CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Praises of Zion Church and the Clearlake United Methodist Church have united to present the ninth annual Martin Luther King Unity Day.
The event will be held from noon to 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 16, at the Clearlake Methodist Church, 14521 Pearl Ave.
The program includes unity speeches from a diverse group of people from different cultures, ethnicities, colors, socioeconomic backgrounds and gender identifications.
Local political leaders, churches, law enforcement, social agencies and state representatives have been invited.
There will be music and performances by local musicians, Pomo dancers and the African drum group.
Everyone in Lake County is encouraged to come to be a part of this “Unity Day.”
Organizers said It is vitally important for the well-being of our community and our country in these times of division and hate speech to come together as one world and on one accord.
The event is open to the entire county.
Please contact organizer Lynette Kirkwood at 707-461-9409 if you want to participate or would like more information.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Forecasters said that Lake County could receive several more inches of rain in coming days as the last atmospheric river storms in a series move over the region.
The National Weather Service’s six-day forecast released on Friday and continuing until Thursday, Jan. 19, called for up to 7 inches of rain.
That’s a concern for areas of Lake County including Upper Lake, where residents on Main Street near Maddocks Court were seeing full culverts and water covering portions of the roadway late this week, leading to them placing sandbags and using fire hose to try to move water away from homes.
State Climatologist Dr. Michael Anderson said the storm on Friday was the end of the seventh atmospheric river storm in a series that began hitting California at Christmas.
He said the eighth storm will take place from Saturday through Tuesday, Jan. 17, to be followed by the ninth storm on Wednesday, Jan. 18.
Anderson said high pressure is building in the eastern Pacific, and rather than storms coming ashore from the southwest or the west, storms will start dropping in from the Gulf of Alaska. Those storms will be colder, with not as much moisture.
Early Saturday, Clear Lake’s level was at 2.54 feet Rumsey, the special measure for the lake, up nearly 5 feet since Christmas.
Due to the atmospheric river storm event’s continued impacts on Lake County, on Thursday, Sheriff Rob Howe declared a local emergency.
The Lake County Office of Emergency Services said Friday on its Facebook page that Sheriff Howe sent his thanks and appreciation to the California Highway Patrol’s Northern California Division for conducting aerial reconnaissance of remote areas of Lake County to assess the potential impacts of the atmospheric river event.
“The Lake County Office of Emergency Services and Sheriff’s Office continue to monitor the condition of our county during this storm event,” the agency said.
During a special Friday afternoon meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Lt. Gavin Wells, the deputy director of Lake County OES, presented Howe’s emergency proclamation to the board for ratification, which needed to take place within seven days of its issuance.
Wells said the state has declared an emergency due to the storms and Lake County was included in a federal declaration for disaster assistance for counties issued on Jan. 9.
The board voted unanimously to ratify the proclamation.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Lakeport Police Department is asking for the community’s help in its effort to locate a woman reported missing in the fall.
The Lakeport Police Department said it is investigating the disappearance of Lien Merry Lloyd, 33. Her first name is pronounced “Lee-Ann.”
Lloyd’s mother contacted Lakeport Police on Oct. 6 to file a missing person report on her, telling police that she was last aware of her daughter being in Lakeport in July.
In August and September, the Lakeport Police Department had enforcement contacts with Lloyd.
At the time of the original report Lloyd was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, which will trigger a notification to Lakeport Police should any other law enforcement agency run her in the National Crime Information System, which is a standard practice.
Lloyd is a white female, 5 feet 2 inches tall and 130 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.
She is reported to have a tattoo of a bird on either her right arm or right ankle.
“We are currently following some leads but have not located Lloyd,” the police department said.
Anyone who may have information on Lloyd’s whereabouts or who she may have been associated with dating back to July of 2022 is asked to contact Officer Katie Morfin by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by telephone at 707-263-5491.
You can also submit information anonymously by texting the words TIP LAKEPORT followed by your message to 888777.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday night announced that the White House has approved California’s request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration to support the state’s emergency response to ongoing storm impacts including flooding, mudslides and landslides in communities across the state.
“California is grateful for President Biden’s swift approval of this critical support to communities reeling from these ongoing storms,” said Governor Newsom, who earlier on Saturday met with evacuated residents in Merced County and surveyed damage in the area. “We’ll continue to work in lockstep with local, state and federal partners to help keep Californians safe and make sure our communities have the resources and assistance they need to rebuild and recover.”
The Presidential Major Disaster Declaration will help Californians in impacted counties through eligibility for several programs and supports, and includes public assistance to help state, tribal and local governments with ongoing emergency response and recovery costs and hazard mitigation.
Saturday’s declaration makes federal funding available to affected individuals in the counties of Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz. Additional impacted counties may be included once storm conditions allow state, local and federal officials to safely assess the scope of damage.
Earlier this week, President Biden approved the governor’s request for a Presidential Emergency Declaration to bolster state, local and tribal government storm response efforts.
Gov. Newsom has activated the State Operations Center to its highest level and proclaimed a state of emergency statewide.
Amid ongoing storms and flooding, the state and its partners are working quickly to initiate recovery efforts and help Californians return home as soon as it is safe to do so.
Work is underway to remove hazardous waste and clear debris and there are teams on the ground conducting damage assessments documenting the extent of the losses so that the state can maximize its requests for federal aid.
Residents and business owners who sustained losses in the designated areas can begin applying for assistance by registering online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362 or 1-800-462-7585 TTY
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — On Friday, the California Attorney General’s Office announced a settlement with the developers of the Guenoc Valley Project that will allow a smaller version of the luxury resort and residential development to go forward.
Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said Friday’s settlement requires a revised version of the project that has a smaller, higher-density footprint to reduce wildfire risk in an area that has had wildland fires in every decade since the 1950s, along with additional measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Every year, devastating wildfires burn through California, forcing evacuations, destroying homes, and threatening lives,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Developers have a responsibility to build in a way that recognizes this reality and to make smart decisions at the front end so people's lives are not endangered down the line. Today's settlement is an example of responsible development, demonstrating how developers can reduce both wildfire ignition risks and greenhouse gas impacts at new developments.”
“In the years since the Guenoc Valley Project was originally designed and approved, the science and best practices for fire-safe development have advanced. We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the attorney general that reflects those advances and builds on our shared goal to protect communities and the environment,” said Chris Meredith, a partner in the Guenoc Valley Project.
While the Attorney General’s Office’s action indicates the project can move forward, the two other petitioners, the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society, were not party to the settlement and continue to challenge the project on appeal.
The settlement announced Friday, meant to create a new standard for fire-safe development, comes a year to the month since Lake County Superior Court Judge J. David Markham handed down a ruling setting aside the July 2020 approval by the Board of Supervisors due to errors in environmental review and violation of the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
The resort and residential community is planned to be built on a 1,415-acre portion of the 16,000-acre Guenoc Ranch property near Middletown, which Lotusland Investment Holdings Inc. acquired in 2016.
In July 2020, the Board of Supervisors approved the project’s first phase, which included 385 residential villas in five subdivisions; five boutique hotels with 127 hotel units and 141 resort residential cottages; 20 campsites; up to 100 workforce housing cohousing units; an outdoor entertainment area, spa and wellness amenities, sports fields, equestrian areas, a new golf course and practice facility, camping area and commercial and retail facilities; agricultural production and support facilities; essential accessory facilities, including back of house facilities; 50 temporary workforce hotel units; emergency response and fire center; a float plane dock; and helipads.
In September 2020, the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society, with the California Attorney General’s Office intervening in support of them, sued the county over the project.
The suit cited myriad issues, including greenhouse gas emissions and building the low-density, luxury resort and housing development in a very high-risk fire hazard severity zone that has burned in 1952, 1953, 1963, 1976, 1980, 1996, 2006, 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2020.
They also raised concerns with the impact of expanding the boundary of existing development into thousands of acres of existing open space and bringing 4,000 new residents to a wildfire-prone area with an existing population of approximately 10,000.
The case was heard in Lake County Superior Court in November 2021, with Judge Markham handing down his decision two months later, at the start of January 2022.
Bonta’s office said the settlement is designed to minimize the risk to current and future Lake County residents and the environment.
The settlement allows the developer to move forward with a smaller, denser version of the project that includes measures to reduce wildfire ignition, evacuation risk, and greenhouse gas emissions generated by the project, contingent on the resolution of other pending litigation challenging the development.
Specifically, the Attorney General’s Office said the settlement requires that the revised project include measures to reduce wildfire ignition risk, including the removal of three development clusters outside the core of the proposed development; various additional road connections to reduce the number of dead-end roads; improved hardscape; and retention of a wildfire expert.
It also requires measures to address greenhouse gas impacts, such as the installation of solar panels and electric vehicle charging equipment at all residential and commercial buildings and the annual purchase of greenhouse gas offset credits, Bonta’s office said.
In addition, under the writ issued by the Lake County Superior Court, the county of Lake also will take additional steps to analyze and address evacuation of the project.
“From the beginning, we have placed the highest importance on safety and sustainability and have worked closely with Lake County and the local community to ensure it is built in a responsible way. Today’s agreement will help this landmark project move forward in delivering increased wildfire safety and greater economic opportunity throughout the region,” Meredith said Friday.
As a result of the settlement, Bonta has filed a request to dismiss the Department of Justice’s appeal against the developers.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — An important new project in the city of Clearlake has received support courtesy of the annual Wine Auction.
On Thursday, the city of Clearlake received a $10,000 donation from the Lake County Wine Alliance to support the Clearlake Youth Center remodel project.
Since taking over the Clearlake Youth Center in October, city staff have been working on an extensive remodel, including replacing kitchen equipment, and replacing flooring, painting, and all-new activity equipment.
Once the Clearlake Youth Center remodel is completed, the creation of such programs like summer and day camps, youth classes, will be held at this facility.
The Clearlake Youth Center will also be available for youth event rentals.
All proceeds from events such as Breakfast with Santa, Bunny Brunch, comedy show fundraiser, and Movies in the Park goes directly to creating and maintaining the youth programs.
A portion of the building also will be used for a daycare for the children of Konocti Unified School District staff and city employees.
“The city is honored to receive these funds from the Lake County Wine Alliance, and we are extremely grateful for the assistance in getting this building and our youth programs up and running again. Our kids need it. A special thanks to Marie Beery for thinking of us and all her support for community programs,” said City Manager Alan Flora.
The check was delivered to city’s Recreation and Events Coordinator Tina Viramontes at the Saw Shop on Thursday.
Weston Seifert, owner of the Saw Shop, is the Lake County restaurant chairperson, and the Saw Shop catered the dinner for the 2022 Wine Auction.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has more big and little dogs awaiting their new homes.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Akita, Alaskan malamute, American blue heeler, Belgian Malinois, German shepherd, hound, husky, Labrador retriever, pit bull, poodle, shepherd and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Male poodle-terrier mix
This 1-year-old male poodle-terrier mix has a long white coat.
He is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-4508.
Lab-pit bull mix puppy
This female Labrador retriever-pit bull mix puppy has a short black coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 2, ID No. LCAC-A-4451.
American blue heeler-hound
This 5-month-old female American blue heeler-hound has a short brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 6a, ID No. LCAC-A-4521.
American blue heeler-hound
This 5-month-old female American blue heeler-hound has a short brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 6b, ID No. LCAC-A-4522.
Female German shepherd
This 10-month-old female German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 8, ID No. LCAC-A-4448.
Male American blue heeler-hound
This 5-month-old male American blue heeler-hound has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 9a, ID No. LCAC-A-4519.
Male American blue heeler-hound
This 5-month-old male American blue heeler-hound has a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 9b, ID No. LCAC-A-4523.
Female Belgian Malinois
This 6-month-old female Belgian Malinois has a short black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-4447.
Male Akita-shepherd
This 2-year-old male Akita-shepherd has a short fawn-colored coat.
He is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-4538.
Female pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short tan and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 14, ID No. LCAC-A-4493.
Male pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old male pit bull terrier has a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-4494.
‘Malachi’
“Malachi” is a 4-year-old male Alaskan malamute with a long black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-4434.
‘Tyson’
“Tyson” is a handsome male husky with a red and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-4344.
Male Dutch shepherd
This 1.5-year-old male Dutch shepherd has a sable coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-4509.
Female terrier
This 7-month-old female terrier has a short brown coat.
She is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-4436.
Female pit bull terrier
This 2-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-4484.
Male pit bull
This 3-year-old male pit bull has a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-4445.
American blue heeler/hound mix
This 5-month-old female American blue heeler/hound mix has a short brindle and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-4524.
Female German shepherd
This 1-year-old female German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-4486.
Male German shepherd
This 8-year-old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-4518.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has dogs waiting to be adopted into new homes.
The City of Clearlake Animal Association also is seeking fosters for the animals waiting to be adopted.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to inquire about adoptions and schedule a visit to the shelter.
Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Board of Supervisors will hold a special Friday afternoon meeting to discuss an affordable housing project for Behavioral Health Services clients to be built in Nice and to consider approving a request from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to ratify a local emergency proclamation for the atmospheric river event.
The board will meet beginning at 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
The meeting ID is 924 1464 6983, pass code 216475. The meeting also can be accessed via one tap mobile at +16699006833,,92414646983#,,,,*216475#.
All interested members of the public that do not have internet access or a Mediacom cable subscription are encouraged to call 669-900-6833, and enter the Zoom meeting ID and pass code information above.
On Friday afternoon the board, sitting as the Lake County Housing Commission, will hear a presentation describing the financing and funding sources and relative positions of the lienholders for the Collier Avenue Affording Housing Project, also referred to in county documents as the No Place Like Home Permanent Supportive Housing Project.
The project will be located on 3.3 acres at 6853 Collier Ave. in Nice.
The Rural Communities Housing Development Corp., or RCHDC, based in Ukiah, will develop the affordable housing project, which will serve low income or very low income households meeting the definition of mental disorder, substance substance use disorder or at risk of homelessness.
It will consist of 40 units, most one- and two-bedroom apartments with one unit set aside for a manager.
RCHDC previously reported that 49% of the units are set aside for clients suffering with serious mental illness and those who are at risk of homelessness, who are clients of Behavioral Health Services.
County documents explain that the project will house adults 18 years and older with a “serious mental disorder” as defined by the California Code, Welfare and Institutions Code. Under that code, serious mental disorders include bipolar, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, major affective disorders or other severely disabling mental disorders.
As part of the discussion, the board will consider a host of final agreements for the project. In his report to the board Behavioral Health Services Director Todd Metcalf, whose department would refer clients to the project for housing, said the documents “represent the final step in executing the Collier Avenue Housing project, prior to breaking ground.”
In other business on Friday, Sheriff Rob Howe is asking the board to ratify the proclamation of the existence of a local emergency due to the atmospheric river event that Howe signed on Thursday.
The proclamation notes that the atmospheric river event began on Jan. 4 and that, as a result, a local emergency now exists throughout Lake County.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
The Exoplanet Watch project invites you to use your smartphone or personal telescope to help track worlds outside our solar system.
More than 5,000 planets have been confirmed to exist outside our solar system, featuring a wide array of characteristics like clouds made of glass and twin suns. Scientists estimate there could be millions more exoplanets in our home galaxy alone, which means professional astronomers could use your help tracking and studying them.
This is where Exoplanet Watch comes in. Participants in the program can use their own telescopes to detect planets outside our solar system, or they can look for exoplanets in data from other telescopes using a computer or smartphone.
Exoplanet Watch began in 2018 under NASA’s Universe of Learning, one of the agency’s Science Activation programs that enables anyone to experience how science is done and discover the universe for themselves.
Until recently there were limits on how many people could help look through the data collected by other telescopes, but now this program is easily available to anyone. By following the site’s instructions, participants can download data to their device or access it via the cloud, and then assess it using a custom data analysis tool.
“With Exoplanet Watch you can learn how to observe exoplanets and do data analysis using software that actual NASA scientists use,” said Rob Zellem, the creator of Exoplanet Watch and an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’re excited to show more people how exoplanet science is really done.”
Helping without a telescope
Participants without telescopes can help astronomers comb through data that’s already been taken. The project has 10 years of exoplanet observations, collected by a small ground-based telescope south of Tucson, Arizona.
This year, the project will start collecting additional data from two other telescopes at the Table Mountain facility in Southern California, which JPL manages.
These telescopes look at nearby stars and search for what scientists call exoplanet transits: regular dips in a star’s brightness caused by a planet passing between the star and Earth. Essentially, a transit is an observation of a planet’s silhouette against the bright glare of its star.
Multiple NASA telescopes look for exoplanet transits as a way to discover new planets, but Exoplanet Watch participants primarily observe transits by planets that have already been discovered to gain more information about their orbits.
The time between exoplanet transits reveals how long it takes an exoplanet to orbit its parent star; the more transits that are measured, the more precisely the length of the orbit is known.
If the timing of the orbit isn’t measured precisely, scientists who want to study those planets in more detail with large ground-based or space-based telescopes can lose valuable observing time while they wait for the planet to appear. Having volunteers sort through the data will save significant computing and processing time.
Exoplanet Watch participants will also look for variations in the apparent brightness of stars – changes caused by features such as flares (outbursts of light) and star spots (dark spots on a star’s surface). In transit measurements, these changes make a planet appear smaller or larger than it actually is. This work will help scientists anticipate the variability of a particular star before they study its exoplanets with large, sensitive telescopes like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Helping with your own telescope
Want to take your own data? Although the number of targets you can see increases with the size of the telescope used, there’s no minimum size requirement. For example, Exoplanet Watch can help you detect exoplanet transits for hundreds of nearby stars with just a 6-inch (15-centimeter) telescope.
Exoplanet Watch combines observations of the same target by multiple sky watchers in order to get a higher-fidelity measurement. Combining observations is also useful if the planet’s transit lasts longer than the time a star is visible in the sky for a single observer: Multiple participants at different locations around the globe can collectively watch the duration of a long transit.
That was the case with a planet called HD 80606 b, which Webb will observe this year. A recent study of this planet led by Kyle Pearson, the Exoplanet Watch deputy science lead at JPL, combined observations from more than 20 Exoplanet Watch participants.
The volunteer effort on HD 80606 b will free up almost two hours of time on Webb for other observations. And on missions that aim to observe hundreds or thousands of exoplanets, the number of minutes saved by refining planet transit measurements can add up and free a significant amount of observing time, according to Zellem.
One of the program’s policies requires that the first paper to make use of the observations or analysis done by volunteers will list those volunteers as co-authors, which was the case with the study led by Pearson. “I hope this program lowers barriers to science for a lot of people and inspires the next generation of astronomers to join our field,” said Zellem.
The ground-based data for the project was collected by the MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network, supported by NASA’s Universe of Learning and managed by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Volunteer-generated data is uploaded to the American Association of Variable Star Observers’ (AAVSO) Exoplanet Database.
NASA’s Universe of Learning is a competitively selected member of the NASA Science Activation program. The Science Activation program connects NASA science experts and real content and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond.
This work is supported by NASA under award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and JPL.
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky.
Astronomers previously discovered three planets in this system, called TOI 700 b, c, and d. Planet d also orbits in the habitable zone. But scientists needed an additional year of TESS observations to discover TOI 700 e.
“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” said Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the work. “That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”
Gilbert presented the result on behalf of her team at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. A paper about the newly discovered planet was accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located around 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. In 2020, Gilbert and others announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds.
The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth’s size and orbits the star every 10 days. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The planets are probably tidally locked, which means they spin only once per orbit such that one side always faces the star, just as one side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth.
TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for approximately 27 days at a time. These long stares allow the satellite to track changes in stellar brightness caused by a planet crossing in front of its star from our perspective, an event called a transit. The mission used this strategy to observe the southern sky starting in 2018, before turning to the northern sky. In 2020, it returned to the southern sky for additional observations. The extra year of data allowed the team to refine the original planet sizes, which are about 10% smaller than initial calculations.
“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” said Ben Hord, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park and a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”
TOI 700 e, which may also be tidally locked, takes 28 days to orbit its star, placing planet e between planets c and d in the so-called optimistic habitable zone.
Scientists define the optimistic habitable zone as the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. This area extends to either side of the conservative habitable zone, the range where researchers hypothesize liquid water could exist over most of the planet’s lifetime. TOI 700 d orbits in this region.
Finding other systems with Earth-size worlds in this region helps planetary scientists learn more about the history of our own solar system.
Follow-up study of the TOI 700 system with space- and ground-based observatories is ongoing, Gilbert said, and may yield further insights into this rare system.
“TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,” said Allison Youngblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We’re looking forward to the other exciting discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove of data.”
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Jeanette Kazmierczak works for NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
U.S. weather disasters are getting costlier as more people move into vulnerable areas and climate change raises the risks of extreme heat and rainfall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned as it released its annual billion-dollar disasters report on Jan. 10, 2023.
Even with an average hurricane season, 2022 had the third-highest number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. since 1980.
In all, 18 disasters each caused more than US$1 billion in damage. The list included three hurricanes, two tornado outbreaks, a destructive fire season, several extreme storms and a drought that disrupted sectors across the economy.
It was also the third-costliest year, compared to past years adjusted for inflation, due primarily to Hurricane Ian’s widespread damage in Florida. Together, the 2022 disasters topped $165 billion, not counting the damage still being tallied from December’s winter storms.
Several scientists wrote about the year’s weather disasters and connections to climate change. Here are three essential reads from The Conversation’s archive:
1. Hurricane Ian
The most expensive U.S. weather disaster of 2022 was Hurricane Ian, which grew into a monster of a storm over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in late September.
Ian hit the barriers islands off Fort Myers, Florida, with 150-mph sustained winds, tying for the fifth-strongest wind speed at U.S. landfall on record. Its storm surge swept through coastal neighborhoods, where the population has boomed in recent years, and its rainfall deluged a large swath of the state. Twenty inches of rain fell in Daytona Beach, triggering erosion with devastating consequences.
At least 144 deaths were attributed to the storm in Florida alone, and the total damage neared $113 billion.
For example, “it is clear that climate change increases the upper limit on hurricane strength and rain rate, and that it also raises the average sea level and therefore storm surge,” Barlow and Camargo wrote.
Less clear is global warming’s influence on hurricane frequency, though research points to an uptick in the strength of storms that do form. “We expect more of them to be major storms,” Barlow and Camargo wrote. “Hurricane Ian and other recent storms, including the 2020 Atlantic season, provide a picture of what that can look like.”
2. The drought
The second-costliest disaster, at over $22 billion, was the widespread drought across much of the U.S. West and parts of the Midwest. It left reservoirs near record lows, disrupted farming in several states and temporarily shut down barge traffic on the Mississippi River.
At one point, 2,000 barges were backed up along the river, where 92% of U.S. agriculture exports travel.
Rivers the size of the Mississippi can be slow to respond to droughts, but during the flash drought of 2022, the river fell 20 feet in less than three months – even though its major tributaries were flowing at normal levels, wrote earth scientists Ray Lombardi, Angela Antipova and Dorian Burnette of the University of Memphis.
“Warmer atmospheric temperatures have the potential to evaporate more water, causing drought, and to hold more water, causing extreme rainfall,” the scientists wrote. “Over the past 100 years, year-to-year changes from very dry to very wet in the Mississippi River Valley have become more frequent. We expect this trend to continue as global temperatures continue to rise because of climate change.”
3. Extreme storms and flooding
Many of 2022’s billion-dollar disasters involved extreme storms, including hail, tornadoes, and a derecho that damaged power lines from Wisconsin to West Virginia.
It was also a summer of flooding, beginning with rain falling on snow that turned the Yellowstone River into a record-shattering torrent. St. Louis, Dallas, eastern Kentucky, southern Illinois and Death Valley were all hit with 1,000-year floods. Storms in the South knocked out Jackson, Mississippi’s fragile water supply for weeks.
Some of that is basic physics – warmer air increases the amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold by about 7% per degree Celsius. Increased humidity can enhance latent heat in storms, increasing their intensity and leading to heavier rainfall, Wu explained.
Even though humans are becoming more adept at managing climate risks, research published in 2022 found that extreme flooding and droughts are still getting deadlier and more expensive, and the costs are likely to continue to rise.
“This past summer might just provide a glimpse of our near future as these extreme climate events become more frequent,” Wu wrote. “To say this is the new ‘normal,’ though, is misleading. It suggests that we have reached a new stable state, and that is far from the truth.”
This is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.