https://eos.org/research-spotlights/short-lived-solutions-for-tall-trees-in-chiles-megadrought By Rebecca Dzombak , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Some southern beeches in the Andes have plumbed deeper for moisture as the surface has dried up. But doing so may deplete resources and undermine the trees’ future health. For more than a decade, forests across much of Chile have been experiencing a  megadrought , its effects overprinted on an already warming and drying climate. ...Sourcing deeper water might be only a temporary fix, however. As droughts become longer, more frequent, and more severe, those reserves may run dry. In addition, trees relying on deeper water may receive fewer nutrients,  stymieing their development  even if they are getting enough water. So although some trees have successfully adapted to drought in the short term, it’s unclear how long they’ll be able to continue. ( Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences ,  https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JG007293 , 2023).

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/28/world/wind-turbine-recycling-climate-intl/index.html By Laura Paddison, CNN.  Excerpt: Wind turbines  are built to last. Their tall bodies are topped with long fiberglass blades, some more than half a football field in length, made to withstand the  harshest, windiest conditions . But this sturdiness brings a big problem: What to do with these blades when they reach the end of their lives. While  about 90%  of turbines are easily recyclable, their blades are not. They are made from fiberglass bound together with epoxy resin, a material so strong it is incredibly difficult and expensive to break down. Most blades end their lives in landfill or are incinerated. ...But in February, Danish wind company Vestas ...announced  a “breakthrough solution”  that would allow wind turbine blades to be recycled without needing to change their design or materials. ...the “newly discovered chemical technology” breaks down old blades in a liquid to produce high quality mat

https://eos.org/articles/the-unequal-benefits-of-californias-electric-vehicle-transition By Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: An uptick in clean vehicles has improved air quality in wealthier communities over marginalized communities in California, a new study finds. California has some of the most aggressive climate laws in the country, including its Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, which incentivizes the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell vehicles. The state has issued more than half a million clean vehicle rebates since 2010. A new study shows that the program is having a  mixed effect on air quality . ...Furthermore, EVs increase the load on power plants, which are disproportionally located in marginalized communities....

https://eos.org/articles/tracking-marine-heat-waves By  Robin Donovan , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Heat waves have spiked in recent years. The United States is now scorched by about six per year, compared to just two annually in the 1960s. At sea, marine heat waves such as the Blob, which warmed waters off the U.S. West Coast from 2013 to 2016, are becoming hotter over time. Now, scientists have discovered that more intense, longer-lasting heat waves on continental shelves can strike the ocean bottom independently from the surface. Excess heat disrupts oceanic ecosystems and thwarts the ocean’s twin promises of cooling and carbon sequestration. ...data revealed bottom marine heat waves that lasted up to 6 months and were 0.5°C–3°C warmer than average. These spikes are enough to stress or kill species that live on continental shelves: lobsters, Dungeness crab, Pacific cod, oysters, clams, and other bottom dwellers, Amaya said. The hot spells sometimes occurred concurrently at the surface, but n

https://eos.org/articles/penguin-poop-may-flush-iron-into-the-southern-ocean By Carolyn Wilke , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: For Earth’s oceans to sequester carbon dioxide, they need iron. The element can  waft in on dust  or  spew from hydrothermal vents . But there’s another source: animal poop. A new study has suggested that penguins  may help fertilize the Southern Ocean  with their iron-rich guano. ...Phytoplankton living in the oceans take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. When those tiny free-floating organisms die, they sink to the deep sea, carrying that carbon with them. Iron is essential for the phytoplankton to photosynthesize, and their growth is limited by the element’s availability. ...Compared with numbers from 4 decades ago, the population of chinstrap penguins, and the amount of iron they contribute to the ocean, has dropped by more than 50%. Scientists suspect that a warming climate and changing food webs have contributed to declines....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/climate/colorado-river-deal.html By Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River, a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland. The  agreement , announced Monday, calls for the federal government to pay about $1.2 billion to irrigation districts, cities and Native American tribes in the three states if they temporarily use less water.... See also New York Times article, The Colorado River Is Shrinking. See What’s Using All the Water .

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/20/world/europe/italy-floods-emilia-romagna.html By Gaia Pianigiani  and  Elisabetta Povoledo , The New York Times.  Excerpt: When the floods hit in the northern Italian town of Lugo this past week, overflowing a local watercourse and sending water gushing into streets and the surrounding fields, Irinel Lungu, 45, retreated with his wife and toddler to the second floor of their home. ...The floods have upended tens of thousands of lives in the region, Emilia-Romagna, as exceptional weather in some areas brought about half the typical annual rainfall in 36 hours. And experts say it may no longer be so exceptional. ...Extreme weather events have become more commonplace in Europe, from the violent storms and raging floods  that killed dozens  in Germany two years ago to the  scorching temperatures that set records  in a normally temperate Britain last July. Italy has suffered its own fair share of extreme events, caught between bouts of extreme drought that

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/20/climate/rice-farming-climate-change.html By  Somini Sengupta , reporting from Arkansas and Bangladesh, and  Tran Le Thuy , from Vietnam, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Rice is in trouble as the Earth heats up, threatening the food and livelihood of billions of people. Sometimes there’s not enough rain when seedlings need water, or too much when the plants need to keep their heads above water. As the sea intrudes, salt ruins the crop. As nights warm, yields go down. These hazards are forcing the world to find new ways to grow one of its most important crops. Rice farmers are shifting their planting calendars. Plant breeders are working on seeds to withstand high temperatures or salty soils. Hardy heirloom varieties are being resurrected.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/20/world/asia/climate-fossil-fuels-g7.html By Motoko Rich ,  Lisa Friedman  and  Jim Tankersley , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In theory, the world’s largest industrialized democracies have agreed to stop using fossil fuels within a little over a quarter-century and to switch to new sources of power such as solar and wind as fast as they can. But as leaders of the Group of 7 gathered in Hiroshima, Japan, this weekend for their annual meeting, some countries were wrangling over whether to loosen commitments to phase out the use of carbon-emitting fuels like gas and coal in time to avert the worst effects of global warming. ...Jarred by the invasion of Ukraine, countries in Europe are seeking to quickly secure sources of natural gas to keep the lights on. At the same time, countries like Japan and even to some degree the United States are seeking to protect longstanding investments in the fossil fuel industry at home or abroad. ...tensions have flared in

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/a-symbiosis-between-agriculture-and-solar-power By  Aaron Sidder , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Introduced in the 1980s, agrivoltaics, or AV, is the concept of pairing agriculture and solar energy production on the same plot of land. Practitioners grow crops under solar panels and can control the amounts and wavelengths of light that pass through for photosynthesis. Light that is not necessary for photosynthesis can power clean energy production. Meanwhile, as plants photosynthesize, they lose water through transpiration. That water loss cools the air and improves the efficiency of energy generation by the panels. It’s a win-win scenario—at least in theory. ...In a  previous study , scientists argued that successful AV setups could partition light into wavelengths that are efficient for either energy production or photosynthesis: red for crops and blue for solar panels, for example. ...The study also considers how solar panels alter the microclimate and light

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/16/headway/indonesia-nusantara-jakarta.html By Hannah Beech , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, Jakarta had expanded from less than a million people to roughly 30 million. It had grown tall with skyscrapers built with fortunes made from timber, palm oil, natural gas, gold, copper, tin. ... Jakarta was sinking , as thirsty residents drained its marshy aquifers and rising sea waters lapped its shores. Forty percent of the Indonesian capital now lies below sea level. ... Joko Widodo ...the governor of a capital city that seemed to teeter on the brink of ruin ...raised sea walls and improved public transport. He later talked up the construction of a constellation of artificial islands to break the waters hitting Jakarta. ...All the Sisyphean dredging, the endless concrete inches slathered on sea walls, the duct tape solutions could not raise Jakarta above the sea’s reach. And so Mr. Joko has turned to a differ

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/business/energy-environment/denmark-wind-power-stiesdal.html By  Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The contemporary wind power industry, which has spawned hundreds of thousands of spinning rotors generating electricity without putting greenhouse gases into the air, was to a great extent born in a notoriously windy region of Denmark called Jutland. ...perhaps no one has had more influence than a Jutlander named Henrik Stiesdal. As a young man of 21, he built a rudimentary machine to generate electricity  for his parents’ farm . He was later co-designer of an innovative three-bladed turbine that set the stage for what has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. His inventions have led to about a thousand patents, and Mr. Stiesdal is widely seen as a pioneer in this very Danish field. At age 66, he is not done. After decades working for what became some of the giant companies in wind energy, Mr. Stiesdal is putting his ideas into a start

https://eos.org/articles/solar-panels-nurse-desert-soil-back-to-life By Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Cultivating delicate soil crust in the shade of solar panels might boost the recovery of arid land. Biological soil crusts go by many names. A living ecosystem of cyanobacteria, lichen, moss, and algae, the crusts grow on arid soils on all continents, even Antarctica. Biocrust coats 12% of the planet’s surface and contains most of a desert’s ecological diversity in just the first few centimeters of soil. But the crust is easily broken (even a footstep can crush it), and operations such as ranching and farming have destroyed crust around the world. ...In a  new study , the researchers claimed that solar farms within the Phoenix metro area could serve as biocrust nurseries for little cost; a large-scale effort could supply enough biocrust to cover most of the fallow farmland in surrounding Maricopa County within 5 years....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/climate/epa-power-plants-pollution.html By  Coral Davenport , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first regulations to limit greenhouse pollution from existing power plants, capping an unparalleled string of climate policies that, taken together, could substantially reduce the nation’s contribution to global warming. The proposals are designed to effectively eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s electricity sector by 2040. ...The nation’s 3,400 coal- and gas-fired power plants currently generate about 25 percent of greenhouse gases produced by the United States.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/08/business/energy-environment/norway-electric-vehicles.html By  Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Last year, 80 percent of new-car sales in Norway were electric, putting the country at the vanguard of the shift to battery-powered mobility. ...The country will end the sales of internal combustion engine cars in 2025. ...There are problems, of course, including unreliable chargers and long waits during periods of high demand. ...But the air in Oslo, Norway’s capital, is measurably cleaner. The city is also quieter as noisier gasoline and diesel vehicles are scrapped. Oslo’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 30 percent since 2009, yet there has not been mass unemployment among gas station workers and the electrical grid has not collapsed. ...Levels of nitrogen oxides, byproducts of burning gasoline and diesel that cause smog, asthma and other ailments, have fallen sharply as electric vehicle ownership has risen. ...Oslo’s air has unhealthy leve

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-greenhouse-gas-burden-of-inland-waters By  Aaron Sidder , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In a new pair of studies, a global team of scientists reassessed greenhouse gas emissions stemming from rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs. ...The study authors found that inland waters contribute 5.5  petagrams  of CO 2  per year, of which one third emanates from South American rivers. Meanwhile, inland waters emit 82–135 teragrams of CH 4  annually, one third of which comes from North American and Russian lakes. N 2 O emissions were comparatively small at 248–590 gigagrams N 2 O per year, and a quarter of N 2 O emissions stem from North American inland waters. ...Inland waters could represent approximately 20% of the total global  CH 4  emissions , the authors found. In contrast, the contributions of inland waters to the global CO 2  and N 2 O budgets are relatively minor....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/climate/heat-wave-spain-morocco.html By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The  early-season heat wave  that broiled parts of Algeria, Morocco, Portugal and Spain last week almost certainly would not have occurred without human-induced climate change, an international team of scientists said in  an analysis issued Friday . A mass of hot, dry air from the Sahara parked itself above the western Mediterranean for several days in late April, unleashing temperatures that are more typical of July or August in the region. Mainland Spain set an  April record  of 101.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38.8 Celsius, in the southern city of Córdoba. In Morocco, the mercury climbed to  more than 106 degrees Fahrenheit  in Marrakesh, according to provisional data, very likely smashing that nation’s April record as well....

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/04/electric-vehicles-suvs-us-vehicle-fleet By Oliver Milman , The Guardian.  Excerpt: In a sign of how the US’s fixation upon large SUVs and pickup trucks is now infiltrating the nascent EV market, General Motors...said that the Michigan plant currently churning out Bolts will switch to new electric models of the Silverado and the GMC Sierra – hulking, and more expensive, alternatives that will probably provide the auto company a greater financial return than the modest Bolt. ...Experts warn that the supersized nature of new EV models is also worse for the environment than smaller options,  requiring  large amounts of mined rare minerals such as lithium and cobalt for their huge batteries and using more energy to move their enormous frames around US streets. ...While electric vehicles are always a better option for the climate than an exact equivalent powered by gasoline or diesel,  rankings  by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient

https://eos.org/articles/in-the-pacific-northwest-2021-was-the-hottest-year-in-a-millennium By Sarah Derouin , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A 1,000-year temperature record shows unprecedented warming in the Pacific Northwest, and new modeling predicts the likelihood of future heat waves in the decades to come. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/02/climate/hydroelectric-power-energy.html By Mira Rojanasakul  and  Max Bearak , The New York Times.  Excerpt: New research released Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor reveals a transformation underway in hydroelectric projects — using the same gravitational qualities of water, but typically without building large, traditional dams like the Hoover in the American West or Three Gorges in China. Instead, a technology called pumped storage is rapidly expanding. These systems involve two reservoirs: one on top of a hill and another at the bottom. When electricity generated from nearby power plants exceeds demand, it’s used to pump water uphill, essentially filling the upper reservoir as a battery. Later, when electricity demand spikes, water is released to the lower reservoir through a turbine, generating power. Pumped storage isn’t a new idea. But it is undergoing a renaissance in countries where wind and solar power are also growing, helping all