How do we learn about how currents transfer heat in the ocean?

The NASA Vital Signs of the Planet article Seal Takes Ocean Heat Transport Data to New Depth by Esprit Smith (12/4/2019) explains (note photo from the article):

But how the current transfers heat, particularly vertically from the top layer of the ocean to the bottom layers and vice versa, is still not fully understood.

Equipped with a specialized sensor reminiscent of a small hat, the seal swam more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) on a three-month voyage, much of it through the turbulent, eddy-rich waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The seal made around 80 dives at depths ranging from 550 to 1,090 yards (500 to 1,000 meters) per day during this time. All the while, it collected a continuous stream of data that has provided new insight into how heat moves vertically between ocean layers in this volatile region…

This type of data is available from Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole database.

Since 2004, several hundred thousands profiles of temperature and salinity have been collected by instrumented animals. The use of elephant seals has been particularly effective to sample the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. These hydrographic data have been assembled in quality-controlled databases that can be accessed through this portal.

How is U.S. life expectancy changing?

The Economist’s daily chart Why are Americans’ lives getting shorter? (11/27/19) provides the graphic copied here.

After climbing gradually over the past half century, life expectancy in America reached a plateau in 2010 and then fell for three consecutive years from 2015 to 2017, the latest for which data are available.

Why? Some of it is due to “deaths of despair” with a 386.5% increase in adult drug overdoses from 1999 to 2017. Still:

But the authors note that mortality has increased across 35 causes of death, suggesting that the problem is systemic. Moreover, all racial and ethnic groups have been affected.

OECD life expectancy data.  Starting point for CDC data.

 

What is the leading cause of child mortality?

The article by Our World in Data, Pneumonia – no child should die from a disease we can prevent, by Bernadeta Dadonaite (11/12/19) reports:

Every 39 seconds a child dies from pneumonia.

5.4 million children under five years old died in 2017. Pneumonia was the cause of death of one-in-seven of them. . . pneumonia is the leading cause of child mortality globally and has been the leading cause for the past three decades.

What is the distribution of deaths around the world:

As the map shows, children are most likely to die from pneumonia across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Just 5 countries — India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia – accounted for more than half of all deaths from childhood pneumonia in 2017.

The disease is therefore most common in places where healthcare infrastructure is lacking and people are least able to afford treatment.

Progress but not enough:

The number of children dying from pneumonia has decreased substantially over the past three decades. In 1990, more than two million children died from pneumonia each year; by 2017 this number had fallen by almost two-thirds.

The post has three graphs with the data.

How hot was October 2019?

From the NOAA Global Climate Report – October 2019 page:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average for October 2019 was the second highest for October in the 140-year record at 0.98°C (1.76°F) above the 20th century average 14.0°C (57.1°F). This value is just 0.06°C (0.11°F) shy of tying the record warm October set in 2015. The 10 warmest Octobers have occurred since 2003; however, the five warmest Octobers have all occurred since 2015.

This occured with ENSO-neutral conditions during October 2019. Also, January through October for 2019:

The first ten months of 2019 ranked as the second warmest January–October on record, with a combined global land and ocean surface temperature of 0.94°C (1.69°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F). This is only 0.09°C (0.16°F) shy of tying the record warm January–October set in 2016.

October time series data from 1880 through 2019 is available here.

Who are the low-wage workers?

The Brookings report Meet the low-wage workforce by Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman (11/7/19) provides demographics of the low-work force by category. The nine categories they use are represented in their chart copied here.  For example, cluster 1 are ages 18-24 are not in school and don’t have a college degree. They are 13% of the low-wage workforce. The post has links to the full report where we learn that this cohort is 51% White, 16% Black, 27% Latino or Hispanic, 2% Asian American, and 4% Other. Of this group, 14% didn’t graduate from high school.

There are regional differences:

Across more than 350 metro areas, the share of workers earning low wages ranges from 30% to 62% of the overall workforce. Low-wage workers are particularly concentrated in smaller places in the southern and western parts of the United States. They make up larger shares of the workforce in places with lower employment rates and that concentrate in agriculture, real estate, and hospitality.

The full report contains a number of data tables.

What are college persistence rates?

The St. Louis Fed post Staff Pick: College Education Persists Less for Blacks and Hispanics by Ana Kent (11/12/19 – reposted from Feb) explains:

Educational attainment tells us quite a bit about the types of financial outcomes we should expect a family to have. So does the education of the family’s parents. Unsurprisingly, most people tend to achieve the same level of education as their parents, with college “persisters” (college graduates for whom at least one parent was also a college grad) having the best financial outcomes.

There are racial differences, for example (note: the chart here is population composition – see the table in the article for persistence rates by race):

Blacks had the lowest intergenerational college persistence. If at least one parent had a degree, only 1 in 3 continued to get a college degree themselves.

Intergenerational no-college persistence also showed marked racial differences. Hispanics had the highest no-college persistence, with just under 9 in 10 not achieving a four-year degree if neither parent did.

The post has two graphs and one table.

How does food move around the U.S.?

An article by Fast Company, The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling by Megan Konar (10/28/19), reports on the paper Food flows between counties in the United States by Xiaowen Lin, et. el. The author of the paper created the network graph of food flow copied here.  From the article:

Overall, there are 9.5 million links between counties on our map.

At 22 million tons of food, Los Angeles County received more food than any other county in 2012, our study year. It also shipped out the most of any county: almost 17 million tons.

Some of the other largest links were inside the counties themselves. This is because of moving food items around for manufacturing within a county—for example, milk gets off a truck at a large depot and is then shipped to a yogurt facility, then the yogurt is moved to a grocery distribution warehouse, all within the same county.

The article has a link to data that created the map. There must be a good graph theory project here.

How has income changed in the U.S.?

From the Census Bureau report New Data Show Income Increased in 14 State and 10 of the Largest Metros by Gloria Guzman (9/26/19)

Median household income for the United States and 14 states increased significantly in 2018 from the previous year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today.

But,

However, the Gini index of income inequality was significantly higher during the same period for the nation and nine states.

The report has six charts or tables. The full Household Income: 2018 report has tables of data. Historical data including household gini index (table H-4 which includes data by race) is on the Historical Income Tables: Income Inequality page.

Where can we find regional weather data?

Go to the NOAA Climate at a Glance Divisional Mapping page. From the first drop down menu choose a state. Below that a state map appears and now click on a region. If time series data is desired click on the second tab along the top that says time series.  At this point the first drop down menu is to choose a parameter. There are seven choices including average, max, and min temperature as well as precipitation. A time scale can be chosen such as a single month or annual. For example, the graph here created from the site is average annual temperature for the finger lakes region in NYS. Along with a graph, a spreadsheet of the data can be downloaded.

What is the status of the ozone hole?

According to the NOAA article Five questions about 2019’s record-small ozone hole by Rebecca Lindsey (10/21/2019):

In 2019, the hole that developed in the ozone layer over Antarctica was the smallest on record since 1982, according to the NASA/NOAA press release. In an average spring, the hole expands throughout September and early October to a maximum extent of about 8 million square miles (21 million square kilometers), an area larger than the United States and Canada combined. In 2019, the hole reached 6.3 million square miles (16.4 million square kilometers) on September 8, but then shrank to less than 3.9 million square miles (10 million square kilometers) for the remainder of September and the first half of October.

Why so small?

An uncommon weather event—a sudden stratospheric warming—disrupted the circulation in the polar stratosphere in early September, just as the ozone hole was beginning to form.

What about the future?

No, this year’s small ozone hole was simply the result of an isolated weather event, not part of a trend. Thanks to the international treaty banning the production and use of CFCs (short for chlorofluorocarbons), levels of these compounds have been declining since about 2000. But because CFCs are so long-lived, concentrations remain high enough to cause significant ozone loss each spring. With continued declines in CFCs, experts project the ozone layer will recover to its 1980 conditions around 2070.

There are three other graphics and the article is worth reading. If you are looking for classroom materials related to the ozone hole consider the Near-Ground Level Ozone Pollution Lab posted by NOAA and designed by SERC. Also note the Ozone project in the Calculus Projects page.