https://eos.org/articles/wildfires-trigger-long-term-permafrost-thawing Source:  By   Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Permafrost underlies much of the far north, but this amalgam of ice and frozen soil is far from stable—it’s thawing as temperatures rise worldwide. That’s bad news because permafrost is a significant repository of carbon, which can be readily   converted into carbon dioxide , a major greenhouse gas. ...Siberia has been plagued by many blazes recently, said   Roger Michaelides , a geophysicist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden not involved in the research, and there’s no sign of the fires abating. “With climate change, wildfire frequency and severity are expected to increase.” ...“The fire itself doesn’t melt permafrost directly.” Rather, a blaze eradicates vegetation, which reflects and absorbs sunlight. When that insulating layer is lost, the ground heats up more readily, causing permafrost to thaw....    

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/08/31/fashion-musrhooms-mycelium-climate/ Source:  By   Jessica Wolfrom , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Textiles have a big carbon footprint and then clog landfills when discarded. Could biodegradable clothes be a solution? Fungus gets a bad rap. ...The word itself conjures up the notion of mold and decay — the slow ending of something alive. But increasingly, scientists are using mycelium, the threadlike vegetative roots of fungus, to create everything from plastics to packaging materials to plant-based meats, even scaffolding to grow new organs. And now, mycelium is starting to show up in closets as a nature-based material for clothes, shoes and bags slung over shoulders. A new crop of manufacturers are harnessing mycelium to create leather-like materials without the cow. While their products are not yet on the mass market, they’re demonstrating that durable clothing and accessories can be derived from fungi — which is neither

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/global-survey-using-nasa-data-shows-dramatic-growth-of-glacial-lakes Source:  NASA Release 20-080.  Excerpt: In the largest-ever study of glacial lakes, researchers using 30 years of NASA satellite data have found that the volume of these lakes worldwide has increased by about 50% since 1990 as glaciers melt and retreat due to climate change. The findings,  published in the journal Nature Climate Change , will aid researchers assessing the potential hazards to communities downstream of these often unstable lakes and help improve the accuracy of sea level rise estimates by advancing our understanding of how glacial meltwater is transported to the oceans. Glaciers are retreating on a near-global scale and this study provides scientists with a clearer picture of how much of this water has been stored in lakes....  See also 2020 Sep 2 New York Times article  Melting Glaciers Are Filling Unstable Lakes. And They’re Growing  and 2020 Aug 31 Nature articl

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-plastics-trade.html Source:  By  Hiroko Tabuchi ,  Michael Corkery  and Carlos Mureithi, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste. The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa. ...an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit. ...“We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying U.S.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/business/electric-delivery-vehicles-ups-fedex-amazon.html Source:  By Jim Motavalli, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Going back years, you might have been able to spot a truck from the likes of FedEx and UPS, and more recently Amazon, that ran on electricity. But most of these were small, short test runs that left the internal-combustion status quo in place. Now that battery technology is catching up to ambitions, many companies are making big commitments to electrify the last delivery mile, typically from transportation hub to destination. The momentum means that plugging in the fleet may happen well before another vaunted goal — self-driving — is reached. Success is not guaranteed, though. The companies are eager to buy, but they will need the latest in battery-powered trucks, and a lot of them. The rush to electrify, prompted by concern about climate change, a chance to offset growing delivery costs, government regulation and big advances in batter

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/tales-storm-how-four-scientists-tracked-hurricane-laura Source:  By   Chris Mooney   and Andrew Freedman.  Excerpt: Surveying the Gulf of Mexico late Tuesday afternoon, National Hurricane Center experts saw a Category 1 hurricane — dangerous, but not likely to cause major damage. Forecaster Jack Beven put the storm’s maximum sustained wind speed at around 80 mph,   forecasting a strong Category 2 storm   by the next day.   Twenty-four hours later , Hurricane Laura was unrecognizable. It had rocketed into a high-end Category 4 storm, with wind speeds of nearly 145 mph, and was teetering toward Category 5 — the most dangerous. It was one of the fastest transformations on record in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts call the phenomenon “rapid intensification” and say it’s happening more frequently, thanks in part to warming ocean temperatures driven by climate change. ...Jim Kossin, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/climate/flooding-relocation-managed-retreat.html Source:  By  Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This week’s one-two punch of Hurricane Laura and Tropical Storm Marco may be extraordinary, but the storms are just two of nine to strike Texas and Louisiana since 2017 alone, helping to drive a major federal change in how the nation handles floods. For years, even as seas rose and flooding worsened nationwide, policymakers stuck to the belief that relocating entire communities away from vulnerable areas was simply too extreme to consider — an attack on Americans’ love of home and private property as well as a costly use of taxpayer dollars. Now, however, that is rapidly changing amid acceptance that rebuilding over and over after successive floods makes little sense. The shift threatens to uproot people not only on the coasts but in flood-prone areas nationwide, while making the consequences of climate change even more painful for cit

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/growing-underwater-heat-blob-speeds-demise-arctic-sea-ice# Source:  By   Paul Voosen , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: In March, soon after arriving aboard the Polarstern, a German icebreaker frozen into Arctic sea ice, Jennifer Hutchings watched as ice broke up around the ship, weeks earlier than expected. ...Arctic sea ice is itself an endangered species. ...The trend is clear: Summer ice covers half the area it did in the 1980s, and because it is thinner, its volume is down 75%. With the Arctic warming three times faster than the global average, most scientists grimly acknowledge the   inevitability of ice-free summers , perhaps as   soon as 2035 . ...Now, he and others are learning that a warming atmosphere is far from the only factor speeding up the ice loss. Strengthening currents and waves are pulverizing the ice. And a study published last week suggests deep heat in the Arctic Ocean has risen and is now melting the ice from below. Unlike th

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/ancient-megadrought-may-explain-civilization-s-missing-millennia-southeast-asia Source:    By  Charles Choi , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: A megadrought that lasted more than 1000 years may have plagued Southeast Asia 5000 years ago, setting up dramatic shifts in regional civilizations, suggests a new study of cave rocks in northern Laos. The researchers believe the drought began when the drying of the distant Sahara Desert disrupted monsoon rains and triggered droughts throughout the rest of Asia and Africa. For years, archaeologists studying mainland Southeast Asia—an area encompassing modern-day Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam—have been puzzled by what they call “the missing millennia,” a period from roughly 6000 to 4000 years ago with little evidence of human settlements. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Joyce White, a co-author on the new paper, says she and others long thought this was because researchers h

h ttps://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ Source: By WIRED magzine.  Excerpt: Photovoltaic panels are a boon for clean energy but are tricky to recycle. As the oldest ones expire, get ready for a solar e-waste glut. Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives—and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that. But we’ll need to develop one soon, .... For the solar recycling industry to grow sustainably, it will ultimately need supportive policies and regulations. The EU model of having producers finance the take-back and recycling of solar panels might be a good one for the U.S. to emulate. But before that’s going to happen, US lawmakers need to recognize that the problem exists....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/surprising-pulses-ancient-warming-found-antarctic-ice-samples Source:    By Sid Perkins, Science  Magazine. Excerpt: Earth’s ice ages are typically thought of as seemingly unending periods of bitter cold. But a new study suggests bursts of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) often entered the atmosphere during these times, providing decades or even centuries of relative warmth amid 10,000-year stretches of chill. Such pulses may have caused glaciers and ice sheets to retreat somewhat, thus opening up new areas for plants and animals. ... Nehrbass-Ahles’s team then analyzed portions of a 3.5-kilometer-long ice core drilled at one of the highest points in eastern Antarctica. Their samples capture times between 330,000 and 450,000 years ago—an interval that includes one complete ice age as well as the warm spells on either side. On average, each data point was separated from its neighbors by about 300 years, a four- to sixfold improvement in time resolution ov

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/business/energy-environment/oil-companies-europe-electric.html Source:    By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: This may turn out to be the year that oil giants, especially in Europe, started looking more like electric companies. Late last month, Royal Dutch Shell won a deal to build a vast wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands. Earlier in the year, France’s Total, which owns a battery maker, agreed to make several large investments in solar power in Spain and a wind farm off Scotland. Total also bought an electric and natural gas utility in Spain and is joining Shell and BP in expanding its electric vehicle charging business. At the same time, the companies are ditching plans to drill more wells as they chop back capital budgets. Shell recently said it would delay new fields in the Gulf of Mexico and in the North Sea, while BP has promised not to hunt for oil in any new countries. Prodded by governments and investors to address climate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/14/record-arctic-fires/ Source:    By Andrew Freedman and Lauren Tierney, The Washington Post. Excerpt: The Arctic summer of 2019 was supposed to be an outlier. Featuring massive blazes in Siberia, including what scientists strongly suspected were smoldering fires beneath the peat in the carbon-rich soils of the transition zone between the tundra and Arctic taiga, last year set records for emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases via wildfires. Many scientists thought it might be a one-off, considering that computer model projections tend to show that the emergence of such extreme fire years won’t happen until mid-century. However, this year is proving those scientists wrong. And it raises the unsettling possibility that fire seasons that begin much earlier than average and end later — and affect delicate Arctic ecosystems — could soon be the new normal. Wildfires continue to burn unimpeded across Siberia, as they have since May, after g

https://eos.org/articles/typhoons-getting-stronger-making-landfall-more-often Source:    By Tim Hornyak, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: ...Typhoons and hurricanes are one of the drivers of intensifying natural disasters, which in 2019 caused some $150 billion in damages around the world, according to the insurer Munich Re. It was a consecutive year of record losses from typhoons in Japan, which suffered $17 billion in damages in the wake of Typhoon Hagibis, 2019’s costliest event. ...In a long-term study that was the basis for a poster submitted to the conference, scientists found that severe typhoons making landfall have increased abruptly in China since 2004. The researchers analyzed tropical cyclone data from the China Meteorological Administration’s Shanghai Typhoon Institute for the July–September period from 1973 to 2017. They showed that about 9.7% of landfall typhoons in southern China underwent a rapid intensification in the 24 hours before coming ashore during the 2004–2017 period, more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/12/baghdad-iraq-heat-climate-change/ Source:    By Louisa Loveluck, Chris Mooney, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: BAGHDAD — This city roars in the summertime. You hear the generators on every street, shaking and shuddering to keep electric fans whirring as the air seems to shimmer in the heat. Iraq isn’t just hot. It’s punishingly hot. Record-breakingly hot. When one of us returned here last week, the air outside felt like an oven. The suitcase crackled as it was unzipped. It turned out that the synthetic fibers of a headscarf had melted crispy and were now stuck to the top of the case. A cold bottle of water was suddenly warm to the lips. At our office, the door handle was so hot it left blisters at the touch. Baghdad hit 125.2 degrees on July 28, blowing past the previous record of 123.8 degrees — which was set here five years ago — and topping 120 degrees for four days in a row. Sitting in one of the fastest warming parts of the globe, t

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/business/concrete-cement-manufacturing-green-emissions.htm l Source:    By Jane Margolies, The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Central [Concrete] — one of a handful of companies at the forefront of a movement to make a greener concrete — is increasingly experimenting with some decidedly new mixtures. In one part of the plant, carbon dioxide from a chemical gas company is injected into the concrete, locking in that greenhouse gas and keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it would contribute to global warming. Elsewhere, engineers tinker with the recipe for concrete, trying out substitutes for some of the cement, which makes up about 15 percent of the mix and functions as the glue that holds it all together. Cement, however, is also responsible for most of concrete’s carbon emissions — emissions so high that some have abandoned concrete for alternative building materials like mass timber and bamboo. ...concrete is also responsible for about 8 percent o

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/08/10/australia-solar-energy-asia/ Source:  By A. Odysseus Patrick, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: SYDNEY — Could Australia, one of the world’s biggest exporters of coal and natural gas, become a solar superpower? The island continent, distant from Asia’s megacities, plans to capture the plentiful Outback sun, store it in giant batteries until nightfall and transmit it to Singapore along a watermelon-width cable traversing 2,800 miles of sea floor, including a deep trench. The Australia-ASEAN Power Link, which is part-owned by two Australian billionaires and was endorsed last month by the Australian government, may be the most ambitious renewable energy project underway anywhere. And it could mark a new chapter in the history of energy: the intercontinental movement of green power. ...Scheduled to start operating in 2027 at a cost of about $16 billion, the project would combine the world’s largest solar farm, the largest battery a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/climate-environment/climate-change-colorado-utah-hot-spot/ Source:    By Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: ...on Colorado’s Western Slope, no snow means no snowpack. And no snowpack means no water in an area that’s so dry it’s lucky to get 10 inches of rain a year. ...A 20-year drought is stealing the water that sustains this region, and climate change is making it worse. ...This cluster of counties on Colorado's Western Slope — along with three counties just across the border in eastern Utah — has warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius, double the global average. Spanning more than 30,000 square miles, it is the largest 2C hot spot in the Lower 48, a Washington Post analysis found. The average flow of the Colorado River has declined nearly 20 percent over the past century, half of which is because of warming temperatures, scientists say. With the region’s snowpack shrinking and melting earlier, the ground absorbs mo

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/06/climate/climate-change-inequality-heat.html Source:    By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times.  Excerpt: It was a record 125 degrees Fahrenheit in Baghdad in July, and 100 degrees above the Arctic Circle this June. Australia shattered its summer heat records as wildfires, fueled by prolonged drought, turned the sky fever red. For 150 years of industrialization, the combustion of coal, oil and gas has steadily released heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, driving up average global temperatures and setting heat records. Nearly everywhere around the world, heat waves are more frequent and longer lasting than they were 70 years ago. But a hotter planet does not hurt equally. If you’re poor and marginalized, you’re likely to be much more vulnerable to extreme heat. You might be unable to afford an air-conditioner, and you might not even have electricity when you need it. You may have no choice but to work outdoors under a sun so blisterin

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/extremely-active-hurricane-season-possible-for-atlantic-basin Source:  By NOAA.  Excerpt: Atmospheric and oceanic conditions are primed to fuel storm development in the Atlantic, leading to what could be an “extremely active” season, according to forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service. ...Historically, only two named storms form on average by early August, and the ninth named storm typically does not form until October 4. An average season produces 12 named storms, including six hurricanes of which three become major hurricanes (Category 3, 4, or 5). “This is one of the most active seasonal forecasts that NOAA has produced in its 22-year history of hurricane outlooks. ...The updated outlook calls for 19-25 named storms (winds of 39 mph or greater), of which 7-11 will become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater), including 3-6 major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater). This update covers t

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/humans-have-altered-north-america-s-ecosystems-more-melting-glaciers Source:  By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Recent human activity, including agriculture, has had a greater impact on North America’s plants and animals than even the glaciers that retreated more than 10,000 years ago. Those findings, presented this week at the virtual annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, reveal that more North American forests and grasslands have abruptly disappeared in the past 250 years than in the previous 14,000 years, likely as a result of human activity. The authors say the new work, based on hundreds of fossilized pollen samples, supports the establishment of a new epoch in geological history known as the Anthropocene, with a start date in the past 250 years. ...For more than 10 years, researchers have debated when humans started to make their mark on the planet. Some argue agriculture transformed landscapes thousands of

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/illegal-deforestation-brazil-soars-amid-climate-impunity Source:  By Herton Escobar, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has risen sharply in the past year—again. Estimates set to be released this week by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) will show clearings have increased by at least 28% during the current monitoring year, which runs from August through July, compared with the previous year. It is the second steep hike under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has made good on his campaign promise to loosen environmental law enforcement and step up development in the Amazon....