http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/flow-battery-could-power-green- homes-when-sun-goes-down-and-wind-stops-blowing Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: With solar and wind electricity prices plunging, the hunt is on for cheap batteries to store all this power for use around the clock. Now, researchers have made an advance with a flow battery, the type of battery being developed to soak up enough excess wind and solar power to fuel whole cities. They report the discovery of a potentially cheap, organic molecule that can power a flow battery for years instead of days. ...Flow batteries have the same components as the typical lithium-ion cells in your cellphone, but work in a way that allows them to be scaled up to provide megawatts. They have pairs of electrodes that convert energy stored in chemicals into electricity, and electrolytes that ferry charges from one electrode to another. But where conventional batteries package electrodes and electrolytes t...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/california-birds-climate-change.html Source:   By Wallace Ravven, The New York Times. Excerpt: More than a century ago, zoologist Joseph Grinnell launched a pioneering survey of animal life in California, ...to all corners and habitats of the state, from Death Valley to the High Sierra. ...Grinnell ...produced one of the richest ecological records in the world: 74,000 pages of meticulously detailed field notes, recording the numbers, habits and habitats of all vertebrate species that the team encountered. In 2003, ...Morgan Tingley, ... an ecology graduate student at the university, ...wanted to know how birds had fared since Grinnell last took a census. ...Dr. Tingley and his colleagues discovered that most species now nest about a week earlier than they did 70 to 100 years ago. That slight advance in timing translates into nesting temperatures about two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the birds would encounter had they not moved up th...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times. Excerpt: “Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe. Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. Climate change denialists were quick to jump on Dr. Campbell’s research as proof that increased carbon dioxide is making the world a better place. ...Dr. Campbell ...feels [they] are drawing the wrong lessons from his research. Here are four reasons he bel...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/climate/record-heat-waves.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, Tiffany May and Zia ur-Rehman, The New York Times. Excerpt: Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones. The contiguous United States had its hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. Japan was walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle. Is it because of climate change? Scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concluded in a study released Friday that the likelihood of the heat wave currently baking Northern Europe is “more than two times higher today than if human activities had not altered climate.”...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/world/europe/uk-hot-weather.html Source:   By Ceylan Yeginsu, The New York Times. F Excerpt: LONDON — To the casual observer, it may seem as if Britain is completely unprepared to deal with long spells of scorching-hot weather. The casual observer would be mostly right. The monthlong heat wave has broken records, spawned wildfires in Wales and England, spurred delays in the transportation system and given birth to names like “Furnace Friday,” as Britons tried to find ways to describe this puzzling pain. “Shops are out of fans, ice, sun cream, ice cream, and there’s a water shortage that has left our beautiful, lush parks all parched and yellow,” said Lucy Thornton.... Summer started out with unusually good weather: The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the sun came out. Some Britons were so delighted that they canceled vacations abroad. ...Then came the heat. Unlike other European countries that are accustomed to coping with hot weather, Br...

https://eos.org/articles/why-are-siberian-temperatures-plummeting-while-the-arctic-warms Source:   By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The answer involves the intricacies of stratospheric circulation, which, if better represented in climate models, could help predict extreme weather events in Siberia and elsewhere. ...Climate change is warming the Arctic and melting sea ice, yet Siberia has experienced significantly colder and harsher winters for the past few decades. A study published yesterday in Science Advances shows that interactions between melting regional sea ice and the stratosphere—an atmospheric layer spanning about 10–50 kilometers above Earth’s surface—play a key role in creating these frigid winter conditions....

https://eos.org/articles/heat-waves-more-than-coral-death-may-cause-fish-to-flee-reefs Source:   By Ilima Loomis, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: It’s no secret that global warming is bringing dramatic changes to coral reef ecosystems. Scientists have widely believed that habitat loss caused by coral death has the biggest effect on reef fish and invertebrates. ...Changes caused by warm water are actually faster and more widespread than the effects of habitat loss. Now new research has found that reef fish populations shift in direct response to the temperature itself and that changes caused by warm water are actually faster and more widespread than the effects of habitat loss. The findings are significant for coral reef protection because a loss of biodiversity, especially of fish that eat harmful algae, could make it harder for reefs to recover from heat waves. “I was surprised by how dramatic the response was over such a short time period,” said Chris Brown, a marine ecologist with the Aus...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/climate/heat-waves-cities.html Source:   By Brad Plumer. Excerpt: Cities can be miserable during heat waves.  ...the urban heat island effect: A large city’s built-up environment can make it 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding countryside during the day and up to 22 degrees warmer at night. That extra heat is becoming a serious public health problem. On average, 650 Americans die each year from heat-related causes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and global warming is only expected to make things worse. ...Here’s a look at a few of the more promising ideas that cities around the world have been pursuing to try to beat the heat. (1) Bring Back the Trees, (2) Let the Wind Blow, (3) Paint Roofs White, (4) Get People to Cooling Centers, (5) Prepare for Deadly Blackouts....

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/outer-space-may-have-just-gotten-bit-closer Source:   By Paul Voosen. Science Magazine. Excerpt: ...A new study argues that the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space—known as the Kármán line—is 20 kilometers, or about 20%, closer than scientists thought. Though the new definition won’t make a difference for launching rockets and spacecraft, it could help clarify a legal debate that will set the rules for space policy—and commercial spaceflight—for years to come. Until now, most scientists have said that outer space is 100 kilometers away. At that point, it’s been thought, the speed needed to achieve lift in the superthin atmosphere is equal to the speed needed to simply orbit the planet; once there, a spacecraft’s horizontal pace would counteract the tug of Earth’s gravity. ...A close look shows that the traditional definition flies in the face of evidence, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian ...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/energy-environment/hoover-dam-renewable-energy.html Source:   By Ivan Penn. Graphic by Mika Gröndahl. Photo and video by David Walter Banks, aerial video by Josh Haner and Josh Williams, The New York Times. Excerpt: Hoover Dam was a public works project likened to the pyramids. Now, after channeling a river, what if it could tap the power of the sun and wind? ...Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future....

https://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Global-warming-will-increase-suicides-Stanford-13097245.php Source:   By Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: More people are likely to take their own lives as the planet warms, say researchers at Stanford University and UC Berkeley in a study published Monday that suggests yet another worrisome impact of climate change. The multidisciplinary research team looked at nearly 1 million suicides in North America and found that hotter temperatures correlate with higher suicide rates. The warming projected through 2050, the group figures, could increase suicide rates by 1.4 percent in the U.S. and 2.3 percent in Mexico over that time, resulting in 21,000 additional deaths in the two nations. The role of heat, the authors said, may be just as significant as other, more well-known drivers of suicide, like economic hardship, which also pushes rates up, and suicide prevention programs and gun control legislation, which tend to pu...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/The-Klamath-conflict-Water-war-along-13089350.php Source:   By Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: TULELAKE, Siskiyou County [CA]...The Klamath River has run low, and the economic fallout of a water shortage brought on by years of drought has gripped this farming community, ...Dating to 1906, the enormous waterworks anchored by Upper Klamath Lake, where the Klamath River begins its 250-mile journey to sea, consists of seven dams and hundreds of miles of canals. It irrigates a region worth more than $300 million annually in potatoes, onions, sugar beets and other crops, .... In addition to serving farmers, federal project managers are required to maintain sufficient water downstream in the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon as well as upstream in the vast yet shallow Upper Klamath Lake for endangered suckerfish. After years of drought and declining fish numbers, however, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has faced a flu...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/science/white-clover-evolution.html Source:   By Karen Weintraub, The New York Times. Excerpt: It’s considered a nuisance or a weed when it pops up in luscious suburban lawns, long the bane of gardeners and homeowners.... But ...white clover ...is one of the most rapidly evolving species of flora, learning quickly how to survive in the toughest of urban environments. Some green thumbs would not be surprised at its stubborn spread, while others might welcome a haven for bee recovery.... According to a study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B , white clover (Trifolium repens) adapts equally well to cities of all sizes — with 20 studied in Ontario, Canada, from London, with a population near 400,000 to tiny Everett, population 1,670. ...Cities work as great natural test cases for evolution, said Marc Johnson, the director of the Centre for Urban Environments at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, who led the research....

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/greenhouse-gases-are-warming-world-chilling-antarctica-here-s-why Source:   By Sid Perkins, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The greenhouse gases that are warming the globe actually cool Antarctica much of the year, a new study confirms. The odd trend doesn’t break the laws of physics, but it does highlight what a strange place Earth’s southernmost continent truly is. Antarctica is home to many extremes. It’s the world’s highest continent, with an average elevation just a shade under 2300 meters. And despite its ice, it’s technically a desert thanks to a paucity of precipitation. This lack of moisture is one of the key factors behind the region’s “negative greenhouse effect,” says Sergio Sejas, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, who led a newly published investigation of this atmospheric quirk. ...water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, too. It is abundant in the atmosphere, giving it a much stronger...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-of-arizona.html Source:   By Noah Gallagher Shannon, The New York Times. Excerpt: Attracted by lax regulations, industrial agriculture has descended on a remote valley, depleting its aquifer — leaving many residents with no water at all. ...Most North American aquifers lie beneath the Western United States and date back to the beginning of the continent as we know it. Six million years ago, as the Rocky Mountains thrust upward, rivers gashed deep channels in the crust, separating ranges with basins that gradually filled with eroded rock, trapping water beneath it. ... Subject to eons of pressure, every aquifer arranges itself differently, forming vast networks of coves and seams of water, some a thousand feet thick but others just a thin vein. Aquifers are unimaginably complex and incredibly fragile; once tapped, they can take more than 6,000 years to replenish. ...Among the most vulnerable aquifers are those underlying...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/climate/lebanon-climate-change-environment-cedars.html Source:   By Anne Barnard, the New York Times Beirut bureau chief for the past six years, and Josh Haner, a Times photographer. Excerpt: The ancient cedars of Lebanon have outlived empires and survived modern wars. Clinging to shrinking patches of territory, these trees stand for Lebanon’s resilience. Now, global warming could finish them off. ...As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher. In the north...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/climate/india-heat-wave-summer.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...Extreme heat can kill, as it did by the dozens in Pakistan in May.  But as many of South Asia’s already-scorching cities get even hotter, scientists and economists are warning of a quieter, more far-reaching danger: Extreme heat is devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions more. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, they say, heat and humidity levels could become unbearable, especially for the poor.  It is already making them poorer and sicker. Like the Kolkata street vendor who squats on his haunches from fatigue and nausea. Like the woman who sells water to tourists in Delhi and passes out from heatstroke at least once each summer. Like the women and men with fever and headaches who fill emergency rooms. Like the outdoor workers who become so weak or so sick that they routinely miss days of...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: ...Australia [is] fertile ground for ...vast forests of windmills and solar panels. More sunlight per square meter strikes the country than just about any other, and powerful winds buffet its south and west coasts. ...[Douglas] MacFarlane ...For the past 4 years... has been working on a fuel cell that can convert renewable electricity into a carbon-free fuel: ammonia. Fuel cells typically use the energy stored in chemical bonds to make electricity; MacFarlane's operates in reverse. In his third-floor laboratory, he shows off one of the devices, about the size of a hockey puck and clad in stainless steel. Two plastic tubes on its backside feed it nitrogen gas and water, and a power cord supplies electricity. Through a third tube on its front, it silently exhales gaseous ammonia, .... "This is breathi...

https://eos.org/articles/tiny-algae-may-have-prompted-a-mass-extinction Source:   By Katherine Kornei, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: More than three quarters of all marine life died about half a billion years ago. ...Below a certain depth in the stratigraphic record, trilobites, corals, and brachiopods thrived in the ocean. Above it, many types of these organisms are missing. What could have caused 85% of marine species—at a time when life largely existed only in the oceans—to just up and perish? New research offers an unlikely linchpin in this vast die-off: tiny algae. Around the time of this extinction event, algae populations were rising ocean-wide. When these abundant organisms lived, they soaked up atmospheric carbon and stored it in their tissues. But when they died, they may have sunk quickly through the water column, scientists have proposed, rapidly sequestering carbon in the depths of the ocean.... The new study “reveals how algal evolution could have been vital in regulating the...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/narwhals-walruses-are-most-risk-booming-arctic-ship-traffic Source:   By Frankie Schembri, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Melting sea ice means more for whales and polar bears than simply habitat loss. A new study suggests that a dramatic jump in Arctic shipping traffic, thanks to longer open-water seasons, could put a host of Arctic-dwelling marine mammals at risk. As summer sea ice coverage retreats, shipping routes such as the Northwest Passage have become ice-free during warmer months, boosting the number of seagoing vessels by three-fold in some regions. With some projections suggesting the Arctic’s summer sea ice could vanish by 2040, such traffic is only expected to balloon further. The more ships that pass through, the more likely mammals are to be struck, stressed by underwater noise, or have their daily activities interrupted. To determine which animals are most vulnerable, researchers looked at 80 populations of seven species, inclu...