Distinguished scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and highly cited lead author Kevin Trenberth together with climate scientist and co-author Lijing Cheng have made a new complete inventory of all the various sources of excess heat on Earth. He studied energy changes from the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice as climate system components from 2000 to 2019 and compared this to the radiation at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere to find the imbalance.

“The net energy imbalance is calculated by looking at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to radiate back into space,” explains Trenberth, who’s paper was published today, “it is not yet possible to measure the imbalance directly, the only practical way to estimate it is through an inventory of the changes in energy.”

Understanding the net energy gain of the climate system from all origins, how much extra energy there is and where it is redistributed in the Earth system is vital to inform and thus address the climate crisis. Previously, the focus of climate research has been on the rise of the global mean surface temperature on Earth. However, this is just one outcome of the total energy imbalance faced on Earth.

Excess energy affects weather systems, directly increasing the number or intensity of extreme weather events such as heavy rains and flooding, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. Weather events move energy around and help the climate system to get rid of energy by radiating it into space, which also affects the rise in temperature globally. The study further revealed that 93% of extra heat from the imbalance ends up in the Earth’s oceans, increasing their overall temperature and sea level which resulted in 2021 being the hottest global ocean recorded year to date.

“Modelling the Earth energy imbalance is challenging, and the relevant observations and their synthesis need improvements. Understanding how all forms of energy are distributed across the globe and are sequestered or radiated back to space will give us a better understanding of our future,” adds Lijing Cheng, co-author of the study.

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The R. typus, like other large sharks, may take years or even decades to reach maturity and reproduce, making them vulnerable to population declines, especially when combined with human threats. For instance, they may be caught in fishing nets as bycatch or face the risk of vessel strikes when shipping lanes overlap with their feeding sites. Being able to understand and predict whale shark behavior is a necessary step for protecting the species.

The satellite monitoring of this species, led by STRI marine ecologist Héctor Guzmán, found that whale sharks feed mainly in coastal waters, seamounts and ridges of the Panamanian Pacific, where they can find an abundance of their favorite foods: small fish and plankton. They were also spotted swimming north and southbound along the coast, towards Mexico and Ecuador, and towards the open ocean to feed.

“This species requires clear regional planning,” said Guzmán. “Once the feeding and breeding aggregation areas are identified, some protection measures should be implemented. The newly announced marine protected area expansions across the region provide an interesting platform for large-scale conservation practices.”

Although they used marine protected areas, the whale sharks also spent time in industrial fishing and vessel traffic zones, which could endanger them according to the new article published in Frontiers in Marine Science.

“The study shows how complex it is to protect whale sharks: tagged individuals visited 17 marine protected areas in 5 countries, but more than 77% of their time they were in areas without any protection,” said Catalina Gómez, co-author of the study and marine ecologist at the University of Panama.

Thus, for highly migratory and endangered species such as the whale shark, conservation measures should go beyond the establishment of local marine protected areas.

Efforts should focus on protecting large oceanic areas and establishing marine corridors that transcend national borders, for example: the newly expanded Cordillera de Coiba Marine Protected Area in Panama or the Marine Conservation Corridor of the Eastern Tropical Pacific which connects Coiba with Costa Rica’s Cocos Islands, the Galapagos in Ecuador and Colombia’s Malpelo Island.

“A periodic tagging program should continue for two main reasons: first, we still don’t know where the species reproduces and tracking may lead us in the right direction,” said Guzmán. “Second, we know that they are moving across extensive areas. We have identified potential corridors or seaways, as well as aggregation areas, that require management attention and clear protection rules. Tracking will allow us to better identify those regional routes.”

The satellite tracking also revealed a whale shark migratory pattern that seems to be associated with circular ocean currents called eddies.

“Eddies are recognized as potential feeding areas for migratory species or food epicenters in the oceans, so they can swim in those areas for a long time while foraging and feeding,” said Guzman. “However, eddies are dynamic systems and change constantly in speed or strength, size and location, even seasonally. These feeding areas are important for conservation, especially considering their dynamics and potential changes associated with climate change.”

This research was partially funded by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, MarViva Foundation, the International Community Foundation-CANDEO, the Secretaria Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion de Panama (SENACYT) and its Sistema Nacional de Investigación.

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“Using this test, we can determine very quickly what variants are in the community and if a new variant is emerging,” said Dr. SoRelle, Assistant Professor of Pathology and senior author of the study. “It also has implications for individual patients when we’re dealing with variants that respond differently to treatments.”

The testing results at UT Southwestern’s Once Upon a Time Human Genomics Center have helped public health leaders track the spread of COVID-19 in North Texas and make policy decisions based on the prevalence of variants. Doctors have also used the results to choose monoclonal antibodies that are more effective against certain strains infecting critically ill COVID-19 patients.

While a number of other tests for COVID-19 exist, they generally detect either a fragment of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material or small molecules found on the surface of the virus, and don’t provide information to identify the variant. In addition, many researchers worry that these tests aren’t accurate in detecting some variants — or may miss future strains. To determine which variant of COVID-19 a patient has, scientists typically must use whole genome sequencing, which is time-consuming and expensive, relying on sophisticated equipment and analysis to spell out the entire RNA sequence contained in the viruses.

In early 2021, Dr. SoRelle and his colleagues at UT Southwestern wanted to track how well current tests were detecting emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2. But they realized that sequencing a lot of specimens would not be timely or cost-effective, so they designed their own test, working in the McDermott Center Next Generation Sequencing Core, part of the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development directed by Helen Hobbs, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics.

CoVarScan hones in on eight regions of SARS-CoV-2 that commonly differ between viral variants. It detects small mutations — where the sequence of RNA building blocks varies — and measures the length of repetitive genetic regions that tend to grow and shrink as the virus evolves. The method relies on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) — a technique common in most pathology labs — to copy and measure the RNA at these eight sites of interest.

To test how well CoVarScan works, Dr. SoRelle’s team ran the test on more than 4,000 COVID-19-positive nasal swab samples collected at UT Southwestern from April 2021 to February 2022 — from patients both with and without symptoms. The tests were validated with the gold-standard whole genome sequencing, and the results were used by doctors to choose treatments in some critically ill COVID-19 patients.

Compared to whole genome sequencing, CoVarScan had 96% sensitivity and 99% specificity. It identified and differentiated Delta, Mu, Lambda, and Omicron variants of COVID-19, including the BA.2 version of Omicron, once known as “stealth Omicron” because it did not show up on some tests designed to detect only the Omicron strain.

“A common critique of this kind of test is that it requires constant adjustment for new variants, but CoVarScan has not needed any adjustment in more than a year; it is still performing very well,” said Dr. SoRelle. “In the future, if we did need to adjust it, we could easily add as many as 20 or 30 additional hotspots to the test.”

Dr. SoRelle plans to continue developing CoVarScan as a commercial test and has a pending patent application based on this work. As the inventor of the genotyping PCR test for variants, Dr. SoRelle is entitled to income from its use.

Other UTSW researchers who contributed to this study include Andrew Clark, Zhaohui Wang, Emily Ostman, Hui Zheng, Huiyu Yao, Brandi Cantarel, Mohammed Kanchwala, Chao Xing, Li Chen, Pei Irwin, Yan Xu, Dwight Oliver, Francesca Lee, Jeffrey Gagan, Laura Filkins, Alagarraju Muthukumar, Jason Park, and Ravi Sarode.

Dr. Hobbs holds the 1995 Dallas Heart Ball Chair in Cardiology Research, the Philip O’Bryan Montgomery, Jr., M.D. Distinguished Chair in Developmental Biology, and the Eugene McDermott Distinguished Chair for the Study of Human Growth and Development. Dr. Sarode holds the John H. Childers, M.D. Professorship in Pathology.