https://eos.org/articles/food-security-lessons-from-the-vikings Source: By  James Dacey , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Scandinavian societies of the first millennium adapted their farming practices to volcano-driven climate changes. ...During this half millennium between 300 and 800, northern Europe experienced cold climates  driven by volcanoes  spewing gases and dust into the atmosphere, which reduced the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface. ...The new research finds evidence that a community in Norway responded to this climate turbulence by regularly adapting its cereal production and animal husbandry practices. It is one of the first studies from a multidisciplinary project called Volcanic Eruptions and their Impacts on Climate, Environment, and Viking Society in 500–1250 CE ( VIKINGS ).... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/climate/california-drought-farming.html Source: By  Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ORDBEND, Calif. — In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all. It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years. ...These are among the signs of a huge transformation up and down California’s Central Valley, the country’s most lucrative agricultural belt, as it confronts both an exceptional  drought  and the consequences of years of pumping far too much water out of its aquifers. Across the state, reservoir levels ar

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/climate/climate-Native-Americans.html Source: By  Christopher Flavelle  and Kalen Goodluck, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Many Native people were forced into the most undesirable areas of America, first by white settlers, then by the government. Now, parts of that marginal land are becoming uninhabitable. In the Pacific Northwest, coastal erosion and storms are eating away at tribal land, forcing native communities to try to move inland. In the Southwest, severe drought means Navajo Nation is running out of drinking water. At the edge of the Ozarks, heirloom crops are becoming harder to grow, threatening to disconnect the Cherokee from their heritage.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/western-heat-wave.html Source: By Mike Baker, The New York Times.  Excerpt: An intense heat wave is set to torment the Pacific Northwest. Many who have always done without air-conditioners are scrambling to get them now.... [Does it bother anyone that humans can survive with air conditioners when heat waves hit and some other local organisms may not? And is it a cruel irony that in seeking to survive a heat wave people turn to air conditioners that may contribute to global warming?  Would a solar/wind/sustainable-energy-powered air conditioner be a good idea?] 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/magazine/cargo-ships-emissions.html Source: By Aurora Almendral, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Cargo vessels belch almost as much carbon into the air each year as the entire continent of South America. Modern sails could have a surprising impact. ...Allwright had previously spent 10 years working with a group that tried to build small cargo ships that would run on wind power to eliminate their carbon footprint. It underscored for him that sails aren’t a relic of the past. At the most fundamental level, the way modern sails work is similar to the way sails did a thousand years ago: As wind moves against their curves, it creates a high-pressure system on one side and a low-pressure system on the other, resulting in a forward thrust that pushes the ship along. But the design, materials and size of modern sails, along with the ships’ movements, allow them to harness significantly more power from the wind than the cloth sails of the past — enough so that t

2021-06-24:  Pacific Northwest faces one of its most severe heat waves in history —Record high temperatures are forecast to be broken in Portland and Spokane, and approached in Seattle;  2021-06-24:  Records crumble in Europe, Russia amid scorching heat wave —Moscow has its highest June temperature on record due to one of several heat domes baking the northern hemisphere;  2021-06-18:  Record-setting heat blasts the West: ‘Your skin is almost sizzling’ —Fueled by climate change, the first major heat wave of the summer has seized the western U.S., toppling records and threatening lives.  See also Eos article,   Siberian Heat Wave Nearly Impossible Without Human Influence  and  New York Times,  Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Shatters Temperature Records .

https://photostories.lbl.gov/how-to-make-lithiumion-batteries-invincible Source: By Text by Julie Chao | Photos by Marilyn Sargent, Berkeley Lab.  Excerpt: In our future electrified world, the demand for battery storage is projected to be enormous, reaching to upwards of 2 to 10 terawatt-hours (TWh) of annual battery production by 2030, from less than 0.5 TWh today. However, concerns are growing as to whether key raw materials will be adequate to meet this future demand. The lithium-ion battery – the dominant technology for the foreseeable future – has a component made of cobalt and nickel, and those two metals face severe supply constraints on the global market. Now, after several years of research led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), scientists have made significant progress in developing battery cathodes using a new class of materials that provide batteries with the same if not higher energy density than conventional lithium-ion batteries but can be made of i

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/federal-regulators-warn-risks-firefighters-electrical-vehicle-fires-n1271084 Source: By Cyrus Farivar, NBC News.  Excerpt: It’s the kind of blaze that veteran Chief Palmer Buck of The Woodlands Township Fire Department in suburban Houston compared to “a trick birthday candle.” On April 17, when firefighters responded to a 911 call at around 9:30 p.m., they came upon a Tesla Model S that had crashed, killing two people, and was now on fire. They extinguished it, but then a small flare shot out of the bottom of the charred hulk. Firefighters quickly put out those flames. Not long after, the car reignited for a third time. ...Eight firefighters ultimately spent seven hours putting out the fire. They also used up 28,000 gallons of water — an amount the department normally uses in a month. That same volume of water serves an average American home for nearly two years. ...As the popularity of electric vehicles grows, firefighters nationwide are realizin

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/world/americas/brazil-drought.html Source: By Manuela Andreoni and  Ernesto Londoño , The New York Times.  Excerpt: RIO DE JANEIRO — Crops have shriveled up under searing heat. Immense water reservoirs, which generate the bulk of Brazil’s electricity, are growing alarmingly shallow. And the world’s largest waterfall system, Iguaçu Falls, has been reduced from a torrent to a trickle. ... may set the stage for another intensely destructive fire season in the Amazon rainforest. Several states in the country are facing the worst drought in at least 90 years. The crisis has led to higher electricity prices, the threat of water rationing and a disruption of crop growing cycles. Agriculture, an economic engine of the nation — which relies heavily on hydropower — is now at risk.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/science/boltysh-crater-dinosaurs.html? Source: Becky Ferreira, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Boltysh crater, a 15-mile-wide formation in central Ukraine, may not be as famous as the Chicxulub crater under the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is directly implicated in the death of the dinosaurs and many other species about 66 million years ago. Nevertheless, Boltysh has long led to debate among scientists. Some have suggested that the crater, which is buried under more than 1,000 feet of sediment, could have formed before or after the Chicxulub event, making its role in this cataclysmic period unclear. ...For years, scientists  speculated that the Boltysh  and Chicxulub impactors may have acted as a one-two punch that shattered life at the end of the Cretaceous period. The revised age suggests that the impact that made the Ukrainian crater did not factor into the apocalyptic die-off of the dinosaurs, though it may have interfered with the recovery fr

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/17/heat-wave-southwest-fires-drought/ ] Source: ByJason Samenow and Diana Leonard, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: One of the most extreme heat waves ever observed in the western United States this early in the season is near its climax. The punishing blast of heat, which began Sunday, has set hundreds of records while simultaneously worsening a historically severe drought, intensifying fires and degrading air quality. About 40 million Americans have endured triple-digit heat and more than 50 million have been under excessive-heat warnings this week. ...While it’s just mid-June and the hottest time of the year is historically still weeks away, temperatures have matched their highest ever observed levels in parts of Utah, Wyoming and Montana. Salt Lake City; Sheridan and  Laramie, Wyo. ; and  Billings, Mont .; all made history Tuesday, soaring to 107, 107, 94 and 108 degrees, respectively. ...On Wednesday, the mercury in Las Vegas swelled to

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/16/earth-heat-imbalance-warming/ Source: By  Tik Root , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The amount of heat Earth traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land, according to  new research from NASA and  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.... 

https://eos.org/articles/indian-cities-prepare-for-floods-with-predictive-technology Source: By Deepa Padmanaban, Eos/AGU  Excerpt: The number and intensity of floods are increasing—they can inundate neighborhoods in Chennai in just 15 minutes. New models can pinpoint and help warn vulnerable areas hours or even days in advance. ...In 2015, the metropolis of Chennai faced  devastating floods  responsible for the deaths of more than 500 people and displacement of more than a million more. Financial  losses  reached around $3 billion. The extent of the damage prompted the Indian government to approach scientists to develop a flood forecasting system for the city.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/g7-2021-carbon-neutral/2021/06/10/eaa2bd5a-c7cd-11eb-8708-64991f2acf28_story.html   Source: By  William Booth . The Washington Post.  Excerpt: LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is promising to host the first "carbon-neutral" summit for the Group of Seven this week — seeking to slash the emissions of greenhouse gases by sourcing the crab and lamb locally, deploying ­generators powered by hydro-treated vegetable oil and offsetting all that international jet travel by building a composting facility in Vietnam. ...Going all-in on “net zero” also plays into Johnson’s pitch to make this week’s G-7 in Cornwall  a steppingstone  toward November’s huge COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which will seek to set tougher goals and firmer commitments to curb planetary warming. Johnson promised that the Cornwall meeting itself “will be completely carbon-neutral” and that, “more significantly, it will be the first G-7 at whi

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/climate/wind-energy-Atlantic-Biden.html Source: By  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The proposed lease sale is part of the Biden administration's push to develop 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. ...The proposed sale, the first of the Biden administration, includes eight lease areas in the New York Bight, a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean between Cape May in New Jersey and Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. Administration officials estimated wind turbines there could generate more than seven gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2.6 million homes.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/06/08/cool-roofs-cooler-designs-nations-building-industry-embraces-energy-sustainability/ Source: By Ben Ikenson, The Washington Post  Excerpt: ...American Institute of Architects in its  top-10 list of sustainable projects , reflect the expansive reach of “low-energy” design strategies and the building industry’s embrace of sustainability as a de facto imperative. They’re part of a remarkable evolution, one that could prove crucial since the building sector globally accounts for at least 40 percent of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide — far more than transportation sources. Some advocates think the U.S. sector can achieve net-zero emissions within 20 years, a decade ahead of President Biden’s net-zero goal for the country. The administration’s initiative includes new codes and efficiency standards for homes, appliances and commercial buildings — and a clean electric grid. Dozens of cities and states are moving forward with th

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/business/energy-environment/offshore-wind-biden-climate-change.htm Source: By  Ivan Penn , The New York Times  Excerpt: A constellation of 5,400 offshore  wind turbines  meet a growing portion of  Europe’s energy needs . The United States has  exactly seven . With more than 90,000 miles of coastline, the country has plenty of places to plunk down turbines. But legal, environmental and economic obstacles and even vanity have stood in the way. ... Offshore turbines  are useful because the wind tends to blow stronger and more steadily at sea than onshore. The turbines can be placed far enough out that they aren’t visible from land but still close enough to cities and suburbs that they do not require hundreds of miles of expensive transmission lines.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/07/record-june-heat-wave-middle-east/ Source: By  Matthew Cappucci , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Temperatures in the Middle East have topped 125 degrees after a run of record-breaking heat. Several countries tied or challenged national records amid the blistering heat wave, which has brought a string of temperatures about 15 degrees above normal to the already baked region. Five countries joined the 50-degree Celsius club, which equates to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. This extreme heat comes a full month before high temperatures reach their annual average peak....  See also New York Times articles:  How Severe Is the Western Drought? See For Yourself  and  Climate Change Batters the West Before Summer Even Begins

https://www.nytimes.com/article/drought-california-western-united-states.html Source: By  Henry Fountain , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Answers to questions about the current situation in California and the Western half of the United States.... 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/rise-and-fall-world-s-largest-lake By  Sid Perkins . Science Magazine.  Excerpt: When continental plates smashed together about 12 million years ago, they didn’t just raise new mountains in central Europe—they created the largest lake the world has ever known. This vast body of water—the Paratethys Sea—came to host species found nowhere else, .... At its largest, the body of water—which some scientists consider to have been an inland sea—stretched from the eastern Alps into what is now Kazakhstan, covering more than 2.8 million square kilometers. That’s  an area larger than today’s Mediterranean  Sea, they write this week in Scientific Reports. ...climate shifts caused the lake to shrink dramatically at least four times in its 5-million-year lifetime, with water levels falling by as much as 250 meters between 7.65 million and 7.9 million years ago. ...That sent water salinity in the lake’s central basin—which closely matches the outlines of today

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/world/europe/climate-change-un-international-maritime-organization.html Source: By  Matt Apuzzo  and Sarah Hurtes, The New York Times.  Excerpt: LONDON — During a contentious meeting over proposed climate regulations last fall, a Saudi diplomat to the obscure but powerful International Maritime Organization switched on his microphone to make an angry complaint: One of his colleagues was revealing the proceedings on Twitter as they happened. It was a breach of the secrecy at the heart of the I.M.O., a clubby United Nations agency on the banks of the Thames that regulates international shipping and is charged with reducing emissions in an industry that burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt. Shipping produces as much carbon dioxide as all of America’s coal plants combined. ...The organization has repeatedly delayed and watered down climate regulations, even as emissions from commercial shipping continue to rise, a trend that thr

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/miami-fl-seawall-hurricanes.html Source: By  Patricia Mazzei .  Excerpt: A proposal to construct barriers for storm surge protection has forced South Floridians to reckon with the many environmental challenges they face. ...Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its  first draft of the study , now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the  gleaming sky-rises of Brickell , the city’s financial district. The dramatic $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/climate/biggest-methane-emitters.html Source: By  Hiroko Tabuchi . The New York Times  Excerpt: As the world’s oil and gas giants face increasing pressure to reduce their fossil fuel emissions, small, privately held drilling companies are becoming the country’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, often by buying up the industry’s high-polluting assets. According to  a new analysis  of the latest emissions data disclosed to the Environmental Protection Agency, five of the industry’s top ten emitters of  methane, a particularly potent planet-warming gas , are little-known oil and gas producers, some backed by obscure investment firms, whose environmental footprints are wildly large relative to their production. ...The largest emitter, Hilcorp Energy, reported almost 50 percent more methane emissions from its operations than the nation’s largest fossil fuel producer, Exxon Mobil, despite pumping far less oil and gas. Four other relatively unknown compa

https://eos.org/articles/an-ancient-meltwater-pulse-raised-sea-levels-by-18-meters Source: By  Tim Hornyak , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The period of time when sea levels shot up at the end of the last glacial period, roughly 14,600 years ago, is known as meltwater pulse 1A (MWP-1A). Ever since this pulse was  identified from coral records in 1989 , the origins of the meltwater have been the subject of debate. Some researchers have hypothesized that Antarctica was the major source of the meltwater, whereas other scientists have suggested that it came from the Northern Hemisphere.  A new study  in Nature Communications has concluded that melting ice sheets in North America, followed by Scandinavia, were the dominant drivers of MWP-1A and that the world’s mean sea level rise was 17.9 meters over 500 years.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/realestate/home-buying-climate-disasters.html Source: By Debra Kamin, The New York Times.   Excerpt: As global temperatures increase and sea levels rise, home shoppers are looking at more than just location, price and the number of bedrooms when exploring properties. They are also wondering about the risk of natural disaster, and what that risk might mean for a home’s value over time. It’s a question that’s long been considered by commercial real estate investors, who have tapped into the growing field of climate analytics via companies like  Four Twenty Seven  and  Jupiter Intelligence  to get projections on weather-related hazards. But individual home buyers have traditionally not had access to the same data. That’s now starting to shift, and most resources are available at no cost. In August of last year,  realtor.com  became the first major real estate website to disclose data, adding both publicly and privately assembled flood risk information to

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/klamath-oregon-water-drought-bundy.html   Source: By  Mike Baker , The New York Times.  Excerpt: KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Through the marshlands along the Oregon-California border, the federal government a century ago carved a whole new landscape, draining lakes and channeling rivers to build a farming economy that now supplies alfalfa for dairy cows and potatoes for Frito-Lay chips. The drawdowns needed to cover the croplands and the impacts on local fish nearing extinction have long been a point of conflict at the Klamath Project, but this year’s historic drought has heightened the stakes, with salmon dying en masse and Oregon’s largest lake draining below critical thresholds for managing fish survival. Hoping to limit the carnage, federal officials have shut the gates that feed the project’s sprawling irrigation system, telling farmers the water that has flowed every year since 1907 will not be available. Some farmers, furious about water rights an