https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-power-of-water-wind-and-solar-and-nothing-else Source:   By Sarah Witman, Eos/AGU Excerpt: From more frequent wildfires to devastating hurricanes to persistent droughts, we are already seeing the effects of climate change. It’s not just the planet that’s at risk: Air pollution causes 4–7 million human deaths each year, and energy security is a concern as our population grows. Addressing these challenges will require a collective effort by individuals, communities, businesses, nonprofits, and policy makers around the world, not to mention a road map to guide these disparate parties. Here Jacobson presents just such a road map. It outlines how the 139 countries that together contribute 99% of all global emissions can transition to 80% clean, renewable energy (water, wind, and solar) by 2030 and to 100% by 2050. By 2050, everything—transportation, agriculture, forestry, fishing, heating, cooling, and all industries—would run on electricity. This

  https://eos.org/research-spotlights/humans-to-blame-for-higher-drought-risk-in-some-regions Source:   By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU Excerpt: The world’s population relies on the global water cycle for food security and economic prosperity. However, human activities may be jeopardizing this critical resource; new research by Douville and Plazzotta confirms that human emissions of greenhouse gases have already begun to alter the water cycle, resulting in a drying trend and increased risk of drought in certain parts of the world. To many researchers, these new findings are not surprising. For more than a decade, observational and numerical modeling studies have predicted that anthropogenic emissions would cause warming that could change the water cycle and expand dry regions. Nonetheless, other recent studies have cast serious doubts on these predictions. Two studies cautioned that simplified calculations used to process observational data could result in incorrect predictions of evapor

https://eos.org/articles/arctic-is-experiencing-a-warmer-new-normal-noaa-reports Source:   By Randy Showstack, AGU/Eos Excerpt: Recent observations of declining sea ice, persistent elevated temperatures, and other factors confirm that a new climate era endures in the Arctic, according to the just-released yearly, major assessment of the region by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “This year’s observations confirm that the Arctic shows no signs of returning to the reliably frozen state that it was in just a decade ago,” Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program, said yesterday as the agency unveiled its 2017 Arctic Report Card. “Arctic temperatures continue to increase at double the rate of global averages,” he told reporters at a news briefing yesterday at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in New Orleans, La. The mean Arctic air temperature this year over land exceeded the 1981–2010 average by 1.6°C, making it the second-highest

https://www.ktoo.org/2017/09/15/can-kodiak-teach-world-renewable-energy-lot/ Source:    By   Rachel Waldholz, Alaska’s Energy Desk , KTOO.  Excerpt: ...Kodiak [2nd largest island in the US] generates about 20 percent of its electricity from wind. ...Since 2007, Kodiak has transformed its grid so that it now generates almost 100 percent of its power with renewable energy. The local electric co-op has managed to do that while keeping rates stable. In fact, the price of electricity in Kodiak has dropped slightly since 2000. It’s a model with lessons for remote communities from the Arctic to the equator — and for cities on the big grids of the Lower 48, from New York to Houston....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/climate/climate-extreme-weather-attribution.html Source:   By Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, The New York Times Excerpt: Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral. Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year’s calamities can, and can’t, be linked to global warming. In a new collection of papers published Wednesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers around the world analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016 and found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them. ...1. Record temperatures around the world. ...2. Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. ...3. Drought in Africa, ...4. Wildfires in North America. ...5. The warm “

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-to-name-winners-of-anti-trump-climate-change-grants/2017/12/11/98ce181e-de4f-11e7-b2e9-8c636f076c76_story.html Source:   By Sylvie Corbet, AP Excerpt: PARIS — Eighteen climate scientists from the U.S. and elsewhere hit the jackpot Monday as French President Emmanuel Macron awarded them millions of euros in grants to relocate to France for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term. The “Make Our Planet Great Again” grants — a nod to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — are part of Macron’s efforts to counter Trump on the climate change front. Macron announced a contest for the projects in June, hours after Trump declared he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. More than 5,000 people from about 100 countries expressed interest in the grants. A majority of the applicants — and 13 of the 18 winners — were U.S.-based researchers. Macron’s appeal “gave me such a psychological boost, to have that kind

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/technology/from-the-arctics-melting-ice-an-unexpected-digital-hub.html Source:   By Cecilia Kang, The New York Times Excerpt: POINT HOPE, Alaska — This is one of the most remote towns in the United States, a small gravel spit on the northwest coast of Alaska, more than 3,700 miles from New York City. ...Needless to say, this is not the sort of place you expect to be a hub of the high-tech digital world. But in a surprising, and bittersweet, side effect of global warming — and of the global economy — one of the fastest internet connections in America is arriving in Point Hope, giving the 700 or so residents their first taste of broadband speed. The new connection is part of an ambitious effort by Quintillion, a five-year old company based in Anchorage, to take advantage of the melting sea ice to build a faster digital link between London and Tokyo....