The U.S. Just Gained 386,000 Square Miles Overnight

It’s not an additional state that added this mileage, but a shift in geographic coordinates that annexed thousands of miles of extended underwater continental shelf.

Essentially, around every mass of land lies underwater land known as the continental shelf, this leads to the continental slope, and eventually the seafloor. The ECS is the area past the continental shelf before the ocean floor begins.

The idea behind this law was to ensure the oceans directly surrounding the continents were protected for both natural and cultural resources.

However, this area sits so closely to Russia’s easternmost shorelines that there has been a decades-long debate as to where each country’s ECS borders actually lie.

The NOAA reportedly used “bathymetric, sub bottom, gravity, magnetic, seismic, and geologic sample data” to create a wildly detailed map of the continental shelves, slopes, canyons, and the ECS around the entire country.

This agency is funded directly by the US Congress, who provides mandatory funding for conducting research and building facilities. Congress also grants NOAA with a discretionary budget it can use for various research projects.

In contrast, President Biden’s 2023 budget included a $7 billion appropriation for the NOAA, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

People are finding themselves battered by storms, hurricanes, fires, and droughts much more frequently depending on where they live. Environmental research is essential to helping predict weather events so the country can plan ahead and navigate future situations.

Previous efforts of drones being sent into the eye of hurricanes have convinced these researchers of the viability and importance they can provide in providing up-to-date temperature readings. Upper-ocean data could be a key component to getting more accurate hurricane predictions in the future.

The team analyzed data from an unmanned ocean robot that showed surface ocean temperatures fluctuated unexpectedly during the first half of Hurricane Sam in 2021. The resulting forecast models at the time suffered from this lack of data.

These drones can explore areas that no human can research and can still collect data in the harshest of weather conditions. Recent technology improvements like wireless recharging and the emergence of AI advancements for drones will make their data more accurate and help avoid human error.

What researchers are currently lacking in the fight against climate change is consistent data on evolving conditions on the ground. As researchers finally feel like they get a handle on intense storms, the storms evolve past predictions, in a constantly changing competition between weather forecasters and nature.

The highest fatality year in recent history was in 2005, where over 1,500 people lost their lives from hurricane events that year, according to Statista.

This means that the Earth’s temperature is increasing at a rate of 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. 2023 was also the warmest year on record according to researcher data from 1850 onwards to today.

Warmer temperatures mean that evaporation of water becomes easier. As more water leaves the ecosystem, soil and vegetation start to degrade as they dry out. This creates a compounding effect that makes it hard for the area to retain water even when moisture returns and temperatures get lower again.

Wildfires further contribute to global warming by releasing toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases into the air. As fires burn they also kick up dust, which can cause devastating dust storms that can last for weeks.

A chief concern among researchers is that increasing global temperatures will increase the number of pollutants and allergens floating around in the air. This will make it harder for people to breathe fresh air, which will have negative health outcomes for many Americans.

The results made it clear that the U.S. has an additional 386,000 square miles of ECS than they originally thought.

However, the Wilson Center, which has helped to analyze and publish the data, reported, “There is no need for a future negotiation with Russia because each country has delineated the outer limit of its continental shelf consistent with the boundary established in 1990 in the Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Maritime Boundary” (via MSN).

And the members of the Wilson Center have played a big role in determining the ECS boundaries as well as explaining their importance.

The spokesperson continued, “The United States is a major maritime nation with the largest exclusive economic zone in the world, and this historic step helps protect its sovereign rights to vast additional subsea areas.”

Of course, whatever is found in the ECS land is the property of the USA, but that also means it’s the country’s duty to protect it.

So that means that while countries can make significant profits from their ECS land, they have the responsibility not to over-farm and ruin the natural landscape.

The NOAA and the USGS have been hard at work understanding the layout, but now, the government will probably want to know what profitable resources lie beneath the surface.