Will there be a dead tree emoji? This means...丨Nature Trumpet

Hello everyone, this is the 19th issue of the Environmental Trumpet column. In this issue, we have collected the following environmental research and news worth reading:

1) Dead tree emojis will be added

2) To mitigate global warming, the United States cracks down on refrigerant smuggling

3) Shanghai hit by strongest typhoon in 75 years, climate change to blame

4) When the sun shines, car exhaust becomes clean energy?

5) "Future Star" is launched into space, understanding the "Sun's mood"

There will be a dead tree expression in emoji!

The Unicode Consortium has approved that a new emoji expression will be added to the emoji in the future: dead tree (leafless tree), to make up for the shortcomings of emoji in environmental information.

The design of the "dead tree" emoji is inspired by the global drought problem . Drought has affected the world to varying degrees: trade along the Mississippi River and the Panama Canal has shrunk, crop yields in Brazil have dropped, and water levels in Spanish reservoirs have dropped...

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the frequency and duration of droughts have increased by nearly a third over the past two decades. Today, more than 2.3 billion people around the world face water stress. By 2050, more than three-quarters of the world's population may be affected by drought.

Dead Tree emoji designed by Brian Baihaki | Brian Baihaki

As environmental issues have become more and more of a topic of conversation, Brian Baihaki first proposed to the Unicode Consortium in 2022 to add new environmental emojis. In the proposal, he gave a design for the "dead tree" emoji and explained that drought-related topics have a high search volume on the Internet. In addition to representing drought, Baihaki believes that the "dead tree" emoji can also be used to express despair and sadness, and also has implications such as death and illness.

To mitigate global warming,

The United States cracks down on refrigerant smuggling

What you think of as smuggling: drug trafficking, smuggling of endangered animals… Actual smuggling: In addition to the above, even refrigerants can be seized by customs.

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an enforcement alert to crack down on the smuggling of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are widely used in automotive air conditioning, household air conditioning, industrial refrigeration and foam industries. In the 1980s, after people discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) represented by Freon would destroy the earth's ozone layer, HFCs gradually became a substitute for CFCs and were used in many refrigerant products.

Using less air conditioning is also one of the ways to reduce HFCs emissions | Pixabay

Although HFCs have alleviated the problem of the ozone hole, as a type of greenhouse gas with extremely strong greenhouse effect, it has brought new problems to the earth: intensified global warming.

How strong is the greenhouse effect caused by HFCs? Taking CO2 as the standard, the impact of HFCs is 14,800 times that of the same mass of CO2. This is why the US government chose to reduce HFCs - according to the plan of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, if the use of HFCs is fully reduced, the global temperature is expected to drop by about 0.5℃.

However, the reduction in the use of HFCs has forced many American residents and businesses to update their refrigeration equipment, which has increased the cost of living . As a result, a black market for HFCs has quietly developed in the United States. People smuggle HFCs into the United States by hiding gas cylinders and labeling HFCs cylinders with false information, thereby trading them. Since 2024, the US government has stopped about 25 illegal HFC shipments, which have caused the same greenhouse effect as 50,000 cars driving for a year.

Shanghai hit by strongest typhoon in 75 years

Is climate change to blame?

On September 16, Shanghai experienced a "special" Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Typhoon "Bebejia" landed in Pudong, Shanghai at around 7:30 am. When it landed, the maximum wind speed near the center reached level 14 (42 m/s). "Bebejia" also became the strongest typhoon to land in Shanghai in 75 years .

Trees fell to the ground after being blown down by Typhoon Bebecca | Xinhua News Agency

It is not uncommon for coastal areas to encounter typhoons in the summer. July to September is the period when typhoon activity is most frequent. Every year, China's coastal areas encounter an average of 6-8 typhoons, sometimes even more. However, the intensity of the typhoons that have landed recently is higher and more destructive than in the past. This is inseparable from the boosting effect of climate change .

The formation of typhoons depends on ocean temperature, atmospheric conditions (such as wind direction, distribution of high and low pressure systems, etc.) and the rotation of the earth. There are many weak tropical vortices distributed on the tropical ocean surface, which are the "predecessors" of typhoons. When the ocean surface temperature exceeds 26.5℃ and the sea water temperature below the sea surface is still high, the tropical vortex can draw sufficient energy from the ocean to strengthen itself. In addition, typhoons will also consume other weaker vortices to maintain their strength.

Under the influence of climate change, ocean temperatures continue to rise , which means that typhoons have more energy to evolve, and the heavy rainfall they bring has also increased, causing greater damage to cities. According to a 2020 study, from 1979 to 2017, the intensity of typhoons increased by about 6% every 10 years , and the probability of super typhoons (wind speeds of about 180 km/h) increased by 25%.

When the sun shines, car exhaust becomes energy?

In the past, scientists have proposed many methods to reduce carbon dioxide. However, in the face of the complex atmospheric environment, the effectiveness of these methods is inevitably subject to many interferences. Recently, a study published in Nature Communications has developed a new catalyst that can convert greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into carbon monoxide and methanol (CH3OH) under the action of light, providing raw materials for automobiles, chemicals, etc.

Gallium nitride (GaN) is needed to prepare the catalyst, which is a material widely used in the production of chargers today. On this basis, the researchers also selected metal gold (Au), palladium (Pd) and other materials as raw materials and doped them on gallium nitride. The prepared catalyst can convert greenhouse gases into methanol and other versatile substances under light, just like plants perform "photosynthesis".

Gallium nitride is widely used in the production of chargers | Tuchong Creative

Researchers said that compared with other catalytic technologies, the use of this catalyst can allow carbon dioxide and methane to react directly to form products, reducing the generation of by-products and avoiding the emission of secondary pollution during the conversion process. At the same time, this technology can also operate stably at room temperature and does not involve the participation of high temperatures or hazardous chemicals. With the development of "photosynthesis", automobile exhaust may also be converted into green energy in the future.

"Future Star" is launched into space, understanding the "Sun's face"

On September 24, the Lancang-Mekong Future Star satellite (also known as Fudan-1) was successfully launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. This is the first satellite jointly developed by Fudan University and Shanghai Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. It will be able to observe and analyze the solar ultraviolet spectrum in outer space, thereby exploring the potential impact of the sun on the earth's climate and human activities.

The satellite uses the SASTX-50 micro-nano satellite platform developed by Shanghai Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., and the main payload carries the "Nuclear Science No. 1" solar detection spectrometer developed by Fudan University. The spectrometer will attempt to obtain the first fine spectrum of solar flares from a Chinese satellite in the 280 nm band with an accuracy better than 0.1 nm, and specifically obtain the characteristic data of the flare ring motion spectrum.

The Lancang-Mekong Future Satellite is a small satellite weighing about 50 kilograms. After the solar panels are folded, it is a cube with a length, width and height of 50 cm each. | Fudan University official website

Solar flares are the most violent explosions in the solar atmosphere, releasing large amounts of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation and high-energy particle streams. Observation and research of the solar flare ring is very important for a deeper understanding of solar activity. In the past, China has launched the Xihe satellite and the Kuafu-1 satellite to observe the sun. The Nuclear Science-1 will further help Chinese researchers obtain more detailed observation data, thereby developing theoretical models to better simulate and predict solar eruption activities .

References

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-21/as-drought-threat-grows-a-dead-tree-emoji-is-on-the-way

[2]https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2023/23255-leafless-tree-emoji.pdf

[3]https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-biden-administration-smugglers-potent-greenhouse.html

[4]https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-enforcement-alert-address-illegal-import-hydrofluorocarbons-united-states

[5]https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240712-modern-hurricanes-are-rewriting-the-rules-of-extreme-storms

[6]https://www.ecowatch.com/typhoon-bebinca-china-shanghai-tropical-cyclone.html

[7]https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1058142

[8]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50801-3

[9]https://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2024/9/530483.shtm

[10]https://news.fudan.edu.cn/2024/0925/c4a142284/page.htm

Author: Xiao Xiaoze

Edited by: Yellowtail Pollock

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)