Mount Fuji Sets Record for Latest Time in the Year Without Snow

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Mount Fuji remains snowless in late October, the latest in the year that the famous mountain has gone without snow for at least 130 years, when records began.

In recent years, at least a light snowfall on Mount Fuji is common by early October, but this year has seen record-breaking hot months over the summer and unseasonably warm temperatures into September.

According to a press release from Tokyo Climate Center (TCC) and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), July 2024 reached record-breaking heat, even surpassing heat records reached in July 2023. June and August also had record-high temps, with temperatures reaching about 1.76 degrees Celsius (3.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, the BBC reported.

While temperatures did begin dropping this month, they still remained above average for October. As such, Mount Fuji remains snowless with just a couple days until November.

This is the latest into the year that the mountain has gone without a snowfall since scientists began tracking this data in 1894.

Previously, the record latest in the year that Mount Fuji hit before having snowfall was October 26, which happened in 2016 as well as in 1955, according to Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office. Katsuta noted that climate change could be playing a role in the delayed snow cover, as reported by The Guardian.

“Temperatures were high this summer, and these high temperatures continued into September, deterring cold air,” Katsuta told Agence France-Presse.

According to TCC and JMA, the extreme heat was linked to the subtropical jet stream moving toward Japan, which allowed warmer air to flow in the region, even into the upper troposphere. The organizations’ report also noted extremely high sea surface temperatures, the El Niño event that ended in spring and other factors that led to these higher temperatures as well as heavy summer rainfall in northern Japan.

“The joint research team in Advanced Studies of Climate Change Projection at Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) conducted a preliminary assessment using event attribution to evaluate the effects of global warming on these extreme events,” the report stated. “The findings indicated that the high temperatures observed would not have occurred in the absence of global warming, which may also have contributed to the heavy rainfall events.”

As confirmed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2023 was the hottest year on record. Last year, snowfall first reached Mount Fuji on October 5. Yet experts predict that 2024 will surpass records broken in 2023, since the global average temperature was over 1.63 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average for 12 consecutive months as of May 2024. The late snowfall for Mount Fuji in 2024 could be another sign of a record-breaking year in terms of heat.

This article originally appeared on Ecowatch.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org

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National Park Service: Cheetos & Other Garbage Food Are Affecting The Ecosystems

National Park Service: Cheetos & Other Garbage Food Are Affecting The Ecosystems

Following the littering of a bag of Cheetos at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, officials are highlighting how even seemingly small amounts of litter can have huge, detrimental impacts on fragile ecosystems.

National Park Service

In a post on Facebook shared on September 6, Carlsbad Caverns National Park officials explained how a single bag of Cheetos, dropped off the main trail in a section known as the Big Room, led to multiple major changes inside the cave.

“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” NPS explained. “Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.”

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According to officials, it took park rangers 20 minutes to remove the debris and the mold that formed on it and the surrounding cave. This mold and fungi growth can impact the hundreds of thousands of bats that live in the cave.

As The Guardian reported, these native bats have been able to avoid white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has affected bats across North America. 

But litter can promote growth of non-native mold and fungi as well as attract other pests, like raccoons, to the cave, Forbes reported.

Edgar G. Biehle / iStock

The Carlsbad Caverns National Park prohibits any food and drink other than water inside the cavern to avoid these impacts. But still, litter made its way into the caverns and quickly led to ecosystem changes.

“We do not know an exact length of time that the bag of chips was sitting there. We as rangers go through and sweep the entire trail every evening to make sure that everyone is out of the cave and to clean up trash along the trail,” park guide Joseph Ward told Forbes. “It could have been missed by one of the rangers but even still I do not think that the bag was there for more than a couple days.”

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According to the National Park Service, around 300 million people visit park sites every year and generate around 70 million tons of trash. But not all that waste makes it to recycling or landfill. A 2022 citizen science project recorded 14,237 pieces of trash found at 44 cleanup sites in national parks over a two-month period.

“At the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing,” officials at Carlsbad Caverns National Park said. “Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it.”

This article originally appeared on Ecowatch.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org

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