Improving earthquake risk maps, and the world’s oldest ice
May 2, 2024
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Christie Wilcox discusses the oldest ice ever found, conservation efforts, and repelling mosquitoes with skin microbes. Leah Salditch examines discrepancies in seismic risk maps, revealing past quakes were stronger than predicted. They explore improving earthquake intensity data and enhancing seismic modeling for better hazard forecasts.
Manipulating skin microbiome can reduce mosquito attractiveness, offering potential living repellents.
Oldest ice found in Antarctica reveals insights into past climate variations, aiding environmental history understanding.
Deep dives
Using Microbes as Mosquito Repellents
Researchers have discovered that certain chemicals produced by microbes on human skin can either attract or repel mosquitoes. By manipulating the skin's microbiome, it may be possible to make individuals less attractive to mosquitoes. Experiments with engineered bacteria that produce lower levels of a specific chemical showed promising results in reducing attractiveness to mosquitoes, paving the way for potential long-lasting, living mosquito repellents.
Uncovering Oldest Ice in Antarctica
Researchers unearthed the oldest ice ever found in Antarctica – ice dating back about six million years. This discovery, retrieved from coastal regions rather than typical inland sites, provides insights into past climate variations. By analyzing trapped air bubbles in the ice, researchers deduced information about temperature changes and carbon dioxide levels during ancient ice ages, highlighting the ice's significance in understanding Earth's environmental history.
Evaluating Seismic Hazard Predictions
Seismic hazard assessments, crucial for urban planning and building codes, are under scrutiny for their accuracy in predicting earthquake intensity. A study led by Leah Saldich and team unveiled a discrepancy where hazard maps consistently overestimate shaking compared to historical human-perceived data. The findings emphasize the need for refined methods to bridge the gap between modern seismic assessments and past earthquake intensities to enhance accuracy in predicting seismic risks.
Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser
First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.
Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.