https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/ancient-global-climate-events-rippled-unevenly-across-globe Source:   By Sid Perkins, Science Magazine. Excerpt: In the past 2000 years, Earth has drifted in and out of extended periods of warmer- and cooler-than-normal climate, including the so-called Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Scientists long thought that during these hot and cold spells, temperatures rose and fell in sync across the globe. In fact, Earth warmed and cooled unevenly, with different regions reaching peak high and low temperatures at different times, two new studies suggest. The one exception: Since the mid–19th century, warming trends have covered some 98% of the globe. Widespread networks of weather stations that could accurately record local temperatures didn’t exist until the last half of the 1800s. But scientists can estimate past temperatures using a variety of natural proxies. These “paleothermometers” include the widths of tree rings and the propo...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/ocean-acidification-could-boost-shell-growth-marine-life-snails-and-sea-urchins Source:   By Katie Camero, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The world’s oceans are acidifying rapidly as they soak up massive amounts of the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) released from burning fossil fuels. That’s bad news for tiny marine critters like coral and sea urchins that make up the base of the ocean food chain: Acidic water not only destroys their shells, but it also makes it harder for them to build new ones. Now, scientists studying sea snails have discovered an unexpected side effect of this acid brew—it can help some of them build thicker, stronger shells by making their food more nutritious. Often called climate change’s “evil twin,” acidification happens when the ocean absorbs atmospheric CO 2   As CO 2  dissolves, the process releases hydrogen ions, lowering the water’s pH and increasing its acidity. That acidic water also removes many f...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/major-us-cities-are-leaking-methane-twice-rate-previously-believed Source:   By Sid Perkins, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Natural gas, long touted as a cleaner burning alternative to coal, has a leakage problem. A new study has found that leaks of methane, the main ingredient in natural gas and itself a potent greenhouse gas, are twice as big as official tallies suggest in major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard. The study suggests many of these fugitive leaks come from homes and businesses—and could represent a far bigger problem than leaks from the industrial extraction of the fossil fuel itself. ...When burned for heat or power, methane emits less carbon dioxide (CO2) than fossil fuels such as coal. But when leaked directly into the atmosphere, its warming effect can be dozens of times stronger than CO2, depending on the time scale over which the warming is measured. ...The new findings could also incentivize researchers to study wh...

https://eos.org/articles/bitcoins-not-so-carbon-friendly-footprint Source:   By Sarah Derouin, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In theory, an all-digital form of currency may seem environmentally friendly. But although cryptocurrency doesn’t require the printing of cold, hard cash, it can still require vast resources to verify transactions. Scientists have traditionally estimated the carbon emissions of cryptocurrency on the basis of estimates of power consumption. Now, in a new study published in Joule, researchers have collected data on hardware and power sources to estimate carbon footprints. They found that for the most popular digital currency, Bitcoin, carbon emissions rivaled that of a major American city or even a small country....

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/killer-heat-in-united-states Source:   By Union of Concerned Scientists. Excerpt: The United States is facing a potentially staggering expansion of dangerous heat over the coming decades. ...Explore interactive maps of the analysis. County-specific results are available for each of the 3,109 counties in the contiguous United States for all extreme heat thresholds and scenarios included in the analysis.  City/county-specific predictions [ https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/extreme-heat-interactive-tool ] Full report [ https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2019/07/killer-heat-analysis-full-report.pdf ]....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/hungry-elephants-fight-climate-change-one-mouthful-time Source:   By Eva Frederick, Science Magazine. Excerpt: African forest elephants can eat up to 450 kilograms of vegetation a day as they plow through the rainforests of West Africa and the Congo Basin. But all this munching actually leads to forests with more plant mass, according to a new study, and it could be good for climate change. ...they munch trees and plants with stems smaller than 30 centimeters in diameter—a little wider than a basketball—often damaging or killing them. Researchers used a model to predict what a forest might look like after years of elephants eating down these smaller plants. The bottom line: Slow-growing, shade-tolerant trees thrive with less competition for water and sunlight. The resulting forest has fewer, taller trees with denser wood, and the overall mass of vegetation above the ground is higher, meaning more carbon is stored, the team reports on toda...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world's largest batteries. It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That's cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel. ...As if on cue, last week a major U.S. coal company—West Virginia–based Revelation Energy LLC—filed for bankruptcy, the second in as many weeks. The new solar plus storage effort will be built in Kern County in California by 8minute Solar Energy. The project is expected to create a 400-megawatt so...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/climate/hurricane-tropical-storms.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: as Tropical Storm Barry bears down on the Gulf Coast in the coming days, it’s the water that the storm will bring with it that has weather watchers worried. The National Weather Service is calling for roughly 10 to 20 inches of rain to fall from late Thursday night through Saturday. The average rainfall for July in New Orleans, which is in the path of the storm, is just under six inches. And Tropical Storm Barry, which may become a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall, will drop rain on already saturated land. On Wednesday, the region was hit by severe thunderstorms, which dropped as much as seven inches of rain according to preliminary National Weather Service data. “Climate change is in general increasing the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall storms,” said Andreas Prein, a project scientist with the National Center for Atmosph...

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/us-ties-record-for-number-of-high-tide-flooding-days-in-2018 Source:   By NOAA. Excerpt: New report cites El Nino and sea level rise as factors for expected increase in 2019. Coastal communities across the U.S. continued to see increased high tide flooding last year, forcing their residents and visitors to deal with flooded shorelines, streets and basements — a trend that is expected to continue this year. The elevated water levels affected coastal economies, tourism and crucial infrastructure like septic systems and stormwater systems, according to a new NOAA report [ https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/Techrpt_090_2018_State_of_US_HighTideFlooding_with_a_2019_Outlook_Final.pdf ]. ...According to the report, nationally, five days of high tide flooding occurred within coastal communities, tying the record set in 2015. Flood days broke records in the Northeast, with a median of 10 days, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico at five days, du...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/science/historic-preservation-climate-newport.html Source:   By Cornelia Dean, The New York Times. Excerpt: NEWPORT, R.I. — The Point, a waterfront neighborhood here, is one of the largest, best preserved and most important Colonial-era communities in the United States. Its grid of 18th-century streets contains scores of houses built before the American Revolution, and dozens more that are almost as old. ...Today, the neighborhood faces a new threat. The Point sits only a few feet above sea level, and because of climate change, the ocean is rising. So people have been thinking again about how to preserve the neighborhood. Similar efforts are underway in many communities on the East Coast, where European colonists settled centuries ago. The task is complicated, and success is far from assured. According to a 2014 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, sea level rise threatens sites ranging from Faneuil Hall, where the Sons of Liberty plan...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/climate/nashville-floods-buybacks.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times. Excerpt: NASHVILLE — Jonna Laidlaw['s]...house...had flooded some 20 times since 2001, from a few inches to six feet. She and her husband would do their repairs with help from their flood insurance, but before long it would flood again. ...When city officials offered to buy the house last year, she and her husband gladly said yes. They have since moved to higher ground. Nashville is trying to move people like the Laidlaws away from flood-prone areas. The voluntary program uses a combination of federal, state and local funds to offer market value for their homes. If the owners accept the offer, they move out, the city razes the house and prohibits future development. The acquired land becomes an absorbent creekside buffer, much of it serving as parks with playgrounds and walking paths. Climate change is increasing the program’s urgency. While a number of citi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/science/frankincense-trees-collapse.html Source:   By By JoAnna Klein, The New York Times. Excerpt: For thousands of years, cultures around the world have revered the sweet aroma of frankincense. ... a staple in ancient Chinese medicine. Today its smoke still permeates centers of worship and Ethiopian coffee ceremonies. Demand is also increasing in the West: It’s found in natural medicine stores, spiritual shops, bespoke boutiques and online. ...Frankincense may not be around much longer, warns a study published Monday in Nature Sustainability [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0322-2 ]....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/tracking-earths-shape-reveals-greater-polar-ice-loss Source:   By Elizabeth Thompson, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Earth may be called the “Blue Marble,” but it is not a perfect sphere. The planet is slightly flattened at the poles because of its rotation, and this flattening has a large effect on Earth’s gravity field. The flattening, or oblateness, can change as Earth’s crust sinks or rises according to the weight of ice sheets resting on its surface or as water from melting polar ice sheets enters the ocean. In 2002, NASA and the German Aerospace Center launched the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE (and later the follow-on mission GRACE-FO), to track anomalies in Earth’s gravitational field and monitor the mass of ice sheets and ocean waters. But one key issue with GRACE was quickly identified. The oblateness measurements were off, leading to errors when calculating mass changes. ...In a new study, Loomis et al. analyze existing meth...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/adding-1-billion-hectares-forest-could-help-check-global-warming Source:   By Alex Fox, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Global temperatures could rise 1.5° C above industrial levels by as early as 2030 if current trends continue, but trees could help stem this climate crisis. A new analysis finds that adding nearly 1 billion additional hectares of forest could remove two-thirds of the roughly 300 gigatons of carbon humans have added to the atmosphere since the 1800s. ...The latest report from the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended adding 1 billion hectares of forests to help limit global warming to 1.5° C by 2050....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/world/americas/mexico-hail-storm-guadalajara.html Source:   By Iliana Magra, The New York Times. Excerpt: The photographs that emerged from western Mexico on Sunday looked more like scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie than an image of the last day of June: hills of white hailstones piled up on the streets, swallowing cars and blanketing the city in a jarring layer of ice. The hail, which accumulated up to three feet high in some parts of Jalisco State on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, baffled the authorities who tried to find a way to clean up the icy mess. Enrique Alfaro, the governor of Jalisco, wrote on Twitter that he had never seen anything like it. “I witnessed scenes that I had never seen before: hail more than a meter high,” he  tweeted, “and then we ask ourselves if climate change exists.” ...Chris Westbrook, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in Britain, said the hail was a result of warm, moist air rising into the atmospher...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/01/climate/greenland-glacier-melting-sand.html Source:   By Henry Fountain and Ben C. Solomon, New York Times. Excerpt: A few miles up the Sermilik Fjord in southwestern Greenland, the water has abruptly turned milky, a sign that it is loaded with suspended silt, sand and other sediment. ... Could this island, population 57,000, become a provider of sand to billions of people? ...because of the erosive power of ice, there is a lot of sand in Greenland. And with climate change accelerating the melting of Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet — a recent study found that melting has increased sixfold since the 1980s — there is going to be a lot more. ...Greenlanders’ contribution to global warming was very slight — their emissions are a tiny fraction of the global total. “They have a long list of negative consequences they have to deal with,” she said, including rising sea levels and thawing permafrost. “If one of the consequences is actually...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/climate/europe-heat-wave.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: Across Europe in June, from the Czech Republic to Switzerland to Spain, new heat records tested the Continent’s defenses. Schools were shuttered. Villages were evacuated. Soldiers battled wildfires. And social workers raced to the homes of older people to prevent mass deaths. ...The hottest summers in Europe in the last 500 years have all come in the last 17 years. Several of those heat waves bear the fingerprints of human-caused climate change. In years to come, scientists say, many more are likely to batter what is naturally one of the world’s temperate zones. ...As rising greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet (average global temperatures have gone up by around 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the dawn of the industrial age) more and more heat records are broken all over the world. ...“It is premature to attribute the heat wave to cl...