By Tianyun Dong et al, Science.  Editor’s summary: Ocean surface temperatures vary from year to year, experiencing heat waves like those felt on land, but 2023 saw an extraordinarily large increase in marine heat waves with no recent analog. Dong  et al . report that 2023 set new records in the duration, extent, and intensity of these events by as much as three standard deviations above the historical average of the past four decades. The increasing trends in marine heat waves present intensifying dangers to ecological, social, and economic systems. —Jesse Smith.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr0910 .

By Jeff Brady , National Public Radio.  Excerpt: The Trump administration wants to overturn a key  2009 Environmental Protection Agency finding  that underpins much of the federal government's actions to rein in climate change. The EPA has crafted a proposal that would undo the government's "endangerment finding," a determination that pollutants from burning fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The finding has   long served as the foundation for a host of policies and rules to address climate change. The EPA's proposal to revoke the finding is currently under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget....  Full article at https://www.npr.org/2025/07/24/nx-s1-5302162/climate-change-trump-epa . See also article in Eos/AGU, A Healthy Environment Is a Human Right, UN Court Rules .

By Cara Buckley , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Pittsburgh is replacing most of its streetlights — more than 33,000 inefficient high-pressure sodium lamps — with LED versions that are projected to save about $942,000 a year in energy costs while tackling light pollution. The old lights cast an orange glow that bathed the heavens and anything nearby in what Flore Marion, the city’s assistant director of sustainability and resilience, described as “horror-movie” lighting....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/climate/pennsylvania-pittsburgh-light-pollution.html . See also article in Eos, Artificial Light Lengthens the Urban Growing Season .

By Robert F. Service , Science.  Excerpt: As a fuel, hydrogen has one major attraction. When it burns or powers a fuel cell, it creates only water—and no climate-warming carbon dioxide. After that, the caveats start. To ship it or store it, the gas must be crushed under intense pressures or liquefied at ultracold temperatures, which raises costs. Now, researchers report the discovery of a cheap catalyst that adds hydrogen atoms to oil-like molecules that are liquid at ambient temperature and pressure. That means hydrogen could be stored and shipped in existing tanks, trucks, and pipelines, much like gasoline....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/storing-hydrogen-oil-liquid-could-allow-easy-transport-trucks-and-ships . 

By Ione Wells, BBC.  Excerpt: Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches her step as she walks across the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile's Atacama salt flats. It's a wetland, known for its groundwater springs, but the plain is now dry and cracked with holes she explains were once pools. "Before, the Vega was all green," she says. "You couldn't see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry." She gestures to some grazing llamas. For generations, her family raised sheep here. As the climate changed, and rain stopped falling, less grass made that much harder. But it worsened when "they" started taking the water, she explains. "They" are lithium companies. Beneath the salt flats of the Atacama Desert lie the world's largest reserves of lithium, a soft, silvery-white metal that is an essential component of the batteries that power electric cars, laptops and solar energy storage. As the world transitions to more renewable energy sources, the ...

By Benjamin L. Rice , et al.  Editor’s summary: The increasing prevalence of extreme weather events creates severe disruptions to public health, as well as to the environment. In the wake of two successive cyclones hitting Madagascar in 2022 and 2023, Rice  et al . examined the effect of these extreme weather events in a high-malaria region. In the aftermath, infection rates by the mosquito-vectored parasite increased to 10% for school-aged children within 3 months as mosquito and malaria control activities were interrupted. Modeling showed that the recently available vaccines supply prolonged protection (up to 10 months) against repeat malaria infections and offer a sustainable instrument for health resilience in the wake of climate change. —Caroline Ash.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5365 . 

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: On every continent not cloaked in ice, researchers have discovered strangely barren circular depressions, tens of meters or even kilometers across and as little as a few centimeters deep. Soil probes show these sunken patches, sometimes called “fairy circles,” leak hydrogen gas that is percolating up from within the earth. They have attracted scientists and businesspeople alike for their potential to signal  reserves of clean hydrogen fuel . Now, researchers are offering one of the first geomechanical explanations for how they form: from the pressure of upwelling hydrogen gas, which causes a circular patch of land to rise and then sink. Before the  new study , which was published on 30 May in  Geology , “nobody really understood or tried seriously to understand how these fairy circles are formed,” says Alain Prinzhofer, a geologist and scientific director of Brazilian company GEO4U who reviewed the paper. ...But these circles ha...

By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Add to the long list of global warming concerns that melting ice caps could trigger more volcanic eruptions. Worse, researchers said Monday at a scientific conference in Prague, the increasing volcanic activity holds the potential for a range of long-term climate feedbacks, as some volcanoes in Antarctica could accelerate ice melt from below while others could be so explosive that they send climate-altering material into the upper layers of the atmosphere. The research funded by the National Science Foundation studied the chemistry of rocks at six volcanoes in the Chilean Andes, where the scientists were able to detail changes in the magma below the ice or underground over the millennia of the most recent ice age, and to document how volcanic activity increased when the ice melted. University of Wisconsin–Madison geoscientist  Brad Singer , who led the research, said there are clear signs that thick ice caps act as lids on vo...

By Jim Robbins , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Eighteen years ago, farmed oyster larvae began disappearing in mass die-offs, mystifying hatchery managers in the Pacific Northwest and threatening a thriving part of the region’s economy. Up to 90 percent of the farmed Pacific oysters — the backbone of the industry — were being wiped out. Businesses like Taylor Shellfish Farms, the country’s largest grower now run by the fifth generation of the Taylor family, stood at the brink of catastrophe. ...The culprit turned out to be an increasingly acidic ocean, and research efforts to solve the mystery have propelled Washington State to the forefront of the world’s efforts to understand and offset the shifting chemical composition of the seas. Now, the global race against ocean acidification is intensifying as carbon dioxide levels in the seas increase. A recent study  found that the world’s oceans crossed a “planetary boundary”  in 2020, and warned that things were worse than prev...

By Kimberly Hatfield , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Scientists constructed a 100-year history of acidity in the Gulf of Maine. They expected coastal variability but were surprised by what they didn’t find: a strong anthropogenic signal. ...Using ocean chemistry recorded in algae, researchers have now constructed a nearly 100-year history of acidity (pH) in the region. The  analysis, published in  Scientific Reports , shows that ocean acidification, seen around the world, has been delayed in the gulf....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/warming-gulf-of-maine-buffers-ocean-acidification-for-now . 

Size-Insensitive Vapor Diffusion Enabled by Additive Freeze-Printed Aerogels for Scalable Desalination . Paper by Xiaomeng Zhao et al, American Chemical Society (ACS).  Summary: ...[desalination] currently requires huge plants with expensive machinery that require tons of energy to separate salt from the water. But now, researchers have developed a sponge-like material that turns saltwater into freshwater using only sunlight.  To make the sponge, the team developed a so-called ‘additive freeze-printing’ technique that combines 3D printing and freeze-casting, a technique that uses ice to create a highly porous material. ...The researchers put the sponge in a cup full of seawater then covered it with a lid to collect the condensation. After six hours in the hot Hong Kong sunlight, they got around three tablespoons of drinkable water. The team notes that, unlike other evaporators which don’t work as well as they get larger, their aerogel lattice is just as effective at a lar...

By Jennifer Hiller , The Wallstreet Journal.  Excerpt: Big wind and solar projects stand to be among the biggest losers, while hydrogen and other projects get a short reprieve. ...U.S. risks a slowdown in power delivery during the global artificial-intelligence race by ending the tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The U.S. is also poised to cede advances in technologies from solar panels to batteries and electric vehicles to China. .... Loser: Big wind and solar power projects ... Winner: U.S. factories, ... Winner: Rooftop solar [??]  ... Loser: Electric vehicles  ....  Full article at https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-renewable-energy-sectors-relative-winners-and-losers-in-the-megabill-95e7ed48 .  See also July 2 Forbes article, Red States–And AI–Are Big Losers From Trump’s Clean Energy Massacre , and July 3 article in TechCrunch, Final GOP bill kneecaps renewables and hydrogen but lifts nuclear...

By Robert F. Service , Science.  Excerpt: More than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with global warming and competing demands from farms and industry expected to worsen shortages. But the skies may soon provide relief, not in the form of rain but humidity, sucked out of the air by “atmospheric water harvesters.” The devices have existed for decades but typically are too expensive, energy-hungry, or unproductive to be practical. Now, however, two classes of materials called hydrogels and metal-organic frameworks have touched off what Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calls “an explosion of efforts related to atmospheric water harvesting.”...  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/devices-pull-water-out-thin-air-poised-take . 

By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: Less than 15 months into a scheduled 5-year mission, a pioneering satellite built to track rogue emissions of planet-warming methane has been lost. The demise of MethaneSAT  was announced today  by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the nonprofit behind the $88 million satellite. ...Methane is emitted by natural sources, such as wetlands, but also by leaky oil and gas infrastructure. Stanching those leaks  is an efficient way to slow global warming , many researchers argue, and MethaneSAT was developed specifically to identify them. ...Some existing satellites, such as the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5, can map methane on broader scales across hundreds of kilometers. Others can pinpoint large individual polluters such as a refinery. But MethaneSAT, funded with the help of a $100 million grant from Jeff Bezos’s Earth Fund, was unique in its ability to detect smaller emissions across entire oil and gas fields while also z...