https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/climate/california-climate-change.html Source:   By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times Excerpt: SACRAMENTO — The Trump administration may appear to control climate policy in Washington, but the nation’s most dynamic environmental regulator is here in California. Mary D. Nichols, California’s electric-car-driving, hoodie-wearing, 72-year-old air quality regulator, is pressing ahead with a far-reaching agenda of environmental and climate actions. She says she will not let the Trump administration stand in her way. ...For now, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said that he will not seek to revoke the federal waiver that allows California to set auto emissions standards — an action that would likely propel the issue to court. Automakers, similarly, have not publicly asked for such a move. ...For much of the 20th century, swaths of Southern California were hit with smog outbreaks that turned the skies so dark that locals once misto...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/25/a-key-antarctic-glacier-just-lost-a-piece-of-ice-four-times-the-size-of-manhattan/ Source:   By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post Excerpt: An enormous Antarctic glacier has given up an iceberg over 100 square miles in size, the second time in two years it has lost such a large piece in a process that has scientists wondering whether its behavior is changing for the worse. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the largest in West Antarctica, ...which loses an extraordinary 45 billion tons of ice to the ocean each year — equivalent to 1 millimeter of global sea level rise every eight years — is 25 miles wide where its floating front touches the sea, and rests on the seafloor in waters more than a half-mile deep. The single glacier alone contains 1.7 feet of potential global sea level rise and is thought to be in a process of unstable, ongoing retreat. ...on Saturday, Stef Lhermitte , a satellite observa...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/22/climate/arctic-sea-ice-shrinking-trend-watch.html Source:   By Nadja Popovich, Henry Fountain, Adam Pearce, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Arctic sea ice has been in steep decline since the late 1970s, when satellite images were first used to study the region. NASA says that the extent of ice covering Arctic waters has fallen by 13 percent per decade. The 10 lowest ice minimums — measured each September, after the summer thaw — have all been recorded since 2007. Scientists say the disappearance of sea ice is largely a result of climate change, with the Arctic warming at a faster rate than any other region....

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recycles-co2-for-ethanol-ethylene/ Source:   By Sarah Yang, Berkeley Lab News Center For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have harnessed the power of photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into fuels and alcohols at efficiencies far greater than plants. The achievement marks a significant milestone in the effort to move toward sustainable sources of fuel. ...said Berkeley Lab chemist Frances Houle, JCAP deputy director for Science and Research Integration, who was not part of the study. “This is a big step forward in the design of devices for efficient CO2 reduction and testing of new materials, and it provides a clear framework for the future advancement of fully integrated solar-driven CO2-reduction devices.”...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/15/climate/does-climate-change-cause-hurricanes-drought.html Source:   By Nadja Popovich, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: It’s been a hectic end to summer, meteorologically speaking. Back-to-back hurricanes raked Texas, Florida and the Caribbean. A Labor Day heat wave broke temperature records in San Francisco and strained California’s electricity grid. Wildfires continue to rage in the Pacific Northwest. This string of extreme events has brought new focus to a familiar question: Is climate change to blame?...

  https://eos.org/opinions/taking-the-pulse-of-the-planet Source:   By Lijing Cheng, Kevin E. Trenberth, John Fasullo, John Abraham, Tim P. Boyer, Karina von Schuckmann, and Jiang Zhu, Eos (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: How fast is Earth warming? Ocean heat content and sea level rise measurements may provide a more reliable answer than atmospheric measurements. Humans have released carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in sufficient quantity to change the composition of the atmosphere (Figure 1). The result is an accumulation of heat in Earth’s system, commonly referred to as global warming. Earth’s climate has responded to this influx of heat through higher temperatures in the atmosphere, land, and ocean. This warming, in turn, has melted ice, raised sea levels, and increased the frequency of extreme weather events: heat waves and heavy rains, for example. The results of these weather events include wildfires and flooding, among other things [Intergove...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/science/parasites-extinction-climate-change.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Recently, scientists carried out the first large-scale study of what climate change may do to the world’s much-loathed parasites. The team came to a startling conclusion: as many as one in three parasite species may face extinction in the next century. As global warming raises the planet’s temperature, the researchers found, many species will lose territory in which to survive. Some of their hosts will be lost, too. “It still absolutely blows me away,” said Colin J. Carlson, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. ...Researchers have begun carefully studying the roles that parasites play. They make up the majority of the biomass in some ecosystems, outweighing predators sharing their environments by a factor of 20 to 1....

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Did-climate-change-cause-the-heat-wave-The-12181543.php Source:   By Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle For Investigation:   Excerpt: ...There’s still no simple answer to the question, “Was that hurricane caused by climate change?” But scientists can now often say whether an event was more likely, and more severe, due to the warming planet. A team of experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, among the pioneers of the evolving science of extreme event attribution, estimated that human-caused climate change probably raised temperatures in California by as much as 4 degrees last week. Similar accounting has been done for the California drought and strings of wildfires across the West, as well as the catastrophic hurricanes Harvey and Irma, whose devastation continues to unfold. ...While scientists can’t blame climate change for causing any one weather system, studies have found that past heat waves in both the U.S. and ab...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/why-are-arctic-rivers-rising-in-winter Source:   By Emily Underwood, Eos/AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Increased glacial melt is boosting winter streamflows by filling aquifers, a new study on an Alaskan river suggests. Alaska’s glacier-fed, braided Tanana River is home to some of the world’s highest-quality salmon fisheries, which have provided sustenance for humans for nearly 12,000 years. Like many Arctic rivers, however, the Tanana and its tributaries are transforming because of rising global temperatures. One prominent change in recent decades is a steady rise in Arctic rivers’ winter flow, which has long puzzled researchers because there is no commensurate increase in precipitation in the Tanana River watershed. Now, a new study suggests that melting glaciers may drive this increased flow by amplifying headwater runoff, the water that drains the mountain region, which is partly lost to the underlying aquifer. In turn, the...

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6354/853 Source:   By Julia Rosen, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Summary: Hurricane Harvey was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2005, but in some ways, it was long overdue. For decades now, tropical storms have been getting a boost from a powerful but still mysterious long-term cycle in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, which appears to be holding steady in its warm, storm-spawning phase. This cycle, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), swings between warm and cool phases every 20 to 60 years, shifting North Atlantic temperatures by a degree or so and setting the backdrop for hurricane season. Since about 1995, the AMO has been in a warm state, but researchers aren't sure where it's headed next. The AMO has traditionally been attributed to natural shifts in ocean currents, and some think it's on the cusp of shifting back toward a cool, quiescent phase. But others pr...