Experts share concerns about climate crisis on Earth Day

To recognize Earth Day, which occurs on April 22 each year, environmental experts at UNC shared today’s biggest climate crisis concerns, including air quality, weather events and the crisis' impact on marine life.

William Vizuete, a professor in the environmental sciences and engineering department, said combustion from cars, power plants, natural gas, wildfires and other things that burn release particulate matter into our atmosphere, contributing to poor air quality and climate change.

Particulate matter, or aerosols, are also formed via chemistry in the atmosphere. Vizuete said this makes them very hard to regulate, but tracking their size and composition is important for determining the cooling and heating of the Earth.

Air quality research is also important for protecting people from disease, especially in poor communities.

"Six to eight million premature deaths occur worldwide due to exposure to air pollution,” Vizuete said. “90 to 95 percent of those deaths occur in low and middle-income countries.”

Air quality researchers have developed computer simulations of the Earth’s atmosphere and Vizuete said they are working to discover the chemistry that occurs, so they can accurately predict the formation of these aerosols.

Paul Taillie, assistant professor of geography, said that rising global climates caused by greenhouse gas emissions are also resulting in more extreme heat waves, droughts and tropical storms. He studies the impact of these extreme weather events on animals, specifically in the coastal region.

Taillie said that coastal islands are important because they sequester carbon and protect our land from storm surges during hurricanes. They are also habitats for fisheries and other marine life.

“A lot of the salt marshes and coastal communities occur in a very narrow band along the coast, so a little bit of sea level rise or habitat loss can be large in proportion to the amount that’s there to begin with,” he said.

Rising temperatures are also causing changes in precipitation cycles. This leads to salinization in surrounding areas, Taillie said, when extreme droughts prevent rainfall from bringing freshwater from rivers into estuaries, where freshwater and saltwater mix.

He said the increase in saltwater prevents trees from properly taking up water, leading to forest mortality in estuarine ecosystems. Taillie said this also harms animals in wetlands that do not tolerate salt well, such as amphibians and terrestrial turtles.

“I definitely think that the coast is one of the most vulnerable areas, but at the same time, I also think that there’s a huge opportunity there because of all of these ecosystem services that we can derive from,” Taillie said.

Janet Nye is an associate professor in UNC’s Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences Department who researches how warming oceans, caused by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere released from human activity, affect fish and fisheries.

Nye said that organisms in tropical or subtropical areas have more narrow temperature ranges, so they can die from what can be thought of as a small temperature change. When this impacts foundational species, such as coral and seagrasses, it disproportionately affects the entire ecosystem.

These communities are often nursery grounds for fish, shrimp and other marine life, Nye said. The loss of these species impacts food security in some developing countries where fish may be the only source of protein.

In North Carolina, these ecosystem changes hit home for many people who feel connected to our beaches and ocean life, Nye said.

“Losing that is deeply personal," she said. "So, I think it’s important to tell that story of how those ecosystems and the places that we love are changing and, in our lifetime, it may not change back to what we knew."

Although the effects of climate change are alarming, experts believe there are ways to reduce its negative impact. Vizuete said people can reduce aerosols in the atmosphere by controlling personal space indoors and not burning things, or ventilating when they do.

Taillie said people can also try to reduce their carbon footprint by taking public transit and walking more.

Nye said she drives a hybrid car, eats less meat and tries not to buy plastic. But the best way to help, she said, is to vote and campaign for political leaders who people think will do the most to curb climate change.

“I think if everybody did little things like that, it would make a difference,” Nye said. “But we need to do that plus so much more.”

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