In the News
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The Seattle Times Thursday, Jul. 25, 2024
The Great Salt Lake isn't just drying out. It's warming the planet.
Like some dystopian astronaut, Melissa Cobo would hike the searing flats of the dried-out Great Salt Lake every couple of weeks, hauling a heavy backpack attached by a hose to what looked like the lid of a cake dome. What remained of the lake often seemed out of reach as she struggled through hot mud, clay and a weird crystalline layer that broke with her footsteps onto a greenish muck.
“You see the water, but you never actually get to it, no matter how many hours you walk,” Cobo said.
Through these grueling treks, Cobo, then a Utah State University graduate student, and her adviser, Soren Brothers, discovered more disturbing evidence that dried-out lakes are a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions — one that has not been included in the official accounting of how much carbon the world is releasing into the warming atmosphere.