https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/no-asteroids-or-volcanoes-needed-ancient-mass-extinction-tied-ozone-loss-warming Source:  By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt:  The end of the Devonian period, 359 million years ago, was an eventful time: Fish were inching out of the ocean, and fernlike forests were advancing on land. The world was recovering from a mass extinction 12 million years earlier, but the climate was still chaotic, swinging between hothouse conditions and freezes so deep that glaciers formed in the tropics. And then, just as the planet was warming from one of these ice ages, another extinction struck, seemingly without reason. Now, spores from fernlike plants, preserved in ancient lake sediments from eastern Greenland, suggest a culprit: The planet’s protective ozone layer was suddenly stripped away, exposing surface life to a blast of mutation-causing ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Just as the extinction set in, the spores became misshapen and dark, indicating D

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/world/asia/india-locusts-jaipur.html Source:  By Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj, The New York Times. Excerpt: Blizzards of bugs are descending on India at an already tough time. Scientists say climate change is making the infestation worse. [Image caption: Fending off swarms of locusts in Jaipur, India, on Monday. NEW DELHI — ...As if India needed more challenges, with coronavirus infections steadily increasing, a heat wave hitting the capital, a recent killer cyclone and 100 million people out of work, the country now has to fight off a new problem: a locust invasion. ...Scientists say it’s the worst attack in 25 years and these locusts are different. “This time the attack is by very young locusts who fly for longer distances, at faster speeds, unlike adults in the past who were sluggish and not so fast,” said K.L. Gurjar, the deputy director of India’s Locust Warning Organization. The locusts were flying in from Iran and Pakistan, blanketing

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/business/hydrogen-fuel-climate-change.html Source:  By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: A producer of orecchiette and paccheri is using the potentially clean energy source in a trial. [Image caption: Tubes containing a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas at Contursi Terme, Italy. The fuel produces fewer carbon emissions than natural gas alone.] CONTURSI TERME, Italy — In the hills near Naples, something unusual was taking place at a pasta factory one day in February. In a nearby olive grove, engineers in safety gear had hooked up tanks of a hydrogen and natural gas mixture to an existing gas line. It fed the boiler that provided the heat to dry and sterilize the noodles being produced. ...because hydrogen fuel is free of emissions, the operation was sending less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than one using just natural gas, an emitter. Mixing hydrogen and pasta-making is a gambit in a multifaceted campaign by Marco Alverà, the chief

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/tropical-forests-soak-huge-amounts-greenhouse-gas-climate-change-could-end Source:  By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Tropical forests have been one of Earth’s best defenses against rising carbon dioxide levels. The trees suck carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, and researchers estimate that, despite ongoing deforestation, tropical forests hold more carbon than humanity has emitted over the past 30 years by burning coal, oil, and natural gas. But scientists have worried that the ability of tropical forests to act as carbon sinks will diminish and ultimately reverse with continued global warming, as trees stressed by heat and drought die and release their carbon. Today in Science [ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/869 ], researchers report that measurements of carbon storage and growing conditions for some 500,000 trees around the world suggest some tropical forests, particularly in Africa and Asia, will—if l

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors Source:   By Adrian Cho, Science Magazine. Excerpt: In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week [ https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/advanced-reactor-demonstration-program ]. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50-50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE. ...But even some proponents of nuclear power doubt the program will spur construction of new commercial reactors as long as natural gas and renewable energy remain relatively cheap. “New builds can’t compete with renewables,” says Robert Ro

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-s-investment-portfolios-fossil-free-clean-energy-investments-top-1-billion Source:   By UC Office of the President. Excerpt: The University of California Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the Regents announced today (May 19) that its investment portfolios are fossil free after the sale of more than $1 billion in assets from its pension, endowment and working capital pools. At the same time, the office has surpassed its five-year goal of investing $1 billion in promising clean energy projects. Both moves are in accord with UC Investments’ comprehensive ESG (environmental, social and governance; https://www.ucop.edu/investment-office/sustainable-investment/index.html) policy, which requires weighing environmental, social and governance issues as an essential risk factor in making all investment decisions and broadly aligns with UC’s systemwide sustainability efforts. “Today’s announcements on our investment strategy undersc

https://eos.org/science-updates/once-again-into-the-northwest-passage Source:   By Frances Crable, Cynthia Garcia-Eidell, Theressa Ewa, Humair Raziuddin, and Samira Umar, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Early European explorers of the New World searched in vain for an easy sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. ...Roald Amundsen and his crew finally succeeded in making an all-water crossing of this hazardous route in 1906. One consequence of recent rapid Arctic warming is that the Northwest Passage is now ice free (or nearly so) for a longer period of time each year, and establishing shipping routes in this region is no longer a pipe dream. ...Over the past 3 years, researchers and undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have prepared and joined the Northwest Passage Project [ https://northwestpassageproject.org/ ], a research and cultural expedition to the Northwest Passage funded by the National Science Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Par

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/05/18/hurricanes-stronger-climate-change/ Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: A new study provides observational evidence that the odds of major hurricanes around the world — Category 3, 4 and 5 storms — are increasing because of human-caused global warming. The implications of this finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [ https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920849117 ], are far-reaching for coastal residents, insurers and policymakers, as the most intense hurricanes cause the most damage.... See also https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/climate/climate-changes-hurricane-intensity.html ________________________

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/wildfires-ravaged-siberia-last-year-this-spring-the-blazes-are-starting-even-bigger/2020/05/15/c00bdb50-9446-11ea-87a3-22d324235636_story.html Source:  By Isabelle Khurshudyan, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Spring wildfires across Siberia have Russian authorities on alert for a potentially devastating summer season of blazes after an unusually warm and dry winter in one of the world’s climate-change hot spots. Some of the April fires in eastern Russia have already dwarfed the infernos at this time last year, which ultimately roared through 7 million acres in total — more than the size of Maryland — and sent smoke drifting as far as the United States and Canada. Siberia also is among the areas of the world showing the greatest temperature spikes attributed to climate change. This year, the average temperatures since January are running at least 5.4 degrees (3 Celsius) above the long-term average, according to a report released Tuesday by t

https://eos.org/articles/shrinking-ice-sheets-lifted-global-sea-level-14-millimeters Source:   By Tim Hornyak, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Using satellite data stretching back more than a decade, scientists have found that the loss of ice in Antarctica and Greenland accounts for a 14-millimeter elevation in sea levels since 2003. The data provide the most accurate and granular picture of ice loss so far, a crucial element for predictions of how high seas will rise as the climate changes....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/a-revised-view-of-australias-future-climate Source:   By David Shultz, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Efforts to understand how climate change will unfold under various emissions scenarios rely on the sophisticated computer models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which combines dozens of models to create as complete a picture of Earth’s climate as possible. ... limiting global warming to less than 2°C—the goal established in the Paris Agreement—will require larger emissions reductions than previously thought. (Earth’s Future, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EF001469 , 2020)....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/lab-evolved-algae-could-protect-coral-reefs Source:  By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine. Excerpt: For the third time in 5 years, an underwater heat wave has turned vast stretches of coral on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef ghostly white, a desperate survival strategy that is often a prelude to coral death. Now, scientists there have taken a small step toward helping coral survive in a warmer world. For the first time, researchers have grown algae in a lab that can reduce coral bleaching, as it’s known. The results are a notable advance in the growing field of “assisted evolution,” in which scientists are working to alter coral genetics to help them endure hotter water.  ...Coral and their algae are deeply intertwined. The tiny, plantlike organisms live inside the cells of coral polyps, the small, anemonelike single animals that form colonies to create the fantastically shaped skeletons typically called coral. The algae, called zooxanthellae,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/business/auto-industry-pandemic.html Source:   By Jack Ewing, The New York Times. Excerpt: Some automakers may emerge stronger, others too weak to survive on their own. Factories will shut down. The pressure to go electric could become more intense. People may travel less now that they have discovered how much they can get done from home. Or they may commute more by car to avoid jostling with others on crowded buses and trains. ... Sales of electric cars have been surprisingly resilient even as lockdowns gutted sales of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. In March, as much of Europe went into lockdown, car sales on the continent fell by more than half. But registrations of battery-powered cars surged 23 percent, according to Matthias Schmidt, an analyst in Berlin who tracks the industry. In April, lockdowns caught up with electric cars, too, and their sales fell 31 percent, according to Mr. Schmidt’s estimate. But that was nothing compared with

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/climate/coronavirus-coal-electricity-renewables.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, with profound implications in the fight against climate change. It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation’s electricity. ...powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently. The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. ...As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the coron

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/aircraft-spies-gravity-waves-being-sucked-antarctica-s-polar-vortex Source:   By Eric Hand, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The Southern Ocean is famously stormy, home to waves taller than telephone poles. Yet 50 kilometers overhead, the weather is just as tempestuous, if less obviously so. Powerful waves in the air break and crash, dumping energy into the stratosphere and disrupting winds that help control the climate. ...Around the world, gravity waves often arise when winds shove air over a mountain range, although storms and jet streams can also touch them off. In each case, a parcel of air gets pushed up, and gravity pulls it down. It overshoots and bobs back up. When confined by overhead winds, the train of undulating air parcels plows ahead horizontally, leading to so-called lee waves that can shake up commercial flights. ... Some gravity waves crash in the upper stratosphere, about 50 kilometers up, but most keep rising into the mesosphere

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/new-solar-panels-suck-water-air-cool-themselves-down Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Like humans, solar panels don’t work well when overheated. Now, researchers have found a way to make them “sweat”—allowing them to cool themselves and increase their power output. It’s “a simple, elegant, and effective [way] to retrofit existing solar cell panels for an instant efficiency boost,” says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. Today, more than 600 gigawatts of solar power capacity exists worldwide, providing 3% of global electricity demand. That capacity is expected to increase fivefold over the next decade. ...with every degree of temperature above 25°C, the efficiency of the panel drops. ...Decades ago, researchers showed that cooling solar panels with water can provide that benefit. Today, some companies even sell water-cooled systems. But those setups require abundant availa

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/artificial-chloroplasts-turn-sunlight-and-carbon-dioxide-organic-compounds# Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Just like mechanics cobble together old engine parts to build a new roadster, synthetic biologists have remade chloroplasts, the engine at the heart of photosynthesis. By combining the light-harvesting machinery of spinach plants with enzymes from nine different organisms, scientists report making an artificial chloroplast that operates outside of cells to harvest sunlight and use the resulting energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into energy-rich molecules. The researchers hope their souped-up photosynthesis system might eventually convert CO 2 directly into useful chemicals—or help genetically engineered plants absorb up to 10 times the atmospheric CO 2 of regular ones....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/lethal-levels-heat-and-humidity-are-gripping-global-hot-spots-sooner-expected Source:   By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine. Excerpt: From the shores of the Persian Gulf to the foothills of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, hot weather is reaching levels humans can’t endure. An analysis of 4 decades of data from thousands of weather stations shows that a handful of hot spots around the globe are experiencing a potentially lethal mix of heat and humidity—something most of these places weren’t expected to experience until midcentury. “Previous studies projected that this would happen several decades from now, but this shows it’s happening right now,” says Colin Raymond, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led the study. Hot weather is already lethal. A 2003 heat wave, for example, killed more than 70,000 people in Europe, when outdoor temperatures reached more than 40°C. But it’s not just the heat that k

https://eos.org/articles/unprecedented-clear-skies-drove-remarkable-melting-in-greenland Source:   By Hannah Thomasy, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: It’s no surprise that warming temperatures are bad news for the Greenland Ice Sheet, a body of ice that’s 3 times the size of Texas. But temperature isn’t the only factor that controls how fast this monstrous ice sheet is melting. New research [ https://www.the-cryosphere.net/14/1209/2020/tc-14-1209-2020.pdf ] from scientists at Columbia University, NASA, and the University of Liège in Belgium shows that atmospheric conditions play an important role in driving major melting events. In terms of melting, 2019 was one of the worst years for the Greenland Ice Sheet since measurements began in 1948. ...Lead author of the new study Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said that unusual atmospheric conditions in 2019 were important contributors to this record-breaking loss. In much of Greenland, ant

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/making-commodity-chemicals-requires-fossil-fuels-new-devices-could-do-it-renewables# Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: As windmills and solar panels multiply, the supply of renewable electricity sometimes exceeds demand. Chemists would like to put the excess to work making commodity chemicals, such as the raw materials for fertilizer and plastics, which are now produced with heat, pressure, and copious fossil fuels. The electrochemical cells that can harness renewable electricity to make these compounds have been too slow to be practical. Now, two groups report redesigning the cells to achieve a dramatic speedup—perhaps enough to put green industrial chemistry within reach....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/climate/heat-temperatures-climate-change.html Source:  By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: As the climate continues to warm over the next half-century, up to one-third of the world’s population is likely to live in areas that are considered unsuitably hot for humans, scientists said Monday. Currently fewer than 25 million people live in the world’s hottest areas, which are mostly in the Sahara region in Africa with mean annual temperatures above about 84 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 Celsius. But the researchers said that by 2070 such extreme heat could encompass a much larger part of Africa, as well as parts of India, the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. ...The parts of the world that could become unsuitably hot “are precisely the areas that are growing the fastest,” said Timothy A. Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University and an author of the study [ https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/19

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/business/cow-methane-climate-change.html Source:   By Adam Satariano, The New York Times. Excerpt: Cattle produce more methane than many large countries. A solution could be an ecological and financial breakthrough — and a Swiss biotech company may be on the cusp. ...in the last five years, a collection of companies and scientists has been getting closer to what would be an ecological and financial breakthrough: an edible product that would change cows’ digestive chemistry and reduce their emission of methane. Several companies are pursuing a seaweed-based compound, and a Dutch firm, DSM, is testing a chemical supplement with promising results. Mootral is one of the furthest along. By mixing compounds from garlic, citrus and other additives into a pellet that’s mixed with a cow’s regular diet, the start-up has surprised scientists by significantly and consistently cutting the toxic output of animals....