By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Tropical forests are biodiversity hot spots; preserving them is a crucial part of global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. When these verdant ecosystems are destroyed, they release  millions  of metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, emissions numbers second only to those driven by fossil fuel consumption. A host of international efforts have emerged to help curb tropical forest loss. The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries ( REDD+ ) program, established in 2005, is a United Nations–supported initiative for countries to sustainably manage and conserve forested land to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Countries receive financial incentives to preserve and maintain their forests—compensation intended to make forests more valuable intact than cut down. There are more than 350 REDD+ projects worldwide, and in many project locations,  habitats have been protected , and...

By Robert F. Service , Science.  Excerpt: Despite the growing adoption of solar power and other renewables, fossil fuels still rule our energy world. That makes steps to make them cleaner all the more vital. Chemists report today in  Science  the discovery of an additive that  sharply cuts carbon emissions  from an industrial process that can convert coal, natural gas, or agricultural biomass to liquid fuels such as diesel or gasoline. ...Fischer-Tropsch process ...was used by Germany in the 1930s to fuel the Nazi war machine and by South Africa during apartheid to produce fuels from the nation’s abundant coal reserves. Although relatively expensive, the approach is still used today to satisfy strategic fuel security needs or in places with abundant feedstocks such as coal or natural gas. The chemistry is highly polluting, however. ...one-third of all the carbon contained in syngas ends up as CO 2  vented into the atmosphere. ...Ding Ma, a chemist at Peking...

By Taylor Mitchell Brown , Science.  Excerpt: About 2200 years ago, a wealthy Han soldier was entombed in a hillside grave on the frontier of the expanding Han Dynasty, in what is now western China. His tomb was filled with gold coins and emblazoned with ornate calligraphy. But what most interested Bao Yang at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and head of its Tree-Ring Laboratory was the wood of his coffin. For dendrochronologists like Yang, coffin wood can be a critical source of tree rings, which can help scientists date sites—sometimes to precise calendar years—and offer details about the region’s environment and climate during the tree’s lifetime. The thickness of rings from the Han soldier’s pine coffin and hundreds of others like it, for example,  revealed that from 270 B.C.E. to 77 C.E. average humidity levels were 18% to 34% higher than today’s, which may have allowed the western Han to expand westward  into what before—and is again today—a barren desert. That...

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A yearly analysis of climate change’s progress and effects shows a “planet on the brink” of ecological breakdown and widespread crisis and suggests that only rapid climate mitigation can avoid the worst consequences. ...The sixth annual report, published in  BioScience ,  analyzes global data on Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, energy, ecosystems, food systems, and more. Researchers identified our planet’s so-called vital signs, including ocean temperature, surface temperature, sea ice extent, and carbon pollution. Of the 34 vital signs, 22 were at record levels, indicating a highly stressed Earth system. For example, 2024 surpassed 2023 as the hottest year on record.  Ocean heat  and  wildfire -related tree cover loss are both at all-time highs. Deadly weather disasters surged in 2024 and 2025, with floods, wildfires, and typhoons killing  hundreds in the U.S. alone . Atmospheric warming is showing signs of acc...

By Adele Peters , FastCompany.  Excerpt: Most climate reports are bleak. Temperatures are soaring. Sea levels are rising. Companies are missing—or abandoning—their emissions targets. But a  new report  from the nonprofit Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) looks at the surprising amount of progress that’s happened since the Paris climate agreement 10 years ago. Renewable energy has grown faster than every major forecast predicted in 2015. There’s now four times as much solar power as the International Energy Agency (IEA) expected 10 years ago. Last year alone, the world installed  553 gigawatts  of solar power...which is 1,500% more than the IEA had projected. Investors are now pouring twice as much into renewables as into fossil fuels. More than 1 in 5 new cars sold worldwide today is  an EV ; a decade ago, that number was fewer than 1 in 100. ...the world is on track to reach 100 million  EVs  by 2028. Dozens of countries have net-zero...

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.   Excerpt: Exxon Mobil sued California late Friday claiming that two new state laws that aim to fight climate change would violate the oil company’s free speech rights. The two laws, passed in 2023 and known as the California Climate Accountability Package, would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to calculate and report the greenhouse gas emissions created by the use of their products, along with the business risks that climate change represents for the companies. ...In the past, climate regulations have generally required companies to report their own corporate emissions, but not emissions caused by people using the products that they manufacture and sell. For oil companies like Exxon, the new rules, which begin to take effect in 2026, mean calculating and then reporting the emissions caused by activities like the use of gas or diesel in cars and trucks. ... Exxon’s lawsuit , filed in the United States Distr...

By Karen Zraick  and  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Some carmakers and energy executives say the plan would trigger costly litigation and spur individual states to create a patchwork of tighter rules....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/climate/endangerment-finding-auto-energy-lawsuits.html . 

By Science Advisor.  Excerpt: Researchers have declared  southern Florida’s  Acropora  coral colonies functionally extinct . The death knell for two reef-building species, elkhorn and staghorn, was the 2023 marine heatwave that brought temperatures above 31°C for almost 6 weeks. The event was the ninth mass coral mortality event for the region since 1987. “ This ecosystem is forever transformed ,” lead author Ross Cunning told  Nature . Conservation for these species “needs to fundamentally change.” Acropora  have made Florida and the Caribbean their home for the past 250,000 to 500,000 years. During the heatwave, they bleached in 98% to 100% of their southern Florida range, a process whereby the corals lose the symbiotic algae that feed them and give them color. Previously, scientists had attempted to reintroduce the corals in areas where they had declined. But with the reintroduced organisms now dead, the authors say that efforts must turn to breeding mor...

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: Acoustic technique could make it easier to monitor threat to marine life stemming from rising carbon emissions. ...The ocean is a noisy place. Ship propellers and whale songs reverberate at the lowest pitches, while at higher tones dolphins click and shrimp snap their claws. Between these frequencies are the sounds of the churning sea itself, generated as waves, wind, and rain roil its surface. Researchers have now used this ambient noise to probe the rising acidity of the ocean. The acoustic technique,  published  last week in the  Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans , could make it easier to measure this key parameter of ocean health across vast distances rather than relying on point measurements....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/ambient-noise-can-track-dangerous-ocean-acidification . 

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A large swath of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will soon open for drilling, the Trump administration announced today. ...The news is the latest in  a saga  involving the ANWR, which in total spans 19.6 million acres. The 1.5 million acres to be opened for drilling represent the coastal plain of the refuge. ...Trump first opened the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain region for drilling in 2020, but the  sale of drilling leases in early 2021  generated just $14.4 million in bids, rather than the $1.8 billion his administration had estimated. ...Erik Grafe, an attorney for the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, in   a statement ...  “The Gwich’in people, most Americans, and even major banks and insurance companies know the Arctic Refuge is no place to drill.” In contrast,  Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat (VOICE) , a nonprofit dedicated “to preserving and advancing North Slope Iñupiat cultural and eco...

By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: ...the recent fate of snow crabs in much of the Bering Sea. An unprecedented underwater heat wave there in 2018 and ’19 set off a chain reaction that led to the disappearance of an estimated 47 billion crabs, one of the largest marine die-offs ever documented. Suddenly, a $150 million fishery mythologized in the  Deadliest Catch  reality TV show found itself with no catch at all. State regulators for the first time banned Bering Sea snow crab fishing in 2023 and ’24, and the U.S. government declared a federal fishery disaster. The fishery reopened this year. But crabbing boats were only allowed to haul in a tiny fraction of what they had caught previously. The collapse “has had massive impacts,” says Scott Goodman, a fisheries biologist and executive director of the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, which is funded by the crab industry. ...In the early months of 2018 and again in 2019, however, the winds reversed, blowing fr...

By Amelia Nierenberg , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Iceland lost the distinction this month of being one of the last places in the world  without a confirmed sighting of wild mosquitoes . And their presence was discovered only because of a rope in a garden doused in sugary red wine. ...The question for Icelandic scientists is whether they will be short-lived tourists or the beginning of a new, native population. But either way, mosquito experts say the discovery is a sign of how  rapid climate change  and  globalization  are changing Iceland. “We should not be surprised that we see mosquitoes popping up in very strange localities,” said Bart Knols, a Dutch mosquito expert and a founder of  MalariaWorld , which gathers and shares malaria research. Iceland has seen a spike in insect life over the past four decades.... Recently, that growth has  coincided with the skyrocketing number of international travelers visiting the geographically isolated na...

By Evan Howell , Quanta Magazine.  Excerpt: In May 2014, NASA  announced(opens a new tab)  at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a point of irreversible retreat. Glaciers flowing toward the sea at the periphery of the 2-kilometer-thick sheet of ice were losing ice faster than snowfall could replenish them, causing their edges to recede inland. With that, the question was no longer whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would disappear, but when. When those glaciers go, sea levels will rise by more than a meter, inundating land currently inhabited by  230 million people(opens a new tab) . And that would be just the first act before the collapse of the entire ice sheet, which could raise seas  5 meters(opens a new tab)  and redraw the world’s coastlines. ...If  greenhouse gas emissions  continue unabated, seas would rise a staggering  15 meters(opens a new tab)  by 2300. ...not all scie...

By Kate Saxton, The Cool Down.  Excerpt: The United Nations recently  announced  that more than $1 trillion has been invested in its Energy Compact...an initiative by countries, companies, and organizations under the UN to invest in clean energy, improve electricity access, and promote  clean cooking . The latest Energy Compacts Annual Progress Report showed that $1.6 trillion has been invested, with $284 billion put to action since 2021, according to Power Technology.  The report revealed that approximately 285 million people have benefited from the agreement, with better access to clean energy. ...Additionally, 2.8 million  electric vehicles  were added, along with more than 300,000  EV charging stations . However, the report also stated that more than $4 trillion is needed annually to cover global needs for electricity and clean cooking. It showed that 660 million people have no access to electricity and that more than 2 billion rely on polluti...

By Prabhat Ranjan Mishra , Interesting Engineering.  Excerpt: A new energy storage system for high-rise buildings has been introduced in Canada. Designed by University of Waterloo researchers, the solid gravity energy storage system is claimed to be suitable for storing renewable energy. The system combines façade-mounted PV panels, small rooftop wind turbines, Li-Ion batteries, and a rope-hoist-based gravity energy storage (GS)....  Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/canada-solid-gravity-energy-storage-buildings .

By Raymond Zhong  and  Sachi Kitajima Mulkey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The average level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere climbed by the largest amount on record between 2023 and 2024, the World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday. ...Last year was  Earth’s hottest year  in recorded history. ...In 2024, the atmosphere’s average concentration of the gas reached 423.9 parts per million, an increase of 3.5 parts per million from the year before. That edged out a 3.3 parts per million increase in 2016 that was previously the largest ever measured. Year-to-year rises in carbon dioxide concentrations have accelerated since the 1960s, when the average pace of increase was 0.8 parts per million....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/climate/carbon-dioxide-emissions-record-jump.html . 

By Michelle Lewis , Elektrek.  Excerpt: Rondo Energy has begun commercial operations of what it says is the world’s largest industrial heat battery – a 100 MWh system now operating at a Holmes Western Oil facility in California. Powered entirely by an onsite solar array, the system supplies constant high-pressure steam and heat to the plant, demonstrating how renewable energy can directly power heavy industry. ...During the day, the off-grid solar array charges the Rondo Heat Battery, and the battery delivers stored heat 24/7. After 10 weeks of daily operation, Rondo says the system has met every performance target, achieving over 97% round-trip efficiency and operating at temperatures above 1,000 °C (1,832 °F). The 100 MWh unit provides the same volume of heat as 10,000 household heating systems....  Full article at https://electrek.co/2025/10/16/worlds-largest-industrial-heat-battery-is-online-and-solar-powered/ .

By John Surico  and  Nick Underwood , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The waters surrounding New York allowed it to grow into an economic powerhouse. But what has been a blessing is increasingly a threat, as flooding becomes one of the city’s greatest challenges. Projections that model future flooding in the city show that it will only get worse. By 2080, many areas will face an increased risk of  tidal flooding  because of rising sea levels. At the same time, more neighborhoods will become vulnerable to  extreme rainfall . And wide swaths of the city face increasing peril in the event of  storm surge  from a hurricane. By 2080, nearly 30 percent of the city’s land mass could be  at risk of significant flooding . Some 1.4 million New Yorkers currently live in these areas — 17 percent of the city’s population. New York’s adaptation is a matter of survival. Climate experts have recommended several strategies. The city could increase its ability t...

By Science Advisor.  Excerpt: According to 160 researchers from around the world, the planet has reached the first climate ‘tipping point’: Warmed waters have resulted in mass coral bleaching. “Already … coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback,” the authors of the report noted. “We can no longer talk about tipping points as a future risk,” said one of the report’s lead authors. “This is our new reality.”...  See GLOBAL TIPPING POINTS  REPORT  |  READ MORE AT  NATURE . See also Eos article, As Seas Rise, Corals Can’t Keep Up . 

By Dharna Noor , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The  Trump administration  has killed a massive proposed  solar power project  in  Nevada  that would have been one of the largest in the world, indicating that the White House plans to attack not only wind power but all renewable energy. On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) changed the status of the  Esmeralda 7  project to say its environmental review has been “ cancelled ”, .... The super project in southern Nevada was set to cover set to cover 185 sq miles – a footprint close to the size of Las Vegas ...the network of solar panels and batteries was set to produce 6.2 gigawatts of energy, or enough to power nearly 2m homes....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/trump-officials-drop-major-solar-power-project-in-another-renewable-energy-attack .  Related article from Los Angeles Times has this headline: "Leaked list shows Trump administration conside...

By Dharna Noor , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his  administration , including more than 40 who have directly worked for oil, gas or coal companies, according to a  new analysis . The report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit that has been critical of the  Trump administration , alongside the Revolving Door Project, a corporate watchdog, analyzed the backgrounds of nominees and appointees within the White House and eight agencies dictating energy, environmental and climate policy. That includes the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior and energy departments and others....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/08/trump-administration-fossil-fuels-climate . 

By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: Omar Yaghi, a Jordanian-American chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry today, sharing it with Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Japan. The  scientists were cited  for creating “molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow. These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.”...  Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/08/uc-berkeleys-omar-yaghi-shares-2025-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/ .

By By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Fifty miles off the Tuscan coast, in a sparkling blue expanse broken only by rocky, forbidding islets, including the real-life Island of Montecristo, ancient creatures are roosting beneath the waves. They spend their days feasting on an unlikely source of nourishment: methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks out of cracks in the seafloor. Lately, researchers have been trying to put these microorganisms to work on an urgent task. If their appetites can be redirected to other sources of their favorite gas — namely, the hundreds of millions of tons of planet-warming methane emitted each year from oil and gas sites, livestock and wetlands — then they might just help slow climate change. First, though, researchers need to better understand these microbes, which have been on this planet for billions of years but remain enigmatic in many ways....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/climate/methane-eating-microbes-...

By Shelby Conn , SFGate.  Excerpt: ...11% of  Siskiyou County  households [are] on the  California FAIR Plan  — a fire-only insurance policy no homeowner wants to turn to. ...the reality for many residents and business owners living in California’s rural, high-fire risk areas, where costly insurance rates are forcing homeowners who own their properties outright to forgo insurance altogether. ...“The FAIR Plan is not intended to compete with or replace insurers in the voluntary market.” Rather, it is meant to provide “basic fire insurance coverage for high-risk properties when traditional insurance companies will not,” she said.  The state’s escalating wildfire risk has driven more and more insurers  out of the market  in California. A study funded by the  National Integrated Drought Information System  estimated that, between 1971 and 2021, the number of acres burned in California rose by 172%. That number is only expected to grow, with...

By   MICHAEL HILL . Associated Press (AP).  Excerpt: ...Battery energy storage systems that suck up cheap power during periods of low demand, then discharge it at a profit during periods of high demand, are considered critical with the rise of intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. ...the systems can make grids more reliable and have been credited with reducing blackouts. ...China and the United States lead the world in rapidly adding battery storage energy systems. ...In the U.S., California and Texas have been leaders in battery storage. ...While the Trump administration has been unsupportive or even hostile to renewable energy, key tax credits for energy storage projects were maintained in the recently approved federal budget.... Developers added 4,908 megawatts of battery storage capacity in the second quarter of 2025, with Arizona, California and Texas accounting for about three-quarters of that new capacity, according to a report from American Clean Power As...

By Antonio Piemontese , Wired.  Excerpt: Speaking by video  at the UN Climate Summit in New York last week,  China's  president Xi Jinping laid out his country's  climate  ambitions. While the stated goals may not have been aggressive as some environmentalists would like, Xi at least reaffirmed China's green commitment. “Despite some countries going against the trend, the international community should stay on the right track, maintain unwavering confidence, unwavering action, and undiminished efforts,” he said. Any reference to Donald Trump and the United States was surely intended (though not explicit). ...Xi Jinping's speech included a commitment to reach 3,600 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind and solar capacity by 2035, six times the country's 2020 figures. This is already the leading country in terms of installed renewable power, and a giant on the technology front as well, with universities churning out environmental and climate tech research at full ...

By Daniel Gala, The Cool Down (TCD).  Excerpt: An initiative that tracks progress in the fight against  rising global temperatures  has  downgraded  the United States from "insufficient" to "critically insufficient" based on a new report. The Climate Action Tracker...  announced  in late September that it had downgraded the U.S. in light of the current administration's drastic U-turn on climate policy.  "The Trump administration's massive support for expanding fossil fuels and unwinding clean energy rollout means the U.S. is being left behind, particularly as China ramps up production of renewable energy,  electric vehicles  and other clean  technology ," Bill Hare, the chief executive officer of Climate Analytics, a nonprofit partnering on the Climate Action Tracker,  said  in a CAT press release....  Full article at https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/climate-action-tracker-us-carbon-emission-reduction/ ....

By Michael Booth  and  Mark Jaffe , The Colorado Sun.  Excerpt: Colorado is losing $550 million in federal clean energy grants as Trump administration officials slash awards to primarily Democratic-controlled states during the budget shutdown,  including a highly-touted $326 million block to Colorado State University  intended to create methane-cutting technologies to combat climate change.  The Colorado Energy Office struggled Thursday to understand the magnitude of the cuts, which are part of a $7.5 billion reversal of Biden-era clean energy grants announced Wednesday night by the U.S. Department of Energy.  ...The Department of Energy list that emerged Thursday “specifically targets states where a majority of Americans cast their votes in favor of the Democratic nominee for President,” a Colorado Energy Office statement said....  Full article at https://coloradosun.com/2025/10/03/colorado-federal-energy-grant-cancellation-550-million/ . 

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Trump administration is emphasizing defense concerns instead of climate research in the rapidly warming Arctic region. ...The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet and is one of the most rapidly changing places on Earth....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/climate/arctic-research-security.html . 

By Gaea Cabico , Science.  Excerpt: As government websites go dark, some nonprofits are trying to fill the void. When news broke that climate.gov was about to go dark in June, Jeffrey Grant scrambled to download as many graphs and data tables from the website as he could. The high school biology teacher had relied heavily on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website to teach students about climate change, showing data on carbon dioxide levels and asking the students to analyze trends and make connections like real climatologists....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/science-teachers-scramble-u-s-climate-resources-vanish .

By Kaja Šeruga , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The towering trees of old forests store massive amounts of carbon in their trunks, branches, and leaves. When these ancient giants are replaced by a younger cohort after logging, wildfire, or other disturbances, much of this carbon stock is lost. ...The resulting study, published in  Nature Ecology and Evolution , measured the regional net aging of forests around the world across all age classes between 2010 and 2020, as well as the impact of these changes on aboveground carbon. ...On average, forests that are at least 200 years old store 77.8 tons of carbon per hectare, compared to 23.8 tons per hectare in the case of forests younger than 20 years old. The implications for carbon sequestration are more nuanced, however. Fast-growing young forests, for instance, can absorb carbon much more quickly than old ones, especially in the tropics, where the difference is 20-fold. But even this rate of sequestration is not enough to replace the old fo...

By Nicolás Rivero  and  Jake Spring , Washington Post.  Excerpt: The Energy Department on Wednesday canceled $7.56 billion in funding for 223 projects aimed at research and deployment of clean energy and other climate-friendly technology mainly in Democratic-led states. The cuts are the latest in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undercut renewable energy and other efforts to reduce the emissions driving climate change. The administration has already sought to claw back funding allotted under President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. That includes  $20 billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund , which supported investments in green technology like heat pumps and electric vehicles, and  $7 billion in the Solar for All program  to help low- and middle-income families install rooftop solar. The latest cuts include a  $1.2 billion award for ARCHES H2 , ...aimed at kick-starting the hydrogen industry in California.... ...

By Calum X. Cunningham et al, Science.  Excerpt: As climate warms and humans build in more undeveloped environments, the threat of costly wildfire disasters is thought to be increasing. Cunningham  et al . examined data about the global distribution, frequency, and associated climate conditions of the most lethal and costly wildfire disasters from 1980 to 2023, finding that disaster risk was highest in regions near relatively affluent, populated areas, and that the frequency of economically disastrous wildfires increased sharply after 2015. They also found that major disasters coincided with extreme climatic conditions. —Jesse Smith...  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr5127 . 

By effrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: NSF-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research fears worse in coming months. ...Anticipating steep cuts to its budget, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), one of the world’s leading climate research centers, this week laid off 29 employees and decided not to fill 21 vacant positions. The job actions...coincide with the start of a partial U.S. government shutdown. NCAR, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has so far been able to maintain normal operations and avoid furloughs of its 830 employees. But NCAR officials fear what could happen next: a $50 million cut to the center’s current $123 million budget....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/renowned-u-s-climate-center-trims-staff-ahead-expected-budget-cuts .