Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features a brilliantly colored phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea. Almost every year in this region - just north of Norway and Russia - phytoplankton blooms appear in satellite images. 

Nutrients are abundant and well-mixed in the Barents Sea in the spring and early summer, and these conditions are just right for microscopic phytoplankton called diatoms to thrive. As they multiply and expand, their silica shells and chlorophyll turn the surface waters green.

By late July and into fall, the water becomes more stratified and contains fewer nutrients. According to NASA, these changes benefit a different type of phytoplankton - coccolithophores. Covered with plates of highly reflective calcium carbonate, coccolithophores transform the surface waters into a milky turquoise blue.

“It is possible this is a mixed bloom,” said Andrew Orkney, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. “Mixed blooms of coccolithophores and another important bloom-forming group, the diatoms, have been observed off the Norwegian coast in previous years.”

The image was captured on July 15, 2021 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

The Barents Sea transformed by phytoplankton

Today's Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features...

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features Fogo, an active volcanic island located 400 miles off the coast of West Africa.

Fogo, which means fire in Portugese, is part of the island nation of Cabo Verde in the central Atlantic Ocean. 

Pico de Fogo is the cone at the summit of the volcano that forms the island. With an altitude of 9,280 feet above sea level, it is the highest peak in West Africa.

Experts have determined that the entire east side of the Fogo volcano slid into the ocean around 80,000 years ago, which formed the caldera. 

According to NASA, so much material slid off the volcano flank that the debris field covers an area larger than the area of the island itself.

The image was captured on July 23, 2020 by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

The active volcanic island of Fogo

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features the Büyük Menderes River in southwestern Turkey.

The river rises in west central Turkey near Dinar, then twists and turns across 382 miles until it reaches the Aegean Sea.

According to NASA, The river’s ancient Greek name Maíandros, or Maeander, became synonymous with the bending character of river courses, and the modern geographical term “meander” was born.

Much of the landscape that the Büyük Menderes River flows through is a depression in the landscape known as a graben - an elongated block of the Earth's crust lying between two seismic faults

The false-color image was captured on March 30, 2021 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Meandering of the Büyük Menderes River

Wildfire smoke pours across the United States Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> shows wildfire smoke from western North America pouring into the eastern United States.

According to <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=nasa&amp;cvid=f684d872fb3c40a0a3ed152a597fa3c1&amp;aqs=edge.0.69i59j0l4j69i60l2.939j0j1&amp;pglt=43&amp;FORM=ANNTA1&amp;PC=HCTS">NASA</a>, haze darkened skies and reddened sunsets, unleashed a rash of code red and orange air quality warnings, and even left the smell of smoke in the air in some regions. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research.

Some of the haziest skies can be seen in New York City, where fine particulate pollution has reached levels that are considered harmful - even for healthy people. New York City (NYC), often simply called New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2019 population of 8,336,817 distributed over about 302.6 square miles (784 km ), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the State of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area. With almost 20 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and approximately 23 million in its combined statistical area, it is one of the world's most populous megacities. New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, significantly influencing commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports, and is the most photographed city in the world.

Ryan Stauffer, an atmospheric scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that it's a magnitude of particle pollution that New York City hasn’t seen in more than a decade.

The experts report that most of the smoke that has streamed into the eastern U.S. is likely from a cluster of fires near the border of the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario.

The image was captured on July 20 by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Wildfire smoke pours across the United States

Wildfire smoke pours across the United States Today's Image of...

Black carbon is streaming across North America Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> shows shows the concentration of black carbon particulates, or soot, over North America on July 21, 2021. The smoke from fires burning in central and western North America continues to spread across the continent. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

According to <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=nasa&amp;cvid=f684d872fb3c40a0a3ed152a597fa3c1&amp;aqs=edge.0.69i59j0l4j69i60l2.939j0j1&amp;pglt=43&amp;FORM=ANNTA1&amp;PC=HCTS">NASA</a>, skies have turned hazy in cities ranging from Boston to Washington, D.C., while smoke from fires in Canada’s Manitoba and Ontario provinces is pouring into the U.S. Northeast. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research. 

The black carbon data is obtained from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which combines observations from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based systems.

Thick plumes of black carbon can be seen streaming from clusters of fires in British Columbia, Oregon, Washington, and California.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Black carbon is streaming across North America

Black carbon is streaming across North America Today's Image of...

Air pollution from common everyday products is killing up to ten times more people than what was previously realized, according to a new study from <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/">CU Boulder</a>. The experts report that pollutants sourced from vehicle fuels and chemical products, such as house paints, are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. 

The researchers refer to the deadly air pollutants as “anthropogenic secondary organic aerosols," which form from chemicals that are regularly released through human activities. The team estimates that these secondary aerosols are linked to somewhere between 340,000 and 900,000 premature deaths each year. 

"That’s more than 10 times as many deaths as previously estimated,” said study co-author Benjamin Nault.

“The older idea was that to reduce premature mortality, you should target coal-fired power plants or the transportation sector."

“Yes, these are important, but we’re showing that if you’re not getting at the cleaning and painting products and other everyday chemicals, then you’re not getting at a major source.”

Direct sources of fine particle pollution (PM2.5), including power plants and diesel exhaust, are well documented. These sources of pollution are tied to at least three million premature deaths annually. 

The new study indicates that anthropogenic secondary organic pollutants serve as an indirect source of deadly fine particles. The chemicals are emitted from tailpipes and cooking fuels like charcoal. They are increasingly being used in house paints and cleaning products.

In previous work, a team of experts from CIRES and <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/">NOAA</a> found that volatile chemical products contribute as much as vehicles do to the formation of particle pollution. 

“What’s new here, is that we are showing this is an issue in cities on three continents, North America, Europe and east Asia," said study co-author Brian McDonald.

Professor Jose-Luis Jimenez noted that air quality regulations have tended to focus on volatile chemicals that produce ozone. The current investigation shows that chemicals in everyday products - which contribute little to ozone pollution - may still contribute to the formation of fine particle pollution in a major way. 

“Because this effect has been thought to be small, it hasn’t been targeted for control,” said Professor Jimenez. “But when you take atmospheric chemistry into account and put it into a model, you find that this particular source is killing a lot of people.”

“If you care about air pollution impacts on health and mortality, you have to take this problem seriously."

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Air pollution from everyday products is deadlier than previously realized

Air pollution from common everyday products is killing up to...

Moderate drinking may lower the risk of a fatal cardiovascular event among individuals with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/coffee-may-lower-the-risk-of-heart-problems/">heart</a> disease, according to a new study published by <a href="https://www.biomedcentral.com/journals">BMC</a>.

"Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has been reported to be cardio-protective among apparently healthy individuals; however, it is unclear whether this association is also present in those with disease," wrote the study authors.

To investigate, the researchers analyzed data from 48,423 adults with cardiovascular disease (CVD) who participated in the UK Biobank, the Health Survey for England, the Scottish Health Survey, and 12 previous studies. 

The individuals, who reported their average alcohol consumption, were followed for up to 20 years. Based on this data, the study authors estimated the risk of CVD-related death.

Drinking up to 15 grams of alcohol per day was associated with a reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, or death, but the lowest risk was found among CVD patients who drank between six and eight grams of alcohol per day.

Individuals who drank six grams of alcohol per day had a 50 percent lower risk of recurrent heart attack, angina or stroke compared to those who did not drink. 

The researchers also found that those who drank more than 62 grams of alcohol per day did not have an increased risk of a recurrent or fatal CVD incident compared to individuals who did not drink alcohol.

"Our findings suggest that people with CVD may not need to stop drinking in order to prevent additional heart attacks, strokes or angina, but that they may wish to consider lowering their weekly alcohol intake," said study co-author Chengyi Ding of University College London.

"As alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of developing other illnesses, those with CVD who do not drink should not be encouraged to take up drinking."

The study is published in the journal <a href="https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/">BMC Medicine</a>.

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Light drinking lowers risk of fatality from heart disease

Moderate drinking may lower the risk of a fatal cardiovascular...

Scientists at the <a href="https://www.dri.edu/">Desert Research Institute</a> (DRI) have found that <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-coronavirus-identified-that-has-originated-in-dogs/">coronavirus</a> cases rose by nearly 18 percent in Reno last year after wildfire smoke persisted throughout the city. 

The study is part of a growing collection of research that links exposure to heavy wildfire smoke with a greater risk of becoming infected with the coronavirus. 

"Our results showed a substantial increase in the COVID-19 [the disease caused by the coronavirus] positivity rate in Reno during a time when we were affected by heavy wildfire smoke from California wildfires," said study lead author Daniel Kiser.

"This is important to be aware of as we are already confronting heavy wildfire smoke from the Beckwourth Complex Fire, and with COVID-19 cases again rising in Nevada and other parts of the western US."

The research raises concerns that the wildfire smoke currently blowing across the United States could cause a surge in coronavirus cases.

In northern California, ongoing wildfires have burned more than 190,000 acres. The fires corresponded with a recent spike in the state's coronavirus cases. Infections jumped by 43 percent in just 24 hours, increasing from 5,577 on July 22 to 7,984 on July 23.

The DRI team set out to investigate whether western wildfires in 2020 were linked to coronavirus cases in Reno. The researchers measured the amount of fine particle pollution circulating in the air as a result of wildfire smoke from May 15 to October 20.

Exposure to fine particle pollution (PM2.5) has been linked to an increased risk of catching a respiratory virus due to modified immune responses such as inflammation. According to the DRI scientists, PM 2.5 may also "enhance the spread and survival" of aerosols that carry the coronavirus.

The researchers compared levels of PM 2.5 in Reno to confirmed coronavirus cases in one of the city's hospitals. The results indicate that there was a three percent rise in coronavirus cases for every 10-microgram increase in PM 2.5 levels per cubic meter. 

"This corresponded to an estimated 17.7% increase in the number of cases during the time period most affected by wildfire smoke, from 16 Aug to 10 Oct," wrote the study authors.

The experts found that residents of Reno were exposed to higher levels of PM2.5 that persisted for longer periods of time compared to neighboring cities. During the study period, PM2.5 levels were elevated for 43 days in Reno versus 26 days in San Francisco.

"We had a unique situation here in Reno last year where we were exposed to wildfire smoke more often than many other areas, including the Bay Area," said study co-author Dr. Gai Elhanan. 

"We are located in an intermountain valley that restricts the dispersion of pollutants and possibly increases the magnitude of exposure, which makes it even more important for us to understand smoke impacts on human health."

"We believe our study greatly strengthens the evidence that wildfire smoke can enhance the spread of the coronavirus."

The study is published in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/jes/">Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology</a>.

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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Wildfire smoke could cause a surge in coronavirus cases

Scientists at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) have found that...

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Today&#8217;s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> (ESA) provides a glimpse of the famous coastal resort town of Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.
Located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in between the desert and the Red Sea, this region was a vacation destination for ancient Romans and Greeks all the way back to the 4th century B.C.
Divers are attracted to Sharm El Sheikh to explore the diverse marine life found in the Red Sea, including hundreds of coral reefs. Ras Muhammad National Park one of the most popular diving destinations in the region, with its clear warm water and breathtaking desert landscape.
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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer
Video Credit: European Space Agency

The Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh