Day: October 12, 2026

The Gooier the Snow, the Deeper the Carbon Goes

It’s that slime at the heart of the ocean carbon pump.

Marine snow, the constant rain of mucus, poop, dead plankton, silt and other detritus from the shallows, carries more than 10 gigatons of carbon away from the surface every year, but only about 2 gigatons make it deep enough to be stored for centuries to millennia.

A new study published Oct 8 in Science says why so much is lost: viscosity.

Marine snow is exactly what it sounds like — it’s snowing in the ocean, 24/7.

Not frozen water. It’s a shower of tiny, fluffy clumps falling from the sunlit surface to the deep seafloor. The term was coined by divers seeing it like snowflakes in a headlamp beam.

Illustration depicting the process of carbon sequestration in ocean waters, featuring a stylized representation of organic matter sinking in a blue ocean environment, with text highlighting the relationship between snow-like particles and carbon depth transport.
AI generated by Meta

It’s that slime at the heart of the ocean carbon pump.

Marine snow, the constant rain of mucus, poop, dead plankton, silt and other detritus from the shallows, carries more than 10 gigatons of carbon away from the surface every year, but only about 2 gigatons make it deep enough to be stored for centuries to millennia.

A new study published Oct 8 in Science says why so much is lost: viscosity.

What they found

Scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Lincoln, led by Bryce Inman, discovered that the gooier, more viscous, a particle is, the better it transports carbon.

  • Bacteria get stuck on the outside: Less viscous areas near the surface of a particle are easy for bacteria to colonize. The more viscous interior is tough to penetrate. “Think of it like a worm in an apple: The flesh is easy to penetrate, but the core is tough to chew through,” Inman said.
  • Takes longer to break down: Lab experiments showed viscous snow resists bacterial degradation and fragmentation much longer.
  • Sinks deeper: Computer simulations showed that extra resistance time lets it sink further. The team estimates high- viscosity marine snow can shuttle more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean as low-viscosity particles.

“How far marine snow can sink is a surprisingly complicated problem, and we have added another, very gooey, piece to the puzzle,” said Inman.

How they saw it

This is the first time anyone has watched live bacteria interacting with the physical structure of marine snow, or any mucus.

Starting in 2021, Inman spent 4 years trying to visualize what he calls “the mucoscape”.

In 2025 it worked: using 3D confocal microscopy plus specialized fluorescent molecules called molecular rotors, they mapped the “physical terrain”, bulges, crevasses, viscous pockets, of individual clumps at a scale smaller than bacteria.

The imaging method is detailed in a companion paper in Nature Communications. 

Why it matters beyond carbon

The findings help refine climate models for the ocean carbon sink, but Inman says the technique also matters for any system where bacteria live in mucus, coral reefs, kelp forests, plant roots, and animal and human digestive tracts.

An illustration depicting marine snow, a mucus-like substance carrying carbon from the ocean surface to the deep sea. The image shows the formation of marine snow from plankton, dead organic matter, and mucus aggregating into sticky particles, with arrows indicating the sinking motion, increasing depth, and temperature changes as it descends. Text explains the process of carbon sequestration in the deep ocean.
AI generated by Meta

Marine snow is exactly what it sounds like — it’s snowing in the ocean, 24/7.

What it is

Not frozen water. It’s a shower of tiny, fluffy clumps falling from the sunlit surface to the deep seafloor. The term was coined by divers seeing it like snowflakes in a headlamp beam.

Each flake is an aggregate, no two are the same:

  • Biological glue: transparent exopolymer particles (TEP), basically phytoplankton mucus and slime
  • Leftovers: dead phytoplankton and zooplankton, fecal pellets, shed exoskeletons
  • Mineral ballast: silt, calcium carbonate shells, silica
  • Living passengers: bacteria (orange in that image you saw), microalgae, protozoa hitching a ride

Size ranges from a few micrometers to centimeters. A big aggregate looks like a dirty snowball with mucus parachutes.

How it forms

  1. Phytoplankton bloom in the surface and excrete sticky sugars
  2. Stickiness makes everything collide and clump, think dust bunnies under the bed
  3. Bacteria colonize it immediately and start excreting enzymes to dissolve it
  4. If it survives long enough, it sinks, typically 10 to 100 and more meters per day, some much faster if ballasted

Why we care: the biological carbon pump

This is one of Earth’s main carbon sinks:

  • Surface phytoplankton fix CO2 into organic carbon
  • When they die or get eaten, that carbon is packaged into marine snow
  • As it sinks, it takes tons of carbon with it. Scientists estimate >10 gigatons per year leave the surface this way, but only ∼2 gigatons sink deep enough to be stored for 100s- 1000s of years

Everything else gets eaten or respired on the way down by bacteria and zooplankton, turning back into CO2 in the upper ocean.

That’s why this new Science paper matters — it shows viscosity is a regulator. The gooier interior acts like a hard apple core that bacteria can’t chew through easily, so gooey flakes resist degradation, sink deeper, and shuttle >6 times more carbon to the deep.

There’s also a recent twist from 2024- 2025 work: sometimes marine snow makes parachute- like mucus structures that actually slow sinking and keep it in the top 100m longer, giving microbes more time to break it down, stalling carbon storage.

So, it’s a tug- of- war at the microscale: ballast and gooeyness help it sink and store carbon; fragmentation, grazing by zooplankton, and slime parachutes keep it up and recycle carbon.

Without marine snow, the Earth would be much hotter. It’s essentially dead stuff at the bottom of the ocean slowing climate change, and it’s also the base food delivery service for most deep- sea life that never sees sunlight.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Marine snow viscosity regulates microbial degradation and the ocean carbon sink

Editor’s summary and Abstract in plain language

The paper asks: when marine snow sinks, will its carbon be released in the upper ocean or sequestered at depth? That depends on sinking speed vs degradation rate.

Using molecular rotors to measure the nanoscale viscosity field of natural aggregates, they show:

aggregates are highly structured microhabitats with less-viscous regions that are accessible for colonization and more- viscous regions that correlate to a barrier to bacterial infiltration

More- viscous aggregates take longer to degrade, sink farther, and contribute more to carbon sequestration, illustrating another way that the physical structure of marine snow can affect the global ocean carbon pump

So it’s not just size, ballast minerals, or density, viscosity itself is a microscale physical constraint on the pump.

What they actually measured

  1. Viscosity mapping: The companion Nature Communications paper describes the method, molecular rotors that fluoresce differently depending on local viscosity and 3D confocal microscopy. This let them see the “mucoscape” inside a single particle for the first time.
  2. Bacterial colonization is patchy: Bacteria latch onto low- viscosity zones near the surface easily but can’t infiltrate high- viscosity cores until they enzymatically break it down.
  3. Degradation rate = function of viscosity: Quantifying the “viscosity degradation rate”, they found high- viscosity snow resists fragmentation. In lab and modeling, that translates to deeper sinking and >6 times more carbon reaching deep water vs low- viscosity counterparts, the number Phys.org highlighted.

The paper frames marine snow not as a uniform clump of detritus, but as a structured habitat with accessible vs protected carbon, where gooeyness acts like a physical defense against microbial recycling in the upper 100- 200m.

Journal: Nature Communications, Science (2026)

DOI: 10.1126/science.adx4170, (Science)

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-75892-y, (Nature Communications)

Provided: University of California – San Diego

Authors: Bryce G. Inman, Stuart Humphries, and Farooq Azam

Abstract

Bacterial degradation of marine snow aggregates is a major component of global carbon cycling. Whether aggregate carbon is released in the upper ocean or is sequestered at depth depends on its sinking speed and degradation rate. However, little is known about the physical constraints of bacterial colonization and degradation of individual aggregates. Using molecular rotors to measure the nanoscale viscosity field of natural aggregates, we show that aggregates are highly structured microhabitats with less-viscous regions that are accessible for colonization and more-viscous regions that correlate to a barrier to bacterial infiltration. By quantifying the viscosity degradation rate, we demonstrate that more viscous aggregates take longer to degrade, sink farther, and contribute more to carbon sequestration, revealing a microscale physical constraint of the global ocean carbon pump.

Feds defy Supreme Court ban on labeling every puddle a ‘protected wetland’

At a time of steep home prices and high mortgage rates, the prospect of 265 new, single-family houses going up in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas provided a ray of hope to prospective homebuyers in Salt Lake City.

About 20 years ago, longtime Utah residential real estate developer Lew Swain and his business partner Brent Baily eyed land just south of Willard in Box Elder County for development as a subdivision. They established a company, Willard Land, bought the parcel, and gave their project a name, “Old Farm Subdivision.”

A serene wetland scene featuring tall cypress trees draped in Spanish moss, with lush greenery, cattails, and lily pads in the water. A lone blue heron stands next to the water's edge amidst the tranquil landscape.
AI generated by Meta

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

A child in bright blue rain boots splashes in a muddy puddle, sending droplets of water flying in the air.
Child wearing blue rain boots jumping into a puddle. Close up

At a time of steep home prices and high mortgage rates, the prospect of 265 new, single-family houses going up in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas provided a ray of hope to prospective homebuyers in Salt Lake City.

But a federal agency’s claim of wetlands jurisdiction over a small drainage ditch on the edge of the 142-acre parcel where the homes are to be constructed has brought the project to a screeching halt.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Sackett v. EPA put clear limits on federal authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act (CWA), but the Army Corps of Engineers persists in throwing its weight around as if nothing had changed. If the Corps’ action on the property north of Salt Lake City is allowed to stand, there is nothing to keep the agency’s bureaucrats from imposing similar restrictions on landowners elsewhere in the country.

About 20 years ago, longtime Utah residential real estate developer Lew Swain and his business partner Brent Baily eyed land just south of Willard in Box Elder County for development as a subdivision. They established a company, Willard Land, bought the parcel, and gave their project a name, “Old Farm Subdivision.” After acquiring assorted permits and agreeing to the construction of regional water and sewer lines connecting the subdivision and other properties to Willard City’s public systems, things appeared to be going smoothly. But that changed when Willard Land encountered an obstacle that had bedeviled rural landowners for decades.

Under the CWA, the Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency share jurisdiction over discharges into “navigable waters.” But over time, the Pacific Legal Foundation points out, EPA and the Corps “interpreted the term ‘navigable waters’ not as a limitation on their authority, but as a near limitless grant of authority to assert control over enormous areas of private land across the country,” (emphasis in the original). Eventually, the agencies’ interpretation of “navigable waters” came to include “small ditches, isolated wetlands, and all manner of otherwise dry land features.”

As a result, in the decades following the CWA’s enactment in 1972, farmers, ranchers, and other landowners contemplating even small construction projects on their property had to hire lawyers and consultants to protect themselves from stiff fines imposed by power-hungry wetlands regulators in Washington.

Finally, in 2023, the steady expansion of federal authority was brought to a definitive halt (or so it seemed) with the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision that determined that the agencies’ CWA authority can expand no further than “waters” and can include only “those relatively permanent, standing, or continuously flowing bodies of water” forming geographical features that are described in ordinary parlance as “streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.”

By any reasonable standard, the Old Farm property, with its drainage ditch and nearby 2.74-acre damp area, does not meet the post-Sackett criteria of “waters” subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act. The parcel is located nearly nine miles from the nearest navigable water, the Great Salt Lake, nor is there a hydraulic connection between the prospective homesites and the lake. Separating the Old Farm parcel from the Great Salt Lake is an upland area, the Union Pacific Railroad, Interstate 15, and the Willard Bay reservoir.

After years of battling federal red tape, the developers of Old Farm had good reason to believe that the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision would at last allow them to move forward with their homesites. Not so. On April 8, 2026, the Corps withdrew (and thus effectively denied) the developers’ CWA permit request, effectively killing the project.

Such a move might have been expected under the Biden administration, which rarely missed an opportunity to assert federal power over the benighted rubes out in the sticks. That this kind of decision could be handed down by an agency headed by Trump appointees raises serious questions about who’s in charge at the Corps.

The Trump administration has made significant progress in rolling back the administrative regulatory state. But the Corps’ latest wetlands overreach shows that the beast is still roaming the countryside. Administration officials need to reverse the Corps’ action immediately.

Entrenched bureaucrats aside, Administrator Lee Zeldin’s EPA has posted a proposed rule to the Federal Register designed to provide certainty to landowners and bring the government’s interpretation of what constitutes a regulable wetland into compliance with Sackett v. EPA.  Under the proposed rule, such wetlands must have a “continuous surface connection” to a covered relatively permanent body of water, a standard not met by the Corps in Utah. Public comments on the proposed rule must be submitted to EPA by Oct. 9.

For their part, the developers have enlisted the pro bono services of the Pacific Legal Foundation in a lawsuit, Willard Land v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, filed Aug. 11 in the U.S. District Court in Utah.

“The Clean Water Act gives the Army Corps of Engineers limited authority to regulate navigable waters — not total control over every drainage ditch and damp parcel of land in the country,” said Charles Yates, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. “Federal agencies cannot expand their authority beyond the limits Congress set and the Supreme Court has enforced.  When the Court and Congress draw a line, lower courts and agencies must follow it.”

This article originally appeared at The Federalist

Simple Algorithm Matches Complex Climate Models in Arctic Sea Ice Forecasts — Raising Questions About the Value of Complexity

Infographic detailing a simple algorithm approach to predict Arctic sea ice extent by comparing it with complex climate models. It includes sections on input data, feature engineering, model characteristics, and a forecast graph showing predicted versus observed sea ice extent.
AI generated by Grok

Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences (ACCESS) have developed a simple data- driven algorithm called the Random Analogue Predictor (RAP) that can forecast Arctic sea ice extent up to nine months ahead.

Published around October 8, 2026 (with the peer- reviewed paper in Scientific Reports), the work is led by Francesco Paparella (inaugural director of Mubadala ACCESS and senior author) and collaborators including Faiq Raees.

How RAP works

Unlike complex physics- based climate models that simulate interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, RAP relies solely on the historical record of Arctic sea ice extent. It identifies past periods with conditions similar to the present, then examines how those analogous situations evolved to generate an ensemble of possible future forecasts. The spread of the ensemble provides an uncertainty estimate for each prediction.

Performance

In tests, RAP achieved skill comparable to models used by the Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN). For September sea ice extent (a key seasonal target), its forecast error matched that of 34 seasonal forecasting models. Reported root- mean- square error (RMSE) stayed no larger than about 0.6×106 km² overall, with lower values (under 0.4×106km²) for winter and spring forecasts even at long lead times.

Significance

Arctic sea ice reflects solar energy and influences atmospheric and oceanic patterns beyond the polar region, so improved seasonal forecasts help anticipate broader climate impacts. The researchers position RAP as a transparent, interpretable, low-cost benchmark for both traditional physics- based models and emerging AI approaches: if a more complex system cannot beat this simple analogue method, it raises questions about the added value of that complexity. Paparella has also noted potential usefulness for the UAE’s polar research activities.

In short, RAP shows that a deliberately straightforward historical- pattern approach can compete with sophisticated models while quantifying its own uncertainty, offering a useful baseline for future Arctic sea-ice prediction research.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The value of model complexity is precisely the central question raised by the RAP paper.

RAP’s core argument

Raees and Paparella deliberately built an extremely simple, transparent method that:

  • Uses only the historical Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE) time series (no atmosphere, no ocean, no spatial fields, no physics equations, no trainable parameters).
  • Still achieves RMSE ≤ 0.6 × 10⁶ km² and skill comparable to the 34 models in the Sea Ice Prediction Network for September SIE forecasts.

They then make a strong methodological claim:

If a much more complex model (whether physics-based or AI- based) cannot outperform such a simple approach, that tells us something important about how much additional predictive information that complexity is actually providing.

In other words, complexity is only valuable to the extent that it demonstrably improves forecast skill beyond what a naïve but well- designed baseline can already achieve.

Failure to beat RAP is presented as a serious shortcoming for any model that claims to capture realistic sea- ice dynamics.

Why this matters

  1. Complexity is costly
    Full dynamical models require enormous computational resources, careful tuning of many physical parameterizations, and high- quality initial conditions. Large AI models require massive training data, compute, and often lack interpretability. RAP needs none of these.
  2. Added complexity can be illusory
    The paper notes that even sophisticated dynamical and machine- learning systems frequently show year- to- year errors that fluctuate widely (sometimes > 1 × 10⁶ km²). Matching or beating a simple analogue method is therefore a meaningful test of whether the extra machinery is extracting genuine additional predictability or merely fitting noise and historical correlations already captured by delay embedding.
  3. A useful “null model” for progress
    Just as persistence was once the standard benchmark that forced numerical weather prediction to prove its worth, RAP is proposed as the modern seasonal- scale equivalent. Beating it is not a major achievement; failing to beat it is a red flag.
  4. Interpretability and uncertainty
    Because RAP is stochastic and produces ensembles, it naturally supplies its own uncertainty estimate. Many complex models struggle to provide well- calibrated uncertainty, so simplicity here also brings practical advantages.

Broader takeaway

Model complexity has value only when it delivers measurable, reliable improvement over simpler alternatives on the specific task that matters (here, seasonal pan- Arctic SIE). RAP forces the community to quantify that improvement rather than assume that more physics or more parameters automatically equal better forecasts.

In short: the paper does not claim that complex models are useless.

It claims that their complexity must earn its keep by clearly outperforming a transparent, physics- free, data- only baseline. That is a stringent and useful standard.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Random analog prediction provides a benchmark for seasonal Arctic sea ice extent forecasting

Abstract (key points)

The authors introduce a Random Analogue Predictor (RAP) algorithm for seasonal forecasting of Arctic sea ice extent (SIE). It is a stochastic variant of the classical method of analogues applied to a scalar time series. RAP uses only the historical SIE record (from NSIDC) to generate ensemble forecasts.

When the observations are compared with the most representative member of the ensemble (selected via band- depth, a centrality measure for functional data), the method shows:

  • Negligible bias
  • Root- mean- square error (RMSE) no larger than 0.6×1060.6×106 km²

Hindcasts of the September average SIE achieve skill comparable to the models participating in the Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN).

The authors argue that RAP’s simplicity, interpretability, independence from physical hypotheses or parameterizations, and built-in uncertainty estimates make it a necessary baseline: any physics- based or AI- based model that fails to outperform RAP should be viewed as having a serious shortcoming if it claims to realistically describe sea- ice dynamics.

Core idea and method

  • RAP is deliberately minimalistic. It relies on delay- coordinate embedding of the single scalar SIE time series (plus a date- of- year component) to reconstruct an effective state space.
  • Analogues are chosen stochastically, weighted by distance in the embedding space.
  • Because of the random selection, repeated runs produce an ensemble whose spread quantifies uncertainty.
  • No spatial fields, no atmospheric and oceanic variables, no trainable parameters, and no physical assumptions about ice dynamics are used.

Context and motivation

Seasonal Arctic SIE forecasting sits between short-range weather prediction (“first- kind” forecasts that try to match the actual trajectory) and long- term climate projections (“second- kind” forecasts that match statistics). RAP is intentionally a second- kind method that still retains useful skill for quantities such as the September minimum.

The authors note that even sophisticated dynamical and machine- learning models often show RMSE values around 0.45 × 10⁶ km² (or higher and more variable) for June- initialized September forecasts, performance that RAP matches with far less complexity. They position RAP as the modern analogue of the old “persistence” benchmark that once helped drive progress in numerical weather prediction.

Authors & affiliations

  • Faiq Raees: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (NYU), Division of Science & Center for Stability, Instability, and Turbulence (NYU Abu Dhabi)
  • Francesco Paparella (corresponding author): Division of Science & Mubadala Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences (ACCESS), NYU Abu Dhabi

Both authors contributed equally. Funding came from Tamkeen awards to SITE (CG0002) and ACCESS (CG0009).

Availability

Code and data related to the method are available (earlier versions appeared on Zenodo and as a Research Square preprint). The paper itself is open access.

In short, the work presents a transparent, ultra- simple, data-only ensemble forecasting method that performs competitively with far more elaborate systems and is proposed as a required benchmark for future Arctic sea- ice prediction research.

Journal: Scientific Reports (2026)

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-72959-0

Provided: New York University

Published online: 5 October 2026 (received 15 Oct 2025; accepted 21 Sep 2026)

Authors: Faiq Raees &
Francesco Paparella

Abstract

We develop a random analog predictor (RAP) algorithm for the forecasting of Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) on seasonal timescales. This is a stochastic variant for scalar time series of the method of the analogues that only uses the historical SIE record to produce ensemble forecasts. When comparing the observations with the most representative forecast of the ensemble (as identified through the band–depth, a centrality measure for functional data) the algorithm shows negligible bias and RMSE no larger than km. Hindcasts of the September average SIE show a level of skill comparable to that of the models of the Sea Ice Prediction Network. We argue that simplicity, interpretability, independence on physical hypotheses, and the ability to attach an uncertainty estimate to its own forecasts, should make RAP a necessary baseline for physics–based and AI–based models alike: failure to outperform RAP should be considered as a serious shortcoming for models aiming at realistically describing sea ice dynamics.

Claim: The French Drought Crisis Should be Addressed by Cutting Pesticide and Switching to Organic Farming

European climate activists seem determined to turn a bad season into a famine crisis.

Can you imagine yourselves in the shoes of European and British farmers who have to deal with this nonsense?

A cartoon illustration depicting a French farmer and a man relaxing in a drought-affected field, with humorous signs addressing the drought crisis and advocating for organic farming. The farmer appears frustrated while the other man, holding a wine glass, seems indifferent. Surroundings include dry soil and signs reading 'No pesticides, No water, No harvest.'
AI generated by ChatGPT

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

European climate activists seem determined to turn a bad season into a famine crisis.

If We Don’t Act Now on Climate Change, Nothing Else Will Matter

Category :ENVIRONMENT
October 10, 2026

Let’s face it: drought isn’t just about dry riverbeds or yellow lawns anymore. These days, it’s turning up everywhere—from our dinner plates to our faucets, even right inside our homes. In this fourth episode of our summer series, biologist Marc-André Selosse takes us on a real-life tour of how drought is already reshaping daily life across France—and, spoiler alert, the consequences won’t be stopping at stained grass. 

Drought on Our Plates and in Our Supermarkets

The first cracks are not just in the fields, but in what ends up on our tables. The Federation of Trade and Distribution (which brings together most of France’s big retail players) announced on August 18th that they would now welcome “ugly” fruits and vegetables onto their shelves. That’s right: the exceptional drought across France has pushed supermarkets to be more tolerant. Fruits and veggies once considered too small or unattractive—the kind your grandma used to stew—are finding their place in the produce aisle.

…

This move is partly to keep a lid on soaring prices, which come as a result of massive drops in agricultural yields. According to French Vegetable Producers, losses are running from 25% to 50%—sometimes even hitting 100% for certain crops. That means tomatoes and cucumbers are reaching record prices in store, and forget about the cost of lettuce, which is especially thirsty for water.


…

Repair and Hope: Individual and Systemic Responses

Our soils teem with life: not just plants, but bacteria, fungi, earthworms, insects—even moles. In our gardens, some good farming practices still apply:

  • Disturb the soil as little as possible mechanically
  • Avoid pesticides
  • Feed the earth with a priority for organic fertilizers

And where do you and I have the greatest influence on soil? It’s in how we consume—specifically, what we buy. According to Selosse, France’s transition to soil-regenerating farming is lagging: only around 400 farms have made the switch, so the “Au Cœur des Sols” (Heart of Soils) label remains nowhere to be seen on store shelves.

…Read more: https://www.futura-sciences.com/en/if-we-dont-act-now-on-climate-change-nothing-else-will-matter_38730/#google_vignette

Can you imagine yourselves in the shoes of European and British farmers who have to deal with this nonsense?

Not only are you desperately trying to scavenge the fertiliser, agricultural chemicals and water your farm desperately needs, you have to deal with greens campaigning for you to revert to medieval agricultural techniques – fertilising your fields with manure and other organic processes, rather than the truck loads of chemicals which are the foundation of modern agricultural yields.

And since its Europe, there is a real chance someone in authority will listen to this green babble, and try to act on it. WUWT has already reported multiple attempts by ignorant bureaucrats to sabotage European agriculture through their arrogant insistence on organic farming practices.

The EU’s Green War on Farmers Never Ends

Ayn Rand predicted this kind of regulatory lunacy in her book “Atlas Shrugged” – the complete failure of self involved activists and bureaucrats to respond rationally to a crisis. One of the pivotal events in the book was how despite everything farmers had successfully harvested a bumper crop of wheat. But all the trains which were meant to collect the harvested wheat were diverted by a well connected government crony to an experimental soybean plantation, leading to the loss of the wheat crop.

There is a real risk people will go hungry in 2027. Oil and fertiliser price rises due to disruption from the Persian Gulf crisis, combined with the West’s immense unpreparedness for a disruption to oil supply and fertiliser thanks to decades of green lunacy and the war on refineries, has led to farmers cutting back on food production. In addition if the coming El Nino does mess up agriculture in Australia, South America and the West Coast of the USA, Europe could be in for a very hard year.

The last thing Europe needs is greens adding to the pressure on supply chains and agricultural production with their organic farming and fertiliser / pesticide obsessions.

Melting Ice in Norway’s Mountains Unlocks 6,000-Year-Old Hunting Secrets — and a Race Against a Warming Climate

In Norway’s Jotunheimen mountains, rapidly retreating ice is exposing objects that have remained frozen for thousands of years. That matches recent reports from Norway’s Secrets of the Ice glacial archaeology program. In their 2026 field season (a three- week effort focused on the Kvitingskjølen area of the Jotunheimen mountains, specifically the Langfonne, Storfonne and Handklefonne ice patches), the team recovered 48 prehistoric arrows from rapidly melting ice.

The Secrets of the Ice team primarily uses two complementary methods to date the prehistoric arrows and other artifacts recovered from Norway’s melting ice patches: typological dating and radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating.

A scenic view of rugged mountains in the background, with a glacier in the foreground and a series of wooden spears resting on the ice.
AI generated by Grok

In Norway’s Jotunheimen mountains, rapidly retreating ice is exposing objects that have remained frozen for thousands of years. That matches recent reports from Norway’s Secrets of the Ice glacial archaeology program. In their 2026 field season (a three- week effort focused on the Kvitingskjølen area of the Jotunheimen mountains, specifically the Langfonne, Storfonne and Handklefonne ice patches), the team recovered 48 prehistoric arrows from rapidly melting ice.

These include well- preserved organic materials that rarely survive elsewhere: wooden shafts (sometimes with sinew or birch- bark bindings and residual tar and glue), plus arrowheads of slate, bone, freshwater mussel shell, and (in later examples) iron.

Standout finds include a slate- tipped arrow with shaft fragments estimated at roughly 5,000- 6,000 years old (Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, based on typology and comparison with prior dated specimens) and a bone- tipped example of similar antiquity, along with a complete ~3,600 years old arrow with a mussel- shell point.

Secrets of the Ice (run by Innlandet County Municipality in collaboration with the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo) has been systematically surveying melting ice patches and glaciers in the region for about 20 years. Across ~73 sites it has recovered more than 5,000 artifacts overall, mostly linked to reindeer hunting (arrows, bows, hunting blinds), but also clothing, shoes, skis, packhorse remains, and travel- related items that reveal ancient high -mountain routes.

Earlier seasons yielded mostly objects younger than ~2,000 years (many Viking Age or Iron Age). As the ice retreats further and older ice layers are exposed, the proportion of Stone Age and Bronze Age material has risen sharply. The ice that once protected these organics is now vanishing faster than expected; once exposed, wood, sinew, hide, and similar materials begin to decay quickly, creating a genuine race against time.

Langfonne alone has already produced a world-record concentration of arrows (dozens more from earlier work, some also dating back ~6,000 years). The pattern shows continuous use of these ice patches for reindeer hunting over millennia, with technology evolving from stone, bone and shell points to iron while the basic strategy remained similar.

Some of the newest finds are already headed for public display (including a refrigerated case at the Norwegian Mountain Centre in Lom) to keep the organics stable. The program’s own field reports and coverage from Science Norway, Smithsonian, and others emphasize both the excitement of the discoveries and the sobering climate- driven loss of the preserving ice itself.

A panoramic view of a mountainous landscape with a mix of gray rock and white snow, under a blue sky with scattered clouds.
Langfonne in Jotunheimen. In 2006, this was a large ice patch. It has now split into several smaller patches. The ice patch will probably be completely gone within 20 years. Photo. Åsa Rommetveit Celius, Innlandet County Municipality, Secrets of The Ice.
Year of the Arrows – Now the Stone Age Is Melting Out – Secrets of the Ice

The Secrets of the Ice team primarily uses two complementary methods to date the prehistoric arrows and other artifacts recovered from Norway’s melting ice patches: typological dating and radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating.

1. Typological dating (relative/comparative dating)

This is based on the form, style, materials, and manufacturing details of the objects, especially the arrowheads.

  • Researchers compare new finds to previously dated examples from the same ice sites, lowland graves, or other archaeological contexts.
  • Iron arrowheads are particularly well- suited to this approach. Distinct shapes (e.g., certain types common in Norwegian graves) can be linked to specific periods such as AD 300- 600 or around AD 700 (pre- Viking and Merovingian).
  • Stone, bone, slate, and freshwater- mussel- shell points are dated by matching them to earlier radiocarbon- dated specimens from Langfonne and nearby ice patches.

For the 2026 finds, the slate- tipped arrow (with shaft fragments) and the bone- tipped example were estimated at roughly 5,000- 6,000 years old, and the mussel-shell point at about 3,600 years old, largely through this comparative method.

2. Radiocarbon dating (absolute dating)

This is the main scientific method used for organic materials that survive in the ice (wooden shafts, sinew bindings, birch- bark tar and glue residues, hide, textiles, etc.).

  • It measures the remaining amount of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (¹⁴C), which decays at a known rate (half-life ≈ 5,730 years) after an organism dies.
  • Results are calibrated against tree- ring sequences (dendrochronology) to convert radiocarbon years into calendar years.
  • In major studies (e.g., the 2020 Holocene paper on Langfonne), nearly all arrows were radiocarbon-dated, 67 of 68 arrows plus associated finds such as a shoe, cut antler, and ski fragments, producing a detailed chronology spanning from ~6,180 to ~680 calibrated years before present.

Radiocarbon dates have repeatedly confirmed or refined typological estimates. For example, early finds thought to be Viking Age turned out to be Bronze Age once dated, and some iron- headed arrows whose typology suggested ~AD 700 were later confirmed by shaft dates.

Supporting approaches and caveats

  • Associated materials: Reindeer bones and antlers found with the arrows are also radiocarbon- dated to reconstruct hunting intensity over time.
  • Ice context: The age of the ice itself (sometimes estimated via nearby ice- patch cores or ground-penetrating radar) provides supporting context, though ice movement and melt can relocate objects.
  • Limitations: Radiocarbon dates the organic material (e.g., when the tree for a shaft was cut), not necessarily the exact moment the arrow was lost. Typology works best when distinctive, well-documented types exist; unique or poorly preserved items rely more heavily on radiocarbon. Once exposed, organic finds must be recovered quickly before they degrade, after which laboratory dating can proceed.

In short, typology gives rapid field estimates (especially useful for the newest Stone Age finds), while systematic radiocarbon dating of the shafts and organics supplies the precise, calibrated chronology that underpins the program’s multi- millennial hunting record.

A display case containing various sticks and artifacts laid on a white backdrop, each labeled with descriptions.
Some of this year’s finds in the “fresh finds display” at the Norwegian Mountain Museum in Lom. Photo. Live Andrea Sulheim, Norwegian Mountain Museum
Year of the Arrows – Now the Stone Age Is Melting Out – Secrets of the Ice

Climate comparison for the Jotunheimen and central southern Norway high mountains (relevant to the ice-patch arrow finds):

1. ~5,000- 6,000 years ago (Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, roughly 4000- 3000 BCE)

This falls near the end of the Holocene Thermal Maximum (also called the Atlantic period or mid-Holocene warm period in Scandinavia, broadly ~7050- 2050 BCE with regional variation).

  • Temperatures: Summers were generally warmer than today, often estimated at 1- 2.5 °C higher mean July temperatures in southern and central Norway and Scandinavia. Winters were milder in many reconstructions. Tree lines were higher, and forests (including pine and birch) extended farther into what are now alpine zones.
  • Precipitation & glaciers and ice patches: Relatively humid in the earlier part, becoming somewhat drier toward the Subboreal transition. Many small glaciers and ice patches in Jotunheimen were reduced or absent for long stretches after the early Holocene; some ice patches that later preserved artifacts began reforming or expanding only later in this window or shortly after (~4000 BCE onward marks the start of Neoglaciation in the region). Reindeer hunting on remaining snow and ice patches was already occurring.
  • Overall character: Warmer, with higher biological productivity at elevation, supporting more extensive vegetation and wildlife ranges than at present.

2. ~3,600 years ago (mid- Bronze Age, roughly 1600 BCE)

This is well into the Subboreal period and after the onset of a longer- term cooling trend linked to the 4.2 ka BP event (around 2250 BCE) and subsequent Neoglacial advances.

  • Temperatures: Cooler than the Thermal Maximum peak and generally closer to (or slightly cooler than) mid- 20th- century averages in many proxies. Summer temperatures had declined from the earlier Holocene optimum; a more continental influence is noted in some records.
  • Precipitation & glaciers and ice patches: Increasingly variable, with evidence of glacier and ice-patch expansion in Jotunheimen (Neoglaciation underway). Ice patches that preserve artifacts were present and growing or fluctuating, allowing continuous or repeated use for reindeer hunting. Some reconstructions show phases of both relatively dry and continental conditions and later wetter intervals.
  • Overall character: Transitional, cooler and more “modern” in feel than the Thermal Maximum, with expanding high -mountain ice that locked away the hunting gear now being recovered. Human activity (including highland hunting) continued despite the shift.

3. Today (2020s and 2026)

  • Temperatures: Significantly warmer than the mid- to- late Holocene average at these elevations, driven by climate change. Recent decades show rapid warming, especially in summer, with mean temperatures in southern Norway rising roughly 1- 1.5 °C (or more at altitude) since the late 19th and early 20th century baseline. High- mountain areas are warming faster than the global average in many datasets.
  • Precipitation & glaciers and ice patches: More variable precipitation, but the dominant signal is strong negative mass balance for glaciers and ice patches. Langfonne and similar sites have lost the majority of their area since the Little Ice Age maximum (and even since the 1990s- 2000s). The oldest ice layers (those that survived previous warm periods) are now melting, exposing the 5,000-6,000- year- old artifacts. Melt is faster than many earlier projections anticipated.
  • Overall character: The warmest multi-decadal period in the region since at least the Holocene Thermal Maximum in many high- elevation proxies, but with the critical difference that ice that formed or persisted through later cooler phases is now disappearing rapidly.

Key contrasts

Aspect5,000–6,000 ya (Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic)~3,600 ya (Bronze Age)Today (2020s)
Relative summer warmthWarmest of the three (HTM conditions)Cooler than HTM, nearer modern pre-industrialWarmest multi- decadal stretch in recent millennia; rapid ongoing rise
Ice -patch and glacier stateMany reduced or absent; early Neoglaciation startingExpanding and present (preserving artifacts)Rapid retreat; oldest ice melting out
Vegetation and tree lineHigher tree lines, more forest at elevationLowering relative to HTMCurrently rising again with warming
Hunting contextReindeer hunting on remaining snow and iceContinued highland hunting on ice patchesSame locations now ice- free or shrinking fast

In short: the oldest arrows date to a distinctly warmer Holocene phase when high- mountain ice was more limited; the ~3,600- year- old examples come from a cooler Neoglacial regime that allowed ice to persist and preserve them; and today’s climate is driving the rapid loss of that same ice, which is why the artifacts are emerging now. The current warming is occurring much faster than the natural transitions of the mid- to- late Holocene.