By JEFFREY MERVIS , Science.  Excerpt: In a much-anticipated decision that many scientific groups had feared, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned a 40-year-old doctrine that gave federal agencies considerable leeway in interpreting laws passed by Congress. The 6-to-3 ruling means judges should no longer defer to the scientific expertise of those agencies on a vast range of technical questions and, instead, should make such decisions themselves. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion in  Loper Bright Enterprises  v.  Raimondo , a case involving environmental regulations affecting herring boats. ...But in a stinging dissent, Justice Elena Kagan ...gave several examples of technical questions that she feels judges are ill-equipped to answer. The Food and Drug Administration must decide what qualifies as a protein in regulating biological products, she notes. And the...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Marine life ...depends on the right combination of water temperature, acidity, and oxygen levels, so creatures such as fish and plankton can be  hard hit  by large regional fluctuations in any of these parameters. When two, or even all three, are off-kilter, the environment can become uninhabitable for many species. Because climate change has generally been  heating the ocean ,  boosting its acidity , and  lowering its oxygen levels , concerns over these regional multithreat events—known as column-compound extremes—are growing. Now,  Wong et al.  report that since the early 1960s, column-compound extremes have been intensifying: growing larger in volume, lasting longer, and occurring more often. ...The analysis suggests that triple column-compound extremes—events involving the convergence of extreme temperatures, high acidity, and low oxygen levels—occupied 39 times more ocean volume, lasted 3 times longer, an...

By Jon Turi, TCD.  Excerpt: Large-scale battery storage systems are a no-brainer to handle the ever-growing influx of renewable energy without letting it go to waste. Since China has taken a  global lead  in using greener energy sources, it's no surprise that one of its latest major storage systems to go online is using a less toxic approach. As Electrek  reported , the Fulin Sodium-ion Battery Energy Storage Station began operating in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China this May. The initial storage capacity is said to be around 10 megawatt-hours (MWh), but it expected to grow to 100 MWh at full capacity..."enough to power 35,000 households and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50,000 tonnes [about 55,000 tons] annually," according to  Electrek . ..."The energy conversion efficiency of its sodium-ion battery energy storage system exceeds 92%. It's comparable to the efficiency of common lithium-ion battery storage systems, at 85% to 95%."...

By Anupama Chandrasekaran , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Daily tides bring warm ocean water farther in beneath West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier than previously thought, potentially causing ice to melt faster than expected, according to a new study. The finding could help scientists make better predictions about the fate of one of the world’s most closely watched glaciers. Thwaites ...is about the size of Florida. It currently  contributes about 4%  to global annual sea level rise. ...  recent research on Thwaites  and  other glaciers  has shown that these boundaries between floating ice and ice that is grounded on the seafloor shift with the daily tide. ...The team found that the ice rose and sank in sync with the tides. The data suggested that the grounding line migrated up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) inland during an average high tide. ...The  study  was published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of ...

By Raymond Zhong , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The very existence of low-slung tropical islands seems improbable, a glitch. ...when the world began paying attention to global warming decades ago, these islands, which form atop coral reefs in clusters called atolls, were quickly identified as some of the first places climate change might ravage in their entirety. As the ice caps melted and the seas crept higher, these accidents of geologic history were bound to be corrected and the tiny islands returned to watery oblivion, probably in this century. Then, not very long ago, researchers began sifting through aerial images and found something startling. They looked at a couple dozen islands first, then several hundred, and by now close to 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the islands’ edges had wobbled this way and that, eroding here, building there. By and large, though, their area hadn’t shrunk. In some cases, it was the opposite: They grew. The seas rose, and ...

By Stephanie Nolen  and Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Federal health officials warned that the risk of contracting dengue in the United States has increased this year, a worrying sign as global cases of the mosquito-borne disease hit record numbers. In the first half of this year, countries in the Americas reported twice as many cases as were reported in all of 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday in an alert to health care providers. The region has seen nearly 10 million cases of the virus so far in 2024, most of which originated in outbreaks in South American countries like Brazil and Argentina. ...climate change is bringing the mosquito to new places, where it is flourishing. “Aedes mosquitoes thrive in warm and humid environments, so definitely climate change and rising temperatures and also extreme weather events are helping extend their habitat range,” said Dr. Gabriela Paz-Bailey, chief of the dengue branch at the...

By Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: An app that helps people find relief from the heat. A tiny insurance policy that pays working women when temperatures soar. Local laws that help outdoor workers get water and shade on sweltering days. As dangerous heat becomes impossible to ignore, an array of practical innovations are emerging around the world to protect people most vulnerable to its hazards. ...The World Meteorological Organization has said that heat now kills more people than any other extreme-weather hazard.... ...Iphigenia Keramitsoglou is an atmospheric physicist who ...led a team that built a cellphone app to give users real-time information about how to stay cool. Put your location into Extrema Global and it will show the outside temperature, air quality and color-coded levels of heat risk. It will populate a map with places to cool down: parks, pools, fountains and air-conditioned public buildings like libraries. Tell the app where you want to go — say, fr...