https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/rise-carbon-dioxide-absorbing-mountains-tropics-may-set-thermostat-global-climate Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Many mountains in Indonesia and neighboring Papua New Guinea consist of ancient volcanic rocks from the ocean floor that were caught in a colossal tectonic collision between a chain of island volcanoes and a continent, and thrust high. Lashed by tropical rains, these rocks hungrily react with CO2 and sequester it in minerals. That is why, with only 2% of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10% of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years (although they are now threatened by global warming). Now, researchers have extended that theory, finding that such tropical mountain-building collisions coincide with nearly all of the half-dozen or so significant glacial periods in the past 500 million years. “These types of

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/discovery-recent-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-raises-fears-new-global-flood Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Some 125,000 years ago, during the last brief warm period between ice ages, Earth was awash. Temperatures during this time, called the Eemian, were barely higher than in today’s greenhouse-warmed world. Yet proxy records show sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher than they are today, drowning huge swaths of what is now dry land. Scientists have now identified the source of all that water: a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Glaciologists worry about the present-day stability of this formidable ice mass. Its base lies below sea level, at risk of being undermined by warming ocean waters, and glaciers fringing it are retreating fast. The discovery, teased out of a sediment core and reported last week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. [ https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm18/meetingapp.c

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/climate/cop24-katowice-climate-summit.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: KATOWICE, Poland — Diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a deal on Saturday to keep the Paris climate agreement alive by adopting a detailed set of rules to implement the pact. The deal, struck after an all-night bargaining session, will ultimately require every country in the world to follow a uniform set of standards for measuring their planet-warming emissions and tracking their climate policies. And it calls on countries to step up their plans to cut emissions ahead of another round of talks in 2020. It also calls on richer countries to be clearer about the aid they intend to offer to help poorer nations install more clean energy or build resilience against natural disasters. And it builds a process in which countries that are struggling to meet their emissions goals can get help in getting back on track. The United States agreed to the deal

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/12/13/researchers-use-jiggly-jell-o-to-make-powerful-new-hydrogen-fuel-catalyst/ Source:   By Kara Manke, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive — water-splitting catalyst out there. ...To create the catalyst, the researchers followed a recipe nearly as simple as making Jell-O from a box. They mixed gelatin and a metal ion — either molybdenum, tungsten or cobalt — with water, and then let the mixture dry. ...“We found that the performance is very close to the best catalyst made of platinum and carbon, which is the gold standard in this area,” Lin said. “This means that we can replace the very expensive platinum with our material, which is made in a very scalable manufacturing process.”....

https://eos.org/articles/one-fifth-of-los-angeless-co2-rises-from-lawns-and-golf-courses Source:   By Katherine Kornei, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Measurements of carbon-14 show that roughly 20% of carbon dioxide emissions in the Los Angeles Basin are likely due to the decay of plants in managed landscapes....

https://eos.org/articles/arctic-undergoing-most-unprecedented-transition-in-human-history Source:   By Randy Showstack, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The Arctic continues to undergo dramatic change due to atmospheric and ocean warming, and the region “is no longer returning to the extensively frozen region of recent past decades,” according to the 2018 Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2018 on Tuesday. ...Here are some of the main findings in the report: In 2018, surface air temperatures in the Arctic continued to warm at more than twice the rate relative to the rest of the globe. The year 2018 was the second warmest year on record in the Arctic ...second only to 2016. ...Arctic sea ice cover, which reached a winter maximum value extent of 14.48 million square kilometers on 17 March 2018, was the second lowest maximum extent in the 39-year record, following 2017. ...Older sea ice, which tends to be thicker and more res

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/power-peat-more-polluting-coal-its-way-out-ireland Source:   By Emily Toner, Science Magazine. Excerpt: ...the Corneveagh Bog in central Ireland ...has been drained and stripped of its moss and heather to reveal the rich, black soil beneath: peat. ...A long mound of peat, stripped and dried earlier in the season, is covered in plastic, waiting to be piled into rail cars and taken to a nearby power plant. There, the carbon-rich soil will be burned to generate electricity. But not for much longer, says Barry O'Loughlin, an ecologist employed by Bord na Móna, a state-owned peat harvesting and energy company based in Newbridge that owns Corneveagh Bog. Bord na Móna, which means "Peat Board," will soon retire dozens of bogs like Corneveagh from energy production. Its team of four ecologists will rehabilitate many of them by blocking drains, soaking the ground, and reestablishing plant life, O'Loughlin says as his boots crunch thr

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/science/climate-change-mass-extinction.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times. Excerpt: In some ways, the planet's worst mass extinction — 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period — may parallel climate change today. ... Some 252 million years ago, Earth almost died. In the oceans, 96 percent of all species became extinct. It’s harder to determine how many terrestrial species vanished, but the loss was comparable. This mass extinction, at the end of the Permian Period, was the worst in the planet’s history, and it happened over a few thousand years at most — the blink of a geological eye. On Thursday, a team of scientists offered a detailed accounting of how marine life was wiped out during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Global warming robbed the oceans of oxygen, they say, putting many species under so much stress that they died off. And we may be repeating the process, the scientists warn. If so, then climate

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/climate/betting-on-a-new-way-to-make-concrete-that-doesnt-pollute.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...a team from a company called Solidia Technologies ...based in Piscataway, N. J. [is] visiting England to test a new technology that the company hopes will dramatically reshape the manufacturing of concrete. Solidia says it can make this ubiquitous building material cheaper and at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions by essentially turning them into stone. Solidia’s big bet is that by tweaking the chemistry of cement, the key ingredient in these blocks and other concrete products, it can profit from helping to clean up an industry that is not only one of the largest on the planet but also one of the dirtiest. Cement plants are major league emitters of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for climate change. ...Because of the high heat and large amounts of energy needed as well as the chemical processes involved, maki

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/climate/trump-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html Source:   By Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy. “I don’t believe it,” he said. Mr. Trump then laid responsibility for cleaning the atmosphere on other countries like China and Japan.... the National Climate Assessment, issued on Friday, was the product of four years of work by 13 federal agencies. It concluded that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” and adds, “the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Those impacts include more devastating wildfires, severe storms and coastal flooding, droughts, crop failures,

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/climate/adaptation-us-climate-change.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The federal government’s sweeping new National Climate Assessment is more than just a dire warning about current and future global warming effects across the United States. It’s also the most detailed guide yet to all the ways the country will have to adapt. Even if the nations of the world get their act together and slash fossil-fuel emissions rapidly, the United States will need to spend many billions of dollars to harden coastlines, rebuild sewer systems and overhaul farming practices to protect against floods, wildfires and heat waves that are already causing havoc nationwide. And the more that emissions rise, the more difficult and costly that task gets. The United States isn’t prepared.... 1. Rethink how we farm.... 2. Build for the future, not the past.... 3. Retreat from the coasts.... 4. Enlist nature to help.... 5. Expect th

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/climate/coal-global-warming.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times Excerpt: ...Home to half the world’s population, Asia accounts for three-fourths of global coal consumption today. More important, it accounts for more than three-fourths of coal plants that are either under construction or in the planning stages — a whopping 1,200 of them, according to Urgewald, a German advocacy group that tracks coal development. Heffa Schücking, who heads Urgewald, called those plants “an assault on the Paris [agreement] goals.” Indonesia is digging more coal. Vietnam is clearing ground for new coal-fired power plants. Japan, reeling from 2011 nuclear plant disaster, has resurrected coal. The world’s juggernaut, though, is China. The country consumes half the world’s coal. More than 4.3 million Chinese are employed in the country’s coal mines. China has added 40 percent of the world’s coal capacity since 2002, a huge increase for just 16 years. .

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html Source:   By Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end. The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth. ...But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ] lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, he

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.html Source:   By Abrahm Lustgarten, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...In the mid-2000s, Western nations, led by the United States, began drafting environmental laws that encouraged the use of vegetable oil in fuels — an ambitious move to reduce carbon dioxide and curb global warming. But these laws were drawn up based on an incomplete accounting of the true environmental costs. Despite warnings that the policies could have the opposite of their intended effect, they were implemented anyway, producing what now appears to be a calamity with global consequences. The tropical rain forests of Indonesia, and in particular the peatland regions of Borneo, have large amounts of carbon trapped within their trees and soil. Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palm cultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon. A lot more carbon. NASA researchers say the accelerated destruction

https://eos.org/articles/world-off-course-to-meet-emissions-reduction-goals Source:   By Randy Showstack, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Despite energy efficiency and solar energy and other renewables playing an ever-larger role in the global energy mix, carbon emissions are increasing, and the world is not on course to meeting emissions reduction goals set by the 2016 Paris climate accord. That’s according to “ World Energy Outlook 2018 ,” [https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/november/world-energy-outlook-2018-examines-future-patterns-of-global-energy-system-at-a-t.html] a report issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on 13 November. ...“We can now safely say that in 2018, CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions will reach an historical high,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said at a 13 November briefing in Paris. “I see a very sharp disconnect between the scientific research targets—aims we have in terms of climate change—and what is happening in the energy markets.” The report states

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive Source:   By Ann Gibbons, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. ...A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to b

https://eos.org/scientific-press/warmer-winter-temperatures-linked-to-increased-crime Source:   AGU Press Release. Excerpt: Milder winter weather increased regional crime rates in the United States over the past several decades, according to new research that suggests crime is related to temperature’s effect on daily activities. A new study published in GeoHealth, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, finds U.S. crime rates are linked to warmer temperatures, and this relationship follows a seasonal pattern. The findings support the theory that three major ingredients come together to bring about crime: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of a guardian to prevent a violation of the law. During certain seasons, namely winter, milder weather conditions increase the likelihood these three elements come together, and that violent and property crimes will take place, according to the new study. Unexpectedly, warmer summer temperatures were not linked with high

https://eos.org/features/why-is-the-gulf-of-maine-warming-faster-than-99-of-the-ocean Source:   By Laura Poppick, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season. These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape. “They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Thanks to record-breaking summer water temperatures that quickly transition to cooler conditions, an expanded sea turtle stranding season is just one facet of a new normal for the Gulf of Maine, Pershing explained. And this new normal is a striki

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/climate/electric-school-buses.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — “Some of the kids call it the singing bus,” said Juliessa Diclo Cruz, 10, as she rode in back of one of New York State’s first-ever electric school buses on a chilly October morning. ...the five new battery-powered buses in White Plains, which went into service this fall, run so quietly that they have to play a four-tone melody for safety as they roam the streets. The school district’s five singing buses — which cost $365,000 apiece, more than three times the price of a new diesel bus with modern pollution controls — are still a rarity. Of the roughly 480,000 school buses in the United States, only a few hundred are fully electric. But that’s slowly changing. State officials are looking to limit children’s exposure to the harmful exhaust from older diesel buses. They’re also increasingly concerned about the carbon emissions that drive glo

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/world/europe/rhine-drought-water-level.html Source:   By Christopher F. Schuetze, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...One of the longest dry spells on record has left parts of the Rhine at record-low levels for months, forcing freighters to reduce their cargo or stop plying the river altogether. ...Parts of the Danube and the Elbe — Germany’s other major rivers for transport — are also drying up. Some inland ports are idle, and it is estimated that millions of tons of goods are having to be transported by rail or road. ...With castles and vineyards dominating the river banks near Kaub, just five miles from the Lorelei rock, named for a siren who was said to lure sailors to their deaths, it would be easy to forget how important the area is to German commerce. It is roughly halfway between the inland ports of Koblenz and Mainz, and virtually all freight shipped from seaports in the Netherlands and Belgium to the industrial southwest of Germany passes th

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/new-generation-flow-batteries-could-eventually-sustain-grid-powered-sun-and-wind Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: ...With the rise of wind and solar power, energy companies are looking for ways to keep electrons flowing when the sun doesn't shine and the wind ebbs. Giant devices called flow batteries, using tanks of electrolytes capable of storing enough electricity to power thousands of homes for many hours, could be the answer. But most flow batteries rely on vanadium, a somewhat rare and expensive metal.... Last week, researchers reported overcoming many of these drawbacks with a potentially cheap, long-lived, and safe flow battery.  ...flow batteries ...store electrical charge in tanks of liquid electrolyte that is pumped through electrodes to extract the electrons; the spent electrolyte returns to the tank. When a solar panel or turbine provides electrons, the pumps push spent electrolyte back through the el

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/climate/exxon-lawsuit-climate-change.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times. Excerpt: New York’s attorney general sued Exxon Mobil on Wednesday, claiming the company defrauded shareholders by downplaying the expected risks of climate change to its business. The litigation, which follows more than three years of investigation, represents the most significant legal effort yet to establish that a fossil fuel company misled the public on climate change and to hold it responsible.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/climate-change-global-warming-trump.html Source:   By Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Excerpt: The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let me give you my view, which does not necessarily represent the position of NASA or the federal government....   

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/scientists-take-opposing-sides-youth-climate-trial Source:   By Julia Rosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Next week, barring a last-minute intervention by the Supreme Court, climate change will go to trial for just the second time in U.S. history. In a federal courtroom in Eugene, Oregon, 21 young people are scheduled to face off against the U.S. government, which they accuse of endangering their future by promoting policies that have increased emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other planet warming gases. The plaintiffs aren't asking for monetary damages. Instead, they want District Judge Ann Aiken to take the unprecedented step of ordering federal agencies to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/business/energy-environment/california-coast-wind-farms.html Source:   By Ivan Penn and Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: LOS ANGELES — California’s aggressive pursuit of an electric grid fully powered by renewable energy sources is heading in a new direction: offshore. On Friday, the federal Interior Department took the first steps to enable companies to lease waters in Central and Northern California for wind projects. If all goes as the state’s regulators and utilities expect, floating windmills could begin producing power within six years. Such ambitions were precluded until now because of the depths of the Pacific near its shore, which made it difficult to anchor the huge towers that support massive wind turbines. “They would be in much deeper water than anything that has been built in the world so far,” said Karen Douglas, a member of the California Energy Commission. Several contenders are expected to enter the bidding, equipped wi

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/climate-change-prompts-rethink-everglades-management Source:   By Richard Blaustein, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Efforts to restore the rich ecology of the Florida Everglades have so far focused on fighting damage from pollutant runoff and reestablishing the natural flow of water. But now, an expert panel is calling for federal and state agencies to reassess their plans in light of threats from climate change and sea-level rise. A congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, released on 16 October, asks the managers of the 18-year-old Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) to conduct a “midcourse assessment.” The new evaluation should account for likely conditions in the wetlands in “2050 and beyond” and model how existing restoration projects would fare under various sea-level rise scenarios.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/climate/climate-change-historic-sites.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...some of the most important ancient sites in the Mediterranean region — the Greek city of Ephesus, Istanbul’s historic districts, Venice’s canals — might not survive the era of climate change. Those places joined a list of others that we’ve covered extensively here at The Times. Our series on cultural heritage has looked at the Cedars of Lebanon , the Stone Age villages of Scotland and the statues of Easter Island , all of which are threatened by climate change. In the case of Scotland and Easter Island, the menace is from rising seas. Many civilizations of the past, much like many present-day cities, were centered on coastal areas. As sea levels rise — both because warmer water takes up more space than cooler water, and because of melting glaciers — these heritage sites face sharply increased risks from both coastal erosion and flooding...

http://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/solar-power-could-electrify-sub-saharan-africa/ Source:   By Public Affairs, UC Berkeley. Excerpt: Solar energy could be the key to providing low-cost, highly reliable energy to the roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who currently live without power, says new UC Berkeley research published today in Nature Energy. ...The research team analyzed 10 years of solar data from NASA to calculate the cheapest ways to build stand-alone solar energy systems. At current costs, they found that most regions in Sub-Saharan Africa can get 95 percent reliable power — meaning customers can use electricity from some combination of solar panels and batteries 95 percent of the time — for roughly 40 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Though this price is still higher than the price of energy from a grid, their model indicates that with future declines in the costs of decentralized systems, these prices may become competitive with the grid in many parts of th

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/science/drought-beer-climate.html Source:   By James Gorman, The New York Times. Excerpt: If horrific hurricanes and a new, scarier-than-ever United Nations report don’t change attitudes on climate change, perhaps a new report on barley will. A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing. They are predicting a beer shortage....   

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/hot-planet/slaying-the-climate-dragon/ Source:   By Kate Marvel. Scientific American. Excerpt: A fairy tale whose ending, still unwritten, is by no means guaranteed to be happy. Once upon a time there was an enchanted kingdom, full of magic and fairies and tame dragons that slumbered safely under the mountains. The people of this kingdom lived in great happiness and prosperity, for out of the ground bubbled a magical elixir that could make their every wish come true. Unfortunately for the people of the kingdom, there also lived in the enchanted land an evil witch. Evil, of course, being a relative term; one cannot help but suspect she was merely very tired of everything that was going on. At any rate, she grew angry and cast an awful curse on them. The magic elixir, the source of all the kingdom’s power and wealth, now came with a deadly side effect: it had the power to wake dragons. And so it was. The reports were hazy at first- disappearing sh

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/key-climate-panel-citing-impending-crisis-urges-crash-effort-reduce-emissions Source:   By Dennis Normile, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The United Nations’s climate panel has moved the goal posts for limiting climate change, setting the world a staggering challenge. A report released yesterday [ http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/ ] in Incheon, South Korea, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says allowing the planet to warm by more than 1.5°C could have dire consequences, and that a speedy transformation of the world’s energy systems is needed to avoid breaching that limit, which is notably tighter than the target of 2°C cited in the Paris agreement of 2015. “Net [carbon dioxide] emissions at the global scale must reach zero by 2050,” said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris and a key participant in drafting the report. ...There is no time for delay

https://ideas.ted.com/methane-isnt-just-cow-farts-its-also-cow-burps-and-other-weird-facts-you-didnt-know-about-this-potent-greenhouse-gas/ Source:   By   Kate Torgovnick May , ideas.ted.com.  Excerpt: Methane, which is created when four hydrogen atoms bond to one atom of carbon, is ...the primary component of natural gas, which   generates  roughly 22 percent of the world’s electricity (after coal). But methane also has a heavy — and damaging — impact on the planet. “Methane pollution causes one quarter of the global warming that we’re experiencing right now,” says   Fred Krupp   of the   Environmental Defense Fund   in his TED talk ( Let’s launch a satellite to track a deadly greenhouse gas ). Carbon dioxide may be the most prevalent greenhouse gas (accounting for 81 percent of emissions), but methane is much more potent. Over a 20-year period, it traps 84 times more heat. So where does the methane in the atmosphere come from? And how can we control it? Let’s get this out of the w

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/ice-covered-icelandic-volcano-may-emit-more-carbon-dioxide-all-country-s-other Source:   By Sid Perkins, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Despite being mostly smothered by a glacier averaging 200 meters thick, one of Iceland’s largest and most active volcanoes still manages to belch surprisingly large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, new research reveals. To help lift the veil on Katla ... which lies near the southernmost tip of Iceland, researchers flew a sensor-laden aircraft around the peak at low altitude three times in 2016 and 2017. At some points near the volcano, CO2 levels were about 8% higher than normal. ...Katla is emitting somewhere between 12,000 and 24,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each day ... several times higher than previous estimates of emissions from all of Iceland’s volcanoes combined—which may be vastly underestimated because only two of that nation’s subglacial volcanoes have had their emissions me

https://eos.org/opinions/millions-more-americans-face-flood-risks-than-previously-thought Source:   By Oliver Wing, Paul Bates, Christopher Sampson, Andrew Smith, Joseph Fargione, and Kris Johnson, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Over the past week, the United States saw floodwaters rise near the coast of North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Swollen rivers have effectively cut off Wilmington, a city of some 119,000 residents, and residents in surrounding regions are being ordered to evacuate as rivers continue to rise and test the strength of dams. Thus far, the storm has claimed 36 lives. The cost in lives and property damage from Florence will take years to assess; initial estimates suggest that Florence’s damage could reach $30 billion. Add this to last year’s triumvirate of devastating U.S. hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—which saw a combined death toll of 3,100 and damages estimated to be $275 billion. Not surprisingly given these events, decision-makers and the America

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/scientists-reveal-how-much-world-s-forests-being-destroyed-industrial-agriculture Source:   By Erik Stokstad, Science Magazine. Excerpt: A new analysis of global forest loss—the first to examine not only where forests are disappearing, but also why—reveals just how much industrial agriculture is contributing to the loss. The answer: some 5 million hectares—the area of Costa Rica—every year. And despite years of pledges by companies to help reduce deforestation, the amount of forest cleared to plant oil palm and other booming crops remained steady between 2001 and 2015. ...Philip Curtis...trained a computer program to recognize five causes of forest loss in satellite images: wildfire, logging of tree plantations, large-scale agriculture, small-scale agriculture, and urbanization. To teach the software, Curtis spent weeks staring at thousands of images from Google Earth that showed deforestation with a known cause. “It was some of the most distr

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/puerto-rico-s-catastrophic-hurricane-gave-scientists-rare-chance-study-how-tropical Source:   By Sarah Amandolare, Science Magazine. Excerpt: PUERTO RICO’S EL YUNQUE NATIONAL FOREST—A year after Hurricane Maria raked Puerto Rico with winds of 250 kilometers per hour and a meter of rain, the island is still struggling to recover. Estimated deaths have risen to shocking levels—nearly 3000—and although power has been almost completely restored, blackouts occur regularly. The wind and flooding also devastated ecosystems as diverse as mangrove swamps and rainforest. As they mend, scientists are watching closely. ...Maria and Irma—a hurricane that struck the island a glancing blow just 2 weeks earlier—were the strongest in a century, turning lush forest into ranks of skeletal trees and piles of sticks. Maria also destroyed research infrastructure and blocked access to some experiments for weeks. As scientists get back to work, the devastated forest

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/science/ocean-cleanup-great-pacific-garbage-patch.html Source:   By Christina Caron, The New York Times. Excerpt: A multimillion-dollar floating boom designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean deployed from San Francisco Bay on Saturday as part of a larger high-stakes and ambitious undertaking. The 2,000-foot-long unmanned structure was the product of about $20 million in funding from the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that aims to trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic during the boom’s first year at sea. Within five years, with the creation of dozens more booms, the organization hopes to clean half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The patch, a gyre of trash between California and Hawaii, comprises an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of scattered detritus, including at least 87,000 tons of plastic....  See also: Controversial plastic trash collector begins maiden ocean voyage (Science Magazine)  

https://eos.org/project-updates/better-data-for-modeling-the-suns-influence-on-climate Source:   By T. Dudok de Wit, B. Funke, M. Haberreiter, and K. Matthes, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Several international initiatives are working to stitch together data describing solar forcing of Earth’s climate. Their objective is to improve understanding of climate response to solar variability. ...Compared to other stars, our Sun is a remarkably steady source of light and heat, but its output does vary. ...how (and how much) does the Sun’s variability affect the climate here on Earth? The role of solar variability in recent global warming is not just a bone of contention; it is also a question of overriding importance for the scientific understanding of our Sun and of climate change. ...Solar variability affects Earth’s climate in many intricate and nonlinear ways. Most effects are ultimately driven and modulated by the solar magnetic field and its conspicuous solar cycle, which repeats approximately

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/business/energy-environment/orlando-carbon-climate.html Source:   By Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: ORLANDO, Fla. ...is vying for another distinction: to be a pioneer in weaning itself from carbon-based energy. You can see its aspirations in the thousands of ponds all over the city that collect the runoff from Central Florida’s frequent downpours. Floating solar panels rise and fall in the water, sending power to the grid. There is also evidence along city streets, where solar panels sit atop streetlights to power them instead of using the electric grid. About 18,000 of the 25,000 in the city already have been converted to high-efficiency light-emitting diodes. Even algae pools may play a role. That’s where officials are testing a system to trap the carbon that the city emits from power plants or transportation, rather than release it into the atmosphere.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/science/lake-superior-algae-toxic.html Source:    By Christine Hauser, The New York Times. Excerpt: In 19 years of piloting his boat around Lake Superior, Jody Estain had never observed the water change as it has this summer. The lake has been unusually balmy and cloudy, with thick mats of algae blanketing the shoreline. “I have never seen it that warm,” said Mr. Estain, a former Coast Guard member who guides fishing, cave and kayak tours year-round. “Everybody was talking about it.” ...Scientists generally agree that algae blooms are getting worse and more widespread, and are exacerbated by the warmer water, heat waves and extreme weather associated with climate change. They are also intensified by human activity, such as from farm and phosphorus runoff, leakage from sewer systems, and other pollution. The problems that algae blooms pose to fresh and marine waters have been propelled to the forefront in recent years by high-profile events like th

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/29/climate/puffins-dwindling-iceland.html Source:    By John Schwartz, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Overfishing, hunting and pollution are putting pressure on the birds, but climate change may  prove to be the biggest challenge. ... The birds have been in precipitous decline, especially since the 2000s, both in Iceland and across many of their Atlantic habitats. The potential culprits are many: fickle prey, overfishing, pollution. Scientists say that climate change is another underlying factor that is diminishing food supplies and is likely to become more important over time. And the fact that puffins are tasty, and thus hunted as game here, hardly helps. ... Around Iceland, the puffins have suffered because of the decline of their favorite food, silvery sand eels, which dangle from the parents’ beaks as they bring them to their young. That collapse correlates to a rise in sea surface temperatures that Dr. Hansen has been monitoring fo

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/business/energy-environment/russia-floating-nuclear-power.html Source:   By Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times. xcerpt: Offshore reactors could be cheaper, safer and more flexible, proponents say, making them a useful weapon against climate change. Critics are incredulous. ...Along the shore of Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia lie bases for the country’s nuclear submarines and icebreakers. ...Here, Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless. ...Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov ...facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind. ...Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants. ...Proponents say they are cheaper, greener and, perhaps counterintuitively, safer. They envision a future when n

https://www.thelocal.se/20180824/meet-the-15-year-old-swedish-girl-on-strike-from-school-for-the-climate Source:   By Catherine Edwards, The Local. Excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg describes herself as a "climate radical" and is protesting outside Sweden's parliament every day until the September election, refusing to attend school and calling on politicians to take climate issues seriously. ...Greta said she learned about the effects of climate change mostly at home, and began to get engaged in environmental issues from the age of 11 or 12. ..."I have gone to climate demonstrations and things like that before, but this is the first time I've organized something myself," the 15-year-old adds. ...The strike has been taking place every schoolday since term began, roughly between the hours of 8.30 and 3.30pm. This means missing three weeks of school in total, so is Greta worried about missing out on the start of the year? "A little bit, but I

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/powerful-new-battery-could-help-usher-green-power-grid Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Lithium-ion batteries power everything from our smartphones to our cars. But one of their most promising replacements is lithium-oxygen batteries, which in theory could store 10 times more power. The only problem: They fall apart after just a handful of charging cycles. Now, researchers have found that running them at high temperatures—along with a couple of other fixes—can push them to at least 150 cycles. Although they would be too hot to handle in phones, lithium-oxygen batteries the size of rail cars could one day underpin a green energy grid, storing excess wind and solar power and delivering it on demand. ... 2 years ago, a team of U.S. researchers came up with the first hints of a breakthrough. They tested another alternative electrolyte, this one made from a combination of salts that turned into a liquid when heated. This m

https://www.ucsusa.org/sm18-looming-coastal-real-estate-bust#.W4DatZNKiIY Source:   By Pamela Worth, Catalyst, Union of Concerned Scientists. Excerpt: A new UCS analysis calculates the threat rising seas pose to the US housing market. ...climate change is causing sea levels to rise at an accelerating rate, which means many coastal properties are at risk of chronic high-tide flooding in the near future. Flooded properties will lose value and, given how widespread the problem is, likely trigger significant deflation in real estate values in many coastal communities, creating problems not just for homeowners but also for mortgage lenders, insurers, real estate developers and investors, and even for communities’ tax bases. Furthermore, while past crashes in the housing market have tended to be temporary, sea level rise is only getting worse under current conditions. For a better sense of what to expect, the UCS team examined information on coastal homes and commercial properties provid

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/climate-change-making-trees-bigger-weaker Source:   By Lakshmi Supriya, Science Magazine. Excerpt: As global temperatures rise, trees around the world are experiencing longer growing seasons, sometimes as much as three extra weeks a year. All that time helps trees grow faster. But a study of the forests of Central Europe suggests the higher temperatures—combined with pollution from auto exhaust and farms—are making wood weaker, resulting in trees that break more easily and lumber that is less durable. ...For the past 100 years, trees have been experiencing growth spurts in temperate regions from Maryland to Finland, to Central Europe, where the growth rate of beech and spruce has sped up nearly 77% since 1870. Assuming wood is just as dense today, those gains would mean more timber for building, burning, and storing carbon captured from the atmosphere. ...But Hans Pretzsch, a forest scientist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, a

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2018/08/20/ecosystems-are-getting-greener-in-the-arctic/ Source:   By Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab. Excerpt: In recent decades, scientists have noted a surge in Arctic plant growth as a symptom of climate change. But without observations showing exactly when and where vegetation has bloomed as the world’s coldest areas warm, it’s difficult to predict how vegetation will respond to future warming. Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have ...In a study published online Aug. 20 in Nature Climate Change, the researchers used satellite images taken over the past 30 years to track – down to a pixel representing approximately 25 square miles – the ebb and flow of plant growth in cold areas of the northern hemisphere, such as Alaska, the Arctic region of Canada, and the Tibetan Plateau. ...At first, the satellite data showed what they expected – that as Arctic climates warmed, tree

https://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Green-minded-Greek-isle-about-to-go-fully-off-the-13167057.php Source:   By Iliana Mier, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: TILOS, Greece — When the blades of its 800-kilowatt wind turbine start turning, the small Greek island of Tilos will become the first in the Mediterranean to run exclusively on wind and solar power. The sea horse-shaped Greek island between Rhodes and Kos has a winter population of 400. But that swells to as many as 3,000 people in the summer, putting an impossible strain on its dilapidated power supply. This summer, technicians are conducting the final tests on a renewable replacement system that will be fully rolled out later this year. It will allow Tilos to run exclusively on high-tech batteries recharged by a wind turbine and a solar park. ...“The innovation of this program and its funding lies in the batteries — the energy storage — that’s what’s innovative,” project manager Spyros Aliferis said. “The energy produced b

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/massive-drought-or-myth-scientists-spar-over-ancient-climate-event-behind-our-new Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Last month, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the bureaucracy that governs geological time, declared we are living in a new geological age. No, it's not the Anthropocene, the much-debated proposal for a geological division defined by human impact on Earth. The new age anointed by ICS is called the Meghalayan, based on signs in the rock record of a global drought that began about 4200 years ago. It is one of three newly named subdivisions of the Holocene, the geological epoch that began 11,700 years ago with the retreat of ice age glaciers. And the name will now filter its way into textbooks....

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2018/?est=happening&type=value&geo=county Source:   By Jennifer Marlon, Peter Howe, Matto Mildenberger, Anthony Leiserowitz and Xinran Wang, Yale Program on Climate Change Education. Excerpt: Interactive maps show how Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels....

http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/08/06/mojave-birds-crashed-over-last-century-due-to-climate-change/ Source:   By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Bird communities in the Mojave Desert straddling the California/Nevada border have collapsed over the past 100 years, most likely because of lower rainfall due to climate change, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study. A three-year survey of the area, which is larger than the state of New York, concludes that 30 percent, or 39 of the 135 bird species that were there 100 years ago, are less common and less widespread today. The 61 sites surveyed lost, on average, 43 percent of the species that were there a century ago. “Deserts are harsh environments, and while some species might have adaptations that allow them to persist in a desert spot, they are also at their physiological limits,” said Kelly Iknayan, who conducted the survey for her doctoral thesis at UC Berkeley. “California deserts have already experien

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/world/europe/europe-heat-wave.html Source:   By Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times. Excerpt: In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are practically dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria. In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain, no longer was in first place after its glacier tip melted. [See " Sweden’s Tallest Peak Shrinks in Record Heat "] Southern Europe is even hotter. Temperatures in Spain and Portugal are expected to reach 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend. On Saturday, several places in Portugal experienced record highs, and over the past week, two people have died in Spain from the high

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/atmospheric-carbon-last-year-reached-levels-not-seen-800000-years Source:   By Elizabeth Gamillo, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere reached 405 parts per million (ppm) last year, a level not seen in 800,000 years, according to a new report. It was also the hottest year on record that did not feature the global weather pattern known as El Niño ... concludes the State of the Climate in 2017 , the 28th edition of an annual compilation published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Overall, 2017 ranked as the second or third warmest year, depending on which measure is used, since researchers began keeping robust records in the mid-1800s. Even if humanity “stopped the greenhouse gasses at their current concentrations today, the atmosphere would still continue to warm for next couple decades to maybe a century,” said Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Ma

https://eos.org/articles/severe-drought-may-have-helped-hasten-ancient-mayas-collapse Source:   By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Chemical signatures from sediments in lake cores reveal that the centuries-long drought during the fall of Classic Maya civilization was worse than researchers had imagined. ...From about 250 to 900 CE, the Maya thrived in what’s known as its Classic period. During this time, the Maya built cities with plazas and multistory temples, devised a complex calendar system, and housed an urban population density that rivals Los Angeles County today. But then, sometime between the 8th and 9th centuries, many of the bustling Maya cities fell silent. By around 900 CE, a number of the grand cities had been abandoned. Scholars have many theories about what went wrong. ...A study unveiled today in Science offers ...another answer: a severe drop in rainfall that coincided with the Maya downfall. At the end of the Classic period in the northern reaches of the Maya

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/flow-battery-could-power-green- homes-when-sun-goes-down-and-wind-stops-blowing Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: With solar and wind electricity prices plunging, the hunt is on for cheap batteries to store all this power for use around the clock. Now, researchers have made an advance with a flow battery, the type of battery being developed to soak up enough excess wind and solar power to fuel whole cities. They report the discovery of a potentially cheap, organic molecule that can power a flow battery for years instead of days. ...Flow batteries have the same components as the typical lithium-ion cells in your cellphone, but work in a way that allows them to be scaled up to provide megawatts. They have pairs of electrodes that convert energy stored in chemicals into electricity, and electrolytes that ferry charges from one electrode to another. But where conventional batteries package electrodes and electrolytes toget

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/california-birds-climate-change.html Source:   By Wallace Ravven, The New York Times. Excerpt: More than a century ago, zoologist Joseph Grinnell launched a pioneering survey of animal life in California, ...to all corners and habitats of the state, from Death Valley to the High Sierra. ...Grinnell ...produced one of the richest ecological records in the world: 74,000 pages of meticulously detailed field notes, recording the numbers, habits and habitats of all vertebrate species that the team encountered. In 2003, ...Morgan Tingley, ... an ecology graduate student at the university, ...wanted to know how birds had fared since Grinnell last took a census. ...Dr. Tingley and his colleagues discovered that most species now nest about a week earlier than they did 70 to 100 years ago. That slight advance in timing translates into nesting temperatures about two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the birds would encounter had they not moved up their

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times. Excerpt: “Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe. Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. Climate change denialists were quick to jump on Dr. Campbell’s research as proof that increased carbon dioxide is making the world a better place. ...Dr. Campbell ...feels [they] are drawing the wrong lessons from his research. Here are four reasons he believe

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/climate/record-heat-waves.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, Tiffany May and Zia ur-Rehman, The New York Times. Excerpt: Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones. The contiguous United States had its hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. Japan was walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle. Is it because of climate change? Scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concluded in a study released Friday that the likelihood of the heat wave currently baking Northern Europe is “more than two times higher today than if human activities had not altered climate.”...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/world/europe/uk-hot-weather.html Source:   By Ceylan Yeginsu, The New York Times. F Excerpt: LONDON — To the casual observer, it may seem as if Britain is completely unprepared to deal with long spells of scorching-hot weather. The casual observer would be mostly right. The monthlong heat wave has broken records, spawned wildfires in Wales and England, spurred delays in the transportation system and given birth to names like “Furnace Friday,” as Britons tried to find ways to describe this puzzling pain. “Shops are out of fans, ice, sun cream, ice cream, and there’s a water shortage that has left our beautiful, lush parks all parched and yellow,” said Lucy Thornton.... Summer started out with unusually good weather: The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the sun came out. Some Britons were so delighted that they canceled vacations abroad. ...Then came the heat. Unlike other European countries that are accustomed to coping with hot weather, Britai

https://eos.org/articles/why-are-siberian-temperatures-plummeting-while-the-arctic-warms Source:   By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The answer involves the intricacies of stratospheric circulation, which, if better represented in climate models, could help predict extreme weather events in Siberia and elsewhere. ...Climate change is warming the Arctic and melting sea ice, yet Siberia has experienced significantly colder and harsher winters for the past few decades. A study published yesterday in Science Advances shows that interactions between melting regional sea ice and the stratosphere—an atmospheric layer spanning about 10–50 kilometers above Earth’s surface—play a key role in creating these frigid winter conditions....