By Jesse Radolinski   et al, Science.  Summary: With climate change, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in many regions, but temperature and elevated CO 2  may modify its effects on soil, water, and vegetation: temperature by increasing plants’ water needs and CO 2  by decreasing them. Radolinski  et al . conducted a field experiment in an Austrian montane grassland to determine the effects of these changes on soil water. Under drought, elevated CO 2 , and warming, plants reduced transpiration, conserving water. Plants treated in this way (but not those with only one manipulated factor) used a larger proportion of recently precipitated water from large pores and with little mixing, showing that future drought will likely fundamentally change how water moves in soil. —Bianca Lopez.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0734 . 

By Connor Letourneau , San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpt: “When people fight the ocean,” [Pacifica, City Council member Christine] Boles said, “the ocean always wins.” ...Pacifica, a picturesque surf town of roughly 35,000 just south of San Francisco, has become an important case study for the increasingly urgent questions  climate change  raises for many coastal communities. Should residents stay to defend their homes from rising tides that grow fiercer by the year? Or, should they admit defeat and cede the land back to nature? ...“Managed retreat” — a term coined by geologists to describe the process of removing people, homes and businesses from at-risk areas — is at the root of the debate. ...“We can’t build seawalls high enough to protect us forever,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “So, in the long run, it’s either going to be managed retreat or unmanaged retreat. It’s up to each community to decide.”...  Full...

By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: More than 3 billion people experienced their hottest year ever in 2024 because of anthropogenic climate change. The world is speeding toward its 1.5°C warming target. ...“Even if we likely exceeded [1.5°C] this year, that doesn’t mean that we’ve exceeded it in the context of the Paris accord, which is over a longer time period,” Schmidt said. “But I will say that we anticipate future global warming as long as we are emitting greenhouse gases, and until we get to net zero, we will not get a leveling off of global mean temperature.”....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/exceptional-global-warming-spike-continued-in-2024 . 

By Laura Paddison , CNN.  Excerpt: It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the  previous record  set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus [ https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level ]. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach  the 1.5-degree limit  countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Scientists are much more concerned about breaches over decades, rather than single years — as above that threshold humans and ecosystems may struggle to adapt — but 2024’s   record   “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London....  Full article at https://www.cnn.c...

By Valério D. Pillar  and  Gerhard E. Overbeck , Science.  Excerpt: Over half of Earth’s land surface is covered with  fire-prone vegetation , with grassy ecosystems—such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, and shrublands—being the most  extensive . In the context of the climate crisis, scientists worldwide are exploring  adaptation  measures to address the heightened fire risk driven by more frequent extreme climatic conditions such as droughts and heatwaves, as well as by  non-native plant invasions  that increased fuel loads and altered fire regimes. Although fire is intrinsic to  grassy ecosystems , rising exposure to wildfire smoke harms human health and the environment. Here, we argue that grazing management in grassy ecosystems could help reduce wildfire risk and its consequences....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7471 . 

By Christopher Bataille , Science.  Excerpt: According to current climate science, global temperatures will continue to rise until net carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions reach zero ( 1 )—that is, when the amount of CO 2  added to the atmosphere is balanced by the amount removed. Given current projected emissions, 2 billion to 15 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO 2  may need to be removed from the atmosphere annually to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming below 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures ( 2 ,  3 ). ...Van Roijen  et al.  ( 4 ) report that replacing traditional building materials with CO 2 -storing alternatives could sequester carbon at the billion-tonne level. ...Building materials such as asphalt, wood, stone, steel, and concrete are foundational to human civilization and have large global demands, ...~30 Gt of concrete are used each year in the world ( 5 ). Some of these materials are also major c...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The vast  Antarctic Ice Sheet  holds  more than half  of Earth’s freshwater. In several places around the continent, the ice extends over the ocean, where it forms large floating shelves. Observations suggest many of these  ice shelves are thinning  as they melt from below, with implications for ocean dynamics, global sea level, and Earth’s climate. For now, the  Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf —one of Antarctica’s biggest, extending over the Weddell Sea—appears to be relatively stable, thanks to near-freezing currents circulating over the continental shelf beneath it. However, climate models predict that shifting ocean currents may bring warmer water to the continental shelf in the future. To gain a clearer picture of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf’s future,  Steiger et al.  analyzed water temperature and velocity data from 2017 to 2021. ...In this study, researchers found that the summertime flow of warm wa...

By Nathaniel Scharping , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In a string of ever-hotter years, 2023 stood out: It was the  warmest on record  (though  2024 will likely surpass it ), with temperatures 1.4°C (2.5°F) above the preindustrial average and 0.17°C (0.3°F) above the previous record set in 2016. One cause for the spike may have been that Earth was just a little darker than it’s been in recent history.  Earth’s albedo , a measure of how reflective the surface is, hit a record low in 2023, according to the authors of a  study in  Science . That record was due mainly to a dearth of bright, low-level clouds, which reflect more solar radiation than land or ocean. The answers to why these clouds were absent and, crucially, whether the trend will continue are still unclear....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/darker-less-cloudy-earth-contributed-to-record-heat .

By   Caroline Van Hemert , bioGraphic.  Excerpt: ...Peregrine falcons hold near-mythical appeal in our collective imagination, and for good reason. Topping out at speeds of more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) per hour, they’re the fastest species on Earth, plummeting from the sky like amber-eyed missiles. ...Perhaps more cosmopolitan than any other wild bird species, peregrine falcons live on every continent except Antarctica, in habitats ranging from polar deserts to subtropical rainforests. They’re flexible in what they eat—from songbirds to seabirds, carrion to chickens—and in where they nest—on cliffs, in trees, on the ground, or on buildings. Some individuals barely budge throughout their lifetimes, whereas others, like the Greenlandic variety, embody the roots of their scientific name— Falco peregrinus , or “wandering falcon”—making migrations upwards of 25,000 kilometers per year. ...Since birds like peregrines feed high on the food chain, contaminants accumulate ...

By DW.  Excerpt: Europe's largest economy saw a rise in renewable energy generation in 2024. Germany  made a notable shift toward  renewable energy  sources last year, according to a  report from the Federal Network Agency  released on Friday. Renewable energy accounted for 59% of the country's total electricity generation, up from 56% in 2023. Wind energy was the leading source, contributing 31.9% to the nation's energy mix, while solar energy contributed 14.7%. ...Last year also marked Germany's first full year  without nuclear power , following the final shutdown of its nuclear plants in April 2023. The country aims to be climate-neutral by 2045....  Full article at https://www.dw.com/en/wind-and-solar-power-drive-germanys-renewable-energy-surge/a-71213890 . 

By Madeline Reinsel , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A slow climate feedback loop may be bubbling beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. The continent...includes volcanic giants such as  Mount Erebus and its iconic lava lake . But at least 100 less conspicuous volcanoes dot Antarctica, with many clustered along its western coast. Some of those volcanoes peak above the surface, but others sit several kilometers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Climate change is causing the ice sheet to melt, raising global sea levels. The melting is also removing the weight over the rocks below, with more local consequences. Ice sheet melt has been shown to  increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes  elsewhere on the globe.  Coonin et al.  ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions. The reason is that this unloading of ice sheets reduc...

By Andrew J. Wight , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In the past 70 years, more than 75,000 tornadoes have been recorded in the United States. Recordkeeping of these phenomena outside this region has been largely fragmented, sitting isolated in books, government databases, and research archives. But a new effort to scour as many publicly accessible records as possible is highlighting the scale of this hazard around the world. In a  new study ,  Malcolm Maas , an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a team of tornado researchers compiled a tornado database that they hope will boost tornado research globally. ...The United States accounts for 21,548 of the recorded fatalities in the database published by Maas and his collaborators. But tornadoes in other countries wreak havoc as well: Bangladesh accounts for 8,325 fatalities in the database, India has seen 1,473, and the rest of the world combined accounts for 3,824....  Full article at https://eos...

By Neal E. Boudette , The New York Times.  Excerpt: General Motors was the biggest winner in U.S. sales in the final quarter, with a gain of 21 percent. It more than doubled its electric vehicle sales. ... Ford Motor sold more than 530,000 vehicles  in the quarter, a gain of nearly 9 percent. Ford’s E.V. sales climbed 16 percent, to more than 30,000 vehicles. ...Analysts said the year-end jump in E.V. sales might also have been spurred somewhat by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has suggested he will eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit on electric vehicles priced under $80,000. The tax credit has helped manufacturers offer the attractive lease deals....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/business/ford-gm-vehicle-sales.html . 

By Jeffrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: John Deutch ...joined President Jimmy Carter’s energy team shortly after the Georgia Democrat took office in January 1977. And for the next 3 years Deutch had a front-row seat to history as Carter, who died on 29 December 2024 at age 100, worked to make the country less dependent on imported oil and in the process reshaped the direction of federal energy research. ...Within 6 months Deutch would become the founding director of the Office of Energy Research at the newly created Department of Energy (DOE), the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the short-lived Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). ...Meeting DOE’s mandate also meant launching programs outside the legacy energy sources, notably fossil fuels and nuclear power, that had been the mainstay of DOE research under its predecessor agencies. ...Although the Carter administration tried hard to get people in the U.S. to conserve energy and to find alte...

By Jianbang Gan , Science.  Excerpt: Wildfire occurrence and scale worldwide have risen over recent decades, with the most destructive wildfires in North America taking place in the past decade ( 1 ,  2 ). ...On page 91 of this issue, Wang  et al . ( 3 ) report the key drivers of burn severity.... ...These studies led to the development of predictive models that are used to project wildfire effects under different scenarios over time in locations where no historical fires have been recorded. However, the drivers of wildfire effects are complex and involve multiple interlinked factors, such as climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. ...Among all the factors, fuel aridity, which reflects the abundance and moisture content of flammable vegetative fuels, was determined to be the primary driver for most Canadian forest fires between 1981 and 2020. ...Wang  et al . found a large increase in burn severity in northern Canada compared with other regions in C...

By  Dan Charles , Science.  Excerpt: ...“This is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Verburg, a land use researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. Global trade in food has fueled the clearing of forests in Brazil and Bolivia for agriculture, but elsewhere it has sidelined small farms with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water. “People give up because they cannot compete,” Verburg says. ...Farmers, or their children, are walking away from land in Eastern Europe, southern France, South Korea, Japan, and mountainous parts of India. It’s difficult to measure the exact extent of the trend. Land is often abandoned, then reclaimed and farmed again. But an estimated  120 million hectares  have been left fallow in Europe alone since 1990. Globally,  the figure since 1950  could be as high as 400 million hectares—half the area of Australia. “Abandonment will continue, I think there’s no doubt,” Verburg says. In fact, climate change is likely to accelerate it as...

By Dennis M. Hogan, Guest Essay for The New York Times.  Excerpt: In 2023, ...July, the middle of Panama’s rainy season. But the rains had been sparse, and water levels in the canal had sunk to troubling lows. Without freshwater from rain, our guide explained, the locks on the canal could not operate. ...the true threat to U.S. commerce through Panama. If the goal is securing affordable access to the transit point over the long term, it is climate change, not Chinese influence, that U.S. policymakers should worry about. ...Sending a single ship through the canal’s locks can use around 50 million gallons of water, mainly freshwater collected from Lake Gatún. Though the canal is, for the moment, operating at full capacity, a drier climate and greater demand for drinking water have in recent years reduced the volume of available water. That has  forced the state-run Panama Canal Authority  at times to limit the number of daily passages through the canal, at one point by as m...