https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/26/global-warming-accelerating-climate-change/ By Chris Mooney  and  Shannon Osaka , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: In a paper published last month,  climate scientist  James E. Hansen and a group of colleagues argued that the pace of global warming is poised to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades, with an accompanying escalation of impacts. ...University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann has argued that no acceleration is visible yet: “The truth is bad enough,” he wrote in a  blog post . ...Between 1880 and 1969, the planet warmed slowly — at a rate of around 0.04 degrees Celsius (0.07 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. But starting aroundthe early 1970s, warming accelerated — reaching 0.19 degrees C (0.34 degrees F) per decade between 1970 and 2023. That acceleration isn’t controversial. ...some scientists believe that the temperature data is simply not yet showing an impending acceleration....

https://www.science.org/content/article/lost-history-antarctica-revealed-octopus-dna By ERIK STOKSTAD .  Excerpt: Some 100,000 years ago, scientists believe Antarctica’s massive western ice sheet collapsed, temporarily opening waterways between a trio of seas surrounding the continent. New evidence for that scenario comes from a surprising source: octopus DNA. ...About 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, a warm spell called the last interglacial gave our planet a brief break in between several million years of ice ages. The average temperature of the planet was about 0.5°C warmer than it is today—and climate projections predict it will be again within decades. The global sea level was also 5 meters to 10 meters higher than current levels. Many scientists believe  the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and consequent melting could have been a primary reason . ...The findings are consistent with growing geological evidence supporting the ice sheet collapse....

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5650 ]  By XINGYI HUANG  AND  PENGLI LI , Science.  Excerpt: Clothing plays an indispensable role in maintaining the human body temperature within a comfort range in our daily life, especially when facing sudden temperature changes or in harsh environments ( 1 ). ...Wang  et al . ( 3 ) report a full-day, self-powered, and bidirectional thermoregulatory clothing that can quickly respond to fluctuating temperature. ...Wang  et al . ...designed and fabricated a wearable thermal-management system by combining an organic photovoltaic unit and an electrocaloric unit into a single device with the required flexibility. The device also achieved bidirectional thermal management, providing 10.1 K of cooling to the skin during hot days but also keeping the human body 3.2 K warmer than bare skin in the dark or at night by using additional energy collected by the organic photovoltaic unit.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/climate/cop28-climate-agreement.html By Brad Plumer  and  Max Bearak , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to confront climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries  approved a global pact  that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet. ...that proposal  faced intense pushback  from major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, as well as fast-growing countries like India and Nigeria. In the end, negotiators struck a compromise: The new deal calls on countries to accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade in a “just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury. It also calls on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy, like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane, a gr

https://eos.org/opinions/a-transformative-carbon-sink-in-the-ocean By Doug Reusch ,  Kayleigh Brisard ,  Gil Hamilton  and  Carson Theriault , Eos/AGU/AGU.  Excerpt: Effectively lowering atmospheric carbon levels will require a range of actions, from  individuals making hard decisions  about lifestyle changes to international cooperation to pursue solutions from a diverse menu of options. Among the options under consideration are methods for  deliberate carbon dioxide removal  (CDR) from the atmosphere.... ...humanity may need to implement CDR on a vast scale to compensate for the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels over the past century.  Ocean alkalinity enhancement  (OAE), in which the addition of ions like Mg 2+  and Ca 2+  (sourced from materials such as olivine or lime) to the ocean drives more dissolution of atmospheric CO 2  to form bicarbonate (HCO 3 – ), holds considerable promise, because the ocean’s capacity for storing bicarbonate is ample on the relevant time frame

https://www.science.org/content/article/cheap-electricity-could-recycle-animal-waste-recover-valuable-chemicals By ROBERT F. SERVICE , Science.  Excerpt: Every year the world’s livestock farms generate more than 3 billion tons of animal waste, equivalent to more than 9000 Empire State Buildings. All that manure pollutes bodies of water and releases noxious fumes and greenhouse gases. But a new recycling technique could reduce those burdens while turning a profit. Researchers have shown that they can  use electricity to break down organic nutrients in animal waste , all while recovering valuable chemicals. Initial projections—reported this month in Nature Sustainability—suggest that in most cases the value of these chemicals would be higher than the costs of the technique, making it profitable for farmers to pursue it. ...renewable power is expected to lower electricity costs in some rural areas to about $0.03 per kWh by 2030. ...Given how efficient the overall process is, she says, the

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/climate/saudi-arabia-cop28-fossil-fuels.html By Lisa Friedman ,  Brad Plumer  and  Vivian Nereim , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading exporter of oil, has become the biggest obstacle to an agreement at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where countries are debating whether to call for a phaseout of fossil fuels in order to fight global warming.... The Saudi delegation has flatly opposed any language in a deal that would even mention fossil fuels.... Saudi negotiators have also objected to a provision, endorsed by at least 118 countries, aimed at tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Saudi diplomats have been particularly skillful at blocking discussions and slowing the talks,.... Tactics include inserting words into draft agreements that are considered poison pills by other countries; slow-walking a provision meant to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change; staging a walkout in a side meeti

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/business/energy-environment/two-three-wheel-electric-vehicles.html By Somini Sengupta ,  Abdi Latif Dahir ,  Alex Travelli  and  Clifford Krauss , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Big Oil faces a tiny foe on the streets of Asia and Africa. The noisy, noxious vehicles that run on two and three wheels, carrying billions of people daily, are quietly going electric — in turn knocking down oil demand by one million barrels a day this year. In Kenya and Rwanda, dozens of start-ups are vying to replace oil-guzzling motorcycle taxis with battery-powered ones. In India, more than  half of all new three-wheeled vehicles  sold and registered this year were battery-operated. Indonesia and Thailand are also encouraging electrification of motorcycle taxis. China dominates the market. Its government began promoting electric vehicles decades ago in a bid to clean its smog-choked cities, which explains why a vast majority of the world’s electric two-wheelers are in China

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a45900085/portugal-renewable-energy/ By DARREN ORF , Popular Mechanics.  Excerpt: For 149 consecutive hours in November, Portugal provided a stunning example of what that could look like, as it used a mix of solar, wind, and hydropower to provide more clean energy than the entire country needed. ...Producing 1,102 GWh (according to the national grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais) for both industrial and residential use, the country’s renewable energy sources—a mix of wind, solar, and hydropower—provided 262 GWh more than was needed. ...This exceeds the country’s previous record—it ran for 131 hours on renewable energy back in 2019—and for 95 hours during this recent test, Portugal even exported its excess clean energy to Spain. Although the country’s  gas  plants were on standby, Portugal’s renewable infrastructure proved to be more than up for the task. ...Portugal’s 149 hours of renewable bliss is a hopeful vision of the futu

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/climate/forests-trees-climate-change.html By Manuela Andreoni  and  Leanne Abraham , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Over the last century, governments around the world have drawn boundaries to shield thousands of the world’s most valuable ecosystems from destruction.... These protected areas have offered lifelines to species threatened with extinction, supported the ways of life for many traditional communities and safeguarded the water supplies of cities. ...Now, high in orbit, a new way of seeing forests is making it clear that...protected areas can still be a crucial buffer against climate change. ...a  study ...which was published this year, showed that policies designed to protect nature can also be important for mitigating global warming, Dr. Duncanson said. She called the findings “a beautiful side benefit” of global forest conservation….

https://eos.org/articles/an-electrifying-approach-to-carbon-capture By Bill Morris , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...a group of researchers at the University of Calgary is using electricity to enhance seawater’s ability to store carbon. The group is developing an instrument, dubbed  PEACH  (Practical Electrochemical Air Capture and Hydrogen), that uses an electrochemical cell, analogous to a lithium-ion battery, to capture alkaline sodium ions from salt water. ...arrays could be lowered more than 500 meters into the ocean to gather ions, then raised to release them as sodium hydroxide at shallower depths, creating an “alkalinity pump” from deep water to the surface. ...Alkaline surface waters draw carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere, eventually converting it to bicarbonate, which can securely store carbon in the ocean for more than 10,000 years. A by-product of the ion exchange is hydrogen, which could be stored as a fuel. The group will  present their research  at AGU’s Annual Meeting 20

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/climate/climate-change-flooding-east-africa.html By Delger Erdenesanaa , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Heavy rain and floods in East Africa  that started in October have killed at least 300 people and displaced millions more. ...East Africa has an annual rainy season in fall, but this year’s disastrous rainfall is about double what it would have been without human-caused climate change, according to  research made public on Thursday . A natural climate cycle called the Indian Ocean Dipole has also contributed to heavier rain than usual, but this phenomenon alone does not account for the extreme amount…. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/climate/air-conditioning-electricity.html By Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Sixty nations committed on Tuesday to improve the efficiency of new air-conditioners by 50 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to those cooling machines by almost 70 percent, the latest in a flurry of global promises that aim to tackle climate change. ...a daunting future facing a warming planet: As global temperatures rise, more people will turn to air-conditioners to ward off the heat. But additional air-conditioning in buildings and other spaces, which is also driven by rising incomes, population growth and urbanization, means that the world could use more than double the electricity it does now to stay cool, leading to more planet-warming emissions, according to research released by the United Nations on Tuesday...

https://eos.org/articles/diverse-forests-store-more-carbon-than-monocultures By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: It pays to mix it up—planted forests containing more than one tree species can store several times as much carbon as monocultures, as shown in a  meta-analysis  published in  Frontiers in Forests and Global Change . Researchers have long known that biodiversity increases forest productivity, ....Forestry companies often plant monocultures, so the study has the potential to affect industry practices. ...Researchers sifted through more than 11,300 studies, including some from a worldwide network of tree diversity experiments called  TreeDivNet , to find 18 that included the information necessary to compare carbon storage in monocultures with that in stands containing two or more species of trees. ...Stands with two or more species contained at least 25% more aboveground carbon than the best-performing monocultures, .... When the researchers focused on forests containing fo

https://grist.org/extreme-weather/marshall-islands-national-adaptation-plan-sea-level-rise-cop28/ By Jake Bittle , Grist.  Excerpt: The Marshall Islands extend across a wide stretch of the Pacific Ocean, with dozens of coral atolls sitting just a few feet above sea level. ...Over the past two years, government officials have fanned out across the country, visiting remote towns and villages as well as urban centers like its capital of Majuro to examine how Marshallese communities are experiencing and coping with climate change. They found that a combination of rapid sea-level rise and drought has already made life untenable for many of the country’s 42,000 residents, especially on outlying atolls where communities rely on rainwater and vanishing land for subsistence. The survey was part of a groundbreaking, five-year effort by the Marshall Islands to craft a sweeping adaptation strategy that charts the country’s response to the threat of climate change. The plan, shared with Grist ahead

https://www.cnn.com/travel/the-long-road-to-guilt-free-flying-climate/index.html By Jacopo Prisco , CNN.  Excerpt: Aviation faces a steep climb towards a greener future. Although it has, like many other industries, committed to slashing its planet-warming pollution by 2050, it is  not on track  to reach its target… ...the sector currently accounts for around 2.5% of global carbon emissions, its actual climate impact is actually  higher , because of the emission of other greenhouse gases and the formation of heat-trapping condensation trails created by jet engines. Meanwhile, demand for air travel is projected to steadily rise, with the global fleet of commercial airplanes doubling in size by 2042 to keep up,  according to Boeing . ...Sustainable aviation fuel, or  SAF , is a type of alternative jet fuel that can curb carbon emissions by  up to 80% . It ...is usually made from plants that have absorbed carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) during their lifetime. When burned, that CO 2 is returned to

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/climate/cop28-aljaber-fossil-fuels.html By Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Simmering tensions around the decision to hold a global climate summit in a petrostate burst into the open on Monday when Sultan Al Jaber, the Emirati oil executive who is leading the conference, launched into an angry public defense of his position on ending fossil fuel use. Mr. Al Jaber, who runs the state-owned oil company, Adnoc, was under fire for a video that surfaced in which he said there is “no science” behind the idea that fossil fuels must be phased out in order to keep average global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. ...“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” Mr. Al Jaber said during a panel discussion.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/al-gore-s-climate-watchdog-spots-rogue-emissions By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: Backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Climate Trace is a coalition of nonprofits and academics that  made headlines  2 years ago with its first analysis of 72,000 of the world’s largest greenhouse gas sources. Its newest assessment looks at 352 million greenhouse gas sources. “It is really incredibly powerful,” Gore says. “This serves a purpose that is at the top of humanity’s priority list.” Long term, Gore hopes Climate Trace will be integrated into the U.N. process. And in the meantime, it is helping less developed regions  keep track  of their emissions.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/02/us/hurricane-season-2023-rapid-intensification.html By William B. Davis  and  Judson Jones , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The 2023 hurricane seasons in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific came to an end this week, with both basins experiencing an above average number of storms, fueled by extremely warm ocean temperatures. The two basins had a combined 37 storms, 13 of which rapidly intensified, sometimes jumping multiple hurricane categories in less than a day. A high proportion of rapid-onset storms this year exceeded the standard definition of rapid intensification — an increase of at least 35 miles per hour in sustained winds, over 24 hours. Experts said that this emphasized the way hurricane seasons are changing and the need for more reliable forecast models. When storms intensify abruptly near land, it becomes more difficult to predict how severely places will be affected, and it leaves officials and residents with little time to prepar

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/climate/biden-methane-climate-cop28.html By Jim Tankersley  and  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Vice President Kamala Harris pledged at a United Nations climate summit on Saturday that the United States would spend billions more to help developing nations fight and adapt to climate change.... Her remarks followed an announcement by U.S. officials at the summit the same day that the federal government would, for the first time, require oil and gas producers to detect and fix leaks of methane. It was the most ambitious move to reduce fossil fuel emissions that President Biden’s administration was expected to unveil at the summit, known as COP28. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that wafts into the atmosphere from pipelines, drill sites and storage facilities, and dangerously speeds the rate of global warming. ...Methane is ...the second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Methane only lingers in the atmosphere about a dec

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/business/energy-environment/us-oil-production-record-climate.html By Clifford Krauss , The New York Times.  Excerpt: American oil fields are gushing again, helping to drive down fuel prices but also threatening to undercut efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Only three years after U.S. oil production collapsed during the pandemic, energy companies are cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia. The flow of oil has grown by roughly 800,000 barrels a day since early 2022, and analysts expect the industry to add another 500,000 barrels a day next year. ...The United States now exports roughly four million barrels a day, more than any member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries except Saudi Arabia…. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/health/malaria-climate-change.html By  Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times.  Excerpt: There were an estimated 249 million cases of malaria around the globe last year,  the World Health Organization said on Thursday , an increase of five million over 2021. Malaria remains a top killer of children. Those new cases were concentrated in just five countries: Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Papua-New Guinea. Climate change was a direct contributor in three of them, said Dr. Daniel Ngamije, who directs the W.H.O. malaria program. In July 2022, massive flooding left more than a third of Pakistan underwater and displaced 33 million people. An explosion of mosquitoes soon followed. The country reported 3.1 million confirmed cases of malaria that year, compared with 275,000 the year before, with a fivefold increase in the rate of transmission....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2023/flood-resistant-home-bamboo/ By Nick Aspinwall, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Yasmeen Lari spent a …career designing …structures out of concrete, glass and steel before stumbling into her ideal material. It was at a camp for refugees…. Residents there were struggling to secure bricks and wood to build communal kitchens — until she spotted a nearby bamboo grove. “Let’s use it,” recalls Lari…. The material worked so well that over the last decade, Heritage Foundation of Pakistan …has built some 85,000 structures for displaced Pakistanis, including victims of last year’s devastating monsoon rains. That disaster, the worst flooding in Pakistani history, left a third of the country underwater and  destroyed more than 2.1 million homes . The thousands of bamboo structures Lari’s group had erected “all survived,” she said. …Many species of bamboo have been used as a building material in Asia for thousands of years and they are

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/us/climate-migrants-asylum.html By  Miriam Jordan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: First came the hurricanes — two storms, two weeks apart in 2020 — that devastated Honduras and left the country’s most vulnerable in dire need. …homes were leveled and growing fields were ravaged. Then came the drug cartels, who stepped into the vacuum left by the Honduran government, ill-equipped to respond to the catastrophe. Violence soon followed. …Cosmi, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of concern for his family’s safety and that of relatives left behind, was staying at a squalid encampment on a spit of dirt along the river that separates Mexico and Texas. Hundreds of other Miskito were alongside him in tiny tents, all hoping to claim asylum. The story of the Miskito who have left their ancestral home to come 2,500 miles to the U.S.-Mexico border is in many ways familiar. Like others coming from Central and South America, they are fleeing failed

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/24/opinion/electric-vehicle-tesla-hybrid.html By Stephen Porder , The New York Times, opinion piece.  Excerpt: ...I am familiar with trepidation about electric vehicles; ...worry about running out of battery power far from a charging station; ...the upfront costs... though the E.V.  has a lower total cost  over the life of the car. ...Those concerns will likely diminish in 2024 as money from the Inflation Reduction Act flows into building more charging stations and making discounts for electric vehicles available right at the dealership. ...while there are environmental concerns with [electric vehicles], they are dwarfed by the benefit they provide regarding climate change. ...Cobalt, another key component of batteries, has been in the public eye because of its scarcity and the  horrific working conditions for miners  in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Those conditions need to be addressed, but it’s a mistake to view them in isolation. Oil extraction h

https://www.science.org/content/article/brought-creationist-home-scientist-fights-evolution By JEFFREY MERVIS , Science.  Excerpt: The  National Center for Science Education  (NCSE), known for fighting to defend evolution’s place in school curricula, has a new leader who knows how hard that work can be. Amanda (Glaze) Townley, who next month becomes executive director of the Oakland, California–based nonprofit, grew up in rural northeastern Alabama, where she learned firsthand how religion and culture can collide with one of the central tenets in biology. “I grew up in a young Earth creationism home, with a worldview that was based in evangelical Christianity and a literal translation of the Bible,” recalls the 42-year-old Townley. “And when I took honors biology in high school, my teacher said she’s not going to teach evolution because she doesn’t believe in it.” ...NCSE is best known for monitoring state and local legislative and ballot initiatives affecting the teaching of evolution

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-rains-pigs-and-waterbirds-fueled-shocking-disease-outbreak-australia By MEREDITH WADMAN , Science.  Excerpt: The appearance of a “tropical” mosquito-borne illness in southeastern Australia has unsettled researchers. ...McCann was the  fourth patient in as many weeks  admitted to Albury with encephalitis. Like McCann, the three others had turned up feverish and confused. ...among the possible causes were mosquito-borne viruses, in particular two encephalitis-causing viruses endemic to Australia: Kunjin, a strain of West Nile virus, and Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV), named for the river valley where McCann has swum, water skied, fished, and boated since he was a boy. ...As with other weather events, the record-breaking wetness of the 2021–22 season can’t be attributed with certainty to climate change. But as the globe warms, the atmosphere holds more water, enabling more intense rainfall and flooding; daily rainfall associated with th

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0557 By MICHAEL E. WEBBER  AND  YAEL R. GLAZER , Science.  Excerpt: On 20 December 2015, a mountain of urban refuse collapsed in Shenzhen, China, killing at least 69 people and destroying dozens of buildings ( 1 ). The disaster exposed the horrible yet real idea that society’s wastes could pile up uncontrollably, directly threatening our lives. But there is another looming threat from solid waste beyond its sheer volumes and mass: the destabilizing impacts of the greenhouse gases it emits. ...Hoy  et al.  ( 2 ) report that rapid and large reductions of methane emissions from the world’s solid waste sector are needed to meet the global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. The good news is that this can be achieved with existing technologies and modified behaviors. ...Municipal solid waste—the garbage that ends up in landfills, recycling centers, compost sites, and ecosystems—is particularly relevant to global warming because solid wast

https://nca2023.globalchange.gov By U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) . Excerpt: The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. Across the country, efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions have expanded since 2018, and US emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007. However, without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. ...In addition to reducing risks to future generations, rapid emissions cuts are expected to have immediate health and economic benefits (Figure  1.1 ). At the national scale, the benefits of deep emissions cuts for current and future generations are expected to far outweigh the costs. { 2.1 ,  2.3 ,  13.3 ,  14.5 ,  15.3 ,  32.4 ; Ch.  2, Introduction

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/11/13/capturing-wellhead-gases-for-profit-and-a-cleaner-environment By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Burning of natural gas at oil and gas wells, called flaring, is a major waste of fossil fuels and a contributor to climate change. But to date, capturing the flared natural gas, estimated at some 140 billion cubic meters per year by the International Energy Agency, has not been economically feasible. University of California, Berkeley, chemists have now come up with a simple and green way to convert these gases — primarily methane and ethane — into economically valuable liquids, mostly alcohols like methanol and ethanol. The liquids are also easier to store. The alcohols can be used as feedstocks for production of numerous other petrochemical products, providing an additional revenue source for oil and gas companies but also lowering carbon dioxide emissions from flaring. Flaring is used to mitigate the more harmful effects of directly ventin

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/business/energy-environment/exxon-mobil-lithium-arkansas.html By Clifford Krauss , The New York Times. Excerpt: Exxon Mobil said on Monday that it planned to set up a facility in Arkansas to produce lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicles, which pose one of the biggest challenges to the company’s oil business. ...the announcement signals that the large oil company intends to hedge its big bets on conventional fossil fuels with at least some investments in cleaner forms of energy that are needed to combat climate change. ...The announcement does not represent a fundamental shift in corporate strategy, but it is an acknowledgment that battery-powered vehicles will increasingly compete with cars and trucks fueled by gasoline and diesel. It could also open the door for southern Arkansas to emerge as a major source of lithium. Most of the metal today comes from Australia and South America, and much of it is processed in China....

https://www.science.org/content/article/forests-could-suck-226-gigatons-carbon-if-restored-and-protected-study-argues By RIK STOKSTAD , Science.  Excerpt: The restoration and protection of forests worldwide could help remove about 226 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to a study published today in  Nature . That’s equivalent to roughly 20 years of emissions from burning fossil fuels and other sources at current rates. Some experts say the analysis provides a more reliable estimate of the carbon-capturing potential of forests than a previous, controversial study that analyzed only the potential benefit from restoring trees to degraded land. But critics are skeptical that the new number is even remotely achievable. ...Humans have cut down a significant fraction—perhaps as much as half—of the forests that once existed. And every year, deforestation contributes 15% of all the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. So, scientists have been interested in finding out how m

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/climate-tipping-points-could-be-triggered-by-committed-warming By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Unless we rapidly reach net zero emissions, the climate will inch closer to a point of no return—even after greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. As the planet warms, climate  tipping points , such as the melting of ice sheets or loss of the Amazon rainforest, become increasingly likely. ...A new study by  Abrams et al.  examines  committed global warming , or warming that continues after greenhouse gas emissions are held constant until a new thermal balance is achieved. It’s a bit like how turning a running faucet from hot to cold doesn’t immediately change the temperature of the water, because there is still hot water in the pipeline. The authors present three scenarios for how the global mean temperature could rise and trigger tipping point events. One represents an increased use of fossil fuels, another represents rapidly reaching net zero emissio

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/12/climate/nuclear-reactors-clean-energy.html By Brad Plumer and Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Towering over the Savannah River in Georgia, the first nuclear reactors built from scratch in the United States in more than 30 years illustrate the enormous promise of nuclear power — and its most glaring weakness. The  two new reactors  at the Vogtle nuclear power plant will join two older units to create enough electricity to power two million homes, 24 hours a day, without emitting any of the carbon dioxide that is dangerously heating the planet. But those colossal reactors cost $35 billion, more than double the original estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule. That’s why no one else is planning to build large reactors in the United States. Instead, the great hope for the future of nuclear power is to go small. Nearly a dozen companies are developing reactors that are a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle, betting tha

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi4123 By XIAO WU et al, Science.  Excerpt: The increasing frequency of severe wildfires demands a shift in landscape management to mitigate their consequences. The role of managed, low-intensity fire as a driver of beneficial fuel treatment in fire-adapted ecosystems has drawn interest in both scientific and policy venues. Using a synthetic control approach to analyze 20 years of satellite-based fire activity data across 124,186 square kilometers of forests in California, we provide evidence that low-intensity fires substantially reduce the risk of future high-intensity fires. ...These findings support a policy transition from fire suppression to restoration, through increased use of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and managed wildfire, of a presuppression and precolonial fire regime in California.... 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk7118 By JUDSON BOOMHOWER , Science.  Excerpt: Wildfire-threatened communities are on the front lines of climate change. From 2013 to 2022, the share of global disaster losses caused by wildfires more than doubled compared with losses in previous decades ( 1 ). ...Radeloff  et al.  ( 2 ) draw on a 30-year time series of housing counts and vegetation to show how housing expansion, area burned, and vegetative fuels contribute to wildfire losses and the increasing number of homes at risk in the United States. With tens of millions of US homes now confronting a growing risk of destruction by wildfires, adaptation is an urgent policy and research challenge. Success will require scaling up cost-effective investments in physical protection to reduce wildfire losses, ensuring well-functioning insurance markets to absorb risk that cannot be cost-effectively mitigated away, and addressing disparities in protection and postfire recovery for socially v

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9614 By DONGLIANG ZHAO  AND  HUAJIE TANG , Science.  Excerpt: Terrestrial surfaces exposed to sunlight absorb solar heat and shed heat back to outer space as infrared radiation. If the radiated heat is greater than the solar energy absorbed, then daytime radiative cooling is achieved passively, without any energy input. However, this approach requires materials that strongly reflect sunlight and simultaneously emit long-wavelength infrared light—the wavelength needed to escape Earth’s atmosphere and not be reflected back. Ceramics composed mainly of silica (SiO 2 ) and alumina (Al 2 O 3 ), and that permit long-wavelength infrared emission, can meet these requirements. ...Zhao  et al.  ( 1 ) and Lin  et al.  ( 2 ), respectively, describe microporous materials— a glass-based ceramic coating and a ceramic composite—that exhibit passive daytime radiative cooling and resistance to harsh environments. These advances may lead to more environmenta

https://eos.org/articles/how-llama-poop-is-helping-an-andean-community-adapt-to-melting-glaciers By Sofia Moutinho , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Ecologist  Anaïs Zimmer  was walking in the Peruvian Andes one day, explaining to community members how hard it is for vegetation and soil to establish itself in deglacierized areas, or areas where glacier ice is retreating. That was when locals suggested an unconventional solution: bringing in llamas to fertilize the soil with their poop. Zimmer, then at the University of Texas at Austin, had been studying the consequences of  glacier loss in the Andes  for the past decade. Peru, which is home to 70% of the world’s tropical glaciers, has lost  more than half of them in the past 50 years because of climate change , according to the country’s ministry of agriculture. When the ice disappears, it uncovers metallic, rocky soil that had been covered for millennia. ...But an ancient practice might offer a solution to these problems. The introduction of llama

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/climate/climate-change-drought-fertile-crescent.html By Manuela Andreoni , The New York Times. Excerpt: Syria, Iraq and Iran were parched by high temperatures that would have been “virtually impossible” without the effects of global warming, scientists said....

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3326 By MICHAEL V. WESTBURY et al, Science Advances.  Excerpt: The Arctic is among the most climatically sensitive environments on Earth, and the disappearance of multiyear sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is predicted within decades. As apex predators, polar bears are sentinel species for addressing the impact of environmental variability on Arctic marine ecosystems. ...we investigate how Holocene environmental changes affected polar bears around Greenland. We uncover reductions in effective population size coinciding with increases in annual mean sea surface temperature, reduction in sea ice cover, declines in suitable habitat, and shifts in suitable habitat northward. ...[over the past 11,000 years...Whenever temperatures rise, polar bear populations crash. For example, about 4500 years ago, sea surface temperatures climbed by 0.2°C, sea ice cover shrank by about 3%, and polar bear populations dropped by about 20%. Several thousand years bef

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42198-2 By R. Millan et al, Nature Communications.  Abstract: The glaciers of North Greenland are hosting enough ice to raise sea level by 2.1 m, and have long considered to be stable. ...Here, we show that since 1978, ice shelves in North Greenland have lost more than 35% of their total volume, three of them collapsing completely. For the floating ice shelves that remain we observe a widespread increase in ice shelf mass losses, that are dominated by enhanced basal melting rates. Between 2000 and 2020, there was a widespread increase in basal melt rates that closely follows a rise in the ocean temperature. ...These results suggest that, under future projections of ocean thermal forcing, basal melting rates will continue to rise or remain at high level, which may have dramatic consequences for the stability of Greenlandic glaciers.... See also Greenland-wide accelerated retreat of peripheral glaciers in the twenty-first century by L. J. Laro

https://www.science.org/content/article/algal-outbreaks-around-world-are-crowding-out-corals By ELIZABETH PENNISI , Science.  Excerpt: Edmunds and colleagues  report today in Current Biology  that these algae are spreading rapidly in the Caribbean Sea and elsewhere, killing existing corals and crowding out new ones. The authors don’t have a solid explanation for the algae expansion, although warming waters or another aspect of climate change may be a driver. But they and others worry this new menace will hasten the demise of ecosystems already decimated in many places by multiple bleaching events, many also linked to climate change. ...These latest coral killers are a group of more than 140 hard to distinguish red algal species belonging to the Peyssonneliaceae family. Some scientists mistake them for coralline algae, which also form crusts on reefs but help promote growth of the living structures. Whereas coralline algae form thin, hard crusts that are pink or whitish, peyssonnelid al

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/gently-down-the-stream-carbons-journey-from-land-to-sea-and-beyond By Nathaniel Scharping , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Movement of carbon from land to ocean and atmosphere plays an important, but understudied, role in the global carbon cycle. Rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs occupy just 1% of Earth’s surface, but they provide a route for large amounts of terrestrial carbon to reach the ocean. Along the journey, carbon dioxide is also released into the atmosphere in a process known as evasion. But much about the land-to-ocean carbon cycle is not yet understood. ... Tian et al.  present a global quantification of carbon export and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) evasion from before the industrial era to the present. Their research indicates that inland waters move nearly half of the carbon absorbed by the land to the atmosphere and oceans. It also reveals significant anthropogenic perturbations to this land-to-ocean carbon cycle. Their work is the first global qu

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231106857589/en/ By BusinessWire.  Excerpt: LOS ANGELES ...Avnos, Inc. (Avnos), the Los Angeles-based company developing the novel Hybrid Direct Air Capture (HDAC™) technology for carbon dioxide removal, today began its first operational commercial pilot project in Bakersfield, California. ...the HDAC pilot delivers the world’s first water-positive Direct Air Capture (DAC) solution. In launching this system, Avnos has inverted the water paradigm in DAC – producing 5 tons of liquid distilled water per ton of CO 2 captured, as compared to 5-10 tons of water consumption per ton of CO 2 captured in other DAC approaches. As a result, Avnos opens the geographic and climatic operating range for DAC to many more regions around the globe. The Bakersfield pilot will capture approximately 30 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide and produce 150 tons of water per year. ...Capturing water from the atmosphere allows Avnos to leverage a first-of-a-kind moisture

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/business/electric-planes-beta-technologies.html By Niraj Chokshi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Over ...16 days, [Chris Caputo] and his colleagues flew the plane, a CX300 built by their employer, Beta Technologies, down the East Coast. They would make nearly two dozen stops to rest and recharge, flying through congested airspace in Boston, New York, Washington and other cities. When the journey came to an end in Florida, Beta handed the plane over to the Air Force, which will experiment with it over the next few months. The trip offered a vision of what aviation could look like years from now — one in which the skies are filled with aircraft that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming up the Earth. ...the CX300, a sleek, futuristic plane with a 50-foot wingspan, large curved windows and a rear propeller ...is designed to carry about 1,250 pounds of cargo and will be followed soon after by the A250, which shares about 80 perc

https://www.science.org/content/article/peru-20-year-study-charted-amazon-forests-revealed-warming-changed By BARBARA FRASER , Science.  Excerpt: PILLCOPATA, PERU— Twenty years ago, a dozen Peruvian biology undergraduates armed with machetes and tape measures laboriously cleared a trail down the steep eastern flank of the Andes Mountains near this sleepy Amazonian town. They staked out eight study plots along a 15-kilometer-long transect that stretched from the grasslands found near the relatively cool, treeless top of a 4020-meter-high mountain known as Apu Kañajhuay down the fog-shrouded Kosñipata Valley to the warmer forests below, which are soaked by as much as 5 meters of rain a year. Along the transect lies some of the world’s richest biodiversity. Now, those 1-hectare plots in and near Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve are the centerpiece of one of the longest running field studies of how an Amazon forest is responding to climate change. The effort, known as the  Andes Bi

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/business/energy-environment/offshore-wind-farm-new-jersey.html By Stanley Reed  and  Tracey Tully , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Plans to build two wind farms off the coast of New Jersey were scrapped, the company behind them said on Wednesday, a blow to the state’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the latest shakeout in the U.S. wind industry. ...Offshore wind and other parts of the  renewable industry have hit some snags  in Europe, especially in Britain. But Mr. Nipper said the problems were more acute in the United States because early contracts lacked protection from inflation and developers incurred high costs because of delays in approvals during the Trump administration. ...In its announcement, Orsted said it would move forward with a $4 billion project called Revolution Wind intended to supply power to consumers in Rhode Island. And other developers have projects under construction,  like Vineyard Wind , which will eventually have

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/business/economy/panama-canal-drought-shipping.html By Peter Eavis , The New York Times. Excerpt: For over a century, the Panama Canal has provided a convenient way for ships to move between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, helping to speed up international trade. But a drought has left the canal without enough water, which is used to raise and lower ships, forcing officials to slash the number of vessels they allow through. That has created expensive headaches for shipping companies and raised difficult questions about water use in Panama. The passage of one ship is estimated to consume as much water as half a million Panamanians use in one day. ...The problems at the Panama Canal, an engineering marvel that opened in 1914 and handles an  estimated 5 percent  of seaborne trade, is the latest example of how crucial parts of global supply chains can suddenly seize up....