According to a major new study, Australia’s main carbon offset method is failing globally and doing little, if anything, to help address the climate crisis.
Research by eleven academics found that the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration,” which was pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, mainly had not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022. Read More
Multiple US cities on the east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding from rising sea levels.
Between 2007 and 2020, the ground under New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year. Other places sank at double or triple that rate, and Charleston, South Carolina, sank fastest, at 4mm a year, in a city less than 3 metres above sea level.
The subsidence resulted from pumping out groundwater for water supplies or for natural gas, but New York and other cities are sinking under the sheer weight of their buildings pressing into soft ground. Read More
Ground-based measuring devices and aircraft radar operated in the far northeast of Greenland show how much ice the 79° N-Glacier is losing. According to measurements conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute, the thickness of the glacier has decreased by more than 160 meters since 1998. Warm ocean water flowing under the glacier tongue is melting the ice from below.
High air temperatures cause lakes to form on the surface, whose water flows through considerable channels in the ice into the ocean. One channel reached a height of 500 meters, while the ice above was only 190 meters thick.
Due to extreme melt rates, the ice of the floating glacier tongue has become 32 % thinner since 1998, especially from the grounding line where the ice comes into contact with the ocean. In addition, a 500-meter-high channel has formed on the underside of the ice, which spreads towards the inland. Read More
News Credit: Phys.org
Image: Ole Zeising starting pRES (radar) measurement on 79 North Glacier. Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Niklas Neckel
In recent years, Antarctica has experienced a series of unprecedented heatwaves. On 6 February 2020, temperatures of 18.3C were recorded, the highest ever on the continent. This beat the previous record of 17.5C, which had only been set a few years earlier.
Another intense heatwave in Antarctica led to a record-breaking surface ice melt around February 2022. In March of the same year, Eastern Antarctica witnessed its strongest-ever heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 30C or 40C higher than the average in multiple areas. Read More
In the present day, virtually all of the world’s largest oil companies have made splashy climate pledges. But when it comes to actually slashing emissions, those firms are “way off track,”.
The analysis from the think tank Carbon Tracker assessed the production and transition plans of 25 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. The report found that none align with the central goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep global warming “well under” 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The analysis comes as oil and gas companies publicly renege on their climate commitments. Read More
Record temperatures in 2024 on land and at sea have prompted scientists to question whether these anomalies are in line with predicted global heating patterns or if they represent a concerning acceleration of climate breakdown.
Heat above the oceans remains persistently, freakishly high, despite a weakening of El Nino, which has been one of the significant drivers of record global temperatures over the past year.
Scientists are divided about the extraordinary temperatures of marine air. Some stress that current trends are within climate model projections of how the world will warm as a result of human burning of fossil fuels and forests. Others are perplexed and worried by the speed of change because the seas are the Earth’s great heat moderator and absorb more than 90% of anthropogenic warming. Read More
In February, a devastating heatwave swept through West Africa, exacerbated by human-induced climate change to be 4C hotter and 10 times more likely, according to recent research. The unprecedented temperatures impacted millions, yet the full extent of its health consequences remains unquantified due to underreporting.
This region, the cornerstone of the world’s cocoa production, faced significant agricultural strain as farmers reported the heatwave further weakened cocoa trees, already battered by extreme rainfall in December. Consequently, cocoa prices, essential for chocolate production, have surged, intensifying due to the climate crisis’s toll on the crops.
The World Weather Attribution’s analysis reveals that absent climate change, such an extreme heat event would be a rarity, likely occurring once per century. However, with the current climate trajectory, marked by an average global heating of 1.2C over the past four years, these heatwaves are now expected to happen about once every decade. The scientists warn that continuing on this path, with a potential global temperature increase to 2C above pre-industrial levels, West Africa could face similar heatwaves biennially unless significant actions are taken to curb fossil fuel emissions. Read More
A recent study spearheaded by researchers from Penn State highlights an alarming consequence of climate change on trees and their role in carbon sequestration. As global climates become warmer and drier, trees are increasingly struggling to act as effective carbon sinks. The process of photosynthesis, which trees use to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, is being compromised. Under stress, trees can release CO2 back into the atmosphere through a process called photorespiration, which has been found to occur at rates up to twice as high in warmer, water-scarce environments.
The response becomes more pronounced when average daytime temperatures surpass approximately 68 degrees Fahrenheit, a condition frequently met in subtropical climates. The research utilized a global dataset of tree tissue to explore this phenomenon, focusing on variations in the abundance of specific isotopes within wood methoxyl groups as indicators of photorespiration activity.
These isotopic “flavours” in the wood samples, sourced from an extensive archive at the University of California, Berkeley, collected in the 1930s and 40s, provided insights into the photorespiratory trends across different climates and conditions worldwide.
This study underscores the pressing need to reassess the role of trees in mitigating climate change under evolving environmental stresses. It raises questions about the long-term viability of relying on forest carbon sinks as temperatures continue to rise. Read More
South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest nations, is particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis. Heatwaves are common but rarely exceed 40C (104F). Civil conflict has plagued the East African country, which also suffers drought and flooding, making living conditions difficult.
The country is closing all schools starting Monday, i.e., 25th March 2024, in preparation for an extreme heatwave that is expected to last two weeks. Read More
Only seven countries globally are meeting an international air quality standard, with deadly air pollution worsening in places due to a rebound in economic activity and the toxic impact of wildfire smoke, a new report has found.
According to the report by IQAir, a Swiss air quality organization that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world, the vast majority of countries are failing to meet this standard for PM2.5, a type of microscopic speck of soot less than the width of a human hair that when inhaled can cause a myriad of health problems and deaths, risking severe implications for people. Read More
