China fires missile into the South Pacific. Provocation? Islanders are concerned.

China just launched a nuclear-capable ballistic missile smack into the central South Pacific, without bothering to notify the target country.

What the heck could that mean?

The rocket didn’t come near Hawai’i. It was at little over 2,000 miles south. 

But that rocket flew some 7,000 miles from China to its watery landing spot. The distance from Beijing to Hawaii is just 5,000. Beijing to San Francisco is 6,000.

Was the Sept. 25, 2024, missile a message, or, as China suggests, just a routine test? Not routine, certainly, since China hasn’t done anything like this in more than 40 years.

Hawai’i folks have expressed concern about North Korean rockets gaining the capacity to fly as far as the Hawaiian archipelago, but China has long had that capacity, and it demonstrated that with the Sept. 25 launch, which reportedly terminated within the exclusive economic zone of Kiribati, near Caroline Island.

Caroline is an uninhabited atoll south of the Equator, in the Southern Line Islands. French Polynesia is to the south and east of it. The Cook Islands are to the west. U.S.-controlled Jarvis and Palmyra are to the north.

China warned the United States and Russia of the proposed launch, which is required by treaty, but did not bother notifying the target nation, Kiribati. France, New Zealand and Australia also got notice. Japan and French Polynesia did not.

China reported the missile carried a dummy warhead.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that China has three models of nuclear-weapon-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as Dongfeng, or East Wind. They are the DF-5, DF-31 and DF-41. Sources differed over whether the Sept. 25 missile was a DF31 or 41.

All three of the missiles have the range to reach either Hawai’i or the West Coast. The DF-5 is silo-based while the other two are transported on mobile carriers, some of which are off-road-capable.

The nation of Kiribati, which has benefitted from Chinese investment in recent years, expressed concern about the launch of a military rocket into its waters. 

French Pacific waters are just south of the rocket landing zone, and officials in Papeete also expressed concern. Radio New Zealand reports that China threw a dinner party in French Polynesia to calm the waters.

The international only news magazine The Diplomat suggested the launch was hardly “routine,” as China suggested. It was the first Chinese launch into international waters since 1980—more than four decades.

That doesn’t mean it was provocative. “Beijing’s motivation for this test launch might not have been the desire to send a political signal, but rather a need for technical data,” The Diplomat wrote.

That said, officials of numerous of the nations of the Pacific have expressed concern. China has been actively courting Pacific nations on the trade front, but until now, it has not suggested that it carries a big stick behind the open pocketbook.

Wrote The Diplomat: 

“China has made progress in winning over some of the Pacific Island states, but has run into resistance from others that fear turning the region into an arena of China-U.S. strategic competition. Firing a nuclear-capable missile into the midst of the islands not only stokes that fear, it positions China as an aggressor.”

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

As Florida cleans up from two hurricanes, Hawai`i is dodging the bullet. Instead, we get hot and dry.

 Hawai’i has benefitted in recent years from the lack of strong hurricanes, while the folks on the Atlantic coasts have taken multiple hits from big spinning storms.

Tropical storm activity can be cyclical. Sometimes it’s higher in the Atlantic; sometimes in the Pacific. That seesaw pattern has been linked to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern associated with ocean water temperature, air temperature, jet streams and rainfall patterns.

During El Nino events, warm water pushes into the eastern Pacific, and tropical cyclones are more likely and stronger in the Pacific. They call El Nino the warm phase. In La Nina, those waters are cooler, and the storm action moves into the Atlantic. They call it a cool phase.

Currently, we’re in a neutral period, but NOAA says we’re likely moving into another La Nina.

Back in May 2024, the National Weather Service predicted a lower-than-normal hurricane season for the Islands, anticipating that shift from neutral to a cooler phase. In a May 21, 2024 press release, NOAA reported:

“Hurricane season in the central Pacific region is likely to be below average this year,” said Matthew Rosencrans, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS). “A key factor influencing our forecast is the predicted arrival of La Nina this summer, which typically contributes to less tropical cyclone activity across the central Pacific Ocean basin.” 

So far, only Hurricanes Gilma and Hone, at the end of August, came near enough to Hawai’i to cause significant weather events locally.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic has been ravaged, pretty much as predicted.

Nine hurricanes in the Atlantic so far this year, four of them Category 4 or greater. The Eastern U.S. has been hit by two powerful and destructive cyclones in just the past month: Helene and Milton.

And the continuing transition into another La Nina does not bode well for the Atlantic coastlines.

With two months to the end of the hurricane season, Hawai’i can hold its breath with a little hope. A storm might come, but it’s less likely than average.

So what about next year? The latest NOAA El Nino forecast suggests the incoming La Nina will last into the beginning of next year. Beyond that, it’s hard to know what will happen.

But all this is playing against a background of significant climate warming. The World Meteorological Organization notes that El Nino/La Nina is not the only climate driver. It is predicting warmer temperatures over all land areas and all oceans, besides the La Nina-impacted eastern Pacific.

As you’ll see from the World Meteorological Organiation chart below, that cooler weather is south of the Hawaiian Islands. Like most of the rest of the globe, we in the Hawaiian Islands have warmer than normal weather likelihood. 

The WMO also suggests rainfall for Hawai’i will likely be lower than normal from September through November 2024. 

Hotter and drier. Welcome to the future.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024

 

 

 

Anti-disease forest fungi thrive when they can hear their neighbors: a lesson in diversity

 

There is such value in diversity.

We can take a lesson from a new bit of science that suggests that life performs better when surrounded by its community.

This study found that certain fungi grow faster—many times faster—in an environment that includes sound, even if the species itself does not make sounds.

In the soil, if you were to insert a sensitive microphone, you would pick up the rustle of ants, the scuffling of scurrying beetles, the whisper of larvae, the swooshing of earthworms on their liquid missions and the motion of all the other critters that normally occupy a healthy underground environment.

Fungi don’t have ears, but from this study, clearly they can sense the presence of other creatures by the impacts of their movements, and you could anthropomorphize that they appreciate the company. They certainly behave as if they do.

This particular study was published in the journal Biology Letters. It was reviewed in the New York Times here. 

Wrote Times writer Veronique Greenwood: “Playing sound to Trichoderma harzianum, a green microscopic fungus that defends tree roots from pathogens, led to growth rates seven times as fast as those of fungus grown in the sound of silence. If the laboratory findings can be replicated in nature, then sound could be an unexpected new tool for improving the health of forests, encouraging beneficial microbes to take root and thrive.”

In this case, the researchers just played white noise for the green fungi, and saw dramatic increases in growth compared to the fungi grown in silence.

And here’s a leap.

A totally other piece of science, from the 13 September 2024 issue of Science magazine, expressed concern that the survival of Asian forest trees that contain anti-cancer properties is threatened. People are going into the forest and harvesting the trees to rarity and endangered status.

“Without these trees, cancer patients will lose access to a vital treatment,” wrote authors Gao Chen, Xiang-Hai Cai, Jia Tang, Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne Renner.

In Hawai’i, we have seen the impacts of loss of diversity. If you lose a pollinating bird species, you risk losing the plants they pollinate, and then the insect and fungal communities that rely on those plants. Round and round it goes.

Back to the fungus study, researchers aren’t sure how the fungi are sensing the sound.

“The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon may be fungal mechanoreceptor stimulation and/or potentially a piezoelectric effect; however, further research is required to confirm this hypothesis,” wrote authors Jake M. Robinson, Amy Annells, Christian Cando-Dumancela and Martin F. Breed.

But it was clear that in the presence of sound—all other things being equal—this little green fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, produces lots more biomass and also produces more spores, than in silence.

And they give back to their forest community. These little life forms colonize tree roots, and then protect the trees from disease and rot-causing fungi. They’re so good at it that they’re used as a natural fungicide—applied to leaves, seeds and the soil around valued plants.

Nature’s message is that a diverse community is a far healthier, more productive one.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2024