https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/climate/heat-smoke-climate-change.html By  Raymond Zhong  and Delger Erdenesanaa , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Human-caused climate change is making high temperatures more common and intensifying the dryness that fuels catastrophic wildfires.... 

https://eos.org/articles/mosses-play-key-roles-in-ecosystems-from-tropics-to-tundra By Carolyn Wilke , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A global survey of mosses growing on soil found that the somewhat underappreciated plants cover a vast area and perform tasks such as sequestering carbon. ...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/volcanoes-future-climate-effects-may-exceed-standard-estimates By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: When volcanoes erupt, they often spew large amounts of  sulfur dioxide  into the atmosphere. This toxic, foul-smelling gas may then form tiny sulfate particles that particularly in the stratosphere, can  influence Earth’s climate  for months to many decades. In modeling future climate change, scientists have therefore incorporated the effects of volcanic eruptions. However,  Chim et al.  now show that there is a 95% chance that volcanic eruptions between 2015 and 2100 will release more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than standard climate models currently assume....

  https://eos.org/articles/sea-ice-is-going-but-when-will-it-be-gone By  Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Every September since 1979, the U.S. government has  measured the extent of sea ice  in the Arctic. And the picture is not a pretty one—more than 2 million square kilometers have been lost in that time, leaving about 4.67 million square kilometers of sea ice intact. ...climate models underestimate the melting that’s been observed in recent years, leaving scientists uncertain of whether they can use these models to make predictions. Two new publications have added to this discussion.  The first , published in  Nature Communications , provided evidence that the Arctic will become seasonally sea ice free in the next few decades even under low-emissions scenarios.  The second , published in  Nature Climate Change , proposed that the extent of Arctic sea ice will decline more slowly than previously thought because the effect of wind has not been adequately incorporated into models..

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/ireland-rewilding-deforestation-ecology.html By Ed O’Loughlin, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Centuries of overgrazing and deforestation have eliminated most native flora in Ireland, creating what ecologists see as a man-made desert in places. A growing “rewilding” push aims to change that. ... Rewilding , the practice of bringing ravaged landscapes back to their original states, is well established in Britain, where  numerous projects are underway . For Ireland, this would mean the re-creation of temperate forests of oak, birch, hazel and yew that  once covered 80 percent of the land  but now — after centuries of timber extraction, overgrazing and intensive farming — have been reduced to only 1 percent....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/27/tuvalu-climate-crisis-rising-sea-levels-pacific-island-nation-country-digital-clone By Kalolaine Fainu , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Tuvalu is expected to be one of the first countries in the world to be completely lost to climate change. The three coral islands and six atolls that make up the country have a total land mass of less than 26 sq km. At current rates of sea level rise, some estimates suggest that half the land area of the capital, Funafuti, will be flooded by tidal waters  within three decades . By 2100, 95% of land will be flooded by periodic king tides, making it essentially uninhabitable. ...Facing potential extinction, Tuvalu has formulated the  Future Now Project , a set of three major initiatives designed to preserve its nationhood, governance and culture in the event of a worst-case scenario. First, encouraging the international community to work together on implementing climate-change solutions, embodying the Tuvaluan cultu

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/business/energy-environment/marthas-vineyard-wind-farm-massachusetts.html By  Stanley Reed  and  Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: “This has been really hard,” said Rachel Pachter, the chief development officer of Vineyard Offshore, the American arm of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a Danish renewable energy developer that is a co-owner of the wind farm. To bring a big energy project to this point near population centers requires clearing countless regulatory hurdles and heading off potential opposition and litigation. ...Ms. Pachter, though, has helped orchestrate a campaign of community outreach, job creation and funding that has finally led to a point where, in industry parlance, steel is going into the water. ...62 turbines, each up to 850 feet high (taller than any building in Boston) with blades about 350 feet long, will be planted on a sweep of seabed 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/business/energy-environment/north-sea-green-energy-wind.html By Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The North Sea has long been host to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and hundreds of rigs for producing oil and natural gas. Now, if European leaders have their way, this shallow and often turbulent stretch of water will, in the coming years, see what could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment aimed at reducing carbon emissions and further shrinking imports of fossil fuels from Russia. ...in Ostend, a Belgian port, in April, the leaders of  nine European governments pledged  to work together to roughly quadruple the already substantial amount of offshore wind generation capacity in the North Sea and nearby waters by 2030 and to increase it by about tenfold by 2050....

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-06-27/solar-panels-could-save-california-but-they-hurt-the-desert By Sammy Roth, LA Times.  Excerpt: High above the Las Vegas Strip, solar panels blanketed the roof of Mandalay Bay Convention Center — 26,000 of them, rippling across an area larger than 20 football fields. ...“This is really an ideal location,” said Michael Gulich, vice president of sustainability at MGM Resorts International. ...There’s enormous opportunity to lower household utility bills and cut climate pollution — without damaging wildlife habitat or disrupting treasured landscapes. The same goes for the rest of Las Vegas and its sprawling suburbs. But that hasn’t stopped corporations from making plans to carpet the desert surrounding Las Vegas with dozens of giant solar fields — some of them designed to supply power to California. The Biden administration has fueled that growth, taking steps to  encourage  solar and wind energy development across vast stretches of publ

https://eos.org/articles/fingerprinting-wood-to-curb-illegal-deforestation By Rishika Pardikar , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: More than a quarter of global forest loss is  driven by commodity production , which includes logging wood. Though illegal deforestation supplies some of the timber in products such as furniture and window frames, independently verifying origins of the wood in finished products is a  daunting task . Scientists from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands  analyzed  the makeup of wood samples from nearly 1,000 different trees in Cameroon, Congo, and Gabon in Central Africa, as well as the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, and found that it’s possible to trace their origins to subnational scales. The researchers tout the analysis as a step toward a global timber-tracing tool....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/anthropocene-geologic-time-crawford-lake/ By Sarah Kaplan ,  Simon Ducroquet ,  Bonnie Jo Mount ,  Frank Hulley-Jones  and  Emily Wright , The Washington Post .  Excerpt: In just seven decades, the scientists say, humans have brought about  greater changes  than they did in more than seven millennia. ...Every new phase of Earth’s history begins with a “ golden spike ” — a spot in the geologic record where proof of a global transformation is perfectly preserved. ...An  exposed Tunisian cliff  face bearing traces of an ancient asteroid impact marks the transition from the age of the dinosaurs to the Cenozoic era. Hydrogen molecules uncovered in Greenland’s ice denote  the start of the Holocene  — the 11,700-year stretch of stable temperatures that encompasses all of human civilization, up to and including the present day. ...In 2009, the  International Commission on Stratigraphy  — an obscure scientific body responsible

https://eos.org/articles/colombian-city-pioneers-path-to-early-warnings-for-all By  Jane Palmer , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Countries with strong early-warning systems can reduce mortality from natural hazards by 8 times, and a 24-hour alert can reduce economic losses by 30%, said  Nahuel Arenas , deputy chief for Americas and the Caribbean at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). ...the United Nations launched the Early Warnings for All initiative (EW4All) to ensure everyone on Earth is protected by early-warning systems by 2027. ...the  Early Warning System of Medellín and the Aburrá Valley (SIATA) , ...provides early warnings for floods, landslides, fires, lightning, and poor air quality to the Aburrá Valley as well as the 2.5 million residents of its largest city, Medellín. “Where we live, emergencies happen all the time, and we’ve had to be flexible and adaptable to solve whatever problem needs to be solved,” said meteorologist  Lina Ceballos-Bonilla , the coordi

https://eos.org/articles/protecting-the-ozone-layer-is-delaying-arctic-melting By Sofia Moutinho , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Efforts to protect the ozone layer have unintentionally benefited Earth’s climate. The Montreal Protocol in particular has not only reduced the “ozone hole” but also  slowed global warming . The treaty, a groundbreaking 1989 international commitment to phase out production of ozone-depleting substances, has also delayed the occurrence of the first ice-free summer in the Arctic by up to 15 years, according to a new  analysis  published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ....

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/scores-die-northern-india-heat-wave-scorches-region-2023-06-19/ By  Saurabh Sharma , Reuters.  Excerpt: At least 54 people died in a district in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh over the last few days, the Times of India newspaper reported on Monday, ...Another 45 people died in neighbouring Bihar state, ...Temperatures have soared close to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days in Ballia with a severe power crisis compounding the situation.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/business/ev-ride-sharing-volunteers.html By  Patricia Leigh Brown , The New York Times.  Excerpt: An innovative E.V. ride-sharing program is bringing low-cost clean transportation to an agricultural town in California’s Central Valley. Others are following suit....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/climate/oil-fossil-fuel-climate-cop28.html By  Max Bearak , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The hosts of the United Nations global climate summit later this year aim to give fossil fuel companies a bigger voice, despite loud objections....

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/14/fire-weather-expanding-across-us-west-southwest By Andrew Freedman and Kavya Beheraj , Axios.  Excerpt: Fire weather days — featuring a volatile mix of low humidity, strong winds and high temperatures — have increased in number across much of the Lower 48 states during the past 50 years, a new analysis shows. ...An  analysis from Climate Central , a nonprofit climate science research organization, found that wildfire seasons are  getting longer and more intense , especially in the West. Many parts of the East have also seen increases in fire weather days. ...The report uses weather data from 476 recording sites across the country during the years 1973-2022. It finds that Southern California, Texas and New Mexico have experienced some of the greatest increases in fire weather days each year, with some areas now seeing around two more months of fire weather compared with a half century ago. ...The Climate Central analysis has not been peer reviewed, thou

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/us/montana-youth-climate-trial.html By  Mike Baker , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Sixteen young people argue that the state is robbing their future by embracing policies that contribute to climate change. A landmark climate change trial opened on Monday in Montana, where a group of young people are contending that the state’s embrace of fossil fuels is destroying pristine environments, upending cultural traditions and robbing young residents of a healthy future.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/12/climate/us-electric-grid-energy-transition.html By Nadja Popovich  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...there is no single U.S. grid. There are three — one in the West, one in the East and one in Texas — that only connect at a few points and share little power between them. Those grids are further divided into a patchwork of operators with competing interests. That makes it hard to build the long-distance power lines needed to transport wind and solar nationwide. ...Tapping into the nation’s vast supplies of wind and solar energy would be one of the cheapest ways to cut the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet,  studies  have  found . That would mean building thousands of wind turbines across the gusty Great Plains and acres of solar arrays across the South, creating clean, low-cost electricity to power homes, vehicles and factories. ...the nation would need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission li

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/climate/arizona-desalination-water-climate.html By  Christopher Flavelle , The New york Times.  Excerpt: ...As the state’s two major sources of water, groundwater and the Colorado River, dwindle from drought, climate change and overuse, officials are considering a hydrological Hail Mary: the construction of a plant in Mexico to suck salt out of seawater, then pipe that water hundreds of miles, much of it uphill, to Phoenix. The idea of building a desalination plant in Mexico has been discussed in Arizona for years. But now, a $5 billion project proposed by an Israeli company is under serious consideration, an indication of how worries about water shortages are rattling policymakers in Arizona and across the American West. On June 1, the state announced that the Phoenix area, the fastest-growing region in the country,  doesn’t have enough groundwater  to support all the future housing that has already been approved.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/world/europe/greta-thunberg-graduates-activism.html By Remy Tumin , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For five years, Greta Thunberg has spent her Fridays in front of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm instead of in class; after 251 weeks, she is hanging up her cardboard protest sign — as a student. ...Ms. Thunberg, an activist who has inspired young people around the world to demand action against climate change, graduated from high school on Friday in Sweden, signifying what she said would be her final school strike. ...In her five years on the world stage, Ms. Thunberg has rallied her peers; written three books; faced off against  former President Donald J. Trump ; and excoriated economic leaders in Davos, Switzerland,  for the “climate chaos” they created , as well as world leaders at the United Nations for  their “business as usual” approach  toward global warming. Ms. Thunberg said she planned to continue protesting on Fridays but because of her gr

https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/2023-spring-summer/berkeley-goes-all-electric-as-part-of-ambitious-clean-energy-campus-plan/ By Pat Joseph, California Magazine.  Excerpt: Goodbye 36-year-old gas turbine, hello electric thermal plant. ...In 2028, as part of Berkeley’s ambitious Clean Energy Campus plan, the 36-year-old gas-fired cogeneration plant will be replaced with a new electrified heating and cooling plant, to be located at North Field, the extramural playing field just north of Hearst Gym, and a utility-fed electrical system.  The current power plant provides about 90 percent of the electricity and 100 percent of the steam needs of campus. When it was first brought online in 1987, the cogen plant was state of the art, efficiently producing both electricity and steam, the latter used for heating and lab processes. But now, says Kira Stoll, chief sustainability and carbon solutions officer, it’s time to move on to a better, cleaner source of power—one that doesn’t e

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/politics/wildfires-republicans-climate-change.html By Maggie Astor  and  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: While many of them acknowledge that climate change is real, they largely downplay the issue and reject policies that would slow rising temperatures....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/climate/canada-wildfires-smoke-extreme-weather.html By Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: It’s not officially summer yet in the Northern Hemisphere. But the extremes are already here. Fires are burning across the breadth of Canada, blanketing parts of the eastern United States with choking, orange-gray smoke. Puerto Rico is under a severe heat alert as other parts of the world have been recently. Earth’s oceans have heated up at an alarming rate. ...the science is unequivocal that global warming significantly increases the chances of severe wildfires and heat waves like the ones affecting major parts of North America today. Now comes a global weather pattern known as El Niño, which can drive up temperatures and set heat records. Thursday morning, scientists  announced its arrival ....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/us/canada-wildfires-us-smoke-air-quality.html By Jesus Jiménez ,  Derrick Bryson Taylor  and  Judson Jones , The New York Times.  Excerpt: An eye-watering and cough-inducing smoky haze from Canadian wildfires smothered a swath of the eastern and northern United States on Tuesday, with officials warning residents with health risks to stay indoors and keep their windows closed. Health alerts were issued from New York to the Carolinas, and as far west as Minnesota. In New York City, the smoke could be tasted as well as smelled, and it wrapped the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Manhattan’s other landmarks in a blanket of orange-gray haze. ...The worst effects were in Canada, where more than 400 active wildfires were burning, according to the  Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center , exacerbating an already active wildfire season that is expected only to worsen. More than 200 of the fires, many of them in Quebec, were burning out of cont

https://eos.org/articles/flash-droughts-are-getting-flashier By  Roberto González , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In the summer of 2012, a  severe drought  unexpectedly struck the central United States. The event began in May and rapidly intensified until it peaked in mid-July, when precipitation hit record lows throughout the Midwest, affecting approximately 80% of U.S. agricultural land and causing  $34.5 billion in losses . Flash droughts such as this are developing more quickly and happening more frequently because of climate change, according to a recent  study  published in  Science . Unlike slow droughts, which develop over years, flash droughts arise in a matter of weeks and can last 30–45 days (or even years). Because these events are abrupt and relatively localized, they are more difficult to forecast.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/guides/heat-pump-buying-guide/ By  Thom Dunn , Wirecutter, New York Times.  Excerpt: Heat pumps are good for your wallet—and the world. They’re the  cheapest  and  most efficient  way to handle both heating and cooling for your home, no matter where you live. They’re also better for the environment. In fact,  most experts agree  they’re one of the best ways for homeowners to reduce their carbon footprint and reap the benefits of a greener future without sacrificing comfort. In other words, they’re a win-win.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/satellite-beams-solar-power-down-earth-first-kind-demonstration By Daniel Clery, Science.  Excerpt: ...A satellite launched in January has steered power in a microwave beam onto targets in space, and even sent some of that power to a detector on Earth, the experiment’s builder, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech),  announced on 1 June . ...The transmitted power was small, just 200 milliwatts, less than that of a cellphone camera light. But the team was still able to steer the beam toward Earth and detect it with a receiver at Caltech. “It was a proof of concept,” says Caltech electrical engineer Ali Hajimiri....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/climate-change-is-drying-out-earths-soils By  Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...In a new study,  Hsu et al.  quantify how global warming affects soil moisture. Although climate change will dehydrate soil, they found, it is not clear how dry is too dry. ...the models disagreed on the threshold at which Earth would become a more moisture-limited system—a value called critical soil moisture. ...Critical soil moisture has wide-ranging impacts on the water cycle, climate, ecosystems, and society. Getting a solid grasp on that value would improve climate models and paint a fuller picture of Earth’s future. ( Earth’s Future ,  https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003511 , 2023)....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/climate/climate-change-insurance-wildfires-california.html By Christopher Flavelle ,  Jill Cowan  and  Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state. Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes. ...In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state. ...And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeow

https://eos.org/articles/spains-seafaring-sports-see-fewer-calm-days By  Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...The changing seasonality of weather conditions will affect the local economy, which relies on tourism, and points to how climate change is affecting the region. ...In 2022, Tarragona’s shores experienced roughly 8 more brave days, 3 more surf days, and 5 fewer calm days per month than in 1958, though the trends are still preliminary, Boqué Ciurana said. The peak period for snorkeling and other gentle recreation, typically July and August, has gotten shorter, whereas periods that are good for more active sports such as surfing and sailing have grown longer. Boqué Ciurana  presented these results  at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2023.... 

https://eos.org/opinions/the-science-we-need-to-assess-marine-carbon-dioxide-removal By Jaime B. Palter ,   Jessica Cross ,   Matthew C. Long ,   Patrick A. Rafter  and   Clare E. Reimers , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: As companies begin selling credits for marine carbon dioxide removal in largely unregulated marketplaces, scientists must develop standards for assessing the effectiveness of removal methods. ...Three categories of mCDR [marine CO 2  removal] approaches— ocean iron fertilization ,  artificial upwelling , and  seaweed cultivation —aim to stimulate  primary productivity  at the ocean’s surface with the expectation that some of the additional biomass produced will sink into and remain in the deep ocean. In contrast,  ocean alkalinity enhancement  (OAE) involves intentionally dispersing alkaline materials such as lime on the ocean’s surface to shift the chemical equilibrium of the seawater carbon system and thereby increase uptake of atmospheric CO 2 . Still another approach proposes