[Tom] This week on Arizona illustrated An Unequivocal Truth [Sabrina] CO2 is really the master dial on the Earth's climate system.

[Tom] Solastalgia [Sabrina] The sadness that results from seeing one's natural environment, deteriorate.

[Tom] Power connectors [Eric] Our mission is to serve scalable science and technology ventures that fuel the Southern Arizona economy [Tom] And Butterfly Explosion.

[John] We get lots of tales of, you know, butterfly declines a lot of bad news, so it's kind of heartening to see such abundance of butterflies this year in Tucson.

Welcome to Arizona illustrated, I'm Tom McNamara.

Throughout this episode will focus on observations, impact and solutions concerning climate change.

Now, renewable energy sources like these solar panels behind me here at the U.S. Tech Park are being built all around the country to reduce greenhouse emissions.

And scientists say we need unprecedented changes to our energy system to combat the unsettling effects of global warming.

Our first story is with a climate scientist, Jessica Tierney, lead author of the most recent UN climate report, which lays out unequivocal evidence about the role humans play in warming the planet and what this might mean for Arizona.

[Jessica] Being in Arizona and working on climate change, it's personal.

We think about it every day.

We think about 10 years from now, 20 years from now, will I still be able to be here What will it look like?

Will we build water infrastructure?

And so it really brings it home for me to be able to work on both past, present and future climate here in a place that is on the frontlines of climate change.

I'm Dr. Jessica Tierney.

I'm a professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona.

And I'm a lead author on the recently released sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

on Climate Change.

In the last several decades, there's always been a representative from the University of Arizona involved with the IPCC reports.

So I'm the latest in a long tradition of Arizona climate scientists participating in this global effort.

The report that I was a part of is the first working group in this report.

We focus on assessing how climate has changed.

So what has happened in the past What's happening right now and what will happen in the future under different emission scenarios.

So a major difference from the report that came out in 2013 is the attribution of extreme events to human influence.

That is new.

So whenever we look back into the past and we find evidence of a warm climate, we always find that CO2 is high.

It's always one for one CO2 in temperature.

When CO2 is high, the planet is warm.

When CO2 is low.

It's cold over and over again.

CO2 is really the master dial on the earth's climate system.

There's a large range of what people call natural climate variability changes in the climate that would occur without human interference.

How do we separate that from what's related to human emissions?

We can take a climate model and we can run it and see what would have happened in the 20th century without humans and what we find from that experiment is that since about 1950, humans are responsible for all all of the increase in global temperatures.

Humans are warming the climate faster than pretty much anything we know about in Earth's history.

The rate is truly unprecedented.

So what that means is we're seeing climate move into a new state at such a speed that ecosystems by MS and people will struggle to adapt just because it's happening so fast.

So if you look at where we're headed already, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are highe than anything we've seen in three million years.

So this is why going back deep into geological history is really important.

What happens to the water cycle?

What places in the world experience more severe drought or more severe flooding?

And so in order to do this, of course, we don't have two monitors.

They go back millions of years.

Right.

So we have to use tricks from chemistry and biology to be able to go back in time and tell things like temperature and how wet or dry it is.

So my research focuses actually on looking at fossils, fats.

So it turns out that fats are preserved in rocks for millions of years.

They just don't break down.

So if we take marine sediments, for example, there are actually algae and they change the structure of their lipid fat cell membran in response to the temperature of the water, and that fat is preserved in the mud.

And so what we do in my lab is we'll go in and we will extract all these fats out of a sample, will focus on the one that we know responds to temperature and we'll measure it.

And so with that calibration, then we can take ourselves back into the past again, going back millions of years.

We're able to tell what is the temperature of the surface ocean.

Another class is actually based on the waxes that are produced by plants.

Leaf waxes, we call them.

So plants, their leaves are quite waxy.

You might notice, especially in desert plants, that there's a thick layer of wax coating and a lot of our plants here in Arizona.

So why are they interesting?

Well, it turns out the chemical signature of the leaf waxes relates to the water cycle and can tell us something about how rainfall has change in the past.

[Thunder sound] So we have a big research project focused on understanding how the North American monsoon system has changed through time The system accounts for about half of the rainfall that falls in Tucson.

And so we really want to know how climate change is going to affect the monsoon.

What we've seen so far is evidence that the monsoon system is more intense during past warm climates.

Now, how does this way into the ongoing drought in the region?

The problem is, even though rainfall is going up and down, temperatures are going up in Arizona.

And as it gets hotter and hotter, the atmosphere becomes thirstier.

So the atmosphere itself is demanding more moisture out of the soil.

It's actually evaporating more moisture out of the soil and away from plants, and it makes the climate drier.

This is a phenomenon we call hot drought because it can be driven by temperatures alone.

You can still have precipitation go up and down year to year, yet see the emergence of this long term drought.

We're just going to walk into the desert and see what we find is, of course, a lot of my students are really worried about climate change.

And so they come into my class and we learn about how the system works.

All the climate changes that have happened in the past and then what we might face in the future.

And it's easy to get trapped into this sort of zone of despair.

So what I do like to remind students of is there still is hope and we still have choices.

I guess I'm sort of a a practical optimist in the sense that I know that some of the trajectories might be too ambitious, but I also think there's great value in doing everything we can to get on a better trajectory.

All these little different choices and engagements add up and they can make a difference moving forward.

[Tom] The zone of despair, as Jessica Tierney said, is one way to describe Solastalgia The fear and anxiety one experiences when there's environmental loss or change.

And that's the subject of our next story.

The U.

Of A's doctor Sabrina Helm explains how we can navigate solar stoljar and cope with feelings of ecological grief.

And she explains how changes in behavior can empower humans to mitigate the impact of global warming.

[Narrator] Knowing that you love the Earth changes you.

Activates you to defend and protect and celebrate.

But when you feel the Earth loves you in return.

That feeling transforms the relationship from a one way into a sacred bond.

This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden, so they would always have a mother to love them long after I'm gone.

[Sabrina] two months ago, this l so parched, it was so terrible.

These walls were so thin, it was it was like like, you could hear them scream.

It was terrible, I really did not enjoy living he at that time, just because natu was looking so terribly, terribly parched.

It was painfu In psychology or in the literature you see a term that's called Solastalgia, which talks about the sadness that results from seeing one's natural environment deteriorate or maybe just change and not feeling at home anymore in that environment, feeling absolutely helpless about it If the saguaros around us perish and vanish, there's very little we feel we can do about that so that that can indeed lead to intense feelings of grief and sadness [Calm music] I have been teaching marketing classes, consumer behavior classes, all my professional life, and it's just doing a a systematic analysis of these textbook and just seeing that there's really nothing in there about climate change nor critical assessment of the role of marketing, production.

All that and overconsumption that this zero linkage in there You're left to wonder how our students who come with a critical mindset and they come to the classroom and they read this, and now they're left to make sense of that.

That can be, you know, a lost opportunity It requires change that is very profound and needs to start early on in consumer socialization, how we grow up how we talk about these issues, how we can address materialism and built a consumption culture that does not necessarily require greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that it does now.

I have got more involved in that field of climate anxiety mainly because of teaching about sustainable consumption and and retailing because I note in my in my students, there's a general sense of anxiety and that made me sad, and made think more about what mental health effects climate change is going to bring pretty much about everybody.

And then on top of all of that, I had a child and that really got me to wonder what would happen in his life If you think about young children education, you cannot worry them too much.

You will imprint them with thoughs that they shouldn't have On the other hand, you have to start early on to enable them to make changes in life that will really have an impact And so it's a bit being torn between those two and then so I, I just step back and I'm like, I'm just a parent in that case, I don't have to.

I just need to figure out how to educate young children.

But I'm very, very happy when I see that's actually done in schools and meanwhile, even in preschool in a very careful manner.

We conducted interviews and we have done some research into the question of how the fear of climate change may affect people's decision to have or not have children.

And we spoke to a number of young people were very, very torn about this issue.

And so it was very interesting to learn these different kinds of perspectives Not having children is a decision which has a huge impact on the climate, of course, but it is not a viable solution to, to any kind of climate change mitigation because that's in the environmen or in the in the societies we live in It's not likely to be something that can be prescribed.

It's not aligned with so many things that hold together our society here.

We look at that phenomenon again more from a mental health perspective because if climate change worries me so much that even when thinking about these most personnal and from most people, probably positive and cherished kind of decisions that I can make in my life.

If climate change even enters that, that tells me a lot about the profundity and the impact of climate change has on our psyche today.

So in our research, we have been at different forms of psychological coping with these ecological stressors that we perceive, and they again, they range, they range from forms which we sometimes call maladaptive They just help us to not have to constantly mentally deal with it you know, form such as denial, denial of one's own role in all of that It's it's a coping mechanism.

It works well psychologically to remove some of the stress, but the stress are remains.

We're still confronted with news about climate change.

And then there are those which we would say are proactive ways of coping and getting more information, actually engaging in behaviors that try to reduce the effects of climate change.

And we generally know that people who feel empowered and committed to do something have positive mental health out and committed to do something have positive mental health out We are embedded in in systems.

I mean, everything is interrelated, right.

Just trying to figure out cause and effect Just trying to figure out cause can be very difficult in this co There is this interlinkage between what's happening in the environment, what's happening in social interaction aggression and so forth.

What's happening in mental health And there's this phenomenon of psychological distance.

So so it's going to happen, but it's going to happen in the but it's going to happen in the future This place is going to look like Death Valley at some point, but will I really be around to e that or it's happening in places of the world that are so far away from what my lived experience is that I can't commit to change my own behavior.

So we we need to navigate that space As somebody who's who's consciously making an effort, but if you blow this up into this ideological realm, it's much more difficult to go and it's much more difficult to go and find our way into that jung and do something about it.

[Tom] Science, technology and entrepreneurial expertize from the U of A.

Plus the fact that 85% of the year the Sun shines brightly in Tucson makes southern Arizona a good place to test, evaluate and demonstrate solar technologies.

The Department of Energy agrees.

In this story, you'll see what it means to become a power connector.

Southern Arizona is a great place for Southern Arizona is a great place for the advancement of technology in the solar space.

In addition to the optimal sun that we have here, we also have resources such as the University of Arizona.

The space at the tech park, which has the solar.

If you walk through this expansive area, you'll see a sea of solar technologies of solar panels.

There are technologies that are addressing battery storage, solar panel efficiency.

There are trackers, dual access trackers and the backdrop.

You'll see the Tucson mountains.

You'll see the beautiful Tucson desert.

And what's really neat is you might walk in there one day and come back a month later, and the technologies will be completely different.

We are the University of Arizona Center for Innovation, and our mission is to serve scalable science and technology ventures that fuel the Southern Arizona economy.

At the heart of it all is our incubator here.

We have over 20 companies that are working on scalable technologies that are solving real world problems and occupy spaces such as our collaboration area, our wet labs, our dry labs and use facilities such as our conference rooms and prototyping center.

So the Department of Energy, by way of the National Renewabl Energy Laboratory or rail, has a goal to help develop solar technologies that are made here in America.

So they created the American made solar prize.

And the goal is to work with innovators, which could be researchers that could be startups or small businesses that are working on technologies that support the solar industry.

Do you have a Center for Innovation?

Is honored to be a power connector for the American-Made Solar Prize.

What this means is that we are one of six across the nation organizations, incubators, universities that support this program.

So the American-Made Solar Prize is in rounds.

Each one of those rounds has stage gates, three of them ready, set and a go.

Dozens of innovators go through the ready round.

They have 90 days to display their technology and prove that feasibility and then go for the set, where each one has the ability to win $100,000 and $75000 in vouchers to work with national labs to help to develop their technologies.

From there, they move on to the go round, where there's an available $500,000 for each innovator that wins in that round and the ability to again work with national labs.

So these innovators can take advantage of quite a bit here at the University of Arizona Center for Innovation and at the Tech Park, should the innovators that we're working with make it through this competition.

We do plan on offering them the space and resources to demonstrate their technology here at the Solar Zone.

It's inspiring to work with innovators.

We're putting Tucson on the map for this, where only one of six power connectors.

And so this is a pretty big deal for our community.

In addition to that, we now are exposing our community to technologies, innovators, startups and federal agencies across the nation.

So the technologies that might come here or the companies that are created here have already been exposed to Tucson, enjoy southern Arizona and are looking to grow here as well.

[Tom] The monsoon of 2021 was a welcome relief for most of southern Arizona, dropping almost 13 inches of rain on Tucson and making it the third wet season on record.

And it was hard not to notice the effects all that green in the mountains, in the desert and a noticeable increase in insects, specifically butterflies.

We went to take a verité with two of Tucson's most enthusiastic entomologists to see what butterflies we could find and understand what made this year feel so different.

[Katy] I feel like the desert is breathing a big sigh of relief after a couple of years of functionally very little water.

[John] There's parasites that keep the populations of butterflies down.

Small wasp and flies with their feet on the eggs or on the larvae on a drought year, those parasite populations crash.

And it allows the butterflies the next year to expand very quickly.

Right now, we're seeing one of the few benefits of a drought is this beautiful influx of snout butterflies and a lot of other butterflies, too.

[Katy] Nathalis iole.

That's the Latin name, and then the English common name is the Dainty sulphur.

And that's because it's so tiny.

So most things are bigger.

Like you see those big fat yellow ones.

They're relatives of this.

Alright darling, I'm going to put you back and see if you're going to stay.

Oh.

Alright.

Fine.

You want to stick around for a little while?

Yeah.

Flex.

Flex.

Sort it out.

[John] This is what's called a beating sheet.

And it's a great way to look for caterpillars.

These the larvae of these butterflies, a very cryptic and they're very difficult to see.

Oh, there's a big fat one.

Wow.

You can see how plump he is looks like a little little pickle with horns.

He's cute.

My name is John Palting, a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Arizona.

And I've been studying butterflies and moths in this area for around 40 years.

And this is a pretty extraordinary year in 2021.

Ooh.

I'm Professor Katy Prudic I'm an assistant professor of community and data science at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the University of Arizona.

This is actually one of my favorites.

This is the dogface butterfly.

I study how butterflies make a living, especially in light of climate change and how we can make their lives better through this process.

Insects are amazing, they were the first animal to take flight, and they did a long, long time ago on that flight has made them pretty successful They've haven't really experienced any mass extinctions.

They've certainly experienced declines.

The west has experienced dramatic declines in butterflies, so there is a cause for concern there.

When I think about butterflies, I think about two functions they serve with other than to make me happy.

They are part of the pollinator guild, and they're partly responsible for creating the next generation of plants.

[John] These are the larvae of the snout butterflies, green ones.

[Katy] The big thing, too, is that caterpillars, as it turns out, are excellent snacks for many, many animals.

[John] This is the pupa of the Empress Leilia.

It's on the hackberry.

So if you look on your hackberry plants, you might see both of these species.

[Classical Music] [Katy] We have over here are some mud puddling butterflies.

now mud puddling butterflies, usually are male butterflies who are acquiring micronutrients to give as a gift to their female mates.

So butterflies not only provide sperm when they meet with females, but also the nuptial gifts is what they're called in biological literature.

They're taking a Gatorade break to stock up on some electrolytes, basically that they're going to then give to their girlfriend.

It's kind of fun to think like like they have these complicated lives right [John] with the Internet we get lots of tales of, you know, butterflied declines and a lot of bad news.

So it's kind of heartening to see such abundance of butterflies this year in Tucson.

[Katy] over the last five years.

This is a really phenomenal year.

If we look over 20 years, it's probably about average.

If we look over 50, it's probably a little below average We're seeing a good population and that's great and something to celebrate.

[Classical music] Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

See you next week.