By Dr. Juliet Lamont, Ecesis — the News Journal of SERCAL California Society for Ecological Restoration .  This is a story about an urban creek, degraded by decades of short-sighted engineering decisions, that was brought back to health. Bringing nature back into our cities is essential not only for climate resilience, but also for generating support for biodiversity. Direct engagement can reconnect us to the natural world in our backyards and on our streets, to foster a deeper environmental ethic that spreads beyond city borders and across future generations....  Full article at https://sercal.org/s/ecesis-25iv-yes-backyards.pdf . 

By Raeanne Raccagno , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Standing inside the New Jersey Statehouse last month, Claudia Mutzus wore a T-shirt from the Service Employees International Union ...gathered with other union members to mark the start of a new organized labor coalition,  Climate Jobs New Jersey , with lofty ambitions: to secure energy independence through solar construction and, in the process, address the state’s electrical affordability crisis.  New Jersey residents have been facing increasingly high electrical bills since they began to spike as much as  20 percent  in June 2025. With large electricity demands from data centers and the state’s need to purchase off-grid power to meet energy requests, costs have surged, leaving many residents baffled with no relief.   One of Climate Jobs New Jersey’s priorities is a statewide solar and battery storage program that coalition leaders say will enable the state to take back control of planning its own ...

By ScienceAdvisor.  Excerpt: Every day, aerosols form in clouds and swirl throughout the turbulent atmosphere. Aerosols, especially those under 10 nanometers, can be dangerous to humans when inhaled because of how easily they enter body tissues; estimates suggest exposure to fine aerosols causes around seven million premature deaths annually. Researchers wanted to see if climate change may alter how aerosol production occurs. Scientists have generally assumed that hot temperatures should hinder the formation of new aerosols.... To check, a team took measurements of nanoparticles and trace gases during a heat wave in central Texas. ...To their surprise, the researchers reported this week in  Science  that  at conditions nearing 40ºC, new particles formed in droves . ...gaseous organic acids, an important precursor to new particle formation, which come from industry sources like traffic and biological sources like oak and pine trees. ...fatty acids in nanoparticle form...

By Jim Robbins , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Officials are designing new ways to protect the shorelines from sudden flooding and longer storm seasons....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/science/lake-erie-storm-surges.html . 

By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Drained peatlands in Finland can become carbon sinks within just 15 years of restoration, suggests a study published in  Restoration Ecology .  The findings  are a stark contrast to another recent publication that suggests the switch from source to sink can take  hundreds of years . Finland will submit a biodiversity restoration plan to the European Commission this September, and what to do about the country’s  5 million hectares  of drained peatland will likely be a hot topic.  Teemu Tahvanainen , the author of the new study and a plant ecologist at the University of Eastern Finland (Itä-Suomen Yliopisto), said the upcoming deadline motivated him to add to the conversation....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/restored-peatlands-could-become-carbon-sinks-within-decades . 

By Amanda Holpuch , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Manufacturers will no longer get a credit toward vehicle emissions standards by installing engines that automatically stop at red lights. ...The start-stop feature is meant to save fuel and reduce emissions, but the Trump administration rejected the scientific finding that the government used to support vehicle emission reduction regulations, making it possible to eliminate the credit. ...Research shows that start-stop reduces fuel use and cuts emissions. Depending on driving conditions, stop-start improved fuel economy between 7.27 and 26.4 percent during testing, according to a  2023 technical paper  by SAE International, an organization formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/business/energy-environment/epa-tax-credits-stop-start-ignition-cars.html . 

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 Eric Niiler , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The U.S. National Science Foundation said on Thursday that the management and operations of a supercomputer used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists across the country would be transferred from a leading research lab to an undisclosed third party. ...Science foundation officials said stewardship of the supercomputer, located at a National Center for Atmospheric Research [NCAR] facility in Cheyenne, Wyo., would “transition to a third-party operator” but declined to give details about the new operator or the timeline. The national center...at its headquarters in Boulder, Colo., and has managed the Cheyenne facility since it opened in 2012. The announcement took many scientists by surprise. ...The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans ar...

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 Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Earth systems may be on the brink of long-term, irreversible destabilization, sending our planet on a “hothouse Earth” trajectory, a scenario in which long-term temperatures remain about 5°C (9°F) higher than preindustrial temperatures, according to a new paper...published in  One Earth ,  ...Earth system components could be at a higher risk than we think of reaching crucial tipping points such as the melting of the  Greenland Ice Sheet  and the thawing of the world’s permafrost—points of destabilization that, once breached, are irreversible. “As we move to higher temperatures, we go into higher risk zones,” said  Nico Wunderling , a coauthor of the new paper and a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Goethe University Frankfurt, both in Germany. Scientists know higher temperatures will activate interactions between tipping elements, he said. The new paper “strongly builds” on...

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...