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Category: Climate Change

A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

Yale Climate Connections reports: Nothing has a bigger influence on year-to-year variations in the global climate than the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, commonly called ENSO. And the tropical waters at the heart of ENSO aren’t behaving exactly as climate scientists expected they would in a warming world, with potentially major implications for Atlantic hurricane seasons, droughts in the U.S. Southwest and the Horn of Africa, and other weather phenomena around the world. ENSO is a recurring ocean-and-atmosphere pattern that warms and…

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More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

Science reports: The U.S. submarine fleet’s biggest adversary lately hasn’t been Red October. In 2005, the nuclear-powered USS San Francisco collided with an underwater volcano, or seamount, at top speed, killing a crew member and injuring most aboard. It happened again in 2021 when the USS Connecticut struck a seamount in the South China Sea, damaging its sonar array. With only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped with sonar, it is impossible to know how many seamounts exist. But radar…

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EPA to propose first controls on greenhouse gases from power plants

EPA to propose first controls on greenhouse gases from power plants

The New York Times reports: President Biden’s administration is poised to announce limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that could compel them to capture the pollution from their smokestacks, technology now used by fewer than 20 of the nation’s 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants, according to three people who were briefed on the rule. If implemented, the proposed regulation would be the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, which generate…

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Photos: Glimpses of a changing Earth, as seen from above

Photos: Glimpses of a changing Earth, as seen from above

The Associated Press reports: Charred, drained or swamped, built up, dug out or taken apart, blue or green or turned to dust: this is the Earth as seen from above. As the world commemorates Earth Day on Saturday, the footprints of human activity are visible across the planet’s surface. The relationship between people and the natural world will have consequences for years to come. In Iraq, lakes shrivel and dry up as rain fails to fall, weather patterns altered by…

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World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Nino returns

World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Nino returns

Reuters reports: The world could breach a new average temperature record in 2023 or 2024, fuelled by climate change and the anticipated return of the El Nino weather phenomenon, climate scientists say. Climate models suggest that after three years of the La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which generally lowers global temperatures slightly, the world will experience a return to El Nino, the warmer counterpart, later this year. During El Nino, winds blowing west along the equator slow…

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Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

Yale Climate Connections reports: While recent federal bills have advanced climate solutions through the lenses of infrastructure, electricity production, and transportation, policymakers are now turning their attention to another major source of planet-heating emissions: the food system. In its March 2023 report on U.S. biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovation, the White House emphasized a coming focus on climate-centric agriculture. In February, a group of House representatives launched a task force to ensure that the 2023 farm bill contains strong climate provisions….

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Facing brutal climate math, U.S. bets billions on direct air capture

Facing brutal climate math, U.S. bets billions on direct air capture

Reuters reports: The world is failing to cut carbon emissions fast enough to avoid disastrous climate change, a dawning truth that is giving life to a technology that for years has been marginal – pulling carbon dioxide from the air. Leading the charge, the U.S. government has offered $3.5 billion in grants to build the factories that will capture and permanently store the gas – the largest such effort globally to help halt climate change through Direct Air Capture (DAC)…

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As world warms, droughts come on faster, study finds

As world warms, droughts come on faster, study finds

The New York Times reports: Flash droughts, the kind that arrive quickly and can lay waste to crops in a matter of weeks, are becoming more common and faster to develop around the world, and human-caused climate change is a major reason, a new scientific study has found. As global warming continues, more abrupt dry spells could have grave consequences for people in humid regions whose livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture. The study found that flash droughts occurred more often…

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EPA lays out rules to accelerate sales of electric cars and trucks

EPA lays out rules to accelerate sales of electric cars and trucks

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date, two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032. The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his “horseless carriage”…

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How plants react to climate change could make floods a whole lot worse

How plants react to climate change could make floods a whole lot worse

Chad Small writes: Tree-planting is a cornerstone of numerous environmental and climate campaigns, and for seemingly good and logical reasons: When plants photosynthesize, they exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. The reality of planting trees to combat climate change is a bit more complicated. Planting the wrong trees in the wrong places can do more environmental harm than good. There is an ongoing debate as to whether reforestation will compete too much with necessary agriculture, or if trees—which can take a…

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In big climate move, EPA set to unveil tough limits on auto emissions

In big climate move, EPA set to unveil tough limits on auto emissions

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration will soon unveil stringent limits on auto tailpipe pollution, aiming to ensure that as many as two-thirds of all new passenger vehicle sales are electric by 2032, according to three people briefed on the proposal. The Environmental Protection Agency plan — the toughest ever from the EPA on auto emissions — threatens to spark a fight with several automakers, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss proposals that…

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The World Bank is getting a new chief. Will he pivot toward climate action?

The World Bank is getting a new chief. Will he pivot toward climate action?

The New York Times reports: As World Bank shareholders gather in Washington for their annual spring meeting on Monday, the global institution appears to be on the brink of significant change. World leaders, led by Prime Ministers Emmanuel Macron of France and Mia Mottley of Barbados, along with a constellation of academics and development experts want the bank to do more to help poor countries grappling with climate change. The bank has set out its own vision for transformation, in…

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‘Headed off the charts’: World’s ocean surface temperature hits record high

‘Headed off the charts’: World’s ocean surface temperature hits record high

The Guardian reports: The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data. Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016. “The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the…

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Video: Alexander Skarsgård, Partha Dasgupta and the answer to everything

Video: Alexander Skarsgård, Partha Dasgupta and the answer to everything

  Partha Dasgupta is a Cambridge University economist who in 2021 prepared a more than 600-page report for the British government about the financial value of nature. Not your average bedtime reading. But believe us when we say his report, the culmination of decades of scholarship, is incredibly important. Or at least believe the United Nations, which awarded him the title Champion of the Earth for his work. Or King Charles III, who this year made Mr. Dasgupta a Knight…

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The thread that ties the recent chemical spills together

The thread that ties the recent chemical spills together

Vox reports: There’s a common thread linking many of the high-profile chemical spills that have made headlines across the country lately: the oil and gas industry. Philadelphia residents were on high alert after the Trinseo latex plant 20 miles from the city released at least 8,100 gallons of acrylic polymers into a tributary for the Delaware River on March 24. Those acrylic polymers were made up of compounds known as butyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate; all are produced from fossil fuels….

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NY Gov. Hochul is helping her fossil fuel donors gut key climate law

NY Gov. Hochul is helping her fossil fuel donors gut key climate law

The Lever reports: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is pushing to gut the state’s signature climate law after raking in nearly half a million dollars from the corporations and lobbyists pushing the move, according to a Lever review of campaign finance records. The governor’s office wants to place a provision into the state’s $230 billion budget that would change how the state counts methane emissions, allowing energy companies to include more natural gas in their energy mix while still…

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