https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/ocean-heat-waves-pacific-s-deadly-blob-could-become-new-normal Source:   By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine. Excerpt: When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?mWithin hours, however, Barbeaux's colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: "The Blob." In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United State

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/polar-vortex-what-is-the-2019-polar-vortex-weather-event-and-is-global-warming-to-blame/ Source:   By Jeff Berardelli, CBS News. Excerpt: Forecasters say millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes will see record-shattering wind chills from 40 to 65 degrees below zero this week — cold so extreme it could cause frostbite on exposed skin in five minutes or less. Some 100 million people will experience temperatures near or below zero. ...the polar vortex [is] a whirling mass of cold air circulating in the mid- to upper-levels of the atmosphere, present every winter. It usually stays closer to the poles but sometimes breaks apart, sending chunks of Arctic air southward into the U.S. during winter. ...Regional cold air outbreaks may be getting an "assist" from global warming. While it may not seem to make sense at first glance, scientifically it's consistent with the extremes expected from climate change. ...Evidence for this was present

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/climate/china-coal-climate-change.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: China...has continued to produce more methane emissions from its coal mines despite its pledge to curb the planet-warming pollutant, according to new research. In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07891-7 ], researchers concluded that China had failed to meet its own government regulations requiring coal mines to rapidly reduce methane emissions, at least in the five years after 2010, when the regulations were passed. It matters because coal is the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, and China is, by far, the largest producer in the world. Coal accounts for 40 percent of electricity generation globally and an even higher share in China, which has abundant coal resources and more than four million workers employed in the coal sector. Scientists and policymakers agree that the world will have to qu

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html Source:   By Nadja Popovich, The New York Times. Excerpt: America isn’t making electricity the way it did two decades ago: Natural gas has edged out coal as the country’s leading generation source ...and renewables like wind and solar have made small yet speedy gains. But, each state has its own story. ...Overall, fossil fuels still dominate electricity generation in the United States. But the shift from coal to natural gas has helped to lower carbon dioxide emissions and other pollution. Last year, coal was the main source of electricity generation for 18 states, down from 32 states in 2001.... [has diagrams of energy mix for each state]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/climate/americans-global-warming-poll.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times. Excerpt: A record number of Americans understand that climate change is real, according to a new survey [http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-mind-december-2018/], and they are increasingly worried about its effects in their lives today. Some 73 percent of Americans polled late last year said that global warming was happening, the report found, a jump of 10 percentage points from 2015 and three points since last March. The rise in the number of Americans who say global warming is personally important to them was even sharper, jumping nine percentage points since March to 72 percent, another record over the past decade. The survey is the latest in a series from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. It was conducted online in November

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/climate/greenland-ice.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times. Excerpt: Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may have reached a “tipping point,” and could become a major factor in sea-level rise around the world within two decades, scientists said in a study published on Monday. The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet.... T he authors found that ice loss in 2012, more than 400 billion tons per year, was nearly four times the rate in 2003. ...The study is the latest in a series of papers published this month suggesting that scientific estimates of the effects of a warming planet have been, if anything, too conservative. Just a week ago, a separate study [ https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/01/08/18128831 ] of ice loss in Antarctica found that the continent is contributing more to rising sea levels than previously thought. Another new analysis suggested tha

https://eos.org/articles/mayor-signs-landmark-clean-energy-law-for-dc Source:   By Randy Showstack, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: With the signing of a landmark clean energy bill today, Washington, D. C. mayor Muriel Bowser has established the city as a global leader in clean energy and efforts to combat climate change. The law, known as the Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018, mandates that 100% of the electricity sold in the city come from renewable energy sources by 2032. In addition, the law...also doubles the required amount of solar energy deployed in the District, makes significant improvements to the energy efficiency of existing buildings, provides energy bill assistance for low- and moderate-income residents, requires all public transportation and privately owned fleet vehicles to become emissions-free by 2045, and funds the DC Green Bank to attract private investment in clean energy projects....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/climate/polar-vortex-2019.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...After a month of relatively mild winter weather, the Midwest and the East Coast are bracing for what is becoming a seasonal rite of passage: the polar vortex. The phrase has become synonymous with frigid temperatures that make snowstorms more likely. A blast of arctic air heralded the vortex’s arrival on Monday. If it seems as if these polar freezes are happening more often, you’re right. “They are definitely becoming more common,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. “There have been a couple of studies [ https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0259.1 ] that have documented that.” ...Colder temperatures have been arriving later in winter over the past few years, according to Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a weather risk assessment firm. But because of chang

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/upshot/how-to-think-about-the-costs-of-climate-change.html Source:   By Neil Irwin, The New York Times. Excerpt: Many of the big economic questions in coming decades will come down to just how extreme the weather will be, and how to value the future versus the present. ...A government report in November raised the prospect that a warmer planet could mean a big hit to G.D.P. in the coming decades. ...Consider three possible ways that climate change could exact an economic cost: A once-fertile agricultural area experiences hotter weather and drought, causing its crop yields to decrease. A road destroyed by flooding because of rising seas and more frequent hurricanes must be rebuilt. An electrical utility spends hundreds of millions of dollars to build a more efficient power grid because the old one could not withstand extreme weather. The farmland’s yield decline is a permanent loss of the economy’s productive capacity... The road rebuildin

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/15/climate/melting-glaciers-globally.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...Glaciers represent the snows of centuries, compressed over time into slowly flowing rivers of ice, up to about a thousand feet thick here in the Tien Shan range and even thicker in other parts of the world. They are never static, accumulating snow in winter and losing ice to melting in summer. But in a warming climate melting outstrips accumulation, resulting in a net loss of ice. The Tuyuksu, which is about a mile and a half long, is getting shorter as well as thinner. When the research station was built in 1957 it was just a few hundred yards from the Tuyuksu’s leading edge, or tongue. Now, reaching the ice requires scrambling on foot for the better part of an hour over piles of boulders and till left as the glacier retreated. In six decades, it has lost more than half a mile. What’s happening in the mountains of southeastern Kazakhst

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/east-antarctica-s-ice-melting-unexpectedly-rapid-clip-new-study-suggests Source:   By Alex Fox, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Antarctica’s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was long thought to come from primarily one place: the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Now, scientists studying 40 years of satellite images have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet—considered largely insulated from the ravages of climate change—may also be melting at an accelerating rate. Those results, at odds with a large 2018 study, could dramatically reshape projections of sea level rise if confirmed. ... East Antarctica’s ice sheet holds 10 times the ice of its rapidly melting neighbor to the west. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most vulnerable to collapse. With an assist from gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/climate/ocean-warming-climate-change.html ] Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: Scientists say the world’s oceans are warming far more quickly than previously thought, a finding with dire implications for climate change because almost all the excess heat absorbed by the planet ends up stored in their waters. A new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Science [ http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/128.summary ], found that the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago. The researchers also concluded that ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years. “2018 is going to be the warmest year on record for the Earth’s oceans,” said Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst at the independent climate research group Berkeley Earth and an author of the study. “As 2017 was the warmest year, and 2016 was the warmest year.” As the pla

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-increase.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday. Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last year, illustrating how difficult it could be for the country to make further progress on climate change in the years to come, particularly as the Trump administration pushes to roll back federal regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/business/energy-environment/wales-hitachi-nuclear-plant-jobs.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: CEMAES, Wales ...a huge construction project is underway. ...Archaeologists are sifting through dirt to document stony dwellings dating from 100 B.C. A technical school is welcoming apprentices eager to learn how to maneuver in high-tech control rooms and operate water-cooling systems. The activity is all tied to a plan by Horizon Nuclear Power to turn this rugged outpost into the home of a plant that could be critical not just to the company, but to the Welsh economy and Britain’s energy future. Horizon, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, is in private talks with the British government over how and when it might build a nuclear plant here at the northern tip of Wales. ...Others in northern Wales herald the economic benefit the potentially enormous investment could have. They see the Horizon plant, which is expe