For a long time, scientists considered Ötzi the Iceman a messenger from the Copper Age. But new research shows this frozen mummy wasn’t alone. He hosts small companions — dormant, cold-adapted yeasts. In other words, his remains might not be as frozen in time as researchers once thought.

Since Ötzi’s discovery in the Italian Alps in 1991, his body has been housed in a specialized facility in Bolzano, Italy. Scientists there held his remains at –6° Celsius (21.2° Fahrenheit). This has been to keep his body from degrading. It’s a temp close to that of the glacier in which he’d been found.

Four ancient species of yeast have now been found in his remains. And they’re still able to grow in the lab, reports Albert Zink. His team isolated “ancient DNA from these species,” he notes. An anthropologist, until recently, he worked at the Eurac research center in Bolzano, Italy. (He’s now at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in Germany.)

Those DNA show the yeast “accompanied [Ötzi] over thousands of years while he was preserved in the ice,” Zink says.

Scientists suspect Ötzi thawed and refroze several times — especially in the first 1,500 years after his death. That could help explain why his remains still host microbes.

Zink’s team shared its results on June 3 in Microbiome.

Frozen in time?

Researchers thawed Ötzi’s body to 4 °C (39.2 °F) for five hours. Then, they collected the liquid that melted off his remains. They also swabbed parts of Ötzi’s body and took samples of his skin and other tissues.

Four colonies of yeast grew from these samples. Scientists compared these yeasts to those in soil near the glacier where Ötzi was found. They also checked air and the water that the museum had used to keep the mummy’s chamber humid.

These tests showed those four yeast species really came from the mummy. They were effectively time capsules of Ötzi’s time in the ice after his death. Bacteria were also extracted from internal tissues. None of these grew in the lab.

The new findings suggest the iceman’s remains seem to still be interacting with the environment.

Risks to the mummy

Those microbes could pose a problem. If they don’t stay dormant, they could end up decomposing the mummy.

This conclusion is “right on the mark,” says Patrick Hunt. He’s an alpine archaeologist at Stanford University in California who did not take part in the new study.

Ötzi is “the most important archaeological-science finding of the 20th century,” Hunt says.

Ötzi’s mummy has offered an incredible window into the man’s former life. From many studies, scientists know he wore leather clothes, had multiple tattoos and would have likely gone bald. Past work even shows he ate a high-fat meal before he died and carried an ax made of copper derived from far away.

More such discoveries may emerge only if Ötzi’s body remains preserved. That requires getting to know the cold-loving and potentially damaging microbes on his body. It also makes the new findings essential, Hunt says. They’ll help scientists preserve this iceman for the ages. 

Climate scientists are warning us to buckle up for a bumpy ride. An El Niño has begun. By year’s end, this periodic climate event might become the strongest El Niño on record.

An El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a recurring two- to seven-year ocean-climate pattern. On June 11, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed Earth has officially entered the El Niño phase of this cycle.

El Niño events emerge in the Eastern Pacific. Eventually, the changes in climate they spawn will affect weather globally. And the stronger an El Niño, the more costly it can be to human health, farming, buildings and our wallets.

Forecasters currently predict a 63 percent chance that, by winter, the new El Niño will prove very strong — as in a “super El Niño.”

Here are four things to know as this climate pattern takes hold.

What’s an El Niño?

An ENSO’s several-years-long cycle has three phases.

The first, known as El Niño, involves months of warmer than normal sea-surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Back in the 1600s, fishers in Peru noticed this warming tended to show up around Christmas. So they dubbed it “El Niño,” which is Spanish for “little boy.” It’s also the name given to “the Christ child.”

A second phase — La Niña (or little girl) — swings to cooler than normal temps in those eastern Pacific waters near the equator.

The last is a neutral, in-between phase. It brings average temperatures back to the Pacific’s equatorial sea surface.

The “Southern Oscillation” part of ENSO’s name refers to another seesawing pattern. Here the swings are between areas of high and low atmospheric pressure over the eastern versus western Pacific Ocean. That up-and-down pressure pattern triggers global-scale changes in winds, air temps and precipitation.

Scientists track ENSO air-pressure changes at two main stations. One is in the West Pacific at Darwin, Australia. The other is in the East Pacific at Tahiti (part of French Polynesia).

During neutral periods and La Niña phases, the high-pressure zone is in the east. That sends prevailing winds westward across the Pacific around the equator. These winds push the warming surface waters of the Pacific to the west. This keeps them away from the coast of the Americas.

In so doing, it allows cold, nutrient-rich water to well up from the deep ocean. That keeps the eastern equatorial Pacific waters cold.

But every few years, conditions flip. Now high pressure prevails over the western Pacific, and lower pressure over the eastern Pacific.

This weakens or even reverses the direction of the prevailing winds. It also allows warm surface waters to stay in place. This suppresses the upwelling of cold water. Now sea-surface temps warm rapidly in the eastern Pacific. This also serves as a telltale sign an El Niño is back.

No two El Niño events are exactly alike, says Tom Di Liberto. He’s a climate scientist and meteorologist now working for the nonprofit news group Climate Central. It’s based in Washington, D.C.

But each El Niño transfers huge amounts of heat from tropical Pacific waters into the air. That bonus heat can temporarily — and dramatically — boost air temperatures around the globe.

What makes for a “super” El Niño?

An El Niño officially starts when sea-surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean steadily remain at least 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) above average for several months. The warmer the waters, the stronger an El Niño’s likely global impacts.

Waters warmer than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above average signal the emergence of a very strong — or “super” — El Niño.

Since April, temps over the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean have remained well above average. Dozens of forecasters around the world concluded an El Niño was on its way. By June, as the ocean warmed even more, their forecasts began to warn that this could prove a really powerful event.

Recently, climate change has made detecting an El Niño’s onset and strength more difficult. Why? Global temperatures have been warming steadily over the last decade, which can mask an emerging El Niño. So in May, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center adopted a new tool for its El Niño forecasts. This now adjusts for that climate change–related warming.

Using this new tool, NOAA predicts that this winter, sea-surface temps in the eastern tropical Pacific are 63 percent likely to be more than 2 degrees Celsius higher than average. That’s what suggests a super El Niño is developing.

In fact, computer models are now forecasting “shockingly high” global temperatures for November and December, Di Liberto says.

Such heat can have deadly consequences. A rise in heat-related illnesses is one. Another is upticks in diseases (such as cholera, typhoid and malaria) carried by mosquitoes and other pests that like it hot.

El Niños also alter the track of the Pacific jet stream. The result: Some areas will become drier than normal. Others will get wetter.

For the United States, one of the most significant impacts will likely be more numerous and intense Pacific cyclones. At the same time, changing wind patterns can make it harder for Atlantic hurricanes to form.

Fortunately, the life of any one El Niño is relatively short: Events typically form in the summer, strengthen into the winter, then die out the next spring.

How will this year compare to past major El Niños?

The most recent strong El Niños happened in 2015–16, 1997–98 and 1982–83.

The 1997–98 event was the strongest on record. It temporarily raised average global temps by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and triggered devastating weather events.

These included torrential rains and floods in Peru and East Africa. Those, in turn, triggered an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in Africa. Droughts in Southeast Asia kicked off deadly wildfires. California saw powerful storms that brought major flooding and landslides. Soaring ocean temperatures led to the bleaching of about one-sixth of the world’s coral reefs.

Such strong El Niños are costly, too. The 1982–83 one cost the world an estimated $4.1 billion. The 1997–98 event was estimated to cost about $5.7 trillion.

How bad this year’s event will be is still unclear. But it’s occurring on top of strong global warming from human activities. And even if this year’s turns out to be only moderately strong, Di Liberto says, its impacts could still be very big. “It would not take a very strong El Niño to see records broken this year.”

Is there a way to downgrade this El Niño?

People might be able to weaken future El Niños by injecting small smoke-size particles into the atmosphere. That’s the finding of an analysis in the July 10 Science Advances.

To work, these aerosols would have to be targeted over a particular patch of the Pacific Ocean. This should increase and brighten clouds there, a new computer model finds. And that would reflect more of the sun’s warming light back into space, cooling the climate.

The idea for this was sparked by the 2019–20 Australian wildfires, says Jessica Wan. She’s a climate scientist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Those fires spewed huge billows of particles into the air. Plumes of them wafted over the southeastern subtropical Pacific Ocean. This brightened clouds there — and helped trigger a multiyear La Niña.

This natural “experiment” hinted at how altering clouds in the proper region can change large climate patterns, says Wan. Her team’s computer model has now calculated what would happen if people injected a huge quantity of aerosols into the atmosphere (as the wildfires had). This should weaken an El Niño. But how much weaker it got would depend on when the injection took place, the model finds. The strategy seemed to work best when done early in an El Niño.

This idea “is really interesting and very new,” says Daniele Visioni. He’s a climate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. who did not take part in this new study. To him, “the fact that it looks like this could work is a really good indication that it is something worth thinking about.”

But it’s not a strategy that could work for this year’s El Niño. There are too many big questions to answer first, Wan says. For one thing, the technology to inject particles is years from being ready. Plus, there needs to be more study about the possible negative consequences of injecting aerosol particles.

Dikansh S. Parmar rescued a snake for the first time in middle school. It happened at his karate class in Surat, India. Someone spotted a baby cobra among a nearby pile of construction materials and wanted to kill it. But Parmar stopped them. His dad had rescued snakes, and he had a rough idea what to do. He took a rod from the construction site and used it to coax the baby snake inside a water bottle.

Parmar was lucky. The snake didn’t harm him. And people without proper training shouldn’t approach snakes. But this encounter inspired him to become a trained snake rescuer as a teen. Parmar is now also a herpetologist who studies snakes. He works at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Bonn, Germany. Recently, Parmar combined his snake rescue and science knowledge to discover something curious about his favorite snakes: king cobras.

Western Ghats King Cobras (Ophiophagus kaalinga), his team found, might ride trains across the Indian state of Goa. Parmar and his colleagues shared their evidence for this January 26 in Biotropica.

In the animated movie Up, a yellow, tail-wagging dog shows up wearing an electronic collar. The main character, a curious and cheerful 8-year-old boy named Russell, tells the dog to sit. The dog sits. Russell tells the dog to shake. The dog extends a paw. Russell then tells the dog to speak.  

“Hi there,” says the dog.  

To Russell’s amazement, the dog’s collar translates his doggy thoughts into actual human words. “My master made me this collar,” Dug the dog tells his new acquaintances. “He is a good and smart master, and he made me this collar so I may talk — SQUIRREL!” 

This is a common piece of technology in stories — a translator that can decode animals’ barks, squeaks, meows, clicks and such, into human language.  

Back here in the nonfiction world, anyone with a pet has probably wondered at some point what’s going on in that cute little animal head. Scientists can’t say. But there are reasons to think that an animal-human translator won’t stay a work of science fiction forever. “I think these things may be one day doable,” says Erich Jarvis. He’s a neurogeneticist at The Rockefeller University in New York City.

One day, pets may wear little devices like Dug’s collar. Or an app on a phone might translate pet sounds into words. This neat trick could finally let you learn the answer to why your cat is staring at that empty corner of the living room.

Learning languages 

Advances in computing power, artificial intelligence (AI) and fancy tools that measure sounds promise to bring people closer to conversing with other animals. These advances could turn animal chatter into bits of information that can be decoded by humans.  

Of course, some animals can already talk to us — in our preferred languages, too. Jarvis tells the story of a parrot that left its California home. It returned years later speaking Spanish, he says.  

Such language skills are rare. Thinking up a message and making intricate vocal sounds to convey it take special mental skills and a great flexibility of body systems. These traits are present in fewer than 1 percent of vertebrate species, says Michael Long. He’s a neuroscientist at New York University in New York City.  

Not all animals may be good conversationalists. Take vervet monkeys. “Their cognitive abilities are huge,” Long says. But they flounder when it comes to producing complex sounds. “So they have one of those requirements, but they need to get the other one,” Long says.  

And with rare exceptions, none really speak our language. But that gap can be overcome. It may just take a slight shift in what we consider talking. “Animals are speaking, often — to use speaking in a very loose way — more vibrantly than we had ever given them credit for,” Long says. 

Understanding animals 

Like parrots, dolphins and whales may similarly make good conversation partners with people. In 2023, scientists used a decoded whale “hello” to enjoy a short conversation with an Alaskan humpback. This exchange consisted of a volley of whale whups, translated into English as “hello.” Still, both parties engaged in this interspecies chat. 

Another group of researchers has since discovered that whale language shares statistical properties with those spoken by humans. With these sorts of advances, perhaps we’ll soon be swapping krill recipes.

Some of Jarvis’ research includes mice that have been genetically changed to produce more complex sounds. He is part of a team that’s closely examining key genes that are active in good vocal learners. Mice with a human version of a protein called NOVA1, for instance, made more complex vocalizations. To be clear, this is not yet a talking mouse. But the research is moving fast.

Some animal messages are clear even without a fancy sci-fi gadget. “Animals are broadly expressive,” Long points out. Anguished yowls of a cat sitting by her unfilled food dish are no great mystery.  

Messages don’t even require a vocal tract. Mongolian gerbils, for instance, beat out messages by thumping the ground percussively. Dances, posture, color and even objects can all carry messages. Just think about it: You can probably figure out the message when a dog holds his leash in his mouth and sits by the front door. 

So while we wait for a gizmo that translates our pets’ thoughts into words, consider the wildly variable ways animals already communicate. Long’s formerly stray Brooklyn cats, for instance, have plenty to say. Their needs and wants are “very, very transparent,” he says.

Should a cat-human translator ever exist, Long’s message to one of his cats would be short, sweet and practical: “I would tell him not to sit too close to the stove when I’m cooking. I think that’s it.”  

Subsidence (noun, “sub-SY-dens”)

Subsidence happens when land sinks because water, soil, rock or other underground materials are removed. It can happen quickly, with the sudden appearance of a sinkhole or abrupt shift during an earthquake. It can also happen gradually as people remove groundwater from aquifers. Over time, the overlying land sinks down to fill the open space.

Most subsidence occurs in areas where people pump groundwater out of aquifers. These natural storage areas are not underground lakes. Rather, they are porous rocks that hold water like vast sponges. Water that soaks into the ground after a good rain or snowmelt fills the spaces in the rock.

When we dig wells, we tap into these groundwater sources. But the more water we remove, the more air pockets we leave behind. Overlying rock and soil collapse into the porous rock, causing the surface to sink. Aquifers can take thousands of years to refill with water. So subsidence is an ongoing issue in many places.

Sometimes subsidence happens because people remove other substances from the ground. This includes mining for minerals or drilling for oil or natural gas. When those materials are removed, land settles into the gaps, leading to subsidence.

Subsidence happens around the world, but it is more common in areas with large cities and lots of agriculture. Human activity in these places can lead to overuse of groundwater. Cities face an additional problem if they are built on fine sediments left behind by rivers. These types of sediments can sink under the heavy weight of buildings and other structures. New York City and Shanghai, China, have both experienced subsidence due to the weight of their buildings.

In a sentence

As many coastal cities sink due to subsidence and face sea level rise, they become more likely to flood.

Check out the full list of Scientists Say.