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Fiery 5,000 MPH Winds: Webb Maps Weather on Extreme Exoplanet WASP-43 b

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Thursday, May 2, 2024

This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. WASP-43 b is a Jupiter-sized planet circling a star roughly 280 light-years away, in the constellation Sextans. The planet orbits at a distance of about 1.3 million miles (0.014 astronomical units, or AU), completing one circuit in about 19.5 hours. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-43 b is probably tidally locked: its rotation rate and orbital period are the same, such that one side faces the star at all times. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)WASP-43 b is cloudy on the nightside and clear on the dayside, with equatorial winds howling around the planet at 5,000 miles per hour.Sometimes not finding something is just as exciting and useful as finding it. Take hot Jupiter WASP-43 b, for example. This tidally locked world has a searing-hot, permanent dayside and a somewhat cooler nightside. Astronomers using Webb to map the temperature and analyze the atmosphere around the planet expected to detect methane, a common carbon molecule, on the nightside. But there is clearly no sign of it. Why? The result suggests that supersonic winds of hot gas are blowing around from the dayside, thoroughly churning up the atmosphere, and preventing the chemical reactions that would otherwise produce methane on the nightside.This light curve shows the change in brightness of the WASP-43 system over time as the planet orbits the star. This type of light curve is known as a phase curve because it includes the entire orbit, or all phases of the planet.Because it is tidally locked, different sides of WASP-43 b rotate into view as it orbits. The system appears brightest when the hot dayside is facing the telescope, just before and after the secondary eclipse when the planet passes behind the star. The system grows dimmer as the planet continues its orbits and the nightside rotates into view. After the transit when the planet passes in front of the star, blocking some of the starlight, the system brightens again as the dayside rotates back into view.Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Taylor Bell (BAERI), Joanna Barstow (The Open University), Michael Roman (University of Leicester)Webb Space Telescope Maps Weather on Planet 280 Light-Years AwayAn international team of researchers has successfully used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather on the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b.Precise brightness measurements over a broad spectrum of mid-infrared light, combined with 3D climate models and previous observations from other telescopes, suggest the presence of thick, high clouds covering the nightside, clear skies on the dayside, and equatorial winds upwards of 5,000 miles per hour mixing atmospheric gases around the planet. The investigation is just the latest demonstration of the exoplanet science now possible with Webb’s extraordinary ability to measure temperature variations and detect atmospheric gases trillions of miles away.Tidally Locked “Hot Jupiter”WASP-43 b is a “hot Jupiter” type of exoplanet: similar in size to Jupiter, made primarily of hydrogen and helium, and much hotter than any of the giant planets in our own solar system. Although its star is smaller and cooler than the Sun, WASP-43 b orbits at a distance of just 1.3 million miles – less than 1/25th the distance between Mercury and the Sun.With such a tight orbit, the planet is tidally locked, with one side continuously illuminated and the other in permanent darkness. Although the nightside never receives any direct radiation from the star, strong eastward winds transport heat around from the dayside.Since its discovery in 2011, WASP-43 b has been observed with numerous telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and now-retired Spitzer space telescopes.“With Hubble, we could clearly see that there is water vapor on the dayside. Both Hubble and Spitzer suggested there might be clouds on the nightside,” explained Taylor Bell, researcher from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and lead author of a study published on April 30 in Nature Astronomy. “But we needed more precise measurements from Webb to really begin mapping the temperature, cloud cover, winds, and more detailed atmospheric composition all the way around the planet.”This simplified diagram of an exoplanet phase curve shows the change in total brightness of a star–planet system as the planet orbits the star. The system looks brighter when more of the lit side of the planet is facing the telescope (full phase). It looks dimmer when more of the dark side is facing the telescope (new phase), when the planet is blocking some of the starlight (transit), and when light from the planet is blocked by the star (secondary eclipse).(Top) Diagram showing the change in a planet’s phase (the amount of the lit side facing the telescope) as it orbits its star.(Bottom) Three-dimensional graph showing the change in the total brightness of the star–planet system as the planet orbits its star. In this graph, known as a light curve, the horizontal plane is orbital location and the vertical axis is brightness.(Right) Scale bar. In both the orbital diagram and the light curve, color indicates the observed brightness of the star + planet: from dark purple (less amount of light detected) to white (more light detected).Researchers use phase curves to study variations in reflectivity and temperature of a planet with longitude (from one side to another), which can provide insight into the surface composition and atmospheric conditions of the planet.Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Dani Player (STScI), Andi James (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI)Mapping Temperature and Inferring WeatherAlthough WASP-43 b is too small, dim, and close to its star for a telescope to see directly, its short orbital period of just 19.5 hours makes it ideal for phase curve spectroscopy, a technique that involves measuring tiny changes in brightness of the star-planet system as the planet orbits the star.Since the amount of mid-infrared light given off by an object depends largely on how hot it is, the brightness data captured by Webb can then be used to calculate the planet’s temperature.The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to measure light from the WASP-43 system every 10 seconds for more than 24 hours. “By observing over an entire orbit, we were able to calculate the temperature of different sides of the planet as they rotate into view,” explained Bell. “From that, we could construct a rough map of temperature across the planet.”The measurements show that the dayside has an average temperature of nearly 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit (1,250 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to forge iron. Meanwhile, the nightside is significantly cooler at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius). The data also helps locate the hottest spot on the planet (the “hotspot”), which is shifted slightly eastward from the point that receives the most stellar radiation, where the star is highest in the planet’s sky. This shift occurs because of supersonic winds, which move heated air eastward.“The fact that we can map temperature in this way is a real testament to Webb’s sensitivity and stability,” said Michael Roman, a co-author from the University of Leicester in the U.K.To interpret the map, the team used complex 3D atmospheric models like those used to understand weather and climate on Earth. The analysis shows that the nightside is probably covered in a thick, high layer of clouds that prevent some of the infrared light from escaping to space. As a result, the nightside – while very hot – looks dimmer and cooler than it would if there were no clouds.This set of maps shows the temperature of the visible side of the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b, as the planet orbits its star. The temperatures were calculated based on more than 8,000 brightness measurements of 5- to 12-micron mid-infrared light detected from the star-planet system by MIRI (the Mid-Infrared Instrument) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In general, the hotter an object is, the more mid-infrared light it gives off. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Taylor Bell (BAERI), Joanna Barstow (The Open University), Michael Roman (University of Leicester)Missing Methane and High WindsThe broad spectrum of mid-infrared light captured by Webb also made it possible to measure the amount of water vapor (H2O) and methane (CH4) around the planet. “Webb has given us an opportunity to figure out exactly which molecules we’re seeing and put some limits on the abundances,” said Joanna Barstow, a co-author from the Open University in the U.K.The spectra show clear signs of water vapor on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing additional information about how thick the clouds are and how high they extend in the atmosphere.Surprisingly, the data also shows a distinct lack of methane anywhere in the atmosphere. Although the dayside is too hot for methane to exist (most of the carbon should be in the form of carbon monoxide), methane should be stable and detectable on the cooler nightside.“The fact that we don’t see methane tells us that WASP-43 b must have wind speeds reaching something like 5,000 miles per hour,” explained Barstow. “If winds move gas around from the dayside to the nightside and back again fast enough, there isn’t enough time for the expected chemical reactions to produce detectable amounts of methane on the nightside.”The team thinks that because of this wind-driven mixing, the atmospheric chemistry is the same all the way around the planet, which wasn’t apparent from past work with Hubble and Spitzer.Reference: “Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b” by Taylor J. Bell, Nicolas Crouzet, Patricio E. Cubillos, Laura Kreidberg, Anjali A. A. Piette, Michael T. Roman, Joanna K. Barstow, Jasmina Blecic, Ludmila Carone, Louis-Philippe Coulombe, Elsa Ducrot, Mark Hammond, João M. Mendonça, Julianne I. Moses, Vivien Parmentier, Kevin B. Stevenson, Lucas Teinturier, Michael Zhang, Natalie M. Batalha, Jacob L. Bean, Björn Benneke, Benjamin Charnay, Katy L. Chubb, Brice-Olivier Demory, Peter Gao, Elspeth K. H. Lee, Mercedes López-Morales, Giuseppe Morello, Emily Rauscher, David K. Sing, Xianyu Tan, Olivia Venot, Hannah R. Wakeford, Keshav Aggarwal, Eva-Maria Ahrer, Munazza K. Alam, Robin Baeyens, David Barrado, Claudio Caceres, Aarynn L. Carter, Sarah L. Casewell, Ryan C. Challener, Ian J. M. Crossfield, Leen Decin, Jean-Michel Désert, Ian Dobbs-Dixon, Achrène Dyrek, Néstor Espinoza, Adina D. Feinstein, Neale P. Gibson, Joseph Harrington, Christiane Helling, Renyu Hu, Nicolas Iro, Eliza M.-R. Kempton, Sarah Kendrew, Thaddeus D. Komacek, Jessica Krick, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Jérémy Leconte, Monika Lendl, Neil T. Lewis, Joshua D. Lothringer, Isaac Malsky, Luigi Mancini, Megan Mansfield, Nathan J. Mayne, Thomas M. Evans-Soma, Karan Molaverdikhani, Nikolay K. Nikolov, Matthew C. Nixon, Enric Palle, Dominique J. M. Petit dit de la Roche, Caroline Piaulet, Diana Powell, Benjamin V. Rackham, Aaron D. Schneider, Maria E. Steinrueck, Jake Taylor, Luis Welbanks, Sergei N. Yurchenko, Xi Zhang and Sebastian Zieba, 30 April 2024, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02230-xThe MIRI observation of WASP-43 b was conducted as part of the Webb Early Release Science programs, which are providing researchers with a vast set of robust, open-access data for studying a wide array of cosmic phenomena.The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

WASP-43 b is cloudy on the nightside and clear on the dayside, with equatorial winds howling around the planet at 5,000 miles per hour. Sometimes...

Hot Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-43 b

This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. WASP-43 b is a Jupiter-sized planet circling a star roughly 280 light-years away, in the constellation Sextans. The planet orbits at a distance of about 1.3 million miles (0.014 astronomical units, or AU), completing one circuit in about 19.5 hours. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-43 b is probably tidally locked: its rotation rate and orbital period are the same, such that one side faces the star at all times. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

WASP-43 b is cloudy on the nightside and clear on the dayside, with equatorial winds howling around the planet at 5,000 miles per hour.

Sometimes not finding something is just as exciting and useful as finding it. Take hot Jupiter WASP-43 b, for example. This tidally locked world has a searing-hot, permanent dayside and a somewhat cooler nightside. Astronomers using Webb to map the temperature and analyze the atmosphere around the planet expected to detect methane, a common carbon molecule, on the nightside. But there is clearly no sign of it. Why? The result suggests that supersonic winds of hot gas are blowing around from the dayside, thoroughly churning up the atmosphere, and preventing the chemical reactions that would otherwise produce methane on the nightside.

Hot Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-43 b (Webb MIRI Phase Curve)

This light curve shows the change in brightness of the WASP-43 system over time as the planet orbits the star. This type of light curve is known as a phase curve because it includes the entire orbit, or all phases of the planet.
Because it is tidally locked, different sides of WASP-43 b rotate into view as it orbits. The system appears brightest when the hot dayside is facing the telescope, just before and after the secondary eclipse when the planet passes behind the star. The system grows dimmer as the planet continues its orbits and the nightside rotates into view. After the transit when the planet passes in front of the star, blocking some of the starlight, the system brightens again as the dayside rotates back into view.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Taylor Bell (BAERI), Joanna Barstow (The Open University), Michael Roman (University of Leicester)

Webb Space Telescope Maps Weather on Planet 280 Light-Years Away

An international team of researchers has successfully used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather on the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b.

Precise brightness measurements over a broad spectrum of mid-infrared light, combined with 3D climate models and previous observations from other telescopes, suggest the presence of thick, high clouds covering the nightside, clear skies on the dayside, and equatorial winds upwards of 5,000 miles per hour mixing atmospheric gases around the planet.

The investigation is just the latest demonstration of the exoplanet science now possible with Webb’s extraordinary ability to measure temperature variations and detect atmospheric gases trillions of miles away.

Tidally Locked “Hot Jupiter”

WASP-43 b is a “hot Jupiter” type of exoplanet: similar in size to Jupiter, made primarily of hydrogen and helium, and much hotter than any of the giant planets in our own solar system. Although its star is smaller and cooler than the Sun, WASP-43 b orbits at a distance of just 1.3 million miles – less than 1/25th the distance between Mercury and the Sun.

With such a tight orbit, the planet is tidally locked, with one side continuously illuminated and the other in permanent darkness. Although the nightside never receives any direct radiation from the star, strong eastward winds transport heat around from the dayside.

Since its discovery in 2011, WASP-43 b has been observed with numerous telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and now-retired Spitzer space telescopes.

“With Hubble, we could clearly see that there is water vapor on the dayside. Both Hubble and Spitzer suggested there might be clouds on the nightside,” explained Taylor Bell, researcher from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and lead author of a study published on April 30 in Nature Astronomy. “But we needed more precise measurements from Webb to really begin mapping the temperature, cloud cover, winds, and more detailed atmospheric composition all the way around the planet.”

Diagram Exoplanet Phase Curve

This simplified diagram of an exoplanet phase curve shows the change in total brightness of a star–planet system as the planet orbits the star. The system looks brighter when more of the lit side of the planet is facing the telescope (full phase). It looks dimmer when more of the dark side is facing the telescope (new phase), when the planet is blocking some of the starlight (transit), and when light from the planet is blocked by the star (secondary eclipse).
(Top) Diagram showing the change in a planet’s phase (the amount of the lit side facing the telescope) as it orbits its star.
(Bottom) Three-dimensional graph showing the change in the total brightness of the star–planet system as the planet orbits its star. In this graph, known as a light curve, the horizontal plane is orbital location and the vertical axis is brightness.
(Right) Scale bar. In both the orbital diagram and the light curve, color indicates the observed brightness of the star + planet: from dark purple (less amount of light detected) to white (more light detected).
Researchers use phase curves to study variations in reflectivity and temperature of a planet with longitude (from one side to another), which can provide insight into the surface composition and atmospheric conditions of the planet.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Dani Player (STScI), Andi James (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI)

Mapping Temperature and Inferring Weather

Although WASP-43 b is too small, dim, and close to its star for a telescope to see directly, its short orbital period of just 19.5 hours makes it ideal for phase curve spectroscopy, a technique that involves measuring tiny changes in brightness of the star-planet system as the planet orbits the star.

Since the amount of mid-infrared light given off by an object depends largely on how hot it is, the brightness data captured by Webb can then be used to calculate the planet’s temperature.

The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to measure light from the WASP-43 system every 10 seconds for more than 24 hours. “By observing over an entire orbit, we were able to calculate the temperature of different sides of the planet as they rotate into view,” explained Bell. “From that, we could construct a rough map of temperature across the planet.”

The measurements show that the dayside has an average temperature of nearly 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit (1,250 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to forge iron. Meanwhile, the nightside is significantly cooler at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius). The data also helps locate the hottest spot on the planet (the “hotspot”), which is shifted slightly eastward from the point that receives the most stellar radiation, where the star is highest in the planet’s sky. This shift occurs because of supersonic winds, which move heated air eastward.

“The fact that we can map temperature in this way is a real testament to Webb’s sensitivity and stability,” said Michael Roman, a co-author from the University of Leicester in the U.K.

To interpret the map, the team used complex 3D atmospheric models like those used to understand weather and climate on Earth. The analysis shows that the nightside is probably covered in a thick, high layer of clouds that prevent some of the infrared light from escaping to space. As a result, the nightside – while very hot – looks dimmer and cooler than it would if there were no clouds.

Hot Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-43 b (Temperature Maps)

This set of maps shows the temperature of the visible side of the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b, as the planet orbits its star. The temperatures were calculated based on more than 8,000 brightness measurements of 5- to 12-micron mid-infrared light detected from the star-planet system by MIRI (the Mid-Infrared Instrument) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In general, the hotter an object is, the more mid-infrared light it gives off. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Taylor Bell (BAERI), Joanna Barstow (The Open University), Michael Roman (University of Leicester)

Missing Methane and High Winds

The broad spectrum of mid-infrared light captured by Webb also made it possible to measure the amount of water vapor (H2O) and methane (CH4) around the planet. “Webb has given us an opportunity to figure out exactly which molecules we’re seeing and put some limits on the abundances,” said Joanna Barstow, a co-author from the Open University in the U.K.

The spectra show clear signs of water vapor on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing additional information about how thick the clouds are and how high they extend in the atmosphere.

Surprisingly, the data also shows a distinct lack of methane anywhere in the atmosphere. Although the dayside is too hot for methane to exist (most of the carbon should be in the form of carbon monoxide), methane should be stable and detectable on the cooler nightside.

“The fact that we don’t see methane tells us that WASP-43 b must have wind speeds reaching something like 5,000 miles per hour,” explained Barstow. “If winds move gas around from the dayside to the nightside and back again fast enough, there isn’t enough time for the expected chemical reactions to produce detectable amounts of methane on the nightside.”

The team thinks that because of this wind-driven mixing, the atmospheric chemistry is the same all the way around the planet, which wasn’t apparent from past work with Hubble and Spitzer.

Reference: “Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b” by Taylor J. Bell, Nicolas Crouzet, Patricio E. Cubillos, Laura Kreidberg, Anjali A. A. Piette, Michael T. Roman, Joanna K. Barstow, Jasmina Blecic, Ludmila Carone, Louis-Philippe Coulombe, Elsa Ducrot, Mark Hammond, João M. Mendonça, Julianne I. Moses, Vivien Parmentier, Kevin B. Stevenson, Lucas Teinturier, Michael Zhang, Natalie M. Batalha, Jacob L. Bean, Björn Benneke, Benjamin Charnay, Katy L. Chubb, Brice-Olivier Demory, Peter Gao, Elspeth K. H. Lee, Mercedes López-Morales, Giuseppe Morello, Emily Rauscher, David K. Sing, Xianyu Tan, Olivia Venot, Hannah R. Wakeford, Keshav Aggarwal, Eva-Maria Ahrer, Munazza K. Alam, Robin Baeyens, David Barrado, Claudio Caceres, Aarynn L. Carter, Sarah L. Casewell, Ryan C. Challener, Ian J. M. Crossfield, Leen Decin, Jean-Michel Désert, Ian Dobbs-Dixon, Achrène Dyrek, Néstor Espinoza, Adina D. Feinstein, Neale P. Gibson, Joseph Harrington, Christiane Helling, Renyu Hu, Nicolas Iro, Eliza M.-R. Kempton, Sarah Kendrew, Thaddeus D. Komacek, Jessica Krick, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Jérémy Leconte, Monika Lendl, Neil T. Lewis, Joshua D. Lothringer, Isaac Malsky, Luigi Mancini, Megan Mansfield, Nathan J. Mayne, Thomas M. Evans-Soma, Karan Molaverdikhani, Nikolay K. Nikolov, Matthew C. Nixon, Enric Palle, Dominique J. M. Petit dit de la Roche, Caroline Piaulet, Diana Powell, Benjamin V. Rackham, Aaron D. Schneider, Maria E. Steinrueck, Jake Taylor, Luis Welbanks, Sergei N. Yurchenko, Xi Zhang and Sebastian Zieba, 30 April 2024, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02230-x

The MIRI observation of WASP-43 b was conducted as part of the Webb Early Release Science programs, which are providing researchers with a vast set of robust, open-access data for studying a wide array of cosmic phenomena.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Read the full story here.
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It’s unclear if that property was also destroyed in the Palisades fire, and, if so, whether it had been already remediated.“I questioned if this was allowable and then the crew dumped material into the excavator bucket and planned to move it on the lowboy with material in bucket,” a federal supervisor wrote in a report intended to track performance of contractors. “Don’t think this is allowed.” According to the report, the workers also left glass, ash and other fire debris on the property the crew had been clearing, because they “were in a rush to get to the next site.” Experts who reviewed the reports said the behavior described may amount to illegal dumping under California law. Other reports obtained by The Times describe federal cleanup workers, on multiple occasions, using ash-contaminated soil to backfill holes and smooth out uneven portions of fire-destroyed properties in the Palisades burn scar. If that were true, it would be a breach of state policy that says contaminated soil from areas undergoing environmental cleanup cannot be used in this way. The reports also cite multiple occasions where workers walked through already cleared properties with dirty boot covers, possibly re-contaminating them. The inspectors also reported crews spraying contaminated pool water onto neighboring properties and into storm drains, and excavator operators using toothed buckets that caused clean and contaminated soil to be commingled.“Obviously, there was some really good work done,” state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Pacific Palisades) said about the federal cleanup. “But it appears that we’ve got some folks who are knowingly breaking the law and cutting corners in their cleanup protocol. “We’ve got to figure out how widespread this was, and anybody who was responsible for having broken a law in this area needs to be held accountable.” The Army Corps did not respond to requests for comment. An ECC executive said that without information such as the properties’ addresses or parcel numbers, he could not verify whether the accusations made in the oversight reports were substantiated by the companies’ own investigations or if any issues raised by the inspectors were resolved. Such specifics were redacted in the version of the reports sent to The Times. “At a high level, ECC does not authorize the placement of wildfire debris or ash on neighboring properties, does not permit the use of contaminated material as fill, and operates under continuous [Army Corps] oversight,” said Glenn Sweatt, ECC’s vice president of contracts and compliance.Between February and September, the Army Corps responded to nearly 1,100 public complaints or other inquiries related to the federal fire cleanup. Over 20% of grievances were related to quality of work, according to the Army Corps assessment of complaints. Some of these complaints point to the same concerns raised by the inspectors. For example, a resident in the Eaton burn scar filed a complaint on June 19 that “crews working on adjacent properties moved fire debris and ash onto his property after he specifically asked them not to.” Other property owners in Altadena filed complaints that crews had left all sorts of fire debris on their property — in some cases, buried in the ground. The Army Corps or ECC ordered crews to go back and finish up the debris removal for some properties. Other times, the officials left the work and costs to disaster victims. A Palisades property owner complained on May 7 that after the Army Corps supposedly completed cleaning his property, he found “parts of broken foundation [that] were buried to avoid full removal.” He said it cost him $40,000 to hire a private contractor to gather up and dispose of several dumpsters of busted-up concrete. James Mayfield, a hazardous materials specialist and owner of Mayfield Environmental Engineering, was hired by more than 200 homeowners affected by the fires to remove debris and contaminated soil — including, in some cases, from properties already cleared by Army Corps contractors. When Mayfield and his workers excavated additional soil from Army Corps-cleared properties, he said they occasionally uncovered ash, slabs of burned stucco, and other debris. “All you have to do is scoop and you can see the rest of the house underneath the ground,” Mayfield said. “It was never cleared at all.” After January’s wildfires, local health authorities warned the soil could be riddled with harmful pollutants from burned-down homes and cars, including lead, a heavy metal that can cause irreversible brain damage when inhaled or ingested by young children.Soil testing has been standard practice after major wildfires in California since 2007. Typically, after work crews clear away fire debris and several inches of topsoil from burned-down homes, federal or state disaster officials arrange for the same contractors to test the soil for lingering contamination. If they find contamination above state benchmarks, they are required to excavate another layer of that soil and conduct additional rounds of testing.But the aftermath of the Eaton and Palisades fires has been different. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has repeatedly refused to pay for soil testing in California, insisting the practice is not necessary to remove any immediate threats after the fires. The Newsom administration unsuccessfully petitioned FEMA to reconsider conducting soil testing to protect returning residents and workers. But as pressure mounted on the state to fund soil testing, the California Environmental Protection Agency secretary downplayed public health risks from fire contamination.Indeed, the vast majority of wildfire cleanups in California are managed by state agencies. Since the January wildfires, California officials have been noticeably guarded when questioned about how the state will respond when the next major wildfire inevitably strikes.Asked whether the state will continue to adhere to its long-standing post-fire soil sampling protocols, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services wouldn’t directly answer whether it would pay for soil testing after future wildfires. Its director, Nancy Ward, declined to be interviewed.“California has the most advanced testing systems in the nation, and we remain committed to advocating for the safe, timely removal of debris after a wildfire,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. “Protecting public health and the well-being of impacted communities remains the state’s foremost priority.”Some environmental experts and lawmakers worry that abandoning long-established wildfire protocols, like soil testing, may set a precedent where disaster victims will assume more costs and work to ensure that their properties are safe to return to and rebuild upon.U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D–Los Angeles) called for the Army Corps to review the results of large-scale soil testing initiatives, including data from USC, to determine which contractors were assigned to clean properties where heavy contamination persists. Such an analysis, he said, might help the federal government figure out which contractors performed poor work, so that they they aren’t hired in future disasters. “I’m going to press the Army Corps to look at where the testing indicates there was still contaminants and who is the contractor for that, to see whether there are certain contractors that had a high failure rate,” Sherman said.“I want to make sure they’re ... evaluating these contractors vis-à-vis the next disaster,” he added. “And, ultimately it’s in the testing.”Throughout much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, thousands of empty lots are awaiting permits to rebuild. But many property owners fear the possibility of contamination. The Department of Angels, a community-led nonprofit formed after the January wildfires, surveyed 2,300 residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the Eaton and Palisades blazes. About one-third of respondents said they wanted testing but had not received it.“The government abandoned testing and left us on our own,” one victim wrote. “We have each had to find out what is the best route to test and remediate, but without standardization and consistency, we are a giant experiment.”

Chemicals
Government
Health

These 10 Wellness Items Solve Real Problems And Won Our HuffPicks Award

After much deliberation, a famous foot stretcher, one cane-shaped massager and others have earned this shopping honor.

With each passing allergy season, major wildfire, and the latest EPA report on pollution, concern for air quality has and will continue to be a major factor in our health and wellness reporting. Based on former in-depth conversations with associate professor of otolaryngology at Stanford University Zara M. Patel and a respiratory therapist and member of the American Association for Respiratory Care Joyce Baker, air purifiers (and most importantly, the right air purifier) are one of the greatest defenses we have against poor indoor air quality, which “can be two to five times more polluted than outdoors because of the lack of fresh air, circulation and ventilation,” according to Baker (who cited an assessment from the Environmental Protection Agency).The decision to award BlueAir's blissfully quiet and top-performing 411i Max air purifier a HuffPick was the result of combined guidance from Baker and Patel and our very own personal experience. “[The] BlueAir 411 is remarkable because it just works — as soon as it’s on, you can feel the difference in the air, leaving air crisper and fresher," former HuffPost shopping writer Haley Zovickian previously said. It should be worth mentioning that, like myself, Zovickian lives in smog-filled Los Angeles, a city that was recently ravaged by one of the worst wildfires in recent history.“I no longer sneeze and itch from dust, pollen and who knows what, and my close friends with cat allergies are able to comfortably relax in my cat hair-filled room as long as the air purifier is on,” Zovickian said.Aside from its sleek Scandinavian-inspired design, Zovickian points to BlueAir's excellent filtration system that uses a dual HEPA filter, a washable fabric pre-filter and an active carbon filter to trap both large and tiny airborne particles like bacteria, viruses, dust, potentially harmful chemicals, and those responsible for odor.The purifier featured here is offers a slight upgrade from Zovickian's preferred model with its Wifi capability, which makes it easier to keep track of air quality and trends over time using the accompanying app, plus do things like schedule run times remotely and use voice commands. It also comes in three sizes, depending on the square footage of the space.

Chemicals
Health
Pollution

Indigenous groups fight to save rediscovered settlement site on Texas coast

Flanked by a chemical plant and an oil rig construction yard, the site on Corpus Christi Bay may be the last of its kind on this stretch of coastline, now occupied by petrochemical facilities.

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback. This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. INGLESIDE — The rediscovery of an ancient settlement site, sandwiched between industrial complexes on Corpus Christi Bay, has spurred a campaign for its preservation by Native American groups in South Texas. Hundreds of such sites were once documented around nearby bays but virtually all have been destroyed as cities, refineries and petrochemical plants spread along the waterfront at one of Texas’ commercial ports. In a letter last month, nonprofit lawyers representing the Karankawa and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to revoke an unused permit that would authorize construction of an oil terminal at the site, called Donnel Point, among the last undisturbed tracts of land on almost 70 miles of shoreline. “We’re not just talking about a geographical point on the map,” said Love Sanchez, a 43-year-old mother of two and a Karankawa descendent in Corpus Christi. “We’re talking about a place that holds memory.” The site sits on several hundred acres of undeveloped scrubland, criss-crossed by wildlife trails with almost a half mile of waterfront. It was documented by Texas archaeologists in the 1930s but thought to be lost to dredging of an industrial ship canal in the 1950s. Last year a local geologist stumbled upon the site while boating on the bay and worked with a local professor of history to identify it in academic records. For Sanchez, a former office worker at the Corpus Christi Independent School District, Donnel Point represents a precious, physical connection to a past that’s been largely covered up. She formed a group called Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend in 2018 to raise awareness about the unacknowledged Indigenous heritage of this region on the middle Texas coast. The names and tales of her ancestors here were lost to genocide in Texas. Monuments now say her people went extinct. But the family lore, earthy skin tones and black, waxy hair of many South Texas families attest that Indigenous bloodlines survived. For their descendents, few sites like Donnel Point remain as evidence of how deep their roots here run. “Even if the stories were taken or burned or scattered, the land still remembers,” Sanchez said. The land tells a story at odds with the narrative taught in Texas schools, that only sparse bands of people lived here when American settlers arrived. Instead, the number and ages of settlement sites documented around the bay suggest that its bounty of fish and crustaceans supported thriving populations. “This place was like a magnet for humans,” said Peter Moore, a professor of early American history at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi who identified the site at Donnel Point. “Clearly, this was a densely settled place.” There’s no telling how many sites have been lost, he said, especially to the growth of the petrochemical industry. The state’s detailed archaeological records are only available to licensed archaeologists, who are contracted primarily by developers. A few sites were excavated and cataloged before they were destroyed. Many others disappeared anonymously. Their remains now lie beneath urban sprawl on the south shore of Corpus Christi Bay and an industrial corridor on its north. “Along a coastline that had dense settlements, they’re all gone,” Moore said. The last shell midden Rediscovery of the site at Donnel Point began last summer when Patrick Nye, a local geologist and retired oilman, noticed something odd while boating near the edge of the bay: a pile of bright white oyster, conch and scallop shells spilling from the brush some 15 feet above the water and cascading down the steep, clay bank. Nye, 71, knew something about local archaeology. Growing up on this coastline he amassed a collection of thousands of pot shards and arrowheads (later donated to a local Indigenous group) from a patch of woods near his home just a few miles up the shore, a place called McGloins Bluff. Nye’s father, chief justice of the local court of civil appeals, helped save the site from plans by an oil company to dump dredging waste there in 1980. Later, in 2004, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, which owned the tract, commissioned the excavation and removal of about 40,000 artifacts so it could sell the land to a different oil company for development, against the recommendations of archaeological consultants and state historical authorities. Patrick Nye pilots his boat on Corpus Christi Bay at daybreak on Dec. 7, 2025. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News“We’re not going to let that happen here,” Nye said on a foggy morning in December as he steered his twin engine bay boat up to Donnel Point, situated between a chemical plant and a construction yard for offshore oil rigs on land owned by the Port of Corpus Christi Authority. Nye returned to the site with Moore, who taught a class at Texas A&M University about the discovery in 1996 and subsequent destruction of a large cemetery near campus called Cayo del Oso, where construction crews found hundreds of burials dating from 2,800 years ago until the 18th century. It now sits beneath roads and houses of Corpus Christi’s Bay Area. Moore consulted the research of two local archaeologists, a father and son-in-law duo named Harold Pape and John Tunnell who documented hundreds of Indigenous cultural sites around nearby bays in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, including a string of particularly dense settlements on the north shore of Corpus Christi Bay. Their work was only published in 2015 by their descendents, John Tunnell Jr. and his son Jace Tunnell, both professors at A&M. Moore looked up the location that Nye had described, and there he found it — a hand-drawn map of a place called Donnel Point, with six small Xs denoting “minor sites” and two circles for “major sites.” A map produced by Pape and Tunnell showing Donnel Point, then called Boyd’s Point, in 1940, with several major and minor archaeological sites marked. Used with permission. Tunnell, J. W., & Tunnell, J. (2015). Pioneering archaeology in the Texas coastal bend : The Pape-Tunnell collection. Texas A&M University Press.The map also showed a wide, sandy point jutting 1,000 feet into Corpus Christi Bay, which no longer exists. It was demolished by dredging for La Quinta Ship Channel in the 1950s. Moore’s research found a later archaeological survey of the area ordered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1970s concluded the sites on Donnel Point were lost. “Subsequent archeological reports repeated this assumption,” said an eight-page report Moore produced last year on the rediscovery of the sites. The artifacts at Donnel Point are probably no different than those collected from similar sites that have been paved over. The sites’ largest features are likely the large heaps of seashells, called middens, left by generations of fishermen eating oysters, scallops and conchs. “Even if it’s just a shell midden, in some ways it’s the last shell midden,” Moore said at a coffee shop in Corpus Christi. “It deserves special protection.” Nye and Moore took their findings to local Indigenous groups, who quietly began planning a campaign for preservation. Seashells spilling down the edge of a tall, clay bank, 15 feet above the water, on Dec. 7, 2025. Dredging for an industrial ship channel and subsequent erosion cut into these shell middens left by generations of indigenous fishermen. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsA mistaken extinction Under the law, preservation often means excavating artifacts before sites are paved over. But the descendents of these coastal cultures are less concerned about the scraps and trinkets their ancestors left behind as they are about the place itself. In most cases they can only guess where the old villages stood before they were erased. In this rare case they know. Now they would like to visit. “Not only are we fighting to maintain a sacred place, we’re trying to maintain a connection that we’ve had over thousands and thousands of years,” said Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, during a webinar in November to raise awareness about the site. The destruction of these sites furthers the erasure of Indigenous people from Texas, he said. He has fought for years against the planned destruction of another village site called Garcia Pasture, which is slated to become an LNG terminal at the Port of Brownsville, south of Corpus Christi. North of Corpus Christi, near Victoria, a large, 7,000-year-old cemetery was exhumed in 2006 for a canal expansion at a plastics plant. “The petrochemical industry has to understand that we’re going to stand in the way of their so-called progress,” Mancias, a 71-year-old former youth social worker, said during the webinar. “They have total disregard for the land because they have no connection. They’re immigrants.” He grew up picking cotton with other Mexican laborers in the Texas Panhandle. But his grandparents told him stories about the ancient forests and villages of the lower Rio Grande that they’d been forced to flee. His schooling and history books told him the stories couldn’t be true. They said the Indigenous people of South Texas vanished long ago and offered little interest or insight into how they lived. It was through archaeological sites that Mancias later confirmed the places in his grandparents’ stories existed. There is no easy pathway for Mancias to protect these sites. Neither the Carrizo/Comecrudo or the Karankawa, who inhabited the coastal plains of Texas and Tamaulipas, are among the federally recognized tribes that were resettled by the U.S. government onto reservations. Only federally recognized tribes have legal rights to archaeological sites in their ancestral territory. As far as U.S. law is concerned, the native peoples of South Texas no longer exist, leaving the lands they once occupied ripe for economic development. “Now it’s the invaders who decide who and what we are,” said Mancias in an interview. “That’s why we struggle with our own identities.” Juan Mancias, chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, at an H-E-B grocery store in Port Isabel in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsIn Corpus Christi, the story of Indigenous extinction appears on a historical marker placed prominently at a bayside park in commemoration of the Karankawa peoples. “Many of the Indians were killed in warfare,” it says. “Remaining members of the tribe fled to Mexico about 1843. Annihilation of that remnant about 1858 marked the disappearance of the Karankawa Indians.” That isn’t true, according to Tim Seiter, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler who studies Karankawa history. While Indigenous communities ceased to exist openly, not every last family was killed. Asserting extinction, he said, is another means of conquest. “This is very much purposefully done,” he said. “If the Karakawas go extinct, they can’t come back and reclaim the land.” Stories of survival Almost a century before the English pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca lived with and wrote about the Karankawas — a diverse collection of bands and clans that shared a common language along the Gulf Coast. By the time Anglo-American settlers began to arrive in Texas, the Karankawas were 300 years acquainted with Spanish language and culture. Some of them settled in or around Spanish missions as far inland as San Antonio. Many had married into the new population of colonial Texas. Many of their descendants still exist today. “We just call those people Tejanos, or Mexicans,” said Seiter, who grew up near the Gulf coast outside Houston. Love Sanchez with her mother and two sons at a park in Corpus Christi in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsHe made those connections through Spanish records at archives in San Antonio. In Texas’ Anglo-American era, Seiter said, most available information about the Karankawas comes from the diaries of settlers who are trying to exterminate them. Some of the last stories of the Karankawas written into history involve settler militias launching surprise attacks on Karankawa settlements and gunning down men, women and children as they fled across a river. “The documents are coming from the colonists and they’re not keeping tabs of who they are killing in these genocidal campaigns,” Seiter said. “It makes it really hard to do ancestry.” All the accounts tell of Karankawa deaths and expulsion. Stories of survivors and escapees never made it into the record. But Seiter said he’s identified individuals through documents who survived massacres. Moreover, oral histories of Hispanic families say many others escaped, hid their identities and fled to Mexico or integrated into Anglo society. That’s one reason why archaeological sites like Donnel Point are so important, Seiter said: They are a record that was left by the people themselves, rather than by immigrant writers. The lack of information leaves a lot of mystery in the backgrounds of people like Sanchez, founder of Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend in Corpus Christi. She was born in Corpus Christi to parents from South Texas and grandparents from Mexico. Almost 20 years ago her cousin shared the results of a DNA test showing their mixed Indigenous ancestry from the Gulf Coast region. Curious to learn more, she sought out a local elder named Larry Running Turtle Salazar who she had seen at craft markets. Salazar gained prominence and solidified a small community around a campaign to protect the Cayo del Oso burial ground. Through Salazar, Sanchez learned about local Indigenous culture and history. Then she was jolted to action after 2016, when she followed online as Native American protesters gathered on the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation to block an oil company from laying its pipeline across their territory. The images of Indigenous solidarity, and of protesters pepper sprayed by oil company security, inflamed Sanchez’s emotions. She began attending small protests in Corpus Christi. When Salazar announced his retirement from posting on social media, exhausted by all the hate, Sanchez said she would take up the task fighting for awareness of Indigenous heritage. “People don’t want us to exist,” she said beneath mesquite trees at a park in Corpus Christi. “Sometimes they are really mean.” In 2018 she formed her group, Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend, which she now operates full time, visiting schools and youth groups to tell about the Karankawa and help kids learn to love their local ecosystems. Over time the group has become increasingly focused on environmental protection from expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Salazar died in March at 68. Chemours Chemical plant on La Quinta Ship Channel, adjacent to the site of Donnel Point in 2022. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate NewsProtecting Donnel Point When Nye and Moore shared their discovery with Sanchez, who has always dreamed of becoming a lawyer, she knew it had to be kept secret while a legal strategy was devised, lest the site’s developers rush to beat them. The groups brought their case to nonprofit lawyers at Earthjustice and the University of Texas School of Law Environmental Clinic, who filed records requests to turn up available information on the property. “We discovered that they had this old permit that had been extended and transferred,” said Erin Gaines, clinical professor at the clinic. “Then we started digging in on that.” The permit was issued in 2016 by USACE to the site’s previous owner, Cheniere, to build an oil condensate terminal, then transferred to the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, administrator of the nation’s top port for oil exports, when it bought the land in 2021. Since then, the Port has sought developers to build and operate a terminal in the space, the lawyers found, even though proposed layouts and environmental conditions differ greatly from the project plans reviewed for the 2016 permit. In November, Sanchez and the other groups announced their campaign publicly when their lawyers filed official comments with USACE, requesting that the permit for the site be revoked or subject to new reviews. The Port of Corpus Christi Authority did not respond to a request for comment. “Cultural information and environmental conditions at the site have changed, necessitating new federal reviews and a new permit application,” the comments said. “Local residents and researchers have re-discovered an archaeological site in the project area, consisting of a former settlement that was thought to be lost and is of great importance to the Karankawa and Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribes.” Still, the site faces a slim shot at preservation. First it would need to be flagged by the Texas Historical Commission. But the commissioners there are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who has received $40 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since taking office. Even then, preservation under the law means digging up artifacts and putting them in storage so the site can be cleared for development. Only under exceptional circumstances could it be protected in an undisturbed state. Neither Abbott’s office nor the Texas Historical Commission responded to a request for comment. Despite the odds, Sanchez dreams of making Donnel Point a place that people could visit to feel their ancestors’ presence and imagine the thousands of years that they fished from the bay. The fossil fuel industry is a towering opponent, but she’s used to it here. She plans to never give up. “In this type of organizing you can lose hope really fast,” she said. “No one here has lost hope.” Disclosure: H-E-B, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University Press and Texas Historical Commission have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Chemicals
Indigenous
Culture

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