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Heatwave season has quietly grown by 39 days, arriving sooner and lasting longer

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By Eric Ralls , earth.com.  Excerpt: The heatwave season has stretched by about 39 days since 1979, with the biggest shifts in dry regions and a recent rise in fast-peaking heat. Scientists have mostly judged heatwaves by how often they strike, how hot they get and how long they last. When they show up in the year has drawn far less attention, and that timing is shifting across most of the world’s land. A new global analysis finds that the heatwave season now starts earlier, ends later and has been stretching at both ends since the late 1970s. Between 1979 and 2023, the first heatwave of the warm season arrived about two weeks earlier, and the last one ended about 24 days later. Put together, the stretch from first heatwave to last grew by roughly 39 days. The researchers counted heat that’s unusual for the date, so an early heatwave isn’t always as hot as one in midsummer. Wenfang Xu of the South China Botanical Garden , part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , is the study’s fir...
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New Colorado Neighborhood Could Offer Glimpse into the Future of Home Energy Use

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By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: KEN CARYL, Colo.—A new residential development south of Denver is the testing ground for an unusual partnership that could transform home heating and cooling across the country. Dandelion Energy, a geothermal startup, and Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, recently completed construction of nearly 100 homes at the base of Colorado’s Front Range, each equipped with its own ground-source heat pump. The systems use less electricity than even the most efficient air-source heat pumps, potentially helping Colorado meet its climate goals while reducing peak energy demand and eliminating the need for new gas pipelines.  Ground-source heat pumps draw on steady temperatures belowground to help heat and cool buildings. ...Installing the devices across dozens of similar new homes at once also eliminates the need for custom plans for each building and avoids potentially costly retrofits to the buildings’ heating, ventilation a...
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Fervo Energy Achieves First Power at Cape Station, a Landmark Moment for the Future of Enhanced Geothermal Systems

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Fervo Energy press release.  Excerpt: Fervo Energy (Nasdaq: FRVO), a global pioneer of next-generation geothermal energy, today announced that Cape Station , its flagship geothermal development in Beaver County, Utah, has achieved First Power, marking the first time a utility-scale enhanced geothermal development has reached this milestone anywhere in the world....Fervo uses horizontal drilling techniques adapted from the oil and gas industry, allowing multiple wells to be drilled from a single pad and unlocking geothermal resources that were previously inaccessible with traditional technology.  “Cape Station works because we treated the subsurface like an engineering challenge,” said Jack Norbeck, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Fervo Energy. “Years of drilling, completion design, subsurface modeling, and flow testing led to this moment, and this is the validation that matters most. First Power is proof the science works.” ...Enhanced geothermal draws continu...
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Energy Secretary Dismisses Reports of ‘Blanket Ban’ on Diesel Exports

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By  Maxine Joselow , The New York Times. The New York Times. Excerpt: “Nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel,” [Energy Secretary Chris] Wright said. ...Asked why he did not see a brighter future for solar energy in the United States, Mr. Wright said, “Every day, actually, the sun goes down, it doesn’t produce power at all.” While it is true that solar panels can only produce power when the sun is shining, enormous batteries can store excess electricity generated during the day for use around the clock. Mr. Wright also defended the Energy Department’s cancellation of more than $7.5 billion in grants for clean energy projects in states that had voted for Democrats. He told Congress in June that politics had nothing to do with the decision. Federal officials later acknowledged in court documents that they had rescinded the funding “based solely” on political considerations....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/climate/chris-wright-trump-ener...
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Protecting tropical forests is more cost-effective for biodiversity and climate than restoration

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By Leonardo S. Miranda   et al, Science.  Editor's Summary: Restoring degraded ecosystems is increasingly recognized as necessary for maintaining biodiversity but may be less effective than avoiding degradation in the first place. Miranda et al . used counterfactual scenarios to compare the cost-effectiveness of different protection strategies in the Brazilian Amazon tropical forest, a globally important area for biodiversity and carbon storage that is threatened by deforestation and forest disturbances. Avoiding deforestation was most effective (and cost-effective) for carbon storage, whereas avoiding disturbances (fire and logging) had the most benefits for biodiversity. Restoration was least effective for both outcomes. Combining all three types of interventions was necessary to create net-positive outcomes, showing that restoration still has an important role to play. —Bianca Lopez.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx9928 . 
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Endangered Sea Turtle Lays Eggs on Southern California Beach

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By Cynthia Silva , The New York Times.  For the first time ever, scientists recorded a sea turtle laying eggs on a beach on the U.S. West Coast. A fence was erected around the eggs of the olive ridley turtle.  Video at https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/earth/100000011167855/endangered-sea-turtle-california-beach.html .  See also CNN article Tropical sea turtles discovered nesting in California for the first time in recorded history , by Laura Paddison, Sept 25. 
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Chemical Conversations Between Forests and the Sky Affect Air Quality, Clouds, and More

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By Dennis Clark , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Do forests cool the planet or warm it? It’s a deceptively simple question with no clear answer. The catch is that the same forest can push climate in opposite directions at once. Forests are widely viewed as climate change mitigators—and planting trees as a partial climate solution —because they absorb carbon dioxide. Yet that framing is incomplete . Trees also release reactive gases called biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that can influence cloud formation, contribute to air pollution, and extend the atmospheric lifetime of methane, a greenhouse gas that can trap about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Although largely invisible to the public, BVOC emissions are significant. They account for roughly 90% of the global mass of nonmethane volatile organic compounds entering the atmosphere [ Khan et al. , 2025]. In natural habitats, forest trees are the dominant sources of BVOCs. They’re responsible for the familiar scent of pin...
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