By JEFFREY MERVIS , Science.  Excerpt: In a much-anticipated decision that many scientific groups had feared, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned a 40-year-old doctrine that gave federal agencies considerable leeway in interpreting laws passed by Congress. The 6-to-3 ruling means judges should no longer defer to the scientific expertise of those agencies on a vast range of technical questions and, instead, should make such decisions themselves. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion in  Loper Bright Enterprises  v.  Raimondo , a case involving environmental regulations affecting herring boats. ...But in a stinging dissent, Justice Elena Kagan ...gave several examples of technical questions that she feels judges are ill-equipped to answer. The Food and Drug Administration must decide what qualifies as a protein in regulating biological products, she notes. And the...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Marine life ...depends on the right combination of water temperature, acidity, and oxygen levels, so creatures such as fish and plankton can be  hard hit  by large regional fluctuations in any of these parameters. When two, or even all three, are off-kilter, the environment can become uninhabitable for many species. Because climate change has generally been  heating the ocean ,  boosting its acidity , and  lowering its oxygen levels , concerns over these regional multithreat events—known as column-compound extremes—are growing. Now,  Wong et al.  report that since the early 1960s, column-compound extremes have been intensifying: growing larger in volume, lasting longer, and occurring more often. ...The analysis suggests that triple column-compound extremes—events involving the convergence of extreme temperatures, high acidity, and low oxygen levels—occupied 39 times more ocean volume, lasted 3 times longer, an...

By Jon Turi, TCD.  Excerpt: Large-scale battery storage systems are a no-brainer to handle the ever-growing influx of renewable energy without letting it go to waste. Since China has taken a  global lead  in using greener energy sources, it's no surprise that one of its latest major storage systems to go online is using a less toxic approach. As Electrek  reported , the Fulin Sodium-ion Battery Energy Storage Station began operating in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China this May. The initial storage capacity is said to be around 10 megawatt-hours (MWh), but it expected to grow to 100 MWh at full capacity..."enough to power 35,000 households and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50,000 tonnes [about 55,000 tons] annually," according to  Electrek . ..."The energy conversion efficiency of its sodium-ion battery energy storage system exceeds 92%. It's comparable to the efficiency of common lithium-ion battery storage systems, at 85% to 95%."...

By Anupama Chandrasekaran , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Daily tides bring warm ocean water farther in beneath West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier than previously thought, potentially causing ice to melt faster than expected, according to a new study. The finding could help scientists make better predictions about the fate of one of the world’s most closely watched glaciers. Thwaites ...is about the size of Florida. It currently  contributes about 4%  to global annual sea level rise. ...  recent research on Thwaites  and  other glaciers  has shown that these boundaries between floating ice and ice that is grounded on the seafloor shift with the daily tide. ...The team found that the ice rose and sank in sync with the tides. The data suggested that the grounding line migrated up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) inland during an average high tide. ...The  study  was published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of ...

By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The very existence of low-slung tropical islands seems improbable, a glitch. ...when the world began paying attention to global warming decades ago, these islands, which form atop coral reefs in clusters called atolls, were quickly identified as some of the first places climate change might ravage in their entirety. As the ice caps melted and the seas crept higher, these accidents of geologic history were bound to be corrected and the tiny islands returned to watery oblivion, probably in this century. Then, not very long ago, researchers began sifting through aerial images and found something startling. They looked at a couple dozen islands first, then several hundred, and by now close to 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the islands’ edges had wobbled this way and that, eroding here, building there. By and large, though, their area hadn’t shrunk. In some cases, it was the opposite: They grew. The seas rose, and ...

By Stephanie Nolen  and Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Federal health officials warned that the risk of contracting dengue in the United States has increased this year, a worrying sign as global cases of the mosquito-borne disease hit record numbers. In the first half of this year, countries in the Americas reported twice as many cases as were reported in all of 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday in an alert to health care providers. The region has seen nearly 10 million cases of the virus so far in 2024, most of which originated in outbreaks in South American countries like Brazil and Argentina. ...climate change is bringing the mosquito to new places, where it is flourishing. “Aedes mosquitoes thrive in warm and humid environments, so definitely climate change and rising temperatures and also extreme weather events are helping extend their habitat range,” said Dr. Gabriela Paz-Bailey, chief of the dengue branch at the...

By Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: An app that helps people find relief from the heat. A tiny insurance policy that pays working women when temperatures soar. Local laws that help outdoor workers get water and shade on sweltering days. As dangerous heat becomes impossible to ignore, an array of practical innovations are emerging around the world to protect people most vulnerable to its hazards. ...The World Meteorological Organization has said that heat now kills more people than any other extreme-weather hazard.... ...Iphigenia Keramitsoglou is an atmospheric physicist who ...led a team that built a cellphone app to give users real-time information about how to stay cool. Put your location into Extrema Global and it will show the outside temperature, air quality and color-coded levels of heat risk. It will populate a map with places to cool down: parks, pools, fountains and air-conditioned public buildings like libraries. Tell the app where you want to go — say, fr...

By Jason Pohl , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: More than 100,000 oil and gas wells across the western U.S. are in areas burned by wildfires in recent decades, a new study has found, and some 3 million people live next to wells that in the future could be in the path of fires worsened by climate change. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, said their analysis, which was  published last week in the journal  One Earth , is the first to examine historical and projected wildfire threats on oil and gas facilities in the U.S. While the public health effects of scorched and damaged drill sites are unclear, researchers said the study is a necessary step toward understanding the potential compound hazards and could help inform policy about future drilling. ... In the past,  fires in oil and gas fields not related to wildfires have caused blowouts, and leaks from gas storage tanks in Los Angeles have resulted in explosions that damaged buildings. Near...

By ASHLEY STIMPSON , Science.  Excerpt: To botanists, there is perhaps no story more infamous than that of Centinela, an isolated 40-square-kilometer ridge on the western slope of the Andes Mountains. ...the area’s lush cloud forests were written off by conservation biologists in the 1990s after extensive deforestation wiped out much of the native vegetation. The tragedy inspired a new phrase, “Centinelan extinction,” to describe the disappearance of a species before it could be described by scientists. But recent announcements have provided a glimmer of hope amid the gloom. This month, scientists  published a description of a species new to science that persists in small remnant patches of forest .... Roads and agriculture crept across western Ecuador and untold tracts of forest were bulldozed to make way for cacao, coffee, and banana plantations on the fertile slopes. In 1991, two influential biologists, Cal Dodson and Alwyn Gentry of the Missouri Botanical Garden, published...

By Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: People all over the world are facing severe heat, floods and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels. The year isn’t halfway done. ...Extreme heat killed an  estimated 489,000 people  annually between 2000 and 2019, according to the World Meteorological Organization, making heat the deadliest of all extreme weather events. Swiss RE, the insurance-industry giant, said in a report this week that the  accumulating hazards  of climate change could further drive the growing market for insurance against strikes and riots. “Climate change may also drive food and water shortages and in turn civil unrest, and mass migration,” the report said....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/climate/heat-deaths-floods-drought.html . 

By Emily Cerf , UC Santa Cruz News Center.  Excerpt: Large language models such as ChaptGPT have proven to be able to produce remarkably intelligent results, but the energy and monetary costs associated with running these massive algorithms is sky high. It costs $700,000 per day in energy costs to run ChatGPT 3.5, according to recent estimates, and leaves behind a massive carbon footprint in the process. In a  new preprint paper , researchers from UC Santa Cruz show that it is possible to eliminate the most computationally expensive element of running large language models, called matrix multiplication, while maintaining performance. In getting rid of matrix multiplication and running their algorithm on custom hardware, the researchers found that they could power a billion-parameter-scale language model on just 13 watts, about equal to the energy of powering a lightbulb and more than 50 times more efficient than typical hardware....  Full article at https://news.ucsc.edu/...

By Dionne Searcey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Large parts of the nation were boiling this week as temperatures climbed in Maine and other areas that are not accustomed to mid-June heat waves. In many cities, residents cooled off in shady parks, jumped in public pools, or hydrated with cold water handed out by paramedics and police officers stationed at busy intersections or inside public transportation hubs — all tactics health officials encourage to help avoid heat-related illnesses. These kinds of strategies are common in countless cities because they are effective in areas with large populations. In more rural areas, however, people are far more spread out and much harder to reach. “We’re missing a large swath of our society, and a swath that typically has higher levels of chronic disease, older populations and lower income,” said Kevin Lanza, an assistant professor of environmental science at UTHealth Houston in Austin. “All three are factors increasing the serious risk on...

By Y KAI KUPFERSCHMIDT , Science.  Excerpt: Scientists have long worried Earth’s rising temperatures could make fungi more dangerous to humans. Now, researchers in China may have stumbled on evidence to support that idea. In a survey of fungal infections in Chinese hospitals, the researchers discovered a fungus not previously reported in humans sickening two patients. The pathogen was already resistant to the two most common antifungal drugs—and when they exposed it to higher temperatures, it quickly developed resistance against a third, leaving it essentially untreatable with current medicines. The finding “supports the idea that global warming may contribute to the evolution of this fungal pathogen or other new fungal pathogens,” says Linqi Wang, a microbiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Microbiology and co-author of a study on the fungi  published today in  Nature Microbiology ....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/c...

By ANDREA THOMPSON , Scientific American.  Excerpt: This Wednesday it will be hotter in Burlington, Vt., than in Miami—by a whopping 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 degrees Celsius). This topsy-turvy weather comes courtesy of a  heat dome , a particularly intense and persistent area of high atmospheric pressure that creates heat waves. This week’s heat dome is expected to cause record-breaking temperatures in some places, particularly in northern New England, where certain areas could see the warmest temperatures in 30 years....  Full article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/intense-heat-dome-will-bring-record-breaking-temperatures-to-the-east/ . 

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Attribution science aims to determine the extent to which climate change causes natural hazards and extreme weather such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves. But how comfortable is the public in making these connections? Pretty comfortable, as it turns out. A  new study  published in  Climatic Change  shows that 83% of Americans have some confidence in attributing at least one type of extreme weather to climate change. However, the public’s views varied among hazards and didn’t always line up with scientists’ confidence. The results point out some important considerations for climate scientists looking to communicate their work to the public. ...The public’s confidence in attributing events aligned with climate scientists’ understanding of how extreme weather and climate change are linked about 40% of the time, according to the researchers. The scientists’ views came from a 2016 report from the  Nat...

By Stanford Report.  Excerpt: ... Robert Waymouth , ...is leading a Stanford team to explore an emerging technology for renewable energy storage: liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs). Hydrogen is already used as fuel or a means for generating electricity, but containing and transporting it is tricky. “We are developing a new strategy for selectively converting and long-term storing of electrical energy in liquid fuels,” said Waymouth, senior author of a  study  detailing this work in the  Journal of the American Chemical Society . “We also discovered a novel, selective catalytic system for storing electrical energy in a liquid fuel without generating gaseous hydrogen.” ...Daniel Marron, lead author of this study ...developed a catalyst system to combine two protons and two electrons with acetone to generate the LOHC isopropanol selectively, without generating hydrogen gas. He did this using iridium as the catalyst. A key surprise was that cobaltocene was the magi...

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: As climate change continues to spur  sea level rise  and increase  hurricane intensity , mapping possible future flooding is crucial. A new  study , published in  Scientific Reports , used community accounts of past floods to show how sea level rise is likely to make future floods worse. The work adds to scientists’ understanding of how climate change could affect Alaska’s coastal communities as part of a broader effort to improve flood modeling in the state. ...In the new study, researchers used the historical accounts to estimate current and future flood exposure. They compared record flooding to topography and the locations of buildings in 46 communities under two scenarios: 0.5 meter (1.6 feet) and 1.0 meter (3.3 feet) of sea level rise by 2100. NOAA  estimates  that global sea level will rise between 0.3 meter (1 foot) and 2 meters (6.6 feet) by 2100.  The team found that currently, 22% ...

By Nathaniel Scharping , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Good topsoil does not accumulate quickly. Less than a tenth of a millimeter of soil forms per year in some places, though the amount can vary depending on the environment. Compare that to the rate of topsoil erosion in agricultural regions of the United States: around half a millimeter per year, or 5 times as much, according to  a recent study  in the journal  Catena . That imbalance is imperiling our ability to grow food in large swaths of America’s breadbasket. ...Croplands see far higher rates of soil erosion than other places, often because tilling leaves soil exposed. It’s in croplands that erosion is most impactful, however. Past studies estimated that erosion costs the United States about  $8 billion each year  and that globally, it reduces agricultural food production by 33.7 million metric tons per year.  Rates of soil erosion  have likely worsened over the past decade, and climate change will p...

Interview by Steve Curwood with Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council , Living on Earth. Excerpt: An environmental lawyer’s frightening report from on the ground in Lahore: animals crumpling, waters rising, crops collapsing, an economy on the brink and millions displaced with nowhere safe to go. Last year was the hottest summer on record in the Northern Hemisphere, and 2024 seems likely to top it, with torrid temperatures already sizzling the Southwest U.S., North Africa, South Asia and much of the Middle East. ...And right now, Pakistan is in the grip of yet another extreme heatwave, ...as some cities reached more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. ...In 2022, we had historic floods, and we’re talking 400 percent to 800 percent of monthly averages falling within a couple of weeks. ...Just a few days ago, Mohenjo-daro, the home of an ancient civilization, recorded 53 degrees Centigrade, so in excess of 125 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the hottest...

By Li Cohen , CBS News.  Excerpt: Carbon dioxide , the gas that  accounts for the majority of global warming  caused by human activities, is accumulating "faster than ever," scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found. ...The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO 2 , levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May ...50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. ..."Not only is CO 2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO 2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill." .....

By Keerti Gopal , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: In a special address, António Guterres called out fossil fuel industry greenwashing and highlighted a new report showing the world will likely pass the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold within five years. ...“Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities,” Guterres said in his address, delivered on the United Nations’  World Environment Day  at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. “Meanwhile, the godfathers of climate chaos—the fossil fuel industry—rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.” Comparing the fossil fuel industry to the tobacco industry, Guterres also called on public relations and advertising firms to “stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction,” by dropping fossil fuel clients from their rosters. ...Pointing out that the oil and gas industry invested just 2.5 percent of its total cap...

By Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Electric cars are more expensive than gasoline models largely because batteries cost so much. But new technology could turn those pricey devices into an asset, giving owners benefits like reduced utility bills, lower lease payments or free parking. Ford Motor, General Motors, BMW and other automakers are exploring how electric-car batteries could be used to store excess renewable energy to help utilities deal with fluctuations in supply and demand for power. Automakers would make money by serving as intermediaries between car owners and power suppliers. Millions of cars could be thought of as a huge energy system that, for the first time, will be connected to another enormous energy system, the electrical grid, said Matthias Preindl, an associate professor of power electronic systems at Columbia University. ...Mobility House, a firm whose investors include Mercedes-Benz and Renault, ...buys power when solar and wind power is abundant an...

By Uta Paszkowski , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Rising temperatures and more extreme weather are exacerbating inequalities in global food systems. More than enough food is already produced to feed the global population, but roughly  783 million people  worldwide currently experience hunger as a result of  systemic inequalities  related to gender, geography, conflict, and resources. Warming of 2°C will drive an  estimated 189 million additional people  into hunger. ...Farmers in predominantly high-income countries (and elsewhere, when possible) apply vast amounts of inorganic fertilizers to their fields to ensure high yields. Perversely, however, the  synthetic fertilizer supply chain  is contributing to the very  changes in climate  that are acutely harming food production worldwide. For example, synthetic fertilizer application and livestock production together are responsible for  up to 70% of emissions of nitrous oxide —a greenhouse ...

By Brad Plumer  and  Nadja Popovich , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the United States, as are  batteries that can store energy  for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean. ...Some factors behind the wind industry’s recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities. ...wind power is much more sensitive to location. Wind turbines in a gusty area can  generate eight times as much electricity  as turbines in an area with just half the breeze. For solar power, the difference between sunny spots and less sunny spots is considerably smaller. That means developers can’t just build wind farms anywhere. .....

By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: FRAMINGHAM, Mass.—After years of planning and months of drilling, a first-in-the-nation, neighborhood-scale geothermal heating and cooling project came online here on Tuesday. Geothermal energy—using the steady temperature below ground—to heat and cool buildings is nothing new. What’s new in Framingham is the fact that climate advocates and a utility company, Eversource, devised the plan together. ...Rather than build individual systems, the Framingham project ties together 31 residential and five commercial buildings that now share the underground infrastructure needed to heat and cool them. ...it may offer a new lease on life for gas utilities without squeezing low income individuals. ...air-source heat pumps that pull heat out of the surrounding air, like an air conditioner run in reverse ...can be costly.... “If we only have the people who can afford it, who have the know-how transitioning, it’s kind of spotty,” said An...

By DIANA GITIG , Ars Technica.  Excerpt: Microbes in soil convert nitrogen fertilizer into nitrous oxide, and the more nitrogen fertilizer they have to work with, the more nitrous oxide they make. Agriculture also leaks plenty of the excess nitrogen into waterways in the form of nitrate, generating algal blooms that create low-oxygen ‘dead zones’ where no marine life can live. One way to reduce nitrogen emissions from farms would be to simply use fertilizer more efficiently. But—as we’ve seen with fossil fuels (and antibiotics and plastics)—when humans have a miraculous substance on our hands, we just can’t seem to use it at levels that minimize its impact. ...But even if we were to start using less fertilizer now, we are past time to choose a single technique to curb greenhouse gas emissions; we need to put them all into action. ...instead of trying to promote the growth of any denitrifying bacteria that might happen to already be in soil, researchers decided to grow them external...