https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/world/africa/cape-town-day-zero.html Source:   By Norimitsu Onishi and Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: The government cautions that the Day Zero threat will surpass anything a major city has faced since World War II or the Sept. 11 attacks. Talks are underway with South Africa’s police because “normal policing will be entirely inadequate.” Residents, their nerves increasingly frayed, speak in whispers of impending chaos. The reason for the alarm is simple: The city’s water supply is dangerously close to running dry. If water levels keep falling, Cape Town will declare Day Zero in less than three months. Taps in homes and businesses will be turned off until the rains come. The city’s four million residents will have to line up for water rations at 200 collection points. The city is bracing for the impact on public health and social order. ...after a three-year drought, considered the worst in over a century, South African officials sa

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/climate/new-jersey-cap-and-trade.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...Even as the Trump administration dismantles climate policies at the federal level, a growing number of Democratic state governors are considering taxing or pricing carbon dioxide emissions within their own borders to tackle global warming. New Jersey took a major step in that direction Monday when newly elected Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, ordered his state to rejoin a regional carbon-trading program that his Republican predecessor, Chris Christie, had pulled out of in 2012. The program, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative https://www.rggi.org/program-overview-and-design/elements, requires power plants in participating states to buy permits for the carbon dioxide they emit. State officials often use revenue from these permit auctions for energy efficiency programs. In a so-called cap-and-trade program like this, power plants can trade

http://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/chemists-create-tinted-windows-that-also-generate-electricity/ Source:   By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News Excerpt: A new discovery by Berkeley researchers may soon bring us windows that automatically tint on a sunny day to block the heat while also generating electricity. Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, and his colleagues have tweaked the chemical structure of perovskite — a versatile material that already rivals silicon-based solar cells — so that the material turns from transparent to opaque when heated and also converts sunlight into electricity. The invention could lead to power-producing smart windows for buildings, cars and display screens, according to the authors of the study, who reported the development today in the journal Nature Materials.... 

https://eos.org/articles/global-average-temperatures-in-2017-continued-upward-trend Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, Eos/AGU Excerpt: Earth’s average surface temperature in 2017 placed as the second or third highest on record, according to new analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NASA’s analysis, released yesterday during a press conference, showed that 2017 is the second-hottest year on record and that the average global temperature rose 0.9°C (1.6°F) above the 1951–1980 average. The size of the temperature increase was calculated from thousands of measurements from more than 6,000 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and measurements across Antarctic research stations. An analysis from NOAA, released during the same press conference, produced similar results: According to NOAA’s models, 2017 ranked as the thi­rd-warmest year on record. Specifically, NOAA scientists found that temperatures rose 0.84

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/science/musk-oxen-climate-change.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times Excerpt: ...Dr. Berger has studied musk oxen in Alaska for nearly a decade, and on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, he and his colleagues reported a disturbing finding: Musk oxen are unexpectedly vulnerable to rapid climate change in the Arctic. In a warming landscape, pregnant female musk oxen may struggle to find enough food for their unborn calves, the researchers found. Their undersized offspring may die young or fail to produce many calves of their own. In places, musk oxen may disappear altogether. The study is the first to suggest a strong link between increasing winter rainfall and the declining health of Arctic mammals, said R. Terry Bowyer, a senior research scientist at the Institute of Arctic Biology in Fairbanks, Alaska, who was not involved in the research. ...These findings are more worrisome because of the drastic change humans are bringin

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/asia/oil-tanker-spill-sanchi-east-china-sea.html Source:   By Gerry Mullany, The New York Times Excerpt: HONG KONG — An oil spill from an Iranian tanker that sank in the East China Sea is rapidly spreading, officials said Tuesday, alarming environmentalists about the threat to sea and bird life in the waterway. The tanker, the Sanchi, was carrying 136,000 tons of highly flammable fuel oil when it crashed into a freighter on Jan. 6. On Sunday, the Sanchi sank after a huge blast sent up a great plume of black smoke and set the surface of the water on fire, China Central Television said. ...The oil slicks from the sunken tanker were growing in size, China’s State Oceanic Administration said Tuesday. There are now two huge slicks covering 52 square miles, compared with just four square miles the previous day. Strong winds were pushing the spill toward Japan, away from China, and it was now less than 200 miles from Naha, Japan....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/science/climate-change-lakes-streams.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times Excerpt: To scientists who study lakes and rivers, it seems humans have embarked on a huge unplanned experiment. By burning fossil fuels, we have already raised the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent, .... Some of that gas may mix into the world’s inland waters, and recent studies hint that this may have profound effects on the species that live in them. “We’re monkeying with the very chemical foundation of these ecosystems,” said Emily H. Stanley, a limnologist (freshwater ecologist) at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. ...Dr. Weiss and her colleagues used this method to figure out the carbon dioxide levels in four reservoirs in Germany from 1981 to 2015. They reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology that the amounts tripled in that time. ...Dr. Weiss hypothesized that carbon dioxide interferes with the nervous system o

https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2018/01/08/listen-1200-years-of-earths-climate-transformed-into-sound/ Source:   By Danielle Venton, KQED Science Excerpt: ...we’d like to offer a new way to understand the speed at which our planet has changed over the past few hundred years. This project was brought to us by three UC Berkeley graduate students and a sonification artist.  ...You’ll hear global temperatures and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the most recent three centuries.... The music... tracks global average temperature and CO2 from 850 A.D. to 2016. ...Perhaps the pace of climate change can be better communicated through sound. “In all climate data you see it in a long chart with time that is way longer than human life time so it’s impossible to experience,” says Gordon. “But when you sonify it you actually experience time in a way that you can’t experience when you look at the chart. As you hear in the piece that Chris has composed there’s really not a lo

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/losses-natural-disasters-insurance.html Source:   By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times. Excerpt: Insurers are set to pay out a record $135 billion to cover losses from natural disasters in 2017, the world’s largest reinsurer said Thursday, driven by the costliest hurricane season ever in the United States and widespread flooding in South Asia. Overall losses, including uninsured damage, came to $330 billion, according to the reinsurer, Munich Re of Germany. That tally was second only to 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami in Japan contributed to losses of $354 billion at today’s dollars. ...“Some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come,” Torsten Jeworrek, a Munich Re board member, said in a statement. While it was still difficult to attribute individual weather ev

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/coral-reefs-bleaching.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis and Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...reefs, home to a quarter of all marine fish species, are now increasingly threatened as rising ocean temperatures accelerate a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. Large-scale coral bleaching events, in which reefs become extremely fragile, were virtually unheard-of before the 1980s. But in the years since, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science , the frequency of coral bleaching has increased to the point that reefs no longer have sufficient recovery time between severe episodes. ...During bleaching events, overheated seawater causes corals to part ways with symbiotic plantlike organisms called zooxanthella that live inside of them. In addition to giving coral reefs their bright colors, zooxanthella also provide corals with oxygen, waste filtration, and up to 90 percent of their energy. Absent zooxanthella,

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/climate/cold-climate-change.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: As bitter cold continues to grip much of North America and helps spawn the fierce storm along the East Coast, the question arises: What’s the influence of climate change? Some scientists studying the connection between climate change and cold spells, which occur when cold Arctic air dips south, say that they may be related. But the importance of the relationship is not fully clear yet. The Arctic is not as cold as it used to be — the region is warming faster than any other — and studies suggest that this warming is weakening the jet stream, which ordinarily acts like a giant lasso, corralling cold air around the pole. ...And as with any single weather event, it’s difficult to directly attribute the influence of climate change to a particular cold spell. But scientists have been puzzled by data that at first seems counterintuitive: Despite an undeniable overa

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/business/energy-environment/climate-change-enzymes-laundry.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times Excerpt: COPENHAGEN — A Danish biotechnology company is trying to fight climate change — one laundry load at a time. Its secret weapon: mushrooms like those in a dormant forest outside Copenhagen. ...Enzymes are also well suited to helping cut energy consumption. They are often found in relatively cool environments, like forests and oceans. As a result of that low natural temperature, they do not require the heat and pressure typically used in washing machines and other laundry processes. ...So consumers can reduce the temperatures on their washing machines while ensuring their shirts stay lily white. Lowering the temperature on a washing machine cycle to cold water from 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) reduces energy consumption by at least half, according to the International Association for Soaps, Detergents and Maintenance P