https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/climate/polar-vortex-weather-climate-change.html Source: By  John Schwartz , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Rough  winter weather  is working its way across the United States, with bitterly cold air hitting the Northeast and snowstorms expected along the East Coast next week. ...Disturbances to the upper-atmosphere phenomena known as the polar vortex can send icy blasts from the Arctic into the middle latitudes, chilling Europe, Asia and parts of North America. The disturbance and its effects have persisted for an unusually long time this year, said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, with two disruptions of the polar vortex so far this year and, potentially, a third on the way. ...Research into the interplay of the complex factors that bring on blasts from the polar vortex is ongoing, but climate change appears to be part of the mix. ...The United States  has already seen heavy snowfall in the Sierra Nevada

https://eos.org/articles/what-a-new-executive-order-means-for-curbing-methane-emissions Source:  By Rishika Pardikar, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: On 20 January, the new administration of President Joe Biden issued  an executive order  calling for consideration of new methane regulations in the oil and gas sector. More stringent regulations could be a major part of climate change mitigation, as the United States is the world’s  largest producer of natural gas  with  steadily increasing production . ...Biden’s executive order comes just days after the release of a  Methane Tracker  report released by the International Energy Agency on 18 January. “Regulatory action to reduce methane emissions is more important now than ever before.…[Because] oil and gas will continue to be part of the energy mix for years to come, even in rapid clean energy transitions, it is crucial for the oil and gas industry to be proactive in limiting, in all ways possible, the environmental impact of their supply,” accord

https://eos.org/articles/drought-not-war-felled-some-ancient-asian-civilizations Source:  By  Richard J. Sima , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Radiocarbon dating, luminescent sand grains, and climate records point to drought as the reason for the civilizations’ demise. When we read about the fall of ancient civilizations in history books, we may think of warfare and other struggles on the human stage as leading causes for a culture’s decline. But climate change also accounts for many a society’s ruin. Such seems to be the case for the central Asian civilizations of the Otrār oasis located at the junction of the Syr Darya and Arys Rivers in what is now southern Kazakhstan. In a  new study  published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, an interdisciplinary team of researchers report that the Otrār oasis had already been in a prolonged period of decline long before the Mongols invaded. ...The clues lie in irrigation canals that the ancient civili

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/28/general-motors-electric/ Source:  By  Steven Mufson , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Big U.S. automaker says it will invest heavily in electric vehicles and be carbon neutral by 2040. GM chief executive Mary Barra, who antagonized many climate experts by embracing President Donald Trump’s relaxation of fuel efficiency targets, said Thursday the company now wants to lead the way to a greener future. “As one of the world’s largest automakers, we hope to set an example of responsible leadership in a world that is faced with climate change,” Barra said on LinkedIn. GM has said it would invest $27 billion in electric vehicles and associated products between 2020 and 2025, outstripping its spending on conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles. That figure includes refurbishing factories and investing in battery production in conjunction with LG Chem, a South Korean battery maker. ...As part of its plan, GM — maker of Buicks, Ca

https://eos.org/features/climate-change-uproots-global-agriculture Source:  By  Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In much of the world, climate change is altering regional growing conditions and making them more unpredictable. ... Small farms , which account for about 90% of the world’s 570 million farms, are particularly vulnerable to changes in seasonal climate. Land tended by families for generations may suddenly become  nonarable . A change in the timing or intensity of yearly rainy seasons or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), for example, could bring rains or drought that wipe out a family’s crops. In early May 2020, the Nzoia River burst its banks. The floods that resulted in western Kenya capped off particularly heavy  long rains  that killed 237 people and adversely affected more than 800,000. Floods and landslides destroyed homes, schools, roads, bridges, and more than 8,000 acres (32 square kilometers) of Kenyan farmland. Kenya’s March-May rainy season (th

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/01/25/ice-melt-quickens-greenland-glaciers Source:   By  Chris Mooney ,  Andrew Freedman , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming  new   research  published this month. From the thin ice shield covering most of the Arctic Ocean to the mile-thick mantle of the polar ice sheets, ice losses have soared from about 760 billion tons per year in the 1990s to more than 1.2 trillion tons per year in the 2010s, a  new study  released Monday shows. That is an increase of more than 60 percent, equating to 28 trillion tons of melted ice in total — and it means that roughly 3 percent of all the extra energy trapped within Earth’s system by climate change has gone toward turning ice into water....  

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/trump-downplayed-costs-carbon-pollution-s-about-change Source: By  Paul Voosen , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Carbon pollution is about to get a lot more expensive. Over the past 4 years, the Trump administration low-balled the “social cost of carbon”—a number representing the burden that carbon emissions place on present and future generations, in terms of the cost of floods, droughts, farming losses, and death. The low estimate served to justify a permissive approach to regulating greenhouse gases, whether through power plant emissions rules or appliance efficiency standards. But now the cost—the price per ton of emitted carbon dioxide  (CO 2 )   methane, and nitrous oxide—is set to rise drastically. On 20 January, its first day in office, the Biden administration recreated an interagency working group (IWG) and  ordered it to update  the social cost of carbon within 30 days. Many economists believe the cost, set as low as $1 during the Trump

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/15/climate/electric-car-cost.html Source:  By  Veronica Penney , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Electric vehicles are better for the climate than gas-powered cars, but many Americans are still reluctant to buy them. One reason: The larger upfront cost. New data published Thursday shows that despite the higher sticker price, electric cars may actually save drivers money in the long-run. To reach this conclusion, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated both the carbon dioxide emissions and full lifetime cost — including purchase price, maintenance and fuel — for nearly every new car model on the market. They found electric cars were easily more climate friendly than gas-burning ones. Over a lifetime, they were often cheaper, too....  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/2020-tied-for-hottest-year-on-record/ Source:  By  Chris Mooney ,  Andrew Freedman  and  John Muyskens , Design by  Jake Crump , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The year 2020, which witnessed terrifying blazes from California to Siberia and a record number of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic, rivaled and possibly even equaled the hottest year on record, according to multiple scientific announcements Thursday. Only the  “super” El Niño  year of 2016 appears to have been slightly hotter in the era of reliable measurements dating to the late 1800s, according to the results from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United Kingdom’s Met Office and Berkeley Earth. NASA finds that 2020 edged out 2016 by less than a hundredth of a degree Celsius, while the other three groups say it fell shy by a mere .01 to .02 degrees Celsius (.02 to .04 degrees Fahrenheit)....  

https://eos.org/articles/a-culinary-silver-lining-of-climate-change-more-truffles Source:  By  Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...scientists have looked to the future of truffle cultivation in Europe by modeling three different climate-warming scenarios. They found that climate change will substantially increase the cultivation potential of one species of truffle commonly used in cooking. Given that truffle farming can be lucrative, it appears that climate change has a culinary silver lining, at least for the niche world of truffles, the researchers concluded....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/climate/trump-disinformation-climate-change.html Source:  By  Lisa Friedman  and  Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The White House science office on Tuesday reassigned two administration officials who  posted a series of debunked scientific reports  denying the existence and significance of man-made climate change, purportedly on behalf of the United States government. ...David Legates, who served as the head of the United States Global Change Research Program, and Ryan Maue, a senior official at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, ... worked together to post the reports on a climate denial website without the knowledge of the director of the White House science office, Kelvin Droegemeier, two administration officials confirmed....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/climate/2020-disaster-costs.html Source:  By  Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The $95 billion in damage came in a year marked by a record number of named Atlantic storms, as well as the largest wildfires recorded in California. ...Topping the list was Hurricane Laura, which caused $13 billion in damage when it struck Southwestern Louisiana in late August. Laura was one of the year’s record number of 30 named storms in 2020; 12 of those storms made landfall, another record. The storms caused $43 billion in losses, almost half the total for all U.S. disasters last year. The next costliest category of natural disasters was convective storms, which includes thunderstorms, tornadoes, hailstorms and derechos, and caused $40 billion in losses last year. The derecho that struck Iowa and other Midwestern states in August caused almost $7 billion in damage, destroying huge amounts of corn and soybean crops. Wildfires caused another $16 b

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/warmer-climates-speed-breakdown-of-rocks Source:   By Jack Lee, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Wetter and warmer climates accelerate mechanical rock weathering, according to new research. Findings by  Eppes et al . reveal new links between climate and the breakdown of rocks, which affects the global carbon cycle—the  movement of carbon  between the oceans, atmosphere, and crust over geologic timescales....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/business/energy-environment/rooftop-solar-installers.html Source:  By  Peter Eavis  and  Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Some companies are having trouble surviving and making money installing panels because of intense competition and the high costs of doing business. ...The home  solar business is growing  fast as thousands of homeowners install panels on their roofs to save money. ...For now, Wall Street investors are bidding up the companies’ stocks in the belief that solar companies will be able to borrow cheaply and cover their losses and cash outflows for some time. They also expect sales to grow fast as homeowners buy larger solar systems and  home batteries to protect themselves from blackouts  and to power electric vehicles. Investors are also expecting the incoming Biden administration to do more to spur the use of renewable energy through tax credits and other incentives....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/climate/trump-national-climate-assessment.html Source: By   Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The National Climate Assessment, America’s premier contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia join forces to compile the best insights available on climate change. The results, released just twice a decade or so, shape years of government decisions. ...“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who during the Obama administration led the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the assessment. “It could have been a lot worse.” ...For Mr. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, the assessment posed a particular challenge. Trying to politicize or dismiss climate science is one thing when the warnings come from Democrats or academics. But this report comes from his administration’s very own agencies. ...Ha

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/business/GE-wind-turbine.html Source: By Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: G.E.’s giant machine, which can light up a small town, is stoking a renewable-energy arms race. Twirling above a strip of land at the mouth of Rotterdam’s harbor is a wind turbine so large it is difficult to photograph. The turning diameter of its rotor is longer than two American football fields end to end. Later models will be taller than any building on the mainland of Western Europe. Packed with sensors gathering data on wind speeds, electricity output and stresses on its components, the giant whirling machine in the Netherlands is a test model for a new series of giant offshore wind turbines planned by General Electric. When assembled in arrays, the wind machines have the potential to power cities, supplanting the emissions-spewing coal- or natural gas-fired plants that form the backbones of many electric systems today. G.E. has yet to install one of these m