LAKEPORT, Calif. — A popular Lakeport eatery is closed temporarily following a small fire that occurred on Monday afternoon.
The fire at Jimmy's Deli & Taqueria on Lakeport Boulevard was first reported just before 2:30 p.m. Monday.
Fire dispatch reported that the fire occurred in an electrical panel at the restaurant.
Shortly after 3 p.m., the Lakeport Police Department issued a Nixle alert reporting that there was one-lane traffic control in effect on Lakeport Boulevard from South Main Street to Larrecou Lane due to a structure fire.
Later on Monday, the restaurant reported on its Facebook page that they “unfortunately experienced a small fire at our building this afternoon. Thankfully, nobody was injured and there is no substantial damage. However, we are currently closed and without power.”
The restaurant management reported that they hope to reopen by Monday.
“A sincere thank you to Lakeport Police, Lakeport Fire, Lake County Sheriff, and PG&E for your diligent response and service. We would like to also extend gratitude to our patrons for your continued support and well wishes,” the restaurant said in its Facebook post. “Looking forward to serving you again soon!”
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 Board of Supervisors will discuss directing staff to create a policy for warming and cooling centers and continue its consideration of chief public defender candidates this week.
The board will meet beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
The meeting ID is 964 0344 8887, pass code 657950. The meeting also can be accessed via one tap mobile at +16699006833,,96403448887#,,,,*657950#.
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.
In a matter timed for 9:30 a.m., the board will consider giving staff direction regarding the crafting of a policy or plan for warming and cooling centers.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, who requested the item be brought before the board, said in his memo that during extreme weather events, “our most vulnerable are impacted in ways that could be hazardous to their health and safety. While emergencies such as last year's winter snow event are rare and requires us to react in similar ways to a fire, extreme heat and extreme cold without the emergency shouldn't be reactionary, it should be planned.”
He pointed out that the county “does not have a specific plan to pull off the shelf each time we get a weather advisory. Too often entire days, especially Sunday, are without assistance to our vulnerable community members to provide respite from the extreme weather. With a plan of action, our staff and our community members can predict what actions will be taken for these events rather than waiting to see what we have been able to pull together.”
He’s requesting that the Behavioral Health, Library, Office of Emergency Services, Public Health and Social Services departments meet to formulate a plan for extreme heat and extreme cold weather events that will come back for approval by the Board of Supervisors.
“This will allow for public input and public knowledge that this is our plan of action for future events,” Sabatier wrote.
During a closed session scheduled for 1:30 p.m., the board will continue its consideration of chief public defender candidates.
The full agenda follows.
CONSENT AGENDA
5.1: Sitting as the Lake County Air Quality Management District Board of Directors, authorize the air pollution control officer to extend the memorandum of understanding by and between county of Mendocino and the Lake County Air Quality Management District for air pollution control officer duties through Oct. 1, 2023.
5.2: Approve Amendment No. 2 for Public Health officer professional services contract to extend an additional month for an amount not to exceed $6,000 a month for the term of the agreement and authorize chair to sign.
5.3: Approve agreement between the county of Lake and Kings View Professional Services for MIS support services in the amount of $93,168 for Fiscal Year 2023-24 and authorize the board chair to sign.
5.4: Approve Amendment No. 1 to the agreement between county of Lake and Redwood Community Services Inc. for the Tule House residential substance use disorder treatment services, ASAM Level 3.1 with no change to the contract maximum for FY 2022-23 and authorize the board chair to sign.
5.5: Approve Board of Supervisors minutes for July 11, 2023.
5.6: Second Reading of Ordinance Amending Chapter 5 of the Lake County Code and adopting by reference Appendices C and J of the 2022 California Building Code, Part 2 of the California Code of Regulations, Title 24.
5.7: Adopt proclamation designating the month of August 2023 as Breastfeeding Awareness Month.
5.8: Approve side Letter to In-Home Supportive Services memorandum of understanding ratified through Dec. 31, 2023, to allow use of REVA software system for provider enrollment and authorize the chair to sign.
5.9: Approve the first amendment to contract between the county of Lake and Tennyson Center for Children, and authorize the chair to sign.
TIMED ITEMS
6.2, 9:07 a.m.: Pet of the Week.
6.3, 9:15 a.m.: Presentation of proclamation designating the month of August 2023 as Breastfeeding Awareness Month.
6.4, 9:30 a.m. Discussion and direction to staff regarding crafting a policy/plan for warming and cooling centers.
CLOSED SESSION
8.1, 1:30 p.m.: Public employee appointment pursuant to Gov. Code Section 54957(b) (1): Interviews for chief public defender, appointment of chief public defender.
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.
I am an avid fisherman and moved to Lake County to enjoy my retirement fishing on Clear Lake. I recently purchased a bass boat and had to purchase a Lake County quagga mussel sticker. I don’t know much about these mussels or what would happen if they got into our lake. Can you provide some information so I can make sure we are doing all we can to protect Clear Lake?
Thanks,
Frank the fisherman
Dear Fisherman Frank,
Again, thank you for this question. As you recall, I answered part of your question in part 1 in my column from Sunday July 16, 2023. Readers can visit Preventing invasive mussels, part one.
Like in part one, this column is focused on invasive mussels, or specifically Quagga (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) and Zebra (Dreissena polymorpha) mussels, which are both freshwater mussels in the Dreissenidae family. I will refer to these mussels as invasive dreissenid mussels.
Today, in part two, I will describe our prevention program, why it's needed, how it works and how we can all help keep invasive mussels out of Clear Lake. Lastly, we will talk about the County of Lake’s current plans for a rapid response, control, and containment plan. There is even a way for the public — you! — to be involved in the planning process.
If you are unsure of what defines an invasive species, please revisit part one, as I describe in detail what is considered an invasive species, and the difference between them and a desired non-native, such as black bass.
In part one we discussed where invasive mussels originated, how they came to North America and the devastating impacts they could have if introduced into Clear Lake or other Lake County water bodies.
The impacts of an invasive dreissenid mussels introduction would be horrific, destroying the local lake-based economy and impacting the lake ecology and food web in unpredictable ways. The probability of a mussel introduction into Clear Lake is high, due to the favorable environmental conditions of Clear Lake waters and the high use of the lake by visiting water users, recreationalists and fishers.
High-risk probability for invasion
The specific favorable environmental water conditions for invasive dreissenid mussels include waters with a high pH (up to 9.5), calcium concentration above 12 mg/L, total hardness between 100-420 mg/L of CaCo3, and a salinity below 12 ppm. Water quality monitoring conducted by Lake County Water Resources reveal that Clear Lake, and surrounding water bodies, do contain these specific water conditions.
These conditions are important to acknowledge because if an invasive mussel was to become introduced into the lake, the environment here is suitable for them to be not only comfortable, but to thrive. We know that the local environmental condition is an important part of what makes a successful introduction grow to an established infestation.
The second factor that makes Lake County extremely susceptible to an introduction is that Clear Lake, the main attraction for water users in Lake County, is huge, and has over 120 miles of shoreline where boats can access the water.
According to the Lake County Water Resources, there are also over 750 public and private access ramps and points around the Clear Lake shoreline. About 15 of those access points are public and only about 11 of those access points are regularly monitored by ramp monitors and prevention program staff.
In addition, Clear Lake is a fishing tournament destination, for prize game fish such as bass, crappie, and catfish. In fact, in 2020, Clear Lake was rated the number #1 Bass fishing lake of the decade by Bassmaster magazine. The boats that participate in these large tournaments come from all over the United States throughout the year, including from mussel-infested states, counties, and water bodies.
The ease of access by boat to the lake, combined with the high number of boating visitors per year from potentially infested lakes, combined with the favorable water conditions means that Clear Lake is at high-risk for an invasive dreissenid mussel introduction.
Due to the high-risk scenario of destruction that would occur should there be an aquatic invasive mussel introduction into Clear Lake, the County established a robust prevention program to stop an invasive dreissenid mussel introduction from occurring in the first place.
It’s the law!
There is a county ordinance, Chapter 15 Article 9, that requires all water vessels be screened for invasive mussels before being able to legally launch in Lake County water bodies.
In addition to Clear Lake, the ordinance provides legal coverage county-wide, specifically, according to the County of Lake Invasive Mussel Prevention Plan (last updated in 2019), that outlines the mechanisms for implementing and enforcing the ordinance, “The purpose of this program is to prevent the introduction and establishment of invasive mussels in Lake County water bodies, including Clear Lake, Indian Valley Reservoir, Blue Lakes, Hidden Valley Lake, Highland Springs Reservoir, and Lake Pillsbury”.
Failure to comply with the ordinance could lead a boater (and boat owner, should the operator be a different party) responsible for a hefty $1000 fine, at maximum. Minimum citations start at $100. In contrast, the cost of compliance in the program is easy, fast, and affordable.
Water vessel screening, inspections and decontamination
I commonly receive and hear comments from local boaters that their boat never gets “inspected” by prevention program staff, yet they still are required to purchase a Lake County Mussel Sticker.
The Lake County mussel sticker indicates that a vessel has gone through a screening process and been determined to be safe, and uninfested with invasive mussels - compared to the State Mussel Sticker which has no screening process involved.
The Lake County mussel sticker, both for resident and visitor boats, is different from the State of California DMV mussel sticker. As its name implies, the Lake County Mussel sticker is specific and unique to Lake County, and must be displayed on all boats and vessels that are launching (or within 50 feet of a waterbody) in Lake County water bodies.
The State Mussel sticker is required for all vessels registered in the state but allows boats to launch and load from any water body — even those that are infested with invasive dressenid mussels in Southern California such as Havasu, Pyramid and Piru Lakes.
The purpose of the State Mussel Sticker is to raise awareness and revenue to support a fund that can be used to implement state-wide aquatic invasive species programs and to prevent spread of mussels, and other dangerous invasive aquatic organisms, from impacting water ways throughout the state.
Some of the grants the County of Lake receives to implement the invasive mussel prevention program are sourced from this state sticker fund and administered through the California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways.
Preventing the spread of invasive mussels one boat at a time
The Lake County invasive dreissenid mussel prevention program is based on a risk assessment screening process that determines and categorizes a boat is at low, medium, or high risk for moving invasive dreissenid mussels into and around Lake County.
The prevention program is administered through the use of Lake County-specific stickers that indicate if a boat has passed the risk assessment screening or has been determined to be cleaned, drained, dried. A boat that passes the screening process will be allowed to display a mussel sticker.
You can test your knowledge of the current Invasive Mussel Prevention program by taking this quiz.
Screenings are conducted by knowledgeable and trained County staff, like ramp monitors, and trained commercial or business employees at locations that sell mussel stickers, called screeners or vendors. A list and map of screening locations can be found online here.
First, residential boats that “live” or stay within Lake County, that do not travel outside the County, are considered very low risk. Meaning that they are basically guaranteed to not be moving invasive dreissenid mussels, as none of the Lake County water bodies, or neighboring counties, are infested with mussels.
These low risk boats can be affixed with a Lake County mussel sticker without being inspected or decontaminated — because they don’t have anything to be inspected or decontaminated for, since they don’t travel around and there is essentially no risk of them moving mussels.
Residential boats can get a Lake County mussel sticker valid for an entire calendar year and come in a set of three. These stickers usually display the year and are appended on both sides of the bow, adjacent to the “CF” registration numbers, and one sticker adheres to the back of the trailer. The trailer sticker purpose is to communicate to program staff monitoring the parking lots that while the boat is in the water, the boat -and boater- are still compliant with the sticker program.
Resident boats have to be registered in Lake County, and have to show proof of this registration, when they are purchasing stickers from a certified screener or vendor. Stickers are $20 for residents for a single calendar year and $20 per visitor for a calendar month. When stickers are purchased, boat owners / operators sign a form stating that they will get their boat rescreened should they take it out of County at any time.
The same form designates the boat owner and operator financially responsible should they be the ones found to move invasive dreissenid mussels into Lake County without getting their boat rescreened or inspected.
Visitor boats, that were previously in a non-infested water body, are also able to purchase and display a Lake County mussel sticker without an inspection. Program staff, at ramps, and at selected vendor locations, use handheld portable digital tablets and the Western Inspection Database (or WID) to check and confirm the information provided on screening forms is true and accurate.
The tables are connected to a large database managed by the Colorado State Parks Invasive Mussel team. The database connects lake managers and prevention programs across the western United States, to identify boats that are at high risk for moving invasive mussels.
Boats that leave infested water bodies will appear in the database when they try to get screened in Lake County. If the period between leaving an infested water body and entering Lake County is less than 30 days, then the database screen will flash red, and recommend an inspection or decontamination, when that boat’s information is scanned into the database.
Boats that don’t pass a screening, including visitor boats that come from counties or water bodies that are known to be infested with dreissenid mussels, are required to get their boat inspected. An inspection is performed for free by a County employee that is specifically trained to find small, tiny mussels or unidentified water on a vessel.
Inspectors are thorough, and will sometimes climb into the boat and search live wells or ballast compartments, look around engine compartments or along water outflow ports and intakes. The inspectors are looking for the attached adult form of invasive dreissenid mussels, but also the juvenile form which can only survive in standing water.
The juvenile form of invasive dreissenid mussels are very small microscopic free-floating organisms, called veligers, that can survive in any small pocket of cool water on a boat, in a bilge, or live well. If an inspector finds any wet area or collection of water on or in a boat and it's known that the boat was last in an mussel-infested lake or county within the last month, the boat will be considered high risk and assumed to be positive for invasive mussels, and will have failed an inspection.
If a boat fails an inspection, it will then be decontaminated by County staff. The decontamination procedure is also free, and can take between 20 minutes and 2 hours depending on the complexity of the boat.
Proper decontamination includes washing the outside of the boat and trailer, and any inner ports, compartments, ballast tanks, and intakes with 120 F degree hot water from a pressure washer.
120 degree hot water has been shown to cause mortality in both adults and juvenile invasive dreissenid mussels. While other states allow chemical decontamination, such as the use of Cleaner 409, bleach/chlorine, or specialty products like Vikron, the State of California does not recognize these as suitable decontamination methods and only approves use of 120 / 140 degree hot water.
Once a boat is decontaminated, and determined to be clean and clear of any potential adult or juvenile invasive dreissenid mussels, then the boat owner operator can safely purchase a mussel sticker for their boat and are free to launch unlimited times in Lake County until they cross back over the County line.
Mussel stickers work!
The sticker works because it communicates to the community that the boat displaying that sticker has successfully passed the boat screening-inspection-decontamination process and associated procedures and is safe for boating in Lake County. Without a sticker, no one would know if that boat was safe, has been screened, inspected, or cleaned.
Additionally, the mussels stickers are a unique financial resource for the local economy. When they are sold by participating vendor screeners, the business conducting the screening receives a portion of that sticker sale cost. For some busy shops, the money generated from mussel sticker sales are significant and can pay for utilities, insurances, or extra staff help during the busy season.
The rest of the sticker proceeds go to the County of Lake Water Resources department and are 100% consumed back into the costs of administering the invasive mussel prevention program.
Informational flier identifying the distribution of revenues from the Lake County Mussel Sticker Program. Currently stickers are only $20 for residents and visitors.
If mussels become introduced into Clear Lake, or Lake County, the prevention program dissipates along with the sticker program. This could mean a significant drop in revenue for local businesses like bait and tackle stores, hardware stores, and individual screeners.
To learn more about the current prevention program, you can visit the County of Lake Invasive Mussel web page at www.nomussels.com.
Planning for an introduction
While focus and investment into the prevention program is the ultimate goal and strategy, there is a chance that mussels could be discovered in Clear Lake or other Lake County Water bodies.
The County of Lake Water Resources staff are preparing for this occurrence, to ensure that the impact to economy and ecology are minimized as much as possible. Water Resources secured a 2021 US Fish and Wildlife grant to hire a specialized firm to facilitate the development of an Invasive Mussel Response and Containment Transition Plan for Clear Lake (“the plan”).
The grant and plan have a new, corresponding website that is a great source for literature, links, ways to get involved, and updates on the plan status, progress, and components. You can access the plan website here.
The purpose of the plan is to outline the steps needed to follow for when or if an invasive mussel becomes introduced into Clear Lake. Depending on the location and type of introduction, there is a chance that a chemical or biological agent could be applied to kill off any introduced mussels before their spread throughout the lake. The plan identifies these potential products and how they could get approved for application if needed.
If spread throughout the lake has already occurred, then the plan outlines how the County and partners can implement a containment strategy to prevent spread of mussels from Clear Lake to regional water bodies that would, assumingly, remain mussel-free at this point within this theoretical scenario.
The website, and plan, even includes lessons learned and outcomes from a “Response Exercise” that included participation from local and state agencies and emergency personnel working through example scenarios where mussels were introduced into Clear Lake and responses needed to be developed.
The second part of the plan, called a “Containment Transition Plan”, like it sounds, focuses on preventing mussels from leaving Lake County water bodies and infecting other regional water bodies. Part of the concern driving the need for a containment plan, is that if mussels are discovered in Clear Lake, the state could limit or eliminate fishing tournaments or boating activity completely. This was the course of action that closed San Justo Reservoir, in San Benito County, once zebra mussels were discovered in that water body. That county is still living with the impacts of that closure.
This is obviously the worst case scenario, but if the State wanted to prevent any chance of mussels moving from Clear Lake, to regional water bodies or throughout the state, then eliminating that vector (i.e. the boats!) would prevent any potential for movement. And because Clear Lake is technically a public state-owned lake, they would have the ability to impose those restrictions.
You can imagine how such fishing restrictions would damage the Lake County economy that is mostly lake and water based. Therefore, developing a containment transition plan now, and including state input and direction, is being proactive in identifying alternative actions that could prevent short and long term financially devastating outcomes.
The Rapid Response and Containment Transition Plan is currently in final draft form, but community feedback is still welcome and needed. The firm writing the plan held two public forums to gain community, business, commercial, and agency input. One of the forums was featured on a County of Lake Water Resources Water Quality Wednesdays and posed the question about how an invasive mussel introduction would impact the community and businesses.
There is still time to provide your comments and review the draft version of this plan. This is especially important if you or your business relies on Clear Lake and is dependent on water based activities.
You can access the plan draft here and submit comments on the same page.
It’s important to gather and include community input because an invasive dreissenid mussel introduction would have significant impacts that would trickle throughout the community, and anything that can be done now to lessen or remove those impacts should be pursued and prioritized.
Sincerely,
Lady of the Lake
Angela De Palma-Dow is a limnologist (limnology = study of fresh inland waters) who lives and works in Lake County. Born in Northern California, she has a Master of Science from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Lake Manager from the North American Lake Management Society, or NALMS, and she is the current president/chair of the California chapter of the Society for Freshwater Science. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The County of Lake Water Resources Department wants to know what you know about invasive mussels! Take this 2-minute survey and get entered to win a FREE 2024 resident or visitor sticker for your boat (a $20 value!). You can access the survey from a computer, tablet, or smartphone at this link: https://forms.gle/5YRq5hPcAdR8NBm56.
Comments and questions can be submitted in writing for City Council consideration by sending them to City Clerk Melissa Swanson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
To give the council adequate time to review your questions and comments, please submit your written comments before 4 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 3.
Under council business, council members will consider offering support for an affordable housing project by Chelsea Investment Corp.
The council also will consider authorizing the sale or disposal of surplus equipment, namely, a 1994 John Deere motor grader.
The council also will consider selecting its voting delegate and up to two alternates for the League of California Cities annual conference in September, and will get a presentation on the 2022 Lake County Tourism District Annual Report.
On the meeting's consent agenda — items that are considered routine in nature and usually adopted on a single vote — are warrants and City Council minutes, the minutes of the June 14 Lake County Vector Control District Board meeting, authorization for the Main Street Project agreement with Citizens Caring 4 Clearlake; consideration of Resolution 2023-34 approving a temporary road closure for the Move Lake County 5K Race and Wellness Fair; and receive and file notification of expiring committee appointments.
The council also will hold a closed session after the meeting for negotiations with the Clearlake Municipal Employees Association and to discuss two cases of existing litigation against the city by the Ko Nation of Northern California.
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.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lakeport City Council this week will meet a new department head and get an update from staff on the development of the city’s newest park.
The council will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
The council chambers will be open to the public for the meeting. Masks are highly encouraged where 6-foot distancing cannot be maintained.
If you cannot attend in person, and would like to speak on an agenda item, you can access the Zoom meeting remotely at this link or join by phone by calling toll-free 669-900-9128 or 346-248-7799.
The webinar ID is 973 6820 1787, access code is 477973; the audio pin will be shown after joining the webinar. Those phoning in without using the web link will be in “listen mode” only and will not be able to participate or comment.
Comments can be submitted by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. To give the city clerk adequate time to print out comments for consideration at the meeting, please submit written comments before 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 1.
On Tuesday, the council will get a presentation from Brian Fisher of the Lake County Tourism Improvement District on the district’s activities and meet new Community Development Director Joey Hejnowicz.
Under council business, council members will get updates on the 2023 Lakeport Splash-In at Clear Lake and Taste In Lakeport events and consider approving applications for both.
Public Works Director Ron Ladd also will give the council the latest on the Lakefront Park project.
On the consent agenda — items considered noncontroversial and usually accepted as a slate on one vote — are warrants; ordinances; minutes of the regular council meeting on July 18; approval of the designated temporary disabled parking on C and D Streets, between South Forbes Street and the respective fairgrounds entrance gates from 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 31, to midnight on Sunday, Sept. 3, for the Lake County Fair; approval of the military Use Policy and City Ordinance, as drafted, and setting of this matter for public hearing and adoption at the Aug. 15 Lakeport City Council meeting.
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.
Michael Wysession, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Between the record-breaking global heat and extreme downpours, it’s hard to ignore that something unusual is going on with the weather in 2023.
People have been quick to blame climate change – and they’re right, to a point: Human-caused global warming does play the biggest role. A recent study determined that the weekslong heat wave in Texas and Mexico that started in June 2023 would have been virtually impossible without it.
However, the extremes this year are sharper than anthropogenic global warming alone would be expected to cause. Human activities that release greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere have been increasing temperatures gradually, at an average of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1 Celsius) per decade.
Three additional natural factors are also helping drive up global temperatures and fuel disasters this year: El Niño, solar fluctuations and a massive underwater volcanic eruption.
Unfortunately, these factors are combining in a way that is exacerbating global warming. Still worse, we can expect unusually high temperatures to continue through at least 2025, which means even more extreme weather in the near future.
Essentially, the atmosphere borrows heat out of the Pacific, and global temperatures increase slightly. This happened in 2016, the time of the last strong El Niño. Global temperatures increased by about 0.25 F (0.14 C) on average, making 2016 the warmest year on record. A weak El Niño also occurred in 2019-2020, contributing to 2020 becoming the world’s second-warmest year.
El Niño’s opposite, La Niña, involves cooler-than-usual Pacific currents flowing westward, absorbing heat out of the atmosphere, which cools the globe. The world just came out of three straight years of La Niña, meaning we’re experiencing an even greater temperature swing.
Based on increasing Pacific sea surface temperatures in mid-2023, climate modeling now suggests a 90% chance that Earth is headed toward its first strong El Niño since 2016.
Combined with the steady human-induced warming, Earth may soon again be breaking its annual temperature records. June 2023 was the hottest in modern record. July saw global records for the hottest days and a large number of regional records, including an incomprehensible heat index of 152 F (67 C) in Iran.
Solar fluctuations
The Sun may seem to shine at a constant rate, but it is a seething, churning ball of plasma whose radiating energy changes over many different time scales.
The Sun is slowly heating up and in half a billion years will boil away Earth’s oceans. On human time scales, however, the Sun’s energy output varies only slightly, about 1 part in 1,000, over a repeating 11-year cycle. The peaks of this cycle are too small for us to notice at a daily level, but they affect Earth’s climate systems.
Rapid convection within our Sun both generates a strong magnetic field aligned with its spin axis and causes this field to fully flip and reverse every 11 years. This is what causes the 11-year cycle in emitted solar radiation.
Earth’s temperature increase during a solar maximum, compared with average solar output, is only about 0.09 F (0.05 C), roughly a third of a large El Niño. The opposite happens during a solar minimum. However, unlike the variable and unpredictable El Niño changes, the 11-year solar cycle is comparatively regular, consistent and predictable.
The last solar cycle hit its minimum in 2020, reducing the effect of the modest 2020 El Niño. The current solar cycle has already surpassed the peak of the relatively weak previous cycle (which was in 2014) and will peak in 2025, with the Sun’s energy output increasing until then.
A massive volcanic eruption
Volcanic eruptions can also significantly affect global climates. They usually do this by lowering global temperatures when erupted sulfate aerosols shield and block a portion of incoming sunlight – but not always.
The eruption released an unusually small amount of cooling sulfate aerosols but an enormous amount of water vapor. The molten magma exploded underwater, vaporizing a huge volume of ocean water that erupted like a geyser high into the atmosphere.
Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and the eruption may end up warming Earth’s surface by about 0.06 F (0.035 C), according to one estimate. Unlike the cooling sulfate aerosols, which are actually tiny droplets of sulfuric acid that fall out of the atmosphere within one to two years, water vapor is a gas that can stay in the atmosphere for many years. The warming impact of the Tonga volcano is expected to last for at least five years.
Underlying it all: Global warming
All of this comes on top of anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming.
Humans have raised global average temperatures by about 2 F (1.1 C) since 1900 by releasing large volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. For example, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 50%, primarily through combustion of fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants. The warming from greenhouse gases is actually greater than 2 F (1.1 C), but it has been masked by other human factors that have a cooling effect, such as air pollution.
If human impacts were the only factors, each successive year would set a new record as the hottest year ever, but that doesn’t happen. The year 2016 was the warmest so far, in large part because of the last large El Niño.
What does this mean for the future?
The next couple of years could be very rough.
If a strong El Niño develops over the next year, combined with the solar maximum and the effects of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption, Earth’s temperatures would likely soar to uncharted highs. According to climate modeling, this would likely mean even more heat waves, forest fires, flash floods and other extreme weather events.
Both weather and climate forecasts have become very reliable in recent years, benefiting from vast amounts of data from Earth-orbiting satellites and enormous supercomputing power for forecasting the flow and interactions of heat and water among the complex components of the ocean, land and atmosphere.
There is now a greater than 50% chance that Earth’s global temperature will reach 2.7 F (1.5 C) by the year 2028, at least temporarily, increasing the risk of triggering climate tipping points with even greater human impacts. Because of the unfortunate timing of several parts of the climate system, it seems that the odds are not in our favor.
New federal legislation is aiming to ban unlicensed and difficult-to-trace “ghost” guns.
Last week, Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Chairman Rep. Mike Thompson joined Representative Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), along with Representatives Madeleine Dean (D-PA) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) as co-leads, to reintroduce the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act (H.R. 4992), legislation to ban dangerous “ghost” guns.
These weapons, which are easily assembled with a 3-D printer or a do-it-yourself gun making kit purchased from an unlicensed seller, can be obtained without passing a background check and have become the weapon of choice for criminals.
Without a unique serial number, these guns are often untraceable and impede investigations by law enforcement.
Such guns have been seized in Lake County, such as happened in May of 2022 when the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said it arrested a Northshore man in possession of a ghost gun and other firearms, along with enough fentanyl to kill the entire population of the county. That defendant is now the subject of a federal court case.
The new bill would require online and other sellers of gun-making kits to comply with federal firearm safety regulations.
“Untraceable ghost guns are the fastest growing gun violence threat in our country, and they pose a significant risk to our communities and law enforcement,” said Thompson. “The Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act will help us crack down on the proliferation of ghost guns and keep these untraceable guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for American children, and we must put measures like this in place to help save lives and keep our kids safe.”
“Gun violence has taken far too many lives and affected countless families around our nation,” said Congressman Espaillat. “Ghost guns are propelling this crisis, as these weapons are self-assembled, untraceable, and can allow criminals to evade firearm background checks. This has presented an ever-growing challenge for law enforcement agencies, as the number of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes has increased exponentially over the past few years alone. Our bill, the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act, would codify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ (ATF’s) authority to regulate and track these deadly weapons. We cannot ignore the public health implications facing the country as a direct result of ghost guns and our bill would implement commonsense solutions to help combat this crisis.”
“Ghost guns are a major threat to public safety and law enforcement’s ability to protect our communities,” said Senator Blumenthal. “Without serial numbers and readily available for anyone to assemble, these untraceable weapons are a convenient tool for those that hope to cause harm. Our measure closes the gaping loopholes that allow domestic abusers, criminals, and terrorists to bypass background checks. A homemade gun is still a gun. Subjecting these weapons to the same safety measures and requirements will save lives.”
“If someone cannot pass a federal background check, they should not be allowed to possess a firearm under any circumstances,” said Rep. Brad Schneider. “They especially should not be able to circumvent the background check process entirely by purchasing the requisite parts online to assemble their own, often untraceable, firearm. The growing gun violence in our communities is at the top of the list of concerns for our local police – particularly, violence from ghost guns. I am proud to help introduce the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act with Representatives Espaillat, Dean, Thompson, and Senator Blumenthal to close this dangerous loophole and prevent more lives lost to preventable gun violence.”
“We cannot solve our gun violence problem without tackling untraceable ghost guns that are devastating our inner cities, suburbs, and rural communities – and are a threat to our police who work to protect us,” Congresswoman Madeleine Dean said. “Slowing and stopping the circulation of these untraceable weapons must be a priority – and the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act will help us crack down on the spread of ghost guns and stop these weapons from terrorizing our communities.”
The use of ghost guns across the country has been dramatically increasing. According to ATF, the number of ghost guns recovered and traced by law enforcement went from 1,629 in 2016 to 19,273 in 2021 – a more than 1000% increase.
Amongst other measures, the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act would permanently include the core building blocks of ghost guns – unfinished frames and receivers – in the definition of “firearm” under federal law.
In doing so, online sellers and other gun kit manufacturers and distributors selling frames and receivers that can “readily” be converted into fully functional weapons would be required to comply with the same federal regulations that govern the production and distribution of completed firearms.
It also includes a requirement that ghost gun sellers have a manufacturer’s license and put a serial number on the frame or receiver included in each gun making kit, and that purchasers of ghost guns undergo a background check.
In the Senate, the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Bob Casey (D-PA), John Fetterman (D-PA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
The legislation is endorsed by Everytown for Gun Safety, Brady: United Against Gun Violence, Giffords, Newtown Action Alliance, and Sandy Hook Promise.
Thompson represents California’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Lake, Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The East Region Town Hall, or ERTH, will meet on Wednesday, Aug. 2.
The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. at the Moose Lodge, located at 15900 Moose Lodge Lane in Clearlake Oaks.
The meeting will be available via Zoom. The meeting ID is 986 3245 2684, pass code is 666827.
This meeting’s guest speaker is Dianna Mann, general manager of the Clearlake Oaks County Water District.
Also on the agenda is the latest on commercial cannabis cultivation projects and a cannabis ordinance task force update and a report from Supervisor EJ Crandell.
The group’s next meeting will take place on Sept. 6.
ERTH’s members are Denise Loustalot, Jim Burton, Tony Morris and Pamela Kicenski.
For more information visit the group’s Facebook page.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has new dogs for adoption this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Anatolian shepherd, Belgian malinois, border collie, Chihuahua, collie, German shepherd, hound, mastiff, pit bull, pointer 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
This 2-year-old male poodle has a black coat.
He is in kennel No. 4, ID No. LCAC-A-5541.
‘Coya’
“Coya” is a 1-year-old female pit bull-pointer mix with a white coat.
She is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-5231.
‘Diamond’
“Diamond” is a 10-month-old female pit bull terrier-pointer mix with a brown brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-5230.
‘Jax’
“Jax” is a 4-year-old male Siberian husky with a black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 17, ID No. LCAC-A-5477.
Female collie mix
This 3-year-old collie mix has a black coat.
She is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-5514.
German shepherd puppy
This male German shepherd puppy is 7 months old, with a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 2, ID No. LCAC-A-5315.
Male Great Pyrenees
This 1 and a half year old male Great Pyrenees has a white coat.
He is in kennel No. 3, ID No. LCAC-A-5469.
Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix
This 3-year-old male Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix has a short fawn coat.
He is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-5276.
Male Chihuahua
This 5-year-old male Chihuahua has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 6, ID No. LCAC-A-5500.
‘Roasie’
“Roasie”is a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier with a short black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 7, ID No. LCAC-A-5434.
Female pit bull
This 3-year-old female pit bull has a short brown coat.
She is in kennel No. 8, ID No. LCAC-A-5505.
‘Trixie’
“Trixie” is a 3-year-old female hound with a short brown coat.
She is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-5433.
Female pit bull terrier
This 3-year-old female pit bull terrier has a brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-5400.
Female Chihuahua
This 9-year-old female Chihuahua has a short brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-5511.
Female German shepherd
This 2-year-old female German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 12, ID No. LCAC-A-5488.
Male shepherd
This 2 and a half year old male shepherd has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 14, ID No. LCAC-A-5479.
Female border collie
This 2-year-old female border collie has a black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-5513.
‘Zeta’
“Zeta” is a 1-year-old female pit bull terrier with a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-5427.
Male Chihuahua-terrier mix
This 2-year-old male Chihuahua-terrier mix has a short white coat.
She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-5381.
Female Chihuahua
This 2-year-old female Chihuahua has a short brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 21, ID No. LCAC-A-5379.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-5423.
Male pit bull
This 3-year-old male American pit bull has a short gray and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-5499.
Female pit bull terrier
This 6-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-5410.
Male pit bull terrier
This 4-year-old male pit bull terrier has a short gray coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-5446.
Male shepherd
This 1 and a half year old male shepherd has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-5424.
Female shepherd
This 2-year-old female shepherd has a short yellow and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-5369.
Male pit bull puppy
This 5-month-old male pit bull puppy has a white coat.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-5325.
Male Belgian malinois
This 1 and a half year old male Belgian malinois has a tan and black coat.
He is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-5409.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a short tan coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-5344.
Male shepherd mix puppy
This 6-month-old male shepherd mix puppy has a black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-5408.
Female shepherd mix
This 2-year-old female shepherd mix has a short yellow coat.
She is in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-5277.
Female shepherd
This 10-month-old female shepherd has a tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-5323.
‘Jojo’
“Jojo” is a one and a half year old female pit bull terrier with a short tricolor coat.
She is in kennel foster care, ID No. LCAC-A-5312.
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.
More than 124 million children across the world are currently considered to be obese. In children under age 5, obesity used to be nearly unheard of. Now, more than 38 million young children live with this condition.
I am a public health researcher who studies and teaches about the factors underlying the obesity epidemic. My research seeks to understand what is driving these trends. Why are more and more people, including children, becoming obese?
The standard measure used to determine obesity in children and adolescents has long been the body mass index, or BMI. This is a measure of an individual’s height as compared to their weight. Children whose BMI is a set threshold above the mean, or average, are considered obese. The role of BMI in defining obesity in children and adults may be changing, however.
Although BMI remains a low-cost and practical method for assessing obesity across populations – such as estimating the percentage of children in a particular nation who are obese – growing evidence has shed light on its limitations for use at the individual and clinical level. Leading medical organizations and researchers are encouraging physicians to consider the use of alternative measures, which may change the way children are screened for health risks related to their weight at the doctor’s office.
Critical role of parents and caregivers
In essence, childhood obesity is the result of kids eating and drinking more calories than they are burning off through play, movement and growth. Because of this, researchers have largely focused on understanding the individual eating and physical activity habits of these kids.
In the case of childhood obesity, researchers like me also know that parental figures play critical roles in both mirroring and creating opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating.
However, attempts to address childhood obesity have often focused excessively on individual behaviors of parents and children and too little on the environment where children and their families live. Research and statistics make it clear that this approach has failed and that new strategies are needed to understand and address why more children are becoming obese.
Social determinants of childhood obesity
Social determinants of health refer to the conditions where people live, learn, work, play and worship that affect health and quality of life.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has described five broad categories of social determinants of health. These include:
economic stability
education access and quality
health care access and quality
neighborhood and the built environment, such as access to sidewalks and playgrounds
social and community context
Social determinants can promote health. For example, neighborhoods with access to safe parks and green spaces and healthy food retailers may support healthy eating and physical activity for families.
But social determinants can also facilitate or encourage unhealthy behaviors. Because of their underlying role in contributing to health outcomes like childhood obesity, social determinants have been described as the “causes of the causes.” In other words, if poor diet is one of the causes of childhood obesity, then the social determinants that shape a child and their family’s food environment – such as lack of neighborhood grocery stores or limited income to purchase healthy foods – would be a cause of that poor diet.
Role of processed foods and physical inactivity
Globally, people are spending more time in cars and less time walking – one of the most basic forms of physical activity. Even in the poorest nations, private car ownership rates are skyrocketing. Kids who would inadvertently be engaging in physical activity just by walking or biking to school are more likely to be taking cars and buses to school instead.
But for working parents with long hours or those who are unable to afford healthy groceries, these are often the easiest or affordable options for feeding their children. In fact, poor families are more likely to live in communities designated as “food deserts,” areas where there are few or no grocery stores and a high concentration of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores.
And children’s lifestyles have changed drastically, shifting away from outdoor physical activity into an increasingly sedentary way of life, in large part due to social media and screen time. The role of screen time in the childhood obesity epidemic is a significant and growing area of concern and research.
In my own research in Peruvian communities, parents identified many of these same factors as barriers to their children being physically active. Mothers complained about the lack of safe spaces for their kids to play. Local parks were full of crime, and yards were congested with traffic and other safety hazards. Mothers felt it was safer for their young children to be inside watching TV than outside playing.
This example is not unique to Peru. Parents around the world are contending with these challenges.
Addressing the underlying causes
The field of public health prioritizes making the healthy choice the easy choice. Combating the childhood obesity epidemic means making healthy eating an easier choice for children and families than staying inside and eating processed foods.
However, the reality is that much of the world’s population now lives, works, plays and worships in places that make it more difficult to choose healthy behaviors.
Policies and programs that address the social determinants of health are a critical part of curbing the childhood obesity epidemic. These include investing in community resources like playgrounds and free programs that get kids outside.
In my view, every kid should be able to swim in the safe and accessible community pool rather than relying on their living room TVs to escape the blistering summer heat, or access fresh and affordable produce in their neighborhood instead of having to rely on fast food as the only close food resource. Childhood obesity is a preventable condition that communities can reduce most effectively by increasing access to resources that will allow them to live healthy lives.
July 2023 marks the one-year anniversary of the national launch of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Currently, more than 200 call centers throughout the U.S. are responding to 988 calls. But few people know it exists. SciLine interviewed Dr. Emmy Betz, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado, who discussed the critical need to raise awareness about 988, the increasing numbers of suicide deaths in the U.S. and the signs that someone is thinking about suicide.
Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can you share some statistics about suicide in the U.S.?
Emmy Betz: Suicide continues to be a leading cause of death in the United States. In fact, it’s the 12th-leading cause of death among all ages. We had been seeing suicide rates rise from about 2000, up until around the COVID era. There was a small dip in rates during those COVID years, which was great, but unfortunately we’ve now seen rates increase again. In 2021, there were 48,000 suicide deaths in the U.S., which is about one every 11 minutes.
What about youth suicide?
Emmy Betz: Suicide rates among youth in particular have increased. Between 2011 and 2021, suicide rates for youth rose 60%. Particularly concerning are increases in suicide rates among young individuals of color, where there have traditionally been lower suicide rates.
Who should call 988, and when?
Emmy Betz: 988 is the suicide and crisis lifeline. I want to really emphasize, it’s not just for suicide. It’s for anyone who’s experiencing substance abuse, mental health crisis, emotional distress or suicidal thoughts. You can call for yourself. You can call for someone in your family or a friend. It’s available 24/7, and it’s free and confidential.
How has the first year of the 988 hotline gone?
Emmy Betz: In the first year, 988 answered nearly 5 million calls, chats or texts. That’s great news. But one thing that I think is concerning: There was a Pew Charitable Trusts survey published in April 2023. Only 13% of respondents said they knew both about 988 and what it was for. So I think we still have a ways to go in terms of raising awareness among people about what the hotline is, when you should call and then what happens when you do call.
What are warning signs that a person is thinking about suicide?
Emmy Betz: It can vary. Sometimes, it can look like what we think of classically as depression – somebody who might seem sad, seems withdrawn and not doing the things that they previously have been wanting to do.
Certainly anything like talking a lot about death, mentioning suicide, mentioning not wanting to be around anymore – those are all very concerning. Some people, though, can seem angry or sort of ramped up or different.
And perhaps the most important thing to know – it’s OK to ask. If you’re ever worried that someone might be having thoughts of suicide, it’s fine to ask them directly. You’re not going to prompt suicidal thoughts by asking that question.
What are some prevention strategies for firearm suicides?
Emmy Betz: Here at the University of Colorado, I lead the firearm injury prevention initiative, which is a new program funded through the medical school that hopes to reduce all sorts of firearm injuries and deaths, including suicide.
Where I live in Colorado, 73% of our gun deaths are by suicide. It’s a critical problem in our state. And these deaths are preventable.
Suicide typically occurs in the context of some kind of crisis, whether it’s related to a job, or a recent breakup with a romantic partner, or something else. Prevention is all about getting people through that high-risk period, to get the treatment or resources they need.
We know that if a person uses a firearm in a suicide attempt, about 90% of the time they die. So my work and the work of our initiative really focuses on how can we reduce firearm access when someone is in that high-risk period.
And importantly, it’s not about confiscation. It’s not about legislation. It’s about engaging with communities, educating communities and educating health care providers about what we can do to reduce firearm access – specifically, encouraging people to take steps to lock up guns differently, such as changing the locks or changing the password so the at-risk person can’t access the gun.
When someone has suicide risk, it can be a good idea to move firearms out of the home temporarily. We’ve been working with gun ranges, retailers and other locations that offer voluntary and temporary firearm storage as a solution for people – to make the home safer while someone’s getting better.
There are things we can do that don’t conflict with views on Second Amendment rights. I’m thrilled to see firearm rights organizations working with large organizations like the Veterans Administration, the Department of Defense and medical organizations.
What is suicide contagion, and what should journalists know about covering suicide without contributing to it?
Emmy Betz: Suicide contagion is the phenomenon whereby hearing about one suicide – in particular, the methods – leads to additional individuals attempting or dying by suicide using the same methods.
It’s really important that journalists talk about suicide, and that we raise awareness, and we get these messages out. But there are guidelines about how to reduce contagion. There are guidelines from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and other large organizations that really spell out best practices for journalists.
Watch the full interview to hear more about the 988 hotline and suicide prevention.
SciLine is a free service based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.
This article was corrected to fix the attribution for the April 2023 survey.
A young planet whirling around a petulant red dwarf star is changing in unpredictable ways orbit-by-orbit. It is so close to its parent star that it experiences a consistent, torrential blast of energy, which evaporates its hydrogen atmosphere – causing it to puff off the planet.
But during one orbit observed with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the planet looked like it wasn't losing any material at all, while an orbit observed with Hubble a year and a half later showed clear signs of atmospheric loss.
This extreme variability between orbits shocked astronomers. "We've never seen atmospheric escape go from completely not detectable to very detectable over such a short period when a planet passes in front of its star," said Keighley Rockcliffe of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. "We were really expecting something very predictable, repeatable. But it turned out to be weird. When I first saw this, I thought 'That can't be right.'"
Rockcliffe was equally puzzled to see, when it was detectable, the planet's atmosphere puffing out in front of the planet, like a headlight on a fast-bound train. "This frankly strange observation is kind of a stress-test case for the modeling and the physics about planetary evolution. This observation is so cool because we're getting to probe this interplay between the star and the planet that is really at the most extreme," she said.
Located 32 light-years from Earth, the parent star AU Microscopii (AU Mic) hosts one of the youngest planetary systems ever observed. The star is less than 100 million years old (a tiny fraction of the age of our Sun, which is 4.6 billion years old).
The innermost planet, AU Mic b, has an orbital period of 8.46 days and is just 6 million miles from the star (about 1/10th the planet Mercury's distance from our Sun). The bloated, gaseous world is about four times Earth's diameter.
AU Mic b was discovered by NASA’s Spitzer and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, space telescopes in 2020. It was spotted with the transit method, meaning telescopes can observe a slight dip in the star's brightness when the planet crosses in front of it.
Red dwarfs like AU Microscopii are the most abundant stars in our Milky Way galaxy. They therefore should host the majority of planets in our galaxy. But can planets orbiting red dwarf stars like AU Mic b be hospitable to life?
A key challenge is that young red dwarfs have ferocious stellar flares blasting out withering radiation. This period of high activity lasts a lot longer than that of stars like our Sun.
The flares are powered by intense magnetic fields that get tangled by the roiling motions of the stellar atmosphere. When the tangling gets too intense, the fields break and reconnect, unleashing tremendous amounts of energy that are 100 to 1,000 times more energetic than our Sun unleashes in its outbursts.
It's a blistering fireworks show of torrential winds, flares, and X-rays blasting any planets orbiting close to the star. "This creates a really unconstrained and frankly, scary, stellar wind environment that's impacting the planet's atmosphere," said Rockcliffe.
Under these torrid conditions, planets forming within the first 100 million years of the star's birth should experience the most amount of atmospheric escape. This might end up completely stripping a planet of its atmosphere.
"We want to find out what kinds of planets can survive these environments. What will they finally look like when the star settles down? And would there be any chance of habitability eventually, or will they wind up just being scorched planets?" said Rockcliffe. "Do they eventually lose most of their atmospheres and their surviving cores become super-Earths? We don't really know what those final compositions look like because we don't have anything like that in our solar system."
While the star's glare prevents Hubble from directly seeing the planet, the telescope can measure changes in the star's apparent brightness caused by hydrogen bleeding off the planet and dimming the starlight when the planet transits the star. That atmospheric hydrogen has been heated to the point where it escapes the planet's gravity.
The never-before-seen changes in atmospheric outflow from AU Mic b may indicate swift and extreme variability in the host red dwarf's outbursts. There is so much variability because the star has a lot of roiling magnetic field lines.
One possible explanation for the missing hydrogen during one of the planet's transits is that a powerful stellar flare, seen seven hours prior, may have photoionized the escaping hydrogen to the point where it became transparent to light, and so was not detectable.
Another explanation is that the stellar wind itself is shaping the planetary outflow, making it observable at some times and not observable at other times, even causing some of the outflow to "hiccup" ahead of the planet itself. This is predicted in some models, like those of John McCann and Ruth Murray-Clay from the University of California at Santa Cruz, but this is the first kind of observational evidence of it happening and to such an extreme degree, say researchers.
Hubble follow-up observations of more AU Mic b transits should offer additional clues to the star and planet's odd variability, further testing scientific models of exoplanetary atmospheric escape and evolution.
Rockcliffe is lead author on the science paper accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.