By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The companies racing to build large solar farms across the United States are facing a growing problem: Not enough workers. Now, they’re turning to robots for help. On Tuesday, AES Corporation, one of the country’s biggest renewable energy companies,  introduced a first-of-its-kind robot  that can lug around and install the thousands of heavy panels that typically make up a large solar array. AES said its robot, nicknamed Maximo, would ultimately be able to install solar panels twice as fast as humans can and at half the cost. ...After months of testing, AES will put Maximo to work in the California desert later this year to help install panels at  the largest solar-plus-battery project  under construction, meant to help power Amazon data centers. If all goes well, the company aims to build hundreds of similar A.I.-powered robots....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/climate/solar-panels-robots-maximo-construction.html . 

By Melissa Eddy , The New York Times.  Excerpt: At a Berlin trade fair for sustainability, a new gadget caught Waltraud Berg’s eye — a solar panel small enough to be easily installed on the side of a balcony and then plugged into a wall socket to feed energy produced by the sun directly into her home. “I was absolutely thrilled to learn that such a thing even existed, that you can generate your own power and be more independent,” said Ms. Berg, a retiree who installed several panels on the south-facing balcony of her Berlin apartment by herself. ...in homes across Germany, they are powering a quiet transformation, bringing the green revolution into the hands of people without requiring them to make a large investment, find an electrician or use heavy tools. “You don’t need to drill or hammer anything,” Ms. Berg said. “You just hang them from the balcony like wet laundry in Italy.” More than 500,000 of the systems have already been set up across Germany, and new laws that relaxed rules

By Erin Martin-Jones , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: With near-constant reports of wildfire catastrophes in the media, it seems like extreme fires are occurring more regularly. And a recent  study  in  Nature Ecology and Evolution  confirms it—showing that intense wildfires are now twice as common as they were 2 decades ago....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/extreme-wildfires-are-getting-more-extreme-and-occurring-more-often . 

By Caroline Kimeu , The Guardian.  Excerpt: A greener economy could bring millions of jobs to some of the largest countries in  Africa , according to a new report. Research by the development agency FSD Africa and the impact advisory firm Shortlist predicts that 3.3 million jobs could be generated across the continent by 2030. Forecasting Green Jobs in Africa  predicts that 60% of the roles, mainly in the renewable energy sector, will be skilled or white collar positions that can “spur the growth of the middle class in countries with high-growth sectors” such as renewable energy, e-mobility, construction and manufacturing. The report was based on forecasts from five countries – the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – that the study says will see more than a fifth of the jobs expected from the green transition over the next six years....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jul/26/green-economy-could-gene

By Leslie Sattler, Yahoo! TCD.  Excerpt: America is about to get its very first  solar-covered canal  — a huge win for clean energy innovation. This groundbreaking project, nearing completion on tribal lands in Arizona, will generate solar power while also helping preserve precious water resources, according to  Canary Media . The Casa Blanca Canal project aims to tackle two urgent issues at once: the need for more renewable energy and the importance of  water conservation , especially in hot, arid regions. By covering a portion of the extensive canal network with solar panels, the installation will produce clean electricity for local communities while reducing water evaporation. This concept has been deployed successfully in India, inspiring U.S. engineers to design a solution tailored for American infrastructure. ...The 1.3-megawatt pilot project was funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and has also received support from the Department of Energy and California Energy Commission.... 

By WENXIA ZHANG et al, Science.  Summary: As climate change continues, warming of the atmosphere allows it to hold more water and thus produce more precipitation. A corollary to more rain is the amplification of precipitation variability, a behavior easier to predict than to observe. Zhang  et al . used global records of daily precipitation to show that this expected increase in precipitation variability is in fact detectable in the data over the past century. This trend, which is most prominent over Europe, Australia, and eastern North America, will make adaptation more difficult for societies and ecosystems. —Jesse Smith.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp0212 . 

By Yuanxu Dong  et al, Science.  Summary: It’s no secret that the ocean is  a big help when it comes to curbing climate change , absorbing carbon and locking much of it away in its deep, dark depths. And that’s  especially true of the waters around Antarctica . Now, a study  published in  Science Advances  suggests that the Southern Ocean may be pulling   25%  more  carbon dioxide from our atmosphere than previously thought . “ Accurate quantification of the Southern Ocean CO 2  sink is essential for the assessment of the Earth’s climate ,” said Yuanxu Dong, lead author on the new paper, in a statement. Unfortunately, it’s the part of the globe we’re least certain about, as conditions often make sampling difficult. ...The new data indicate far more carbon absorption than expected during summer—and suggest  previous estimates that relied on indirect methods were thrown off by temperature....  Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn5781 . 

About research by LAIYIN ZHU  et al, Science.  In the Atlantic, ...Warm air from an ordinary thunderstorm has absorbed heat from tepid seawater and begun churning—the birth of a hurricane. But, whether the storm will be a sprinkle or deluge when it makes landfall  depends largely on how dusty it is , according to a new study. Wind strips dust from the Sahara Desert, bringing it westward across the Atlantic. These plumes of dirt-laden air provide marine life with nutrients and can affect air quality half a world away. And they’re known to be a wet blanket for growing hurricanes—or, more accurately,  a dry one  . The lack of moisture, shearing winds, and even the dust itself—by reflecting warming solar rays—can squelch a would-be storm. But it turns out that’s only true if there’s enough dust. When there’s too little, the particles act as nucleation seeds for clouds, boosting the storm’s deluge and the damage it causes when it comes ashore, researchers reported this week in  Science Adva

By David Curran , SFGATE.  Excerpt: “They love it,” my neighbor Ali Schneider tells me of her two sons, ages 3 and 7. “And we do, too. They don’t mind cars, but they love the bike. Pretty much all the kids on the block really like it.” At least three other families on our block also use electric cargo bikes to transport their kids. ...In terms of competing with a car, the electric assist has allowed the cargo bike — first introduced in the U.S. by  Xtracycle  in 1998, Allen explains — to become a more mainstream product. And while the early years presented numerous challenges, a huge breakthrough came in 2015, when the German manufacturing giant Bosch produced a breakthrough battery for these bikes. ...“with this motor you could put two kids on a bike and climb any hill in San Francisco.” And that has made all the difference. In their first year with the Bosch-powered bikes, the number of e-cargo bikes the New Wheel sold jumped to 61, then to 221 in 2018. Last year, they sold 479. And,

By Copernicus Climate Change Service.  Excerpt: The Earth has just experienced its warmest day in recent history, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) data. On 22 July 2024, the daily global average temperature reached a new record high in the ERA5 dataset*, at 17.16°C. This exceeds the previous records of 17.09°C, set just one day before on 21 July 2024, and 17.08°C, set a year earlier on 6 July 2023. ...  Full article at https://climate.copernicus.eu/new-record-daily-global-average-temperature-reached-july-2024 . 

By Elise Cutts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: New research shows that present-day iceberg loss from Greenland stacks up to some of the most dramatic iceberg-slinging episodes in recent geological history. Such events involved the disintegration of an ice sheet over North America and coincided with the weakening or failure of vital ocean currents in the North Atlantic—as well as severe climate swings. Despite this concerning parallel, there’s reason to think that modern iceberg loss from Greenland won’t disrupt ocean circulation within the next few decades, according to authors of the study,  published in  Science . ...The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or  AMOC , flows northward along the east coast of North America before veering east toward Scandinavia. Along the way, evaporation leaves behind water that’s increasingly cool and salty and therefore dense. In the Arctic, this dense, cold water sinks to join deepwater currents headed south to the Antarctic. Shutting down the AMOC wo

By Minho Kim , The New York Times.  Excerpt: On June 20, after millions of Americans had suffered through a sweltering heat wave for three days, Amtrak sent an ominous  warning over social media : Trains connecting the largest cities in Northeast could face up to an hour of delay from high temperatures. Later that afternoon, after the temperature peaked at 96 degrees in Newark, Amtrak lost electricity near the New Jersey side of the Hudson River tunnels. The power failure soon shuttered a 150-mile stretch of the busiest rail corridor in the United States for more than three hours. ...Extreme weather events bogged down Amtrak trains for more than 4,010 hours in the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October 2022 and ended in September 2023, according to a Times analysis of more than 313,000 individual train delay data dating to September 2003. ...The biggest contributor has been intensifying heat waves. ...Railways made from steel are prone to deformities when exposed to direct sunlight d

By Raymond Zhong  and  Mira Rojanasakul , The New York Times.  Excerpt: We usually talk about summertime heat in terms of how hot the air is, but there’s another metric that matters: the temperatures of roads, sidewalks, buildings, parking lots and other outdoor surfaces. Hot surfaces can make the places people live and work more dangerous, and can increase the risk of  contact burns . ...Around noon on July 10, huge parts of [Phoenix] were 120 degrees Fahrenheit, about 49 Celsius, or hotter to the touch. Had you been unlucky or unwise enough to actually touch it with bare skin, it could have caused  injury within minutes . ...So far this summer, the Arizona Burn Center, which serves Phoenix and the broader Southwest, has admitted 65 people for severe heat-related burns, according to Dr. Kevin Foster, the center’s director. Six of these people died from their injuries. Last summer, the center recorded 14 such deaths. ...645 heat-related deaths that were identified last year in Maricopa

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Debris from a damaged wind turbine blade has been washing up on the shores of Nantucket, Mass., prompting the closure of several beaches to swimmers and spurring an investigation into what caused the mishap. The damage to the blade occurred on Saturday evening at Vineyard Wind, the country’s second large-scale offshore wind farm, which is 14 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. It’s still under construction but the first turbines  began generating electricity in February . The companies behind the project...plan to install a total of 62 turbines by the end of the year that could, at full strength, produce 800 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power more than 400,000 homes. The  turbines being installed  at Vineyard Wind are enormous, featuring 351-foot-long blades that can reach heights taller than the Eiffel Tower. ...the developers of Vineyard Wind said that while the fiberglass debris was not hazardous to people, they re

By Roger Harrabin , New Scientist.  Excerpt: Some 450 kilometres north of Helsinki, Finland, lies a decommissioned mine. Despite its remote location, it is being keenly watched because it looks set to play a role in revolutionising our energy systems – though not for the reasons you might suspect. The Pyhäsalmi mine used to yield wealth from zinc and copper, but it is about to monetise the power of gravity. As the deepest metal ore mine in Europe, it is an ideal spot for what’s known as a gravity vault. UK-based company Gravitricity plans to dangle a heavy weight down a mine shaft and connect the mechanism to a generator. It will store power as potential energy by pulling up the weight, then generate it again by letting it plummet. If that sounds surprisingly simple, that is exactly the point. Governments are wrestling with the epic challenge of the intermittency of  renewable power : how to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. So far, they have larg

By ARI PLACHTA , Sacramento Bee.  Excerpt: California’s power grid emerged from a nearly three weeklong record-setting heat wave relatively unscathed, and officials are crediting years of investment in renewable energy — particularly giant batteries that store solar power for use when the sun stops shining....  Full article at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article290009339.html .

By Luke Barratt  and  Miranda Green , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Some forest carbon offsets sold by the biggest offsetting company in the US offer little or no benefit to the climate, a satellite analysis has found. Finite Carbon, created in 2009 and bought by British multinational oil and gas giant  BP  in 2020, is responsible for more than a quarter of the US’s total carbon credits, which it says it generates from protecting more than 60 “high credibility, high integrity projects” across 1.6m hectares (4m acres). However, experts at the offsets ratings agency  Renoster  and the non-profit CarbonPlan analyzed three projects accounting for almost half of Finite Carbon’s total credits, with an estimated market value of $334m, according to analysis by market intelligence company  AlliedOffsets . Renoster  found  issues, including trees in a project in the Alaska Panhandle that were probably never in danger of being cut down in an already extensively logged area. Of the credits Renoster look

By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: When it comes to understanding the medieval climate of Europe, scientists face a daunting issue: Europeans loved to chop down their oldest and biggest trees. ...[making] it difficult for researchers to obtain records of tree rings, a standard paleoclimate tool, leaving gaps where most Europeans actually lived. ...climate scientists are now turning to a far more abundant historical resource: wine. Records of grape harvests found in the cellars and monasteries of Europe stretch back to the 1400s and can provide a powerful resource for teasing out past temperatures. “Compared with the average tree ring, it’s really excellent,” says Stefan Brönnimann, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Bern. ...Several years ago, Brönnimann and co-authors  showed  that the date of grape harvests was an excellent indicator of past temperature in the growing season. Now, in a new study  published last month  in Climate of the Past, they’ve shown that another mea

By Ron Barrett , Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College.  Excerpt: Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change. While researching for a new book about the  history of emerging infections , I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming. Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, both reveal how people with different beliefs and interests can still agree on key policies and practices for tackling a global problem....  Full article at https://theconversation.com/can-humanity-address-climate-change-without-believing-it-medical-history-suggests-it-is-possible-230936 . 

By Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Federal Emergency Management Agency will take new steps to ensure that the structures it funds — including schools, hospitals, police stations, libraries, sewage treatment plants and bridges — are protected from flooding. The agency said Wednesday that projects constructed with FEMA money must be built in a way that prevents flood damage, whether by elevating them above the expected height of a flood or, if that’s not feasible, by building in a safer location. The rule also makes it clear that building decisions must reflect risks now and also in the future, as climate change makes flooding more frequent and severe....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/climate/fema-flooding-construction-rules.html . 

By Closed Loop Partners.  Excerpt: Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Peet’s Coffee, Yum! Brands and other global and local brands and restaurants are partnering in  The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project  from the  NextGen Consortium , led by the Center for the Circular Economy at  Closed Loop Partners , to activate an unprecedented collaboration to drive reuse. Starting August 5, more than 30 restaurants in the City of Petaluma, CA, will swap their single-use cups for to-go reusable cups to all customers at no cost, and widespread return points will also be available across the city. This program marks a significant milestone for reuse, as the first initiative of its kind that makes reusable to-go cups the default option across multiple restaurants in a U.S. city, with the opportunity to drive more customers to reuse and displace hundreds of thousands of single-use cups. The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is focused on supporting customers to create return habits, a key factor to t

By CARINE F. BOURGEOIS et al, Science.  Abstract: Mangroves’ ability to store carbon (C) has long been recognized, but little is known about whether planted mangroves can store C as efficiently as naturally established (i.e., intact) stands and in which time frame. Through ...models compiled from 40 years of data and built from 684 planted mangrove stands worldwide, we found that biomass C stock culminated at 71 to 73% to that of intact stands ~20 years after planting. Furthermore, prioritizing mixed-species planting including  Rhizophora  spp. would maximize C accumulation within the biomass compared to monospecific planting. Despite a 25% increase in the first 5 years following planting, no notable change was observed in the soil C stocks thereafter, which remains at a constant value of 75% to that of intact soil C stock, suggesting that planting effectively prevents further C losses due to land use change. These results have strong implications for mangrove restoration planning and

By Helena Kudiabor , Nature.  Excerpt: Researchers have developed a chemical-processing technique that can break down fabrics into reusable molecules, even when they contain a mixture of materials. The process, outlined in a  Science Advances  paper on 3 July, shows that chemical recycling can give old textiles a new lease of life. If scaled up, it could help to tackle the  growing mountain of waste generated by the fashion industry , says study co-author Dionisios Vlachos, an engineer at the University of Delaware in Newark. Estimates suggest than less than 1% of textiles are recycled, and nearly three-quarters of used garments end up incinerated or dumped into landfill. “A good third or more of the microplastics that end up in the ocean” come from clothing, says Vlachos. “Our ability to develop technology to be able to handle all this waste and remove them from the environment, landfills and the oceans is very important.” Miriam Ribul, who researches sustainable materials at the UKRI

By Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...accessing clean water is an issue for a significant swath of the population, and the situation is only apt to worsen in coming decades, new modeling work reveals. About 55% of the world’s population currently has trouble accessing clean water at least 1 month out of the year, and by 2100, that number could rise above 65%, researchers calculated. Minimizing water scarcity now and into the future will rely on curbing water use, reducing pollution, and mitigating the effects of climate change, the researchers suggest. ... Edward Jones , a hydrology and water quality modeler at Utrecht University in the Netherlands ...Researchers were surprised to find that the worst-case scenario they considered—RCP 8.5 and SSP 5—didn’t result in the largest number of people being exposed to clean water scarcity. The researchers attributed that finding to the increased economic development and heightened water use efficiency built into that particular SSP. The s

By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: One of North America’s largest areas of interconnected glaciers is melting twice as quickly as it did before 2010, a team of scientists said Tuesday, ...  published on Tuesday  in the journal Nature Communications. ...Last year, researchers issued projections of  how every glacier on Earth will evolve  depending on what humankind does, or fails to do, about global warming. ...roughly half of the world’s glaciers, 104,000 of them or so, could be gone by 2100....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/climate/alaska-juneau-icefield-melting.html .