By Tom Chivers , SEMAFOR.  Excerpt: Renewables are being deployed aggressively across much of the world even as the US, historically the world’s biggest emitter, overturned a landmark domestic climate ruling. ...Elsewhere in the world, however, green technology is being implemented at pace: Africa’s solar capacity expanded 17% last year, with 20 of the continent’s nations  setting import records , and data this week showed that China’s emissions  may already be falling  thanks in large part to its huge outlay on clean power. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said renewables and nuclear will account by  half of global power supply by 2030 ....  Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/02/13/2026/renewables-soar-globally-despite-us-climate-pullback . 

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: President Trump on Wednesday directed the Pentagon to start buying more electricity from coal-burning power plants as part of his efforts to revive the declining coal industry....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/climate/trump-coal-pentagon-electricity.html . 

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In a new attack on the science of climate change, a federal agency has stripped a chapter on global warming from a manual written to help judges understand important scientific questions they may face in their courtrooms....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/climate/judge-manual-climate-change-chapter.html . 

By Valerie Volcovici  and  David Shepardson , Reuters.  Excerpt: The administration of President Donald Trump is set this week to overturn an Obama-era scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health, removing the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations. The move, which the administration formally proposed in July, would mark the Republican administration's most sweeping climate change policy rollback to date, and follows a string of regulatory cuts and other moves intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-repeal-landmark-climate-finding-huge-regulatory-rollback-wsj-reports-2026-02-10/ .  See also New York Times articles, Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change and What to Know About the E.P.A.’s Big Attack on Climate Regulation . Also from the American Geophysical Union, AGU Denounces Trump ...

By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—The discussions started roughly a decade ago, when an account manager at Xcel Energy, the electricity and gas utility provider, expressed confusion, officials at Colorado Mesa University recalled. A public school on the state’s remote western slope, Colorado Mesa had recently doubled in size, but its energy usage had hardly budged as it began installing an advanced geothermal heating and cooling system. Since its geothermal buildout began in 2008, the university has saved more than $15 million in energy costs, money it has passed on to students through lower tuition and more scholarship funding.  Hundreds of boreholes drilled approximately 500 feet beneath athletic fields and parking lots tap low-temperature thermal energy to help heat and cool campus buildings in what is now one of the largest such networks in the nation. ...A boiler that provides backup heat is rarely used. A bigger challenge is...

By Brad Plumer  and  Rebecca F. Elliott , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s efforts to slow — and sometimes revoke — federal approvals for wind and solar projects. A key  environmental review  of Jackalope by the Interior Department was stalled for months, and the project is now effectively dead. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide. While Mr. Trump’s  attacks on offshore wind  have been highly visible, his administration has also been hobbling solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying federal approvals that were once routine....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: Over the weekend of 24–25 January, a major winter storm blanketed the eastern United States in soft snow. ...in many places, the powder gave way to freezing rain, glazing trees and roads in heavy, dangerous ice, bringing down power lines, and depriving 1 million people of light and heat. Freezing rain is a stealth winter hazard, says Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. ...“...[freezing rain is] relatively understudied.” ...a handful of scientists are studying how this rare but destructive form of precipitation might be changing in a warming world, drawing on long-term records, new measurements, and computer modeling. One early result: Freezing rain isn’t vanishing—but it is shifting in location and timing. “We want to make an urgent warning that these kinds of winter hazards won’t be less frequent under a warmer climate,” says postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu, who works with Yang. Instead, in the ...

By KEN MORITSUGU Associated Press.  Excerpt: BEIJING -- Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will  reduce carbon emissions enough  to limit climate change. ...At the same time, even larger  additions of wind and solar  capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. ...If more of the nation's  1.4 billion people  climb into the middle class, more will be able to afford air conditioners and washing machines. ...The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from  a drought  that hit ...

By Bakar institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. Excerpt: A new material developed by BIDMaP researchers captures CO₂ from outdoor air with unprecedented speed, marking a critical leap toward practical direct air capture technology. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, the scientific consensus is clear: reducing emissions alone is no longer enough. To avert the worst effects of climate change, scientists must also figure out a way to actively remove vast quantities of CO₂ that are already lingering in the sky. One of the most promising technologies for this task is Direct Air Capture (DAC), machines that filter carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. ...a team of researchers from Omar M. Yaghi’s Lab —whose pioneering work on reticular chemistry was recognized with the  Nobel Prize in 2025 —has reported a major breakthrough. In a study published today in  Nature Sustainability , the team unveils COF-1000, a new material that captures carbon dioxid...

By UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.  Excerpt: Drawing on research developed by Paul Mayencourt’s team at the  UC Berkeley Wood Lab , Mad River Mass Timber has emerged as California’s first producer of dowel-laminated mass timber, which has the potential to improve forest health, mitigate wildfire risk, and accelerate the production of affordable housing — while also contributing toward the long-term goal of decarbonizing the environment. ...With guidance from Assistant Professor  Paul Mayencourt  and the  UC Berkeley Wood Lab , Humboldt County’s  Mad River Mass Timber  is pioneering the commercial manufacture of dowel-laminated timber (DLT) in the state. The first vertically integrated producer of mass timber in California, MRMT transforms waste wood from our forests into construction-ready building panels. ...Weak or small-diameter trees that cannot otherwise be used for construction, such as red fir, hemlock, and Ponderosa pine, can be jo...

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that the Netherlands violated the human rights of residents of the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, by failing to protect them from the effects of climate change. ...In a  statement  accompanying  Wednesday’s decision , the court said, “There is no good reason why measures for the inhabitants of Bonaire, who will be affected by climate change sooner and more severely, should be taken later and less systematically than for the inhabitants of the European part of the Netherlands.”...  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/climate/netherlands-bonaire-climate-ruling.html . 

By  Carlos Martinez , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Five ways dismantling NCAR will cost the American people, and two ways to save it. ...the Trump administration  plans to dismantle  the  National Science Foundation’s (NSF)   National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),  a federally funded institution that underpins critical science that Americans rely on. ...1. Air Travelers Will Lose Protection. ...2. Food Security and the U.S. Agricultural Economy Will Be Put at Risk. ...3. U.S. National Security and Military Readiness Will Be Weakened. ...4. Americans in Disaster-Prone Areas Will Have Less Time to Prepare for, and Evacuate from, Extreme Weather. ...5. Americans Lose a Unique Source of National Pride. ...What We Must Do Now. ...This moment demands more than concern—it requires action. First, NSF is requesting feedback regarding its intent to restructure NCAR. ... Respond, and inform NSF  about the value and benefits of  all  of NCAR, n...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A study of 25 million Medicare participants adds to a body of evidence suggesting that prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke is more harmful to human health than other forms of air pollution....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/wildfire-smoke-linked-to-17000-strokes-annually-in-the-united-states . 

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Many of the cancellations had been known for months, but the announcement underscored the drastic change in the energy landscape under President Trump. The Energy Department said on Thursday that  it was in the process of revising or canceling more than $83 billion in loans  for clean energy technologies that had been approved under the Biden administration. The announcement came from the agency’s loan programs office, which  played a central role  in the Biden administration’s efforts to develop new technologies to fight climate change. Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., that office finalized or issued conditional commitments for roughly $104 billion in lending for battery factories, transmission lines, hydrogen plants and many other projects. The Trump administration has sought to reshape the agency and renamed it the Office of Energy Dominance Financing. Last year, the energy secretary, Chris Wright, announced ...

By Evan Howell , Science.  Excerpt: Seas will rise this century—but not uniformly.... In the very places where glaciers are melting and shrinking, the land beneath will rebound as the burden eases, meaning seas may fall even as the meltwater causes them to rise elsewhere. A new study shows that in Greenland—whose rapidly melting ice sheet accounts for about one-fifth of current sea level rise—this paradox will mean expanding coastlines, dried-up fjords, and future complications. Published today in  Nature Communications , the research  shows portions of Greenland’s coast will rebound far more sharply than expected , causing seas to fall by anywhere from 1 to nearly 4 meters by 2100. Western and southern Greenland...will likely bear the brunt of the retreat, posing major problems for shipping and food security. ...Changes in the mass of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, which is roughly three times the size of Texas and in some places more than 3 kilometers thick, ...

By Ryan Craggs , Travel + Leisure.  Excerpt: In Norway, the Havila Polaris is sailing on liquefied biogas and battery power, making it the world’s first climate-neutral cruise. ...Norway built the world’s largest  sovereign wealth fund  by selling oil; Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, a  $2 trillion nest egg , was built almost entirely on North Sea oil and gas revenues. Now it's spending that money to prove you don't need oil at all. As of Jan. 1, 2026, Norwegian regulations require  zero emissions for passenger ships under 10,000 gross tons  operating in the country's five UNESCO World Heritage fjords, with larger vessels facing the same mandate in 2032....  Full article at https://www.travelandleisure.com/worlds-first-climate-neutral-cruise-powered-by-garbage-havila-polaris-11885603 . 

By Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...the fate of the world’s largest island has outsize importance for billions of people on the planet. That’s because of the one thing that Greenland is quickly losing: ice. Most of Greenland’s landmass...is covered in ice. That ice is melting rapidly because the polar regions of the world are warming rapidly, with wide-ranging consequences for the stability of the Earth’s climate. Blame the burning of coal, oil and gas. Their emissions have driven up global temperatures, most strikingly in the Arctic, which is  warming at least twice as fast  as the rest of the planet. As the Arctic warms, potential new trading routes open up, as well as access to mineral riches, including those that are vital for clean energy technologies useful for slowing climate change.... ...In the 12 months ending on Aug. 31, 2025, Greenland lost 105 billion metric tons of ice, according to scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute, who...

By Rachel Berkowitz , Science.  Excerpt: Plugged with the world’s oldest and thickest sea ice, the fjords of the Queen Elizabeth Islands (QEI), in the northernmost Canadian Arctic, have long been impenetrable to icebreaker ships. But even here, in a place where climate models predict ice will persist the longest, global warming is taking its toll. Last summer, when the Canadian Coast Guard ship  Amundsen  conducted the first comprehensive oceanographic research mission through the QEI archipelago, the ice “was much easier to go through than we expected,” says  Amundsen  Capt. Pascal Pellerin. Floes once several meters thick were broken and soft....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/arctic-s-last-ice-area-showing-signs-weakness . 

By Associated Press/The Guardian.  Excerpt: In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released on Tuesday. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of datacenters and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by Donald Trump’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say. US emissions of carbon dioxide and methane had dropped 20% from 2005 to 2024, with a few one- or two-year increases in the overall downward trend. Traditionally...

By YaleEnvironment360.  Excerpt: Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second....  Full article at https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay . 

By Reuters/The Guardian.  Excerpt: A federal judge on Monday cleared the Danish offshore  wind  developer  Ørsted  to resume work on its nearly finished Revolution Wind project, which  Donald Trump’s administration  halted along with four other projects last month. The ruling by US district judge Royce Lamberth is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters. Ørsted’s Revolution Wind lawsuit is one of several filed by offshore wind companies and states seeking to reverse the interior department’s 22 December  suspension of five offshore wind leases  over what it said were national security concerns....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/12/orsted-rhode-island-wind-project-trump .

By Oliver Milman , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US’s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures. In  a presidential memorandum  issued on Wednesday, Trump withdrew from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, calling them “contrary to the interests of the United States”. The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international cooperation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/07/trump-international-groups-un . 

By Vincent Gauci , Science.  Excerpt: For decades, soil was thought to be the only surface that exchanges trace gases with the atmosphere...soil emits gas when it is saturated with water and absorbs gas when it is not saturated. Tree bark biogeochemistry (life-mediated chemical cycling and exchange between air, water, and land) has been almost completely ignored, despite bark having a global surface area of ~143 million km 2 , almost as large as the global land surface... Leung  et al . report that bark microbes process methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, showing that bark is an important component of global trace gas dynamics. ...Over a 100-year period, methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide trap 27.9, 12.8, and 3 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, respectively. Atmospheric methane is responsible for 0.5°C of the global rise in temperature observed since the preindustrial period....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec9651 .

By Chelsea Harvey , E&E News by Politico.  Excerpt: The National Climate Assessments.  Climate.gov . The billion-dollar disaster database. Hundreds of scientific datasets. They’re all government resources that have been altered, deleted or curtailed since President Donald Trump returned to office nearly one year ago. Now, all of those resources have been rescued, in some form or another, by organizations that are determined to combat Trump’s cuts to federal science. But whether these grassroots missions are making a difference — or are able to fully replace their canceled counterparts — is hard to say. Even as some efforts to preserve the information show promise for purposes like public education or climate-related lawsuits, they’re also running up against big challenges....  Full article at https://www.eenews.net/articles/all-the-climate-info-that-disappeared-under-trump-and-how-its-being-saved/ .

By Science Adviser.  Excerpt: If you’ve ever pressed your face up to a windowpane, you know just how bad it is at insulating—both cold and warm temperatures seem to bleed right through! Researchers have now designed a highly insulating, transparent material for more efficient windows. With buildings consuming around 40% of the world’s energy, the technology could be a promising climate solution. Researchers have previously tried to engineer better windows using gas-filled panes, vacuum insulation, and even transparent aerogels. But they’ve all been pricey, difficult to manufacture, and maladapted to different uses. So, a team started from scratch, designing a new class of metamaterials built from interconnected nanoscale polysiloxane tubes. Because structural features of the material—including the diameter of the nanotubes and sizes of the pores between them—were all smaller than the wavelength of visible light,  the materials let through 99% of sunlight , the researchers repo...

By Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Venezuela’s oil reserves, thought to be the largest in the world at an estimated 300 billion barrels, are notable not just for scale. Most of the oil found there is among the dirtiest type, with high sulfur and low hydrogen content. ...the country is vulnerable to oil spills, it has one of the fastest deforestation rates in the tropics and the production of its oil generates more planet-warming greenhouse gases than most other types of crude oil....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/climate/venezuela-dirty-oil.html . 

By Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: More than two miles below the windswept steppe of western Kazakhstan, porous rocks composed of the skeletons of coral and other ancient marine life form the matrix for one of the world’s most prolific oil fields. Tengiz, as the field is known, has been producing oil for more than three decades, helping to nurture Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy. The oil field has also contributed handsomely to the earnings of Chevron, the American oil giant, which owns 50 percent of the company that operates Tengiz, known as Tengizchevroil, or TCO. The participation of Chevron and Exxon Mobil in TCO and other projects in Kazakhstan also provides the country, which shares a 4,750-mile border with Russia, with an important tie to the United States. ...Recently, Ukraine has attacked the main oil export route from Kazakhstan through Russia, a 940-mile pipeline that includes flows from the Tengiz field, as part of an effort to crimp Moscow’s ear...

By Sarah Derouin , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Researchers found the unprecedented 2023 East Asian marine heat wave increased land temperatures and humidity by up to 50%....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/marine-heat-waves-can-exacerbate-heat-and-humidity-over-land . 

By Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Tesla has lost its status as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles after Congress and President Trump eliminated the federal tax credits that had encouraged Americans to buy those cars. The company’s car sales declined 16 percent in the last three months of 2025, Tesla said on Friday. And its sales for the full year declined 9 percent even as other automakers notched gains. In 2025, for the first year ever, the company sold fewer electric cars than China’s leading automaker, BYD....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/business/tesla-electric-vehicles-fourth-quarter-sales.html . 

By Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Developers of five offshore wind farms that were ordered last week by the Trump administration to halt construction are suing to restart work on at least three of the projects. The Interior Department on Dec. 22 ordered companies to halt work on five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. They were: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off the coast of New York; Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia. The administration cited unspecified national security concerns about the projects. On Thursday, Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Revolution Wind, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On Friday Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, did the same....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/climate/trump-offshore-wind-lawsuit-national-secur...