https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-megafires-crush-forest-regeneration By Nancy Averett , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: High-intensity fires in western states kill mature trees and their seeds while warmer, drier conditions stress seedlings. But forest managers can still intervene to change this trajectory. ...

https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-el-nino-monitor-gets-upgrade By Paul Voosen, Science.  Excerpt: For 3 years in a row, cool La Niña conditions have reigned in the tropical Pacific Ocean, suppressing the steady march of global warming. But warm waters are now rolling east and gathering off the west coast of South America, signaling the likely arrival of El Niño later this year and, next year, a surge in heat that could push the planet past 1.5°C of warming. These fluctuations in the Pacific—the greatest short-term control on global climate—once caught the world off guard. But they are now predictable months in advance, largely because of the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array, a series of 55 U.S. buoys, moored to the sea floor, that stretch some 13,000 kilometers along the equator. Now, the TAO array is getting a $23 million overhaul, the first since it was set up in the mid-1990s, the  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says . The revamped b...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/climate/malawi-farmers-agriculture.html By  Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: When it comes to growing food, some of the smallest farmers in the world are becoming some of the most creative farmers in the world. Like Judith Harry and her neighbors, they are sowing pigeon peas to shade their soils from a hotter, more scorching sun. They are planting vetiver grass to keep floodwaters at bay. They are resurrecting old crops, like finger millet and forgotten yams, and planting trees that naturally fertilize the soil. A few are turning away from one legacy of European colonialism, the practice of planting rows and rows of maize, or corn, and saturating the fields with chemical fertilizers. “One crop might fail. Another crop might do well,” said Ms. Harry, who has abandoned her parents’ tradition of growing just maize and tobacco and added peanuts, sunflowers, and soy to her fields. “That might save your season.” It’s not just Ms...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37781-6 By  Katherine A. Crichton ,  Jamie D. Wilson ,  Andy Ridgwell ,  Flavia Boscolo-Galazzo ,  Eleanor H. John ,  Bridget S. Wade  &  Paul N. Pearson , Nature Communications.  Abstract: Paleontological reconstructions of plankton community structure during warm periods of the Cenozoic (last 66 million years) reveal that deep-dwelling ‘twilight zone’ (200–1000 m) plankton were less abundant and diverse, and lived much closer to the surface, than in colder, more recent climates. We suggest that this is a consequence of temperature’s role in controlling the rate that sinking organic matter is broken down and metabolized by bacteria, a process that occurs faster at warmer temperatures. In a warmer ocean, a smaller fraction of organic matter reaches the ocean interior, affecting food supply and dissolved oxygen availability at depth. Using an Earth system model that has been evaluated against pale...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/climate/horn-of-africa-somalia-drought.html By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Two and a half years of meager rain have shriveled crops, killed livestock and brought the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions, to  famine’s brink . Millions of people have faced  food and water shortages . Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, seeking relief. A  below-normal forecast  for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue. Human-caused climate change has made droughts of such severity at least 100 times as likely in this part of Africa as they were in the preindustrial era, an international team of scientists said in  a study released Thursday . The findings starkly illustrate the misery that the burning of fossil fuels, mostly by wealthy countries, inflicts on societies that emit almost nothing by comparison. In parts of the nations hit hardest by the drought — Ethiopia, Kenya and S...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/27/endless-record-heat-asia-highest-april-temperatures By Rebecca Ratcliffe , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Asia is experiencing weeks of “endless record heat”, with sweltering temperatures causing school closures and surges in energy use. Record April temperatures have been recorded at monitoring stations across  Thailand , Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, as well as in China and South Asia. On Tuesday, four weather stations in  Myanmar  hit or matched record monthly temperatures, with Theinzayet, in eastern Mon state, reaching the highest, at 43C (109.4F). On Wednesday, Bago, north-east of Yangon, reached 42.2C, matching an all-time record previously recorded in May 2020 and April 2019, according to Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian. ...weeks of records falling every day,” said Herrera. In Thailand last weekend the authorities advised people in Bangkok and other areas of the country to stay home to avoid...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/26/accelerating-ocean-warming-earth-temperatures-climate-crisis By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, ... in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis. ...Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the  Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series , gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days. ... Warming oceans  are a concern for many reasons. Seawater takes up more space at higher temperatures, accelerating sea level rise, and warmer water at the poles  accelerates the melting of the ice caps . Hotter temperatures can also be dire for marine ecosystems, as it can be difficult or impossible for ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/climate/carbon-capture-power-plants.html By  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Biden administration’s plan to limit, for the first time, greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants could hinge on the ability of plant operators to capture carbon dioxide before it is pumped into the atmosphere. Yet none of the nation’s 3,400 coal- and gas-fired power plants are currently using carbon capture technology in a significant way, raising questions about the viability of that approach. In the coming weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency  is expected to propose strict new limits  on emissions from coal- and natural gas-burning power plants, which are responsible for about 25 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases.  Under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Congress increased existing tax credits that are now worth up to $85 for every ton of carbon dioxide that polluters capture and bury underground, up from...

https://eos.org/features/hunting-for-methane-hot-spots-at-the-top-of-the-world By Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A visit to an Alaskan wetland with some of the world’s highest lake marsh methane emissions brings scientists one step closer to understanding the phenomenon. I was joining a day of fieldwork with a group of Arctic scientists hunting an invisible gas that has been  increasing in our atmosphere at an accelerating rate since 2007. Our destination, a lake a mere 15-minute drive from campus, has the highest rates of ecological methane emissions ever recorded from Arctic lake marshes....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/do-volcanoes-add-more-carbon-than-they-take-away By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In a new study,  Zhong et al.  discovered that a volcano in northeast China emits a small net amount of carbon each year. Over geological timescales, that could have a significant impact on our planet’s carbon cycle. Volcanic areas continue to emit carbon dioxide long after  eruptions  are over. Conversely, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is constantly locked away into minerals on Earth’s surface through a process called  silicate weathering . Whether volcanoes release more CO 2  through degassing or capture more CO 2  through silicate weathering is an open question. The authors of the new study   investigated whether the Changbaishan volcanic area in northeast China is a net source or sink of atmospheric carbon. The region has been active for at least 2.7 million years, but it has not erupted since 1903, making the...

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-molecular-membranes-could-slash-costs-storing-green-energy By Robert F. Service, Science.  Excerpt: Ability to let certain ions pass with near-zero friction could vastly improve batteries, fuel cells, and other electrochemical devices. New technology promises to dramatically improve the performance of batteries, fuel cells, and the electrolyzers that make green hydrogen and other fuels from electricity. The advance—used in a type of “flow battery” that’s becoming common for storing renewable energy—boosted the speed at which the battery could provide power fivefold. That jump in performance could sharply reduce the cost of storing green energy for use on the grid, making it easier for societies to completely shift from fossil fuels to renewables.... 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/25/experts-hail-decision-us-climate-lawsuits-advance By  Hilary Beaumont , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Without weighing in on the merits of the cases, the supreme court on Monday  rebuffed  an appeal by major oil companies that want to face the litigation in federal courts, rather than in state courts, which are seen as more favorable to plaintiffs. ...The cases have been compared to tobacco lawsuits in the 1990s that resulted in a settlement of more than $200bn and changed how cigarettes are advertised and sold in the US.... 

https://eos.org/features/redefining-glacial-pace By  Damond Benningfield , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Glaciers and ice sheets are moving much faster now than they were just a couple of decades ago. The vast majority of them are retreating, thinning, cracking, or shrinking at unprecedented speeds. Heated by Earth’s warming atmosphere and oceans, Greenland’s massive ice sheet is melting more rapidly and running into the sea. Weakened by changing currents in the Southern Ocean, the floating extensions of Antarctica’s even bigger ice sheet are cracking off like slivers of peanut brittle. And smaller mountain glaciers from Alaska to New Zealand are vanishing, setting up potentially major consequences for people and ecosystems that depend on their water. “Every region that has glaciers is out of balance,” said  Alex Gardner , a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “None are in equilibrium with the climate. None are healthy. And the problem has been accelerating.” ......

https://eos.org/features/the-mental-toll-of-climate-change By  Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Megan Irving, a mental health therapist in Oregon ...and mental health professionals like her are seeing more clients suffering from a ...pervasive, form of stress: unease brought on by the effects of our changing climate. A growing body of research links the impacts of climate change to  adverse mental health outcomes , such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance abuse. But individuals and communities can take steps to bolster their emotional resilience to climate-related stressors, researchers have suggested. ...mental health impacts in three broad categories ...The first category is brought on by acute events such as devastating storms, wildfires, and floods. Sudden-onset events can cause trauma, which often manifests as PTSD and has been linked to anxiety, major depressive disorder, and substance abuse... Events that evolve more...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/world/europe/italy-climate-drought-da-vinci-ferry-imbersago.html By Jason Horowitz , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Since at least 500 years ago, when the opposing banks of the Adda belonged to the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice, ferries have run on water currents and a taut rope above a narrow stretch of the river. Leonardo spent a lot of time in the area and  sketched  the motorless ferry around 1513. ...But a year after Italy’s worst drought in seven decades — when much of Europe gasped for precipitation — a winter without much rain or snow has turned into a dry spring across the country’s north. ...the scarcity of rainfall, which has also hit the Adda, where swans glide on water so low that islands have emerged, rowboats are beached and the last of what the town calls “Leonardesque” ferries has become a stationary landmark....

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/us/california-gold-prospectors.html By  Thomas Fuller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: There’s a fever in California’s gold country these days, the kind that comes with the realization that nature is unlocking another stash of precious metal. California’s prodigious winter rainfall blasted torrents of water through mountain streams and rivers. And as the warmer weather melts the massive banks of snow — one research station in the Sierra recorded 60 feet for the season — the rushing waters are detaching and carrying gold deposits along the way. The immense wildfires of recent years also loosened the soil, helping to push downstream what some here are calling flood gold.... 

https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-knocks-it-out-of-the-park By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Home runs in baseball have been getting steadily more common for decades, and a recent spike in home runs might be driven by anthropogenic climate change. A new analysis combined decades of baseball statistics and ballistics data with predictive climate modeling. The study showed that more than 500 home runs since 2010 can be attributed to climate-driven, unseasonably hot temperatures. ... Jim Albert , a statistician at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, noted that although these results are statistically significant, the number of home runs attributable to  climate change  is small relative to other ball and player effects. ...Callahan speculated that there will likely come a point when team owners decide that the increase in home runs isn’t worth the heat-related  health risks  to players and fans. “I don’t know that we’ve seen a baseball game ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/04/20/carbon-removal-ocean-climate-change-global-warming/5714197e-df8d-11ed-a78e-9a7c2418b00c_story.html By Julie Watson, AP.  Excerpt: LONG BEACH, Calif. — Atop a 100-foot barge tied up at the Port of Los Angeles, engineers have built a kind of floating laboratory to answer a simple question: Is there a way to cleanse seawater of carbon dioxide and then return it to the ocean so it can suck more of the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere to slow global warming? Called the lungs of the planet, the ocean, whose plants and currents take in carbon dioxide, has already helped the Earth tremendously by absorbing 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution and capturing 90 percent of the excess heat from those emissions. Acting as a giant carbon sink, it has been a crucial buffer in protecting people from even worse effects of early climate change. Seawater can store 150 times more carbon dioxide per unit volume tha...

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-plan-comeback-ukraine-s-war-ravaged-forests By April Reese, Science.  Excerpt: In addition to its horrific human toll, the war in Ukraine has inflicted widespread damage on the nation’s forests. Bombs and missiles have sparked thousands of fires, and “artillery breaks trees in half—it basically mows the forest,” says Brian Milakovsky, a U.S.-born forest ecologist who lived in eastern Ukraine before fleeing the country. Ironically, some forestry experts say the destruction could lead to a major overhaul of how Ukraine manages its forests, changes they say will help ensure these landscapes can better cope with climate change, support biodiversity, and protect water quality. Optimistic that Ukraine will prevail in the war, the researchers are already planning for this greener postwar future. Milakovsky and Sergiy Zibtsev, a forest scientist at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, shared their vision d...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/19/volcanic-microbe-eats-co2-astonishingly-quickly-say-scientists By Damian Carrington , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Discovery of carbon-capturing organism in hot springs could lead to efficient way of absorbing climate-heating gas . ...The new microbe, a cyanobacterium, was  discovered in September  in volcanic seeps near the Italian island of Vulcano, where the water contains high levels of CO 2 . The researchers said the bug turned CO 2 into biomass faster than any other known cyanobacteria. ...Dr Braden Tierney...said: ...“The project takes advantage of 3.6bn years of microbial evolution,” he said. “The nice thing about microbes is that they are self-assembling machines. You don’t have that with a lot of the chemical approaches....” The new microbe had another unusual property, Tierney said: it sinks in water, which could help collect the CO 2 it absorbs. But the microbe was not a silver bullet, Tierney said. “There reall...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/18/scientists-discover-pristine-deep-sea-galapagos-reef-teeming-with-life By Dan Collyns , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Scientists operating a submersible have discovered deep-sea coral reefs in pristine condition in a previously unexplored part of the  Galápagos marine reserve . Diving to depths of 600 metres (1,970ft), to the summit of a previously unmapped seamount in the central part of the archipelago, the scientists witnessed a breathtaking mix of deep marine life. This has raised hopes that healthy reefs can still thrive at a time when coral is in crisis due to record sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification. It also showed the effectiveness of conservation actions and effective management, they said. ...[Ecuador] is collaborating with its northern neighbours Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia on a  regional marine corridor initiative , which aims to protect and responsibly manage the ocean....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/17/colorado-river-grand-canyon-climate-crisis-endangered By Nina Lakhani . The Guardian.  Excerpt: A 277-mile stretch of the  Colorado  River that snakes through the iconic Grand Canyon is America’s most endangered waterway, a new report has found. The unique ecosystem and cultural heritage of the Grand Canyon is on the brink of collapse due to prolonged drought, rising temperatures and outdated river management, according to American Rivers, the conservation group that compiles  the annual endangered list. ...The 2023 list includes rivers that traverse 17 states and scores of sovereign tribal nations, and supply drinking water, food, recreation and spiritual nourishment to millions of people. The waterways are under threat from mining, the climate breakdown, dams, industrial pollution and outdated river management practices that for too long have rebuffed traditional knowledge and sustainable techniques tried and tested ...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/14/climate/electric-car-heater-everything.html ] By  Nadja Popovich  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times. Excerpt: The United States still gets most of its energy by setting millions of tiny fires everywhere. Cars, trucks, homes and factories all burn fossil fuels in countless engines, furnaces and boilers, creating pollution that heats the planet. To tackle climate change, those machines will need to stop polluting. And the best way to do that, experts increasingly say, is to replace them with electric versions — cars, heating systems and factories that run on clean sources of electricity like wind, solar or nuclear power. But electrifying almost everything is a formidable task.... 

https://eos.org/articles/as-the-arctic-warms-these-rivers-are-slowing-down By  Danielle Beurteaux , Eos/AGU Excerpt: Permafrost is the understructure of the Arctic, but it’s thawing at a drastic pace, putting  infrastructure  and  landscape  in peril. Researchers wanted to ascertain how rising temperatures and thawing permafrost are affecting the movement of the Arctic’s large rivers. A  new study  published in  Nature Climate Change  found that such rivers’ channel migration is actually decreasing. Rivers across Alaska and Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories migrated 20% less between 1972 and 2020, a period when the region’s temperatures spiked. ...researchers evaluated  Landsat  imagery of 10 rivers that were more than 100 meters wide in Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. These rivers, including the Yukon and Mackenzie, are in areas with varying amounts of  permafrost , from continuous to sporadic. ...The ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/14/biden-alaska-lng-liquefied-natural-gas-exports The Guardian.  Excerpt: The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “ carbon bomb ”. ...The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups. ...The Biden administration last month  approved  the ConocoPhillips $7bn Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, prompting  criticism  of Biden’s record on the climate crisis.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/business/china-sodium-batteries.html By  Keith Bradsher , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...batteries, mostly made of lithium, have powered the rise of cellphones and other consumer electronics. They are transforming the auto industry and could soon start doing the same for solar panels and wind turbines crucial in the fight against climate change. China dominates their chemical refining and production. Now China is positioning itself to command the next big innovation in rechargeable batteries: replacing lithium with sodium, a far cheaper and more abundant material. Sodium, found all over the world as part of salt, sells for 1 to 3 percent of the price of lithium and is chemically very similar.... 

https://eos.org/articles/wildfire-smoke-destroys-ozone By Elise Cutts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: n the middle of the 20th century, humanity unleashed chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere. By the 1980s, CFCs had gnawed away at the planet’s ozone shield, endangering safety and health on Earth. Worldwide restrictions and bans have begun to heal the damage, but new results have suggested that increasingly severe wildfires could be stalling progress. Liquid droplets containing wildfire smoke act like tiny reaction chambers for chlorine in the stratosphere, producing reactive forms of the element that degrade ozone over the midlatitudes, researchers  reported  in  Nature . This chemical mechanism had “never been seen before,” said study coauthor and atmospheric scientist  Kane Stone  of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This is a completely new chemistry that we’re looking at.” Large wildfires are expected to happen more often as the planet warms, s...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/12/climate-models-warn-of-possible-super-el-nino-before-end-of-year By Graham Readfearn , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Some models are raising the possibility later this year of an extreme, or “super El Niño”, that is marked by very high temperatures in a central region of the Pacific around the equator. The last extreme El Niño in 2016 helped push global temperatures to the highest on record, underpinned by human-caused global heating that sparked floods, droughts and disease outbreaks. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology  said in a Tuesday update  that all seven models it had surveyed – including those from weather agencies in the UK, Japan and the US – showed sea surface temperatures passing the El Niño threshold by August....

https://www.science.org/content/article/dwindling-sea-ice-may-speed-melting-antarctic-glaciers By Paul Voosen, Science.  Excerpt: In February, on an icebreaker off the coast of West Antarctica, Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), came on deck to a startling sight: open gray water as far as the eye could see. There was no ice at all for the ship to break. The next day, satellite surveys would find sea ice around the continent hitting a record low. Unlike fast-shrinking Arctic sea ice, the sea ice ringing Antarctica seemed more resistant to climate change—until recently. But now a long-term decline may have set in, and it could have unexpected and ominous domino effects, according to several recent studies. Dwindling sea ice could strengthen a whirling current called the Ross Gyre, bringing warm waters closer to land and hastening the  collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet , which locks up enough water to  raise global sea levels...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/10/a-jail-for-wayward-polar-bears-you-must-be-in-churchill-canada By  Zed Nelson , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Perched on the southern edge of the  Arctic  on the shores of Hudson Bay, residents of the Canadian town of Churchill share their streets with the world’s largest land carnivore. Their regular encounters with polar bears have earned Churchill the nickname “Polar bear capital of the world”. ...The 900 or so residents are used to looking cautiously around corners and not walking after dark. But it’s the bears that could claim to have a grievance: the town was built on their annual migratory route. ...Living side by side with apex predators certainly poses challenges for the town’s residents, but it is the spectre of climate change that looms large over Churchill. The number of polar bears in western Hudson Bay has fallen by  27% in the past five years , according to a recent government survey that counted bears...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-electricity-pollution.html By  Gabriel J.X. Dance , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Texas was gasping for electricity. Winter Storm Uri had knocked out power plants across the state, leaving tens of thousands of homes in icy darkness. By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died, some from the freezing cold. Meanwhile, in the husk of a onetime aluminum smelting plant an hour outside of Austin, row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency. ...The New York Times has identified 34 such large-scale operations, known as Bitcoin mines, in the United States, all putting immense pressure on the power grid and most finding novel ways to profit from doing so. Their operations can create costs — including higher electricity bills and enormous carbon pollution — for everyone around them, most of whom have nothing to do w...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/08/headed-off-the-charts-worlds-ocean-surface-temperature-hits-record-high By Graham Readfearn , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data. Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa)  showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since  the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016. ...Three years of  La Niña  conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas emissions. But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface, pointing to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this year that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and furth...

https://www.science.org/content/article/baseball-s-sluggers-hit-more-home-runs-thanks-global-warming By Christian Elliott, Science.  Excerpt: Climate change will affect essentially every aspect of our lives, climate researchers say, even America’s unofficial pastime, baseball. Because warmer air is less dense and exerts less drag on a batted ball, the number of home runs should in theory climb as global temperatures increase. And, sure enough, a new study shows that about 0.8% of the homers hit in Major League Baseball (MLB) since 2010 made it over the fence thanks to the extra distance global warming lent their flight. Other factors, however, from the explicit effort of players to hit more home runs to the design of the ball itself, play bigger roles in explaining why home run numbers have skyrocketed in recent decades. “From a purely baseball point of view, this is primarily an academic result, not a result that Major League Baseball should really worry about,” says Alan Nathan, ...

https://eos.org/articles/wisconsin-stalagmite-records-north-american-warming By  Stacy Kish , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A new record, obtained from a tiny stalagmite in North America, has revealed eight abrupt periods of warming, likely greater than 10°C, that punctuated the last glacial episode. The new research was published last month in  Nature Geoscience . The last glacial period began 115,000 years ago and ended at the start of the Holocene, 11,700 years ago. Ice core data from Greenland previously revealed 25 rapid episodes of warming, called Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events, largely attributed to changes in deepwater circulation in the North Atlantic. ...Paleoclimate studies from central North America rely heavily on lake records, which range from 15,000 to 20,000 years old. The stalagmite extends that time back another 40,000 years, making it one of the longest and oldest records in this part of the world. The new record also illustrates how quickly DO warming telescoped ...