http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-provides-lab-us-forecast-experiments Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: For years, U.S. forecasters have envied their colleagues at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, U.K., whose hurricane prediction models remain the gold standard. Infamously, the National Weather Service (NWS) in 2012 failed to predict Hurricane Sandy’s turn into New Jersey, whereas ECMWF was spot on. But two innovations tested during Hurricane Harvey, one from NASA and another from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), could help level the playing field. ...Last week, GFDL [NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory] anxiously watched the developing storm to see how it compared with a test run of the next-generation model. On Thursday, a day prior to landfall, the experiment agreed with the European model that Harvey would plow inland, stall, then hea...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/world/americas/chile-green-energy-geothermal.html Source:   By Ernesto Londoño, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...they draw steam from the earth at South America’s first geothermal energy plant. With the ability to power roughly 165,000 homes, the new plant is yet another step in Chile’s clean energy transformation. This nation’s rapidly expanding clean energy grid, which includes vast solar fields and wind farms, is one of the most ambitious in a region that is decisively moving beyond fossil fuels. Latin America already has the world’s cleanest electricity, having long relied on dams to generate a large share of its energy needs, according to the World Bank. But even beyond those big hydropower projects, investment in renewable energy in Latin America has increased 11-fold since 2004, nearly double the global rate, according to a 2016 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/world/asia/guam-north-korea-climate-change.html Source:   By Mike Ives, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: HONG KONG — The island of Guam made rare headlines this week when North Korea, responding to blustery language from President Trump, threatened to fire four ballistic missiles into waters near the American territory’s shores. ...Scientists in Guam, however, say they have at least one other major threat in mind: climate change. “We know that it’s serious,” said Austin J. Shelton III, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Center for Island Sustainability at the University of Guam. “Some of the impacts are here, and a lot more are coming.” Like other Pacific islands, Guam may be affected in the coming decades as climate change prompts shifts in weather, temperature and oceanic acidity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/climate/climate-change-lawsuits-courts.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Several groups and individuals around the United States have gone to court to try to do what the Trump administration has so far declined to do: confront the causes and effects of global warming. In California, two counties and a city recently sued 37 fossil fuel companies, seeking funds to cover the costs of dealing with a warming world. In Oregon, a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of young people is moving toward a February trial date.... And more than a dozen state attorneys general have sued to block Trump administration moves to roll back environmental regulations. Efforts in the United States are part of a wave of litigation around the world, including a 2015 decision in which a court in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to toughen its climate policies; that case is under appeal. A 2017 report f...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40877099 Source:   By Matt McGrath, BBC News Environment correspondent For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Fires are rare on an island where 80% of the land is covered by ice up to 3km thick in places. However, satellites have observed smoke and flames north-east of a town called Sisimiut since 31 July. Experts believe at least two fires are burning in peat that may have dried out as temperatures have risen. ...Prof McCarthy believes that melting permafrost is likely to have contributed to this outbreak. She referred to studies carried out in the region that showed degraded permafrost around the town of Sisimiut. Locals say that what they call "soil fires" have happened before, especially in the last 20-30 years....  See also Southern Greenland Wildfire Extinguished

https://eos.org/editors-vox/preventing-climate-change-by-increasing-ocean-alkalinity Source:   Phil Renforthon, Eos/AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The oceans contain more carbon than soils, plants, animals and the atmosphere combined. Every cubic meter of seawater contains about 120 grams of negatively charged bicarbonate ions, which are balanced with positive ions such as calcium and magnesium. This carbon pool was created naturally over millions of years by mineral weathering. A recent review article published in Reviews of Geophysics explores the possibility of accelerating weathering processes to increase bicarbonate ions in the ocean, and thus prevent climate change and potentially ameliorate ocean acidification. The editors asked one of the authors some questions about the scientific basis for this idea and how it might work in practice....

http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/08/03/climate-policies-study-shows-inland-empire-economic-boon/ Source:   By Jacqueline Sullivan, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: According to the first comprehensive study of the economic effects of climate programs in California’s Inland Empire, Riverside and San Bernardino counties experienced a net benefit of $9.1 billion in direct economic activity and 41,000 jobs from 2010 through 2016. Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at Berkeley Law report that many of these jobs were created by one-time construction investments associated with building renewable energy power plants. These investments, they say, helped rekindle the construction industry, which experienced major losses during the Great Recession. When accounting for the spillover effects, the researchers report in their study commissioned by nonpartisan, nonprofit group Next 10, t...

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/seas-rise-trees-die-climate-change-eyes-48961148 Source:   By Wayne Parry, Associated Press For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: They're called "ghost forests" — dead trees along vast swaths of coastline invaded by rising seas, something scientists call one of the most visible markers of climate change. The process has happened naturally for thousands of years, but it has accelerated in recent decades as polar ice melts and raises sea levels, scientists say, pushing salt water farther inland and killing trees in what used to be thriving freshwater plains. ..."I think ghost forests are the most obvious indicator of climate change anywhere on the Eastern coast of the U.S.," said Matthew Kirwan, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who is studying ghost forests in his state and Maryland. "It was dry, usable land 50 years ago; now it's marshes with dead stumps and dead trees." It is happening...