Open access notables Quantifying climate loss and damage consistent with a social cost of carbon , Burke et al., Nature Climate change is causing measurable harm globally 1 , 2 . Political and legal efforts seek to link these damages with specific emissions, including in discussions of loss and damage (L&D) 3 , 4 ; however, no quantitative definition of L&D exists 5 , 6 , nor is there a framework to link past and future emissions from specific sources to monetized, location-specific damages. Here we develop such a framework, which is integrated with recent efforts to estimate the social cost of carbon 7 . Using empirical estimates of the non-linear relationship between temperature and aggregate economic output, we show that future damages from past emissions—one...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Imagine if I told you that the damages from climate change next year are worth 12% less to me than climate damages today. And 12% less the year after that. That the harms from climate change on people alive in the year 2100 are only worth one fiftieth as much as impacts on people this year. You’d probably call me selfish, heartless, or a similar slew of invectives, and rightly insist that the welfare of future generations should not be sacrificed for my short term benefit. But a somewhat obscure climate policy choice of how to value methane emissions compared to CO2 is doing just that – and unfortunately a number of climate scientists who should know better are defending it. The broader context is a big...
Open access notables Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence , Forster et al., Earth System Science Data We follow methods as close as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report. We compile monitoring datasets to produce estimates for key climate indicators related to forcing of the climate system: emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, surface temperature changes, the Earth's energy imbalance, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. The purpose of this effort, grounded in...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Despite their polar-opposite politics, California and Texas have achieved the same distinction: They’re both national leaders in producing renewable energy. Wind and solar today account for 40% of power generation in California and 30% in Texas, well above the national average of 17%. California and Texas alone account for more than one-third of the U.S.’s solar and wind power generation and over half of its battery storage capacity — shares that continue to grow . The policy approaches used by California and Texas differ dramatically. “California has used centralized state control to achieve lots of wind, solar, and storage, while Texas has accomplished the...
Open access notables The emerging human fingerprint on global extreme fire weather , Turco et al., Science Advances Extreme fire weather (hot, dry, and windy conditions) has intensified globally, yet formally attributing this trend to anthropogenic climate change remains challenging. Here, we analyze global trends in extreme fire weather days (FWI95d, annual count of days with Fire Weather Index above the 95th percentile) over 1980–2023, using climate model ensembles, observational data, and fingerprint detection techniques. We find that the observed increase in extreme fire weather bears a clear externally forced signal, detectable at 99% confidence above natural variability and attributable to human-induced climate change. This emerging human-induced fingerprint...
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . Authors: John Cook , Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne ; Alex Farnsworth , Senior Research Associate in Meteorology, University of Bristol ; Dan Lunt , Professor of Climate Science, University of Bristol , and Dann Mitchell , Professor of Climate Science, University of Bristol When English author J.R.R. Tolkien crafted his fantasy world Middle-earth, he argued storytellers are essentially “sub-creators” – they build fictional realms with internally consistent laws. For a world to be truly immersive and believable, readers apply what is known as the “ principle of...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 8, 2026 thru Sat, March 14, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) Dangerous droughts triggered by heatwaves are accelerating at an alarming rate, study shows Heatwaves, drought, wildfire risk and El Niño are compounding to create a dangerous cocktail of climate change. AP/Euronewsdotcom, Seth Borenstein, Mar 9, 2023. For frigid East it may be hard to fathom, but the US had its second-warmest winter on record AP News, Seth Borenstein, Mar 9, 2026. A Warmer Climate Means Bigger Hail "New attribution research shows how extra heat in the atmosphere can turn thunderstorms into factories...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarella Arkkila Mixing science and creativity, “ Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet ” documents our irrefutable impacts on Earth’s climate system and the dire consequences we now face. But it does so much more than that. Written by Earth scientist Kate Marvel, “Human Nature” starts from the premise that it’s OK for a scientist who has been trained to be objective to have feelings. “And believe me,” she writes, “I have feelings.” If the title is a nod to human impacts on the natural world, it’s also a provocation. Marvel doesn’t believe in human nature, “at least not in the sense of immutable characteristics that...
Open access notables Abrupt Gulf Stream path changes are a precursor to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation , van Westen & Dijkstra, Communications Earth & Environment The Gulf Stream is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is a tipping element and may collapse under changing forcing. However, the role of the Gulf Stream in such a tipping event is unknown. Here, we investigate the link between the AMOC and Gulf Stream using a high-resolution (0. 1°) stand-alone ocean simulation, in which the AMOC collapses under a slowly-increasing freshwater forcing. AMOC weakening gradually shifts the Gulf Stream near Cape Hatteras northward, followed by an abrupt northward displacement of 219 km within...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator Dave Borlace . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Why does the global energy transition look so slow in the headline statistics — even as solar, wind, EVs and heat pumps surge ahead? New analysis from EMBER argues the problem isn’t the transition — it’s the way we’ve been counting it. By shifting the focus from “primary energy” to “useful energy” the paper reveals how electrification dramatically reduces wasted energy and why renewables are far more competitive than traditional charts suggest. Support Dave Borlace and his "Just have a Think" channel on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/justhaveathink
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 22, 2026 thru Sat, February 28, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (13 articles) States push climate superfund bills despite Trump’s opposition "The legislation would make oil and gas firms pay for climate damages from burning their products. Trump has referred to such laws as 'extortion'.” Canary Media, Sarah Shemkus, Feb 17, 2026. Data Centers Are Not a License to Drill Union of Concerned Scientists, Laura Peterson, Feb 18, 2026. Why rejecting the endangerment finding also rejects climate science Chemical & Engineering News, Leigh Krietsch Boerner, Feb 18, 2026. ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Florida’s barrier reef is in trouble – and it’s costing us. The reef has been experiencing a severe outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease over the past decade. The likely cause: stress from the warming climate and acidifying waters, both the result of burning fossil fuels. The financial stake of losing the reef is high. Florida’s coral reefs are estimated to draw in over $1 billion in tourism revenue each year, provide $650 million in flood protection benefits, and support over 70,000 jobs. What’s more, coral reefs protect people and property by dissipating up to 97% of wave energy , lessening storm surges. A new study in Nature Climate Change...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 15, 2026 thru Sat, February 21, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (17 articles) Democratic senators launch inquiry into EPA’s repeal of key air pollution enforcement measure "Senators said repeal was ‘particularly troubling’ and was counter to EPA’s mandate to protect human health" The Guardian, Marina Dunbar, Feb 10, 2026. What repealing the ‘endangerment finding’ means for public health "The EPA has scrapped a rule stating that climate change harms human health. Here’s what that could mean" Scientific American, Andrea Thompson, Feb 12, 2026. Trump...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Artificial Intelligence is here, and it's changing the world. But when it comes to climate change, whether those AI changes are going to save us or doom us depends heavily on who you ask. I take a look at what our AI Overlord CEOs have been saying about climate change, and about AI's huge energy needs. And see just how much they contradict each other and themselves - especially when it comes to the vast amounts of energy our AI future (might) need, and the climate change consequences this would cause. Featuring Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 8, 2026 thru Sat, February 14, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (10 articles) After Republican complaints, judicial body pulls climate advice "Meant to help judges handle scientific issues, document is now climate-free." Ars Techica, John Timmer, Feb 10, 2026. The E.P.A. Is Barreling Toward a Supreme Court Climate Showdown "The agency is racing to repeal a scientific finding that requires it to fight global warming. Experts say the goal is to get the matter before the justices while President Trump is still in office." The New York Times, &by Maxine Joselow & Lisa Friedman, Feb 10, 2026...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler Want to lower your carbon footprint? Consider ditching your car. In a 2025 study, researchers at the World Resources Institute found that going car-free is the most effective step individuals can take to lower their personal emissions. In fact, it has a bigger impact than adding a home solar system and going vegan combined, they wrote, and 78 times more effective than composting. But in much of the U.S., getting around without a car is difficult, if not impossible, due to overwhelmingly car-centric infrastructure. However, while going car-free may be hard for many Americans to imagine, this could change. As cities like Amsterdam and Paris have shown, when governments take...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 1, 2026 thru Sat, February 7, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (11 articles) Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn "States and financial bodies using modelling that ignores shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points" The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Feb 4, 2025. ‘That ends now’: German court ruling raises pressure to fix stalled climate plans "The ruling ends a nearly two-year long legal battle and requires the German government to act." euronews, Craig Saueurs, Jan 30, 2026. A Secret Panel to Question Climate Science Was...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson his week’s mammoth U.S. winter blast wasn’t the only storm affecting the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society occurring in Houston, Texas. Looming in the background of the meeting – and jumping into the foreground during an evening town hall on Wednesday, January 28 – was the fate of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, which the Trump administration is moving to dismantle. Based in Boulder, Colorado, and sponsored by the National Science Foundation since its founding in 1960, NCAR (or NSF NCAR, as the center brands itself) is a premier national and global hub for weather, water, and climate-related research. Beyond carrying out its own...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 25, 2026 thru Sat, January 31, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (11 articles) Thailand’s endangered ‘sea cows’ are washing ashore – pointing to a crisis in our seas "The Andaman Coast has one of the largest concentration of dugong in the world, so why are numbers falling dramatically and what can they tell us about a biodiversity warning cry" The Guardian, Gloria Dickie, Jan 23, 2026. How the polar vortex and warm ocean are intensifying a major US winter storm The Conversation US, Mathew Barlow & Judah Cohen, Jan 24, 2026. Heat Dome Fuels Extreme Heatwave across Australia...
This is a re-post from the WMO Climate variability and long-term climate change are increasingly shaping the performance and reliability of renewable energy systems worldwide, according to the WMO–IRENA Climate-driven Global Renewable Energy Resources and Energy Demand Review: 2024 Year in Review, released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Published in partnership with: International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Key messages WMO–IRENA 2024 Year in Review highlights growing impacts of climate extremes on clean power systems Climate variability is already shaping renewable energy supply and electricity demand worldwide Extreme heat is...
This is a re-post from the WMO Press Office The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperatures. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, and ocean heating continues unabated. Key messages Past 11 years have been 11 warmest on record Temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse long-term trend Ocean warming continues unabated WMO consolidates eight datasets for single authoritative source of information International data exchange underpins climate monitoring The global average surface temperature was 1.44°C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13°C)...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels? Solar panels produce far less emissions than coal or natural gas. “Lifecycle emissions” counts all aspects of raw materials, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and disposal. A major National Renewable Energy Laboratory review of thousands of studies found that while some emissions are generated when solar panels are manufactured and shipped, their lifetime emissions are much lower than fossil fuels. Coal’s lifecycle climate pollution is about 23 times higher than solar power, and natural gas about...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 11, 2026 thru Sat, January 17, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (10 articles) As a climate scientist, I know heatwaves in Australia will only get worse. We need to start preparing now "During black summer, my daughters were too young to know what was happening. Now, amid another Australian heatwave, they deserve answers" Comment is Free, The Guardian, Opinion by Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Jan 8, 2026. Ocean Warming Breaks Record for Ninth Straight Year "Scientists warn the ocean’s accumulation of energy is fueling extreme weather patterns and destabilizing marine ecosystems." Science, Inside Climate...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does clearing trees for solar panels release more CO 2 than the solar panels would prevent? Clearing trees to build solar farms does not negate their climate change benefits, because one acre of solar panels prevents far more CO 2 emissions than an acre of forest absorbs. In the U.S., replacing equivalent natural gas power with one acre of solar prevents about 175 to 198 metric tons of CO 2 emissions per year. In contrast, an average acre of forest sequesters less than 1 metric ton of CO 2 per year. An acre of solar cuts roughly 200 times more CO 2 than an acre of trees...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 4, 2026 thru Sat, January 10, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Analysis: UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises Carbon Brief, Simon Evans & Ho Woo Nam, Jan 2, 2025. The Year in Climate: Attacks on Science, the Start of Trump’s Second Term and Surging Electricity Demand Foreshadow a Future Filled with Uncertainty Global inaction on fossil fuel and plastic treaties, the dismantling of federal agencies and regulations and the rapid rise of data centers were just a few of the consequential stories that Inside Climate News tracked in 2025. Inside...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief The UK’s fleet of wind, solar and biomass power plants all set new records in 2025, Carbon Brief analysis shows, but electricity generation from gas still went up. The rise in gas power was due to the end of UK coal generation in late 2024 and nuclear power hitting its lowest level in half a century, while electricity exports grew and imports fell. In addition, there was a 1% rise in UK electricity demand – after years of decline – as electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and data centres connected to the grid in larger numbers. Other key insights from the data include: Electricity demand grew for the second year in a row to 322 terawatt hours (TWh), rising by 4TWh (1%) and hinting at a shift towards steady...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Izzy Woolgar , director of external affairs at the Centre for Net Zero ; Andy Hackett , senior policy adviser at the Centre for Net Zero ; and Laurens Speelman , principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute Electric vehicles (EVs) now account for more than one-in-four car sales around the world, but the next phase is likely to depend on government action – not just technological change. That is the conclusion of a new report from the Centre for Net Zero , the Rocky Mountain Institute and the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute . Our report shows that falling battery costs, expanding supply chains and targeted...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Josh Gabbatiss China’s coal demand is set to drop by 2027, more than cancelling out the effects of the Trump administration’s coal-friendly policies in the US, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Global coal demand is due to grow by 0.5% year-on-year to reach record levels in 2025, according to the latest figures in the IEA’s annual market report . Yet this will be reversed over the next couple of years, as a faster-than-expected expansion of renewables in key Asian nations and “structural declines” in Europe push coal demand down, the agency says. While US coal demand is set to continue falling, the decline will be slower than expected last year...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Flooding in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) has recently turned deadly serious, as days of intense rain from a powerful atmospheric river have swollen rivers and caused widespread flooding across the PNW. If you guessed climate change was playing a role in this, you’d be right. Climate change isn’t just making storms “wetter” in a simple sense; it is fundamentally breaking the region’s natural plumbing system. Here is why: 1. The atmosphere is wetter The first mechanism is the one you hear about most often: basic thermodynamics. The rule of thumb (the Clausius-Clapeyron relation for the science geeks) is that for every degree Celsius the atmosphere warms...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Tis the season for global temperature forecasts. The UK Met Office recently released their 2026 prediction, estimating that it is most likely to end up as the second warmest year on record at 1.46C (with a range of 1.34C and 1.58C) relative to the 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline period. 1 This is likely warmer than both 2023 and 2025 2 and with a small chance of being warmer than 2024. Not to be outdone, James Hansen released his estimate that 2026 temperatures will also be around 1.47C in the GISTEMP dataset (albeit using a somewhat different 1880-1920 baseline) 3 , with the 12 month average dipping down to around 1.4C in the coming months before rising back up by year’s end...
Open access notables Widespread Increase in Atmospheric River Frequency and Impacts Over the 20th Century , Scholz & Lora, AGU Advances Atmospheric rivers (ARs) play a dominant role in water resource availability in many regions, and can cause substantial hazards, including extreme precipitation, flooding, and moist heatwaves. Despite this, there is substantial uncertainty about recent and ongoing changes in AR frequency and impacts. Here, we place recent observed trends in their longer-term context using AR records extending back to 1940. Our results show that AR frequency has increased broadly across the midlatitudes, bridging the apparent discrepancy between the observed satellite-era poleward shift and the general increase simulated in climate change projections...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are toxic heavy metals from solar panels posing a threat to human health? Toxic heavy metals in solar panels are locked in stable compounds and sealed behind tough glass, preventing escape into air, water, or soil at harmful levels. Most concern focuses on cadmium and lead. 40% of new U.S. panels use cadmium telluride, which does not dissolve in water, easily turn to gas, or approach the toxicity of pure cadmium. During manufacturing and disposal, heavy metals are handled under safety and waste rules. Per unit of electricity, solar releases far less heavy metals than fossil fuels. ...
Open access notables Detectability of Post-Net Zero Climate Change s and the Effects of Delay in Emissions Cessation , King et al., Earth's Future There is growing interest in how the climate would change under net zero carbon dioxide emissions pathways as many nations aim to reach net zero in coming decades. In today's rapidly warming world, many changes in the climate are detectable, even in the presence of internal variability, but whether climate changes under net zero are expected to be detectable is less well understood. Here, we use a set of 1000-year-long net zero carbon dioxide emissions simulations branching from different points in the 21st century to examine detectability of large-scale, regional and local climate changes as time passes under net...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are electromagnetic fields from solar farms harmful to human health? Electromagnetic fields from solar farms are far too weak to harm human health and fall well within accepted safety limits for exposure. Solar equipment emits non-ionizing radiation, meaning it has enough energy to move atoms in a molecule but not enough to remove electrons or damage DNA. Solar farm EMFs are even less energetic than other forms of common non-ionizing radiation such as radio waves, infrared, or visible light. Even when standing directly beside the largest-scale equipment, EMF levels measure around 1,050...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 30, 2025 thru Sat, December 6, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) Where no one really dies One of the most wonderful people I've met as a climate journalist died this year. But Shelton Kokeok, like everyone in Shishmaref, lives on through his name. Basline on Substack, John D. Sutter, Nov 30, 2025. Will Glacier Melt Lead to Increased Seismic Activity in Mountain Regions? State of the Planet, Emily Cohen, Dec 01, 2025. In Burned Forests, the West`s Snowpack Is Melting Earlier As blazes expand to higher elevations, the impacts cascade downstream. Inside Climate News, Mitch Tobin...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creators and climate scientists Dr. Adam Levy and Dr Ella Gilbert . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Ten years ago today, world leaders met to agree a plan to finally solve climate change. This was COP21, which led to the historical Paris Climate Agreement. But did the Paris Agreement actually achieve anything? After all, ten years on, we're emitting more than ever. But lots has changed in all this time. So in this video ?@ClimateAdam? & ?@DrGilbz? sit down and discuss what Paris did and didn't achieve for our planet, and what we can expect from the future of climate change. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 23, 2025 thru Sat, November 29, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: International Climate Conferences and Agreements (8 articles) Bad COP Personal Blog, Michael E. Mann, Nov. 22, 2025. COP30: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém A voluntary plan to curb fossil fuels, a goal to triple adaptation finance and new efforts to “strengthen” climate targets have been launched at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil. Carbon Brief, Carbon Brief Staff, Nov 23, 2025. UN warns world losing climate battle but fragile Cop30 deal keeps up the fight Reaching agreement in divisive political landscape...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink I still spend a decent amount of time engaging with folks who disagree with me on X (nee Twitter). One thing there has recently caught my eye is the integration of Grok, xAI’s large language model (LLM), into twitter engagements. Users can ask Grok questions and get answers, and in many cases (particularly for scientific questions) these answers are not necessarily what they are looking for: Grok is somewhat of an outlier in the LLM space as its developers have tried to manipulate its outputs to fit their ideological priors (with some unfortunate results ). But even Grok is surprisingly consistent at giving scientifically accurate answers to questions about topics like climate change, vaccines, evolution, GMOs...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections of an article by Sanket Jain that just won a gold medal from the United Nations Correspondents Association With limited access to indoor cooling or study spaces, Kavya Waghmare often studies under trees. (Image credit: Sanket Jain) Every summer when extreme heat arrives in Dhakale, India, Pramila Waghmare notices her children’s grades drop, only to improve again when winter arrives. After three years of this pattern, she asked her neighbors and learned that heat waves seemed to be hurting the academic performance of at least 40 schoolchildren in her hamlet with a total population of less than 1,000. Schoolteachers told her that students in many nearby villages in Maharashtra state had similar problems, especially...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are changes in solar activity causing climate change? The rise in global temperatures over the past century cannot be explained by the small changes in the sun’s energy output. The sun varies slightly in brightness through several natural cycles, including an 11-year sunspot cycle, but these shifts are small and largely cancel out over decades. Satellite measurements show total solar irradiance actually drifted slightly downward since the late 1970s, which would have caused mild cooling, not rapid warming. Over longer timescales, research has found that solar changes account...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink It's the COP time of the year: the 30th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC. In addition to countless delegates trekking down to Brazil, this also means the release of a number of high-profile reports approximately timed to the COP to maximize their impact. This year we have three new analyses that explore how much warming might be in store for us under current policies in place today as well as if countries meet their near-term nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement and their long-term net zero targets. The new analyses include updates to the high profile annually re-occurring estimates from the UNEP Emissions Gap Report , the IEA’s World Energy Outlook , and Climate Action Tracker...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink “Super pollutants” – short-lived climate pollutants like methane (CH4) and some refrigerants (halocarbons) – are having a moment. There were numerous sessions on the topic during the recent New York Climate Week, and a number of companies are exploring investments in reducing these emissions as part of their climate goals. Reducing emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) is, by itself, an unambiguously good thing. Methane in particular is responsible for around a third of all warming to-date from well-mixed greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and reductions in emissions can have a rapid cooling effect on the planet. It is when methane (or other SLCPs) are used to offset or neutralize CO2 emissions –...
Open access notables Robust increase in observed heat storage by the global subsurface , Cuesta-Valero et al., Science Advances Changes in heat storage within the different components of the climate system alter physical and biogeochemical phenomena relevant for human societies and ecosystems. Among such processes, permafrost thawing, soil carbon storage, and surface energy exchanges depend on the persistent heat gain by the continental subsurface. Nevertheless, there are not enough data to estimate ground heat storage at the global scale after the year 2000. We solve this problem by expanding the database of geothermal data with remote sensing observations from satellite platforms. Estimates from satellite data show a heat gain between 16.4 ± 3.4...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Bill Gates just published a climate think piece that has taken the internet by storm. While conservatives are claiming he's backtracked on climate change, the truth is much more subtle. So what does the Microsoft founder, Gates, get right and wrong about climate change? And why might he be downplaying the risks at a crucial moment for our planet's climate? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 2, 2025 thru Sat, November 8, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (6 articles) Revisiting The Category 6 Conversation After Hurricane Melissa Forbes, Marshall Shepherd, Nov 1, 2025. Insurer calls for climate action as severe weather drives premiums up A major insurer is warning Australians to expect rising home insurance premiums, in part due to increasingly frequent and damaging weather events. Australian Broadcasting Corp., Samuel Yang and Yiying Li, Nov 03, 2025. The ground is swallowing homes in this Native village in Alaska. Residents have no choice but to move The climate crisis is causing...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does cold weather disprove human-caused climate change The planet continues to warm due to human activity; bouts of cold weather don’t change this. Satellites around the world measure temperatures at different places throughout the year. These are averaged to calculate annual global temperatures. The past ten years (2015-2024) have been the ten hottest since modern record-keeping began in 1850, and 2024 was the all-time hottest. The last time Earth had a colder-than-average year was 1976. Weather refers to meteorological conditions — heat, humidity, precipitation...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 26, 2025 thru Sat, November 1, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Law and Justice (4 articles) Trump and Republicans Join Big Oil`s All-Out Push to Shut Down Climate Liability Efforts Republican attorneys general, GOP lawmakers, industry groups and the president himself are all maneuvering to foreclose the ability of cities and states to hold the fossil fuel industry liable for damages linked to climate change. Inside Climate News, Dana Drugmand, Oct 26, 2025. Survivors of Philippines `Super Typhoon` Sue Oil Giant for Causing Climate Emergency The lawsuit centers on Philippine laws stating that citizens have the right...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is there empirical evidence for human-caused global warming? There are multiple lines of evidence that our greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet. The greenhouse effect is the process whereby “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide create a kind of atmospheric blanket, absorbing outgoing heat energy and re-radiating a portion of it back down to Earth. CO 2 levels surged after humans began burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Today, we’re over 420 parts per million — up 50% from pre-industrial times and higher than for millions of years. We...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 19, 2025 thru Sat, October 25, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) DeBriefed: Earth`s first `tipping point`; Climate adviser interview; How warming affects children`s health For those interested in keeping up with policy details of our climate blunder and how we're going to deal with it, we recommend Carbon Brief's weekly "Debrief" feature. Carbon Brief, Emma Hancox, Oct 17, 2025. US-led alliance wins a year`s delay in adoption of green shipping deal A landmark deal to clean up the global shipping industry’s emissions has been postponed for at least a year, after a successful campaign...
In April 2024 we announced the (renewed) collaboration between Gigafact and Skeptical Science to create fact briefs , short but credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. Initially, we published new fact briefs on Saturdays, but switched to Tuesdays earlier this year and while we try to have a new fact brief out each week, we sometimes miss a week due to time constraints and vacations. Regardless of that, we published fact brief #50 - Are humans responsible for climate change? - on September 30, 2025 and thought that this little milestone might make for a good reason to write a short blog post about the current status of this project. From what we can tell, these bite-sized explanations are still useful to people...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 12, 2025 thru Sat, October 18, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (6 articles) Climate Change Comes for the House of the Seven Gables At the edge of Salem’s harbor, caretakers face a race against rising seas and intensifying storms to protect a landmark bound up in America’s literary and colonial past. Inside Climate News, Ryan Krugman, Oct 12, 2025. Net-zero is a pipe dream: civilisation now faces an existential threat Crops now grown will no longer survive, water shortages will become widespread, and food will be scarce. Are we ready for widespread environmental refugees? Newsroom NZ, Kevin...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A draft report commissioned by the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, or DOE, misleadingly claims that increasing levels of carbon dioxide could be beneficial for agriculture. In fact, mainstream climate experts have found that rising CO2 levels, by causing climate change, are harmful to agriculture overall – and likely to cause food prices to increase. The Trump administration’s claim arose from a draft “critical review” report commissioned by DOE and written by fringe experts. The DOE subsequently disbanded that group when faced with a lawsuit alleging that it violated a law requiring that such federal advisory committees must be transparent and unbiased...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink We focus a lot on global average temperatures, but this tends to mask the real local impacts that climate change is having. The land – where all of us live – is warming about 40% faster than the global average, and high latitude regions are warming even faster. One of the many ways to visualize this regional heat is to look at when all time high temperature records were set for each region of the world. Here I’m build upon a Carbon Brief analysis I published back in 2023 that looked at daily temperature data from ERA5 – a great resource, but one that unfortunately only extended back to 1950 at the time (and back to 1940 today). We know of at least some regional heat...
Open access notables Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires , Cunningham et al., Science Climate change and land mismanagement are creating increasingly fire-prone built and natural environments. However, despite worsening fire seasons, evidence is lacking globally for trends in socially and economically disastrous wildfires, partly due to sparse systematic records. Using a 44-year dataset (1980 to 2023) we analyze the distribution, trends, and climatic conditions connected with the most lethal and costly wildfires. Disastrous wildfires occurred globally over this period but were concentrated in the Mediterranean and temperate conifer biomes. Disaster risk was highest where highly energetic daily fire events intersected affluent, populated...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Do errors in Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' disprove climate change? While Gore’s 2006 documentary proved incorrect about the extent and timeline of some predictions, it does not negate the reality, confirmed by decades of peer-reviewed evidence, that humans are warming the planet. One erroneous claim is that Kilimanjaro’s ice loss was driven mainly by warming. Research now indicates sublimation and local dryness as dominant causes. Another is that sea levels could rise by 20 feet in the near future as ice sheets face imminent collapse – outcomes scientists expect...
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 28, 2025 thru Sat, October 4, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts “This Heat Killed Six Football Fields Of Ice”: Swedish Glaciers Gone In One Summer While Earth’s Temperature Breaks All Records "The unprecedented disappearance of eight glaciers in Sweden's Kebnekaise mountain range highlights the urgent and tangible impacts of global warming, prompting renewed calls for international action to combat climate change." Climate, The Sustainability-, Rosemary Potter, Sep 26, 2025. Giant trees of the Amazon get taller as forests fatten up on carbon dioxide We're not seeing signs of them dying...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Kevin Trenberth A new analysis issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) found that the evidence linking rising greenhouse gas emissions to negative human health outcomes is “beyond scientific dispute.” Climate change is real and it has already resulted in major damage. The main cause is increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all from human activities. Because carbon dioxide has a very long lifetime (hundreds to thousands of years), it is cumulative emissions that matter and the U.S. is the biggest contributor (although China, with a population 4x bigger than the U.S., has been a bigger annual contributor for the last two decades)...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink I have a new guest essay in the New York Times with David Keith that builds off my earlier Climate Brink post The Geoengineering Question . Below I’ve included some more detailed thoughts that couldn’t make it into the published piece given the word limit constraints. We are already geoengineering the planet today, but badly. Humans are cooling the climate today by emitting 75 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the lower atmosphere, almost entirely as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels. This cooling offsets about 0.5C of warming that would have otherwise occurred from CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but it comes at the cost of millions of premature deaths per year caused by the sulfate aerosols...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Let’s run a thought experiment. Imagine that you’re the Secretary of Energy. But you’re not just any public servant. You're a former fossil fuel executive, and you’re cartoonishly, mustache-twirlingly evil. Your singular goal is to keep America hooked on fossil fuels — a dirty, expensive product that enriches you personally — by slowing as much as possible the deployment of clean, cheap renewable energy that benefits everyone else . One of the main obstacles to your plan is the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” the EPA’s judgment that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. To push your agenda, you need to overturn it. And, to do...
This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics It seems that the US Department of Energy has now disbanded the Climate Working Group that drafted the report that I discussed in this post . However, about a week ago, Steven Koonin – one of the authors of the report – had an article in the Wall Street Journal titled At Long Last, Clarity on Climate . Clarity is a bit of a stretch. Personally, I think it more muddied the waters, than brought clarity. A general point that I didn’t really make in my previous post (and that has just been highlighted in a comment ) is that it is explicitly focussed on the US. The richest country in the world probably is more resilient than most others and could well decide that it’s better to deal...
Open access notables The weak land carbon sink hypothesis , Randerson et al., Science Advances Over the past three decades, assessments of the contemporary global carbon budget consistently report a strong net land carbon sink. Here, we review evidence supporting this paradigm and quantify the differences in global and Northern Hemisphere estimates of the net land sink derived from atmospheric inversion and satellite-derived vegetation biomass time series. Our analysis, combined with additional synthesis, supports a hypothesis that the net land sink is substantially weaker than commonly reported. At a global scale, our estimate of the net land carbon sink is 0.8 ± 0.7 petagrams of carbon per year from 2000 through 2019, nearly a factor of two lower...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Has the greenhouse effect been falsified? The greenhouse effect is basic physics that has been known for nearly 200 years. Without it, the Earth would not be warm enough for life. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide act like an insulating blanket. By preventing some outgoing heat from escaping the atmosphere by absorbing and re-emitting it, they keep Earth around 33°C (59°F) warmer than it would be otherwise. In comparison, the Moon, lacking an atmosphere, swings from 120°C (248°F) in daytime to -130°C (-202°F) at night. Venus’s thick CO2-rich atmosphere always...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 7, 2025 thru Sat, September 13, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (9 articles) Chevron’s Boss Says the World Will Need Oil for a ‘Long, Long Time’ "Mike Wirth, who has seen many booms and busts over the more than 40 years he has been with the energy giant, said that 'when the world stops using oil and gas, we’ll stop looking for it'." US Economy, The New York Times, Q&A by Jordyn Holman, Aug 31, 2025. Politicians now talk of climate 'pragmatism' to delay action-new study The Conversation, Steve Westlake, Sep 04, 2025. Former staffers of Climate.gov are attempting...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Has Arctic sea ice recovered? Arctic sea ice, in both extent and volume, continues to decline. The only fair comparison for Arctic sea ice is to a full 12 months prior, as ice accumulates each winter and melts each summer. By that metric, Arctic sea ice extent set a record low maximum in March 2025, the month when ice is at its highest. Arctic sea ice volume for July 2025 was the 5th lowest on record. There are two types of sea ice: thin “first-year” ice and thick “multi-year” ice. First-year ice grows and shrinks with the seasons and fluctuations in ocean currents...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 31, 2025 thru Sat, September 6, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) How to organize a peaceful and effective climate protest "Are you ready to organize your first event on behalf of the planet? Here are some ideas and tips on how to make it successful." Yale Climate Connections, Colleen M. Crary, Aug 28, 2025. Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science "Authoritarians have long feared and suppressed science as a rival for social influence. Experts see President Trump as borrowing some of their tactics. The New York Times, William J. Broad, Aug 31, 2025. ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is global warming actually happening? Multiple indicators show Earth is warming rapidly. Global surface temperatures are now about 1.47°C (2.65°F) above the 19th century average, with the past ten years the warmest on record. Surface temperatures are measured by thousands of land weather stations and weather balloons, along with ships, ocean buoys, and satellite measurements. Oceans, which absorb over 90% of excess heat, hit record highs in 2024, making the last decade the warmest since the 1800s. Sea levels are rising at the fastest rate in 2,500 years, driven by melting ice sheets...
Open access notables Evaluating IPCC Projections of Global Sea-Level Change From the Pre-Satellite Era , Törnqvist et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef006533 With an acceleration of global sea-level rise during the satellite altimetry era (since 1993) firmly established, it is now appropriate to examine sea-level projections made around the onset of this time period. Here we show that the mid-range projection from the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995/1996) was strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years, with the magnitude of sea-level rise underestimated by only ∼1 cm. Projections of contributions from individual components were more variable, with a notable underestimation of dynamic mass loss...
This story by Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. It was 4 a.m. on July 4 at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when Kolton Taylor woke up to the sound of screaming. The 12-year-old boy stepped out of bed and straight into knee-deep floodwaters from the nearby Guadalupe River. Before long, the water had already risen to his waist. In the darkness, he managed to feel for his tennis shoes floating nearby, put them on, and escape to the safety of the hillside. All 400 people at the all-boys camp survived, even as they watched one of their cabins float away in the rushing river. But 5 miles downriver at Camp Mystic, 28 campers...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 17, 2025 thru Sat, August 23, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (13 articles) Summer 2025 is roasting hot: these charts show why it matters Data reveal how this year’s back-to-back heatwaves are affecting populations and economies across Europe. Nature, Giorgia Guglielmi, Aug 14, 2025. Flash floods kill at least 159 people in Pakistan after huge cloudburst "Search for the missing continues in north-west after downpour also sparks deadly flooding and landslides in India" World, The Guardian, Associated Press in Chositi, Aug 15, 2025. ‘Hellish’: heatwave brings hottest nights on record...
Open access notables Glacier Geoengineering May Have Unintended Consequences for Marine Ecosystems and Fisheries , Hopwood et al., AGU Advances A bold suggestion to reduce sea level rise is to install underwater barriers to reduce the inflow of oceanic heat around Antarctica and Greenland. Inflow of warm, saline water masses drives ice melt and the destabilization of tidewater glaciers. Whilst the basic theory that barriers would stem oceanic heat flow is uncontroversial, the extent to which barriers might reduce future ice mass loss is less certain. There are numerous concerns about the viability and side-effects of this proposed intervention. We use existing field observations and representative fjord-scale models for the Greenland's largest glacier, Sermeq Kujalleq...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). The icy caps of our planet hold a frozen secret. Inside the permafrost, within the Arctic Circle, vast amounts of carbon are stored. And as the climate changes and the world heats, many fear this could lead to a tipping point, where thaw causes a viscous cycle of greenhouse gas emissions. But... Could it? Is permafrost really a tipping element for our planet? And how should we be keeping permafrost frozen - to protect ourselves from as much global warming as possible? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 10, 2025 thru Sat, August 16, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (14 articles) Atmospheric Rivers May be Diminishing on the West Coast and Surging in the East, Study Finds "Over a 20-year period, atmospheric rivers could double the amount of rain falling on part of the Southeast, the researchers found." Science, Inside Climate News, Chad Small, Aug 9, 2025. Fossil-fuelled heat has caused tropical birds to decline by `up to 38%` since 1950s An uptick in heat extremes, driven by human-caused climate change, has caused tropical bird populations to decline by up to 38% since the 1950s, according to a first-of-its-kind...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by SueEllen Campbell Solar and wind energy systems require some means of saving power for times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Such approaches, from batteries to gravity, are developing rapidly and in many different directions. The pieces below sample the richness and complexity of this important topic. Batteries It can feel impossible, at least for a nonspecialist, to stay current on research into new kinds of “regular” batteries, never mind those suitable for large-scale energy storage. One fairly promising recent development is the iron-air battery – or, we might say, rust . See “ How iron-air batteries could fill gaps in renewable energy ” (Alissa Greenberg...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters As Hurricane Helene roared toward the Florida Panhandle on September 26, 2024, the storm put on an intimidating display of rapid intensification, ramping up from a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph (129 km/h) winds to a Cat 4 monster with 140 mph (225 km/h) winds in the 24 hours before landfall . Storm damage rises exponentially as the winds increase, so this rise in intensity increased Helene’s destructive power by a factor of about 92, according to a NOAA damage potential scale . Rapid intensification – defined as a 35 mph (56 km/h) or greater increase in the maximum sustained wind speed within a 24-hour period – is something 80% of major hurricanes (Category 3-5) ...
Open access notables Public concerns about solar geoengineering research in the United States , Buck et al., Communications Earth & Environment Solar geoengineering is receiving increased private research funding at a time of growing social media speculation about government weather control. This can complicate public deliberation on solar geoengineering research. Using interviews (N = 64), focus groups (N = 10), and a national survey (N = 3076), we explore initial impressions of the US public on solar geoengineering research, including views on research and beliefs that atmospheric modification to combat global warming is currently ongoing. We find more opposition than support for research and a strong preference...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink I’ve been traveling with my family on vacation in Iceland for the past week, so the timing of recent events has been less than ideal. Given that I am cited in both the recent DOE report and EPA proposed rule, I thought it would be useful to address how my work was used and misused in more detail. Expect more on the broader topics covered in the report in coming weeks. Moving away from current policy In their proposed rule titled “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards”, the EPA cites my work (among others) to argue that the original 2009 endangerment finding was too pessimistic. Specifically, they say that: With respect to projected increases in GHG concentrations and...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 27, 2025 thru Sat, August 2, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (9 articles) Trump’s war on windmills started in Scotland. Now he’s taking it global President’s opposition to offshore wind more than a decade ago now threatens a huge industry in the US and beyond US News, The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Feb 24, 2025. Lessons From a Climate Disaster "Bolivia’s record-setting 2024 wildfire season makes clear that emergency responses to climate disasters are not enough and governments must address the root of the problem, a new report says." Justice & Health, Katie Surma, July 27...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Rafael Méndez Tejeda and Pearl Marvell In the past three weeks, two international courts have issued opinions that could provide a boost to those pushing for climate action through justice systems. At the beginning of July, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, headquartered in Costa Rica, declared that the planet is experiencing a climate emergency and that every person has the right to a healthy climate. And on July 23, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest court, said that nations must cut emissions to address the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. Both opinions are advisory, which means they aren’t legally binding. In fact, the United...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler We’ve been posting a lot recently about how renewables lower electricity costs . Last week, Zeke posted about the impact of renewables on U.S. electricity prices. In response to that, several people pointed us to a figure that seems to show something different: The plot shows a clear correlation between retail cost of electricity and the fraction of renewable energy for many countries around the world. So does this mean that renewable energy actually raises the price of electricity? Confirmation First, I wanted to verify the figure, so I downloaded the data for Europe and plotted retail price vs. renewable fraction (the fraction of electricity produced...
Open access notables Calculating the Temperature Trend Bias Induced by Inhomogeneities Into Climate Data Without Running a Homogenization Algorithm , Lindau, International Journal of Climatology Inhomogeneities are known to induce sudden jumps into the time series of climate stations. If these jumps tend to be upwards, a spurious positive trend will be inserted into the data, which would falsify the true climate trend. The classic method to identify such biases is to run a homogenisation algorithm and to assess the statistics of the found jump heights. However, in the past it was shown that already small detection errors lead to a strong systematic underestimation of such trend biases. Therefore, an alternative method is proposed that calculates...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). As our climate changes and our world heats, that's turbo charging extreme weather disasters - from floods to wildfires. These disasters are claiming lives. And now a group of researchers have studied a recent extreme weather event - a heatwave across Europe - to see just how much more deadly it became, due to climate change. This first of its kind study reveals just how dangerous global warming already is today. But it doesn't need to be this way. Because there's plenty we can do to protect ourselves from the heat - now and in the future. Support ClimateAdam on patreon:...
Open access notables Climate change has increased the odds of extreme regional forest fire years globally , Abatzoglou et al., Nature Communications Regions across the globe have experienced devastating fire years in the past decade with far-reaching impacts. Here, we examine the role of antecedent and concurrent climate variability in enabling extreme regional fire years across global forests. These extreme years commonly coincided with extreme (1-in-15-year) fire weather indices (FWI) and featured a four and five-fold increase in the number of large fires and fire carbon emissions, respectively, compared with non-extreme years. Years with such extreme FWI metrics are 88-152% more likely across global forested lands under a contemporary (2011–2040) climate compared...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Did CO 2 contribute to early 20th century warming? Warming from 1920 to 1940 was influenced by both natural dynamics or “forcings” as well as human-caused greenhouse gas emissions such as CO 2 . Human-caused CO 2 began rising during the Industrial Revolution and contributed to early 20th century warming. At the same time, solar activity rose slightly and volcanic activity was unusually low, adding to warming. Ocean circulation changes also raised regional temperatures in areas like the North Atlantic. The myth that early warming disproves CO 2 ’s role in climate change...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 6, 2025 thru Sat, July 12, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (6 articles) DeBriefed 4 July 2025: Trump `megabill` guts clean energy; Europe`s record heat; Scientists discuss `most worrying` tipping points Carbon Brief, Carbon Brief Staff, Jul 04, 2025. Devastating flash floods slam Texas Hill Country; Tropical Storm Chantal heads for Carolinas Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, Jul 05, 2025. Update on Texas flooding Andrew Dessler's update on the flooding in Texas The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler, Jul 07, 2025. Experts: Which climate tipping point is the most concerning?...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections On the Fourth of July – America’s 249th birthday – President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that could very well cede the country’s position as the leading global economic superpower to China. As the nonpartisan energy think tank RMI has argued , the world is in the midst of a transition from the Information Age, which the United States led by dominating the development of new software and information technologies, to the Renewable Age, in which the development and deployment of electric and renewable energy technologies will drive the global economy. This transition is dominated by insurgent clean technologies, such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and batteries, whose prices are falling rapidly...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink The publication of an article titled “The World Is Warming Up. And It’s Happening Faster” by the New York Times kicked off a pretty heated debate among climate scientists over the evidence of acceleration and how strong a claim can be made based on the evidence today. The NYT included the illustrative figure below, which draws simple ordinary least squares trends over three time periods: 1880-1970, 1970-2010, and 2010-present (May 2025). It appears to show a notable acceleration over the past 15 years compared to the rate of warming that characterized the post-1970 “modern warm period” when climate change began to notably take off alongside human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. However...
Open access notables The Emergence of Near-Permanent Marine Heat wave State in the Tropical Indian Ocean During 2023–2024 , Soumya, International Journal of Climatology In 2023/24, global mean surface temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and the Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO) experienced a record-breaking basin mean anomalous warming of 0.88°C. This unprecedented warming in the TIO is linked to the severe and long-lasting marine heatwave (MHW) events ever recorded in the region, reconciling with the ongoing long-term warming and internal climate variabilities. The MHW events of 2023/24 were primarily centred in the Arabian Sea (AS) and southwestern TIO regions, with mean intensities of 0.73°C and 0.89°C, respectively...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are human CO 2 emissions driving current global warming? While many natural factors influence Earth’s climate, human emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are driving today’s global warming. Scientists have conducted detailed studies of climate “forcings,” or the factors impacting global temperatures, especially with the past 50 years of satellite data. Long-term natural forcings, such as changes in Earth’s orbit or tectonic movement, take tens of thousands of years. They cannot explain the pace of recent warming. More immediate, smaller-impact changes occur...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 22, 2025 thru Sat, June 28, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (10 articles) Heatwave in England to bring temperatures above 32°C (89.6°F) – study finds climate change made this 100 times more likely Science Feedback, Editor: Darrik Burns, June 20, 2025. Wildfires: climate change cause and effect Canadians think about a recent object lesson on climate change. Winnipeg Free Press, David McLaughlin, Jun 21, 2025. It's hot. Fossil fuels made it hotter. And it'll still be the coldest summer of your life if Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passes this week. HEATED, Emily Atkin, Jun 23, 2025...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Since President Trump took office in January 2025, he's declared war on climate change research. In this video, I speak with three expert scientists, who explain the devastation caused by Trump's attacks on climate researchers, institutions and reports. These assaults aren't just a huge deal in the USA, where they limit our ability to forecast extreme weather disasters. But they'll also affect our ability to be safe from climate extremes the world over - now and in the future. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 15, 2025 thru Sat, June 21, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Science and Research (6 articles) Climate Crisis 'Evil Twin' Is Coming for Marine Life Scientists have warned that the planet crossed the global boundary for ocean acidification around the year 2020, according to a new study. Newsweek, Thomas Westerholm, Jun 16, 2025. Human influence on climate detectable in the late 19th century A new paper describes how humans were influencing Earth's climate by cooling the stratosphere in the late 19th century. Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Ben Santer et al. , June 16, 2025. Study finds planetary...
Every year on 21st June we encourage everyone to participate in " Show your Stripes Day " to start conversations about climate risks and solutions. Springboarding from a crocheted blanket created by fellow University of Reading professor Ellie Highwood, the "warming stripes" graphic was created in 2018 by Prof. Ed Hawkins , who explains the visualization's purpose in this video: The "warming stripes" have been embraced around the world as a clear and vivid representation of how the climate is changing-- a powerful appeal to urgency in addressing our climate crisis. From the website of the University of Reading : What is Show Your Stripes Day? Show Your Stripes Day is a global moment to share our concern about how the climate is changing and the need...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Over at Carbon Brief I have a new detailed explainer on aerosols. They have a major (but poorly constrained) cooling effect on the climate, masking about 0.5C warming from CO2 and other greenhouse gases that would otherwise have occurred. However, we are rapidly reducing both aerosol emissions and their resulting climate cooling effect. Global emissions of SO2, the most important aerosol, have fallen by 40% since the mid?2000s. China has cut its SO2 emissions more than 70% over the same period. This is a good thing; SO2 is a major precursor to PM2.5, which is responsible for millions of deaths from outdoor air pollution worldwide. But reductions to clean the air are quickly unmasking more warming from our...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 8, 2025 thru Sat, June 14, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Science and Research (8 articles) Stefan Rahmstorf - Atlantic ocean circulation: a dangerous tipping point for European climate? IFIMAC on Youtube, Stefan Rahmstorf, May 27, 2025. Ocean mud locks up much of the planet’s carbon – we’re digging deep to map these ancient stores Deep down at the bottom of the sea, mud is one of the most important natural archives of Earth’s past – holding clues of shifting climates, coastlines, ocean conditions and carbon storage. The Conversation, Sophie Ward & Zoe Roseby, June 6, 2025. When...
Open access notables A Rapid Deterioration of the Transmissive Atmospheric Radiative Regime in the Western Arctic , Bertossa & L’Ecuyer, Geophysical Research Letters: The tendency for the atmosphere to reside in one of two radiative states (“transmissive” or “opaque”) is unique to the high latitudes. This phenomenon makes the Arctic climate particularly sensitive to change if the conditions that support one of these states vanish. This study examines 25 years of in-situ data from the North Slope of Alaska to investigate how these two states have changed over time. While November once had nearly equal occurrences of both states, the transmissive state has almost completely disappeared, resulting in an increase of over 30 W/m2 in...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The Trump administration has taken an ostrich-like approach to climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to publish a report about the country’s sources of climate-changing pollution each year by April 15. This year, that didn’t happen. But the completed report was recently made public as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Environmental Defense Fund. This latest U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report provides granular detail on U.S. emissions in 2023. It’s unclear why the administration withheld this report, which had been completed, and thus its suppression offered no budgetary benefit. But suppressing the report lines up with the Trump...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are CO2 measurements reliable? Measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are consistent, reliable, and globally verified across multiple independent systems. NOAA collects data from over 60 sites, including Mauna Loa, which has hosted the longest continuous CO2 record, tracking an annual increase in CO2 from 0.94 ppm in 1959 to 3.33 ppm in 2024. Mauna Loa is ideal due to its remote location and clean Pacific air, while occasional volcanic emissions are well understood and mathematically filtered out of records. In addition, hundreds of stations all over the world...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington . Dana will do a Livestream with Yale Climate Connections on the subject today, Wednesday 6/4 at 5–6pm ET as well. Tune in here . House Republicans worked to eliminate clean energy tax credits in a massive tax bill that they passed in a 215-214 vote early in the morning on Thursday, May 22, 2025. The new bill, named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” would sunset individual and business incentives created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, such as tax credits for electric vehicle purchases. A large swath of the public supports such incentives. In a December 2024 survey , researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this site, found...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 25, 2025 thru Sat, May 31, 2025. Story of the week If you haven't yet tuned in to the Weather and Climate Livestream you still have a chance to do so in the 13 hours after this news roundup was published! Regardless of when you tune in, you'll find something of interest to watch as they cover so many different topics. Each presentation is about 20 minutes long unless it's the middle of the night or very early morning in the U.S. when you might be treated to an hour-long segment of live coding or lab experiments! You can currently also watch the previous parts of the livestream which they have to reset every 8 hours or so via the catchup play list . We...
Open access notables A new indicator can assess absorption capacity for carbon dioxide and ocean acidification , Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment: The ocean has absorbed 25% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions over the past 40 years, effectively slowing atmospheric carbon dioxide growth but causing ocean acidification. As acidification intensifies, the seawater absorption capacity for carbon dioxide will decline. While the Revelle factor has been used to assess carbon dioxide absorption, it becomes inapplicable at pH < 7.5. Here, we propose a new factor, γCO2, to better measure the absorption capacity for carbon dioxide and acidification. γCO2 decreases with increased partial pressure of carbon dioxide...
Wed. May 28th 1pm ET/10am PT to Sun. June 1st 5:30pm ET/2:30pm PT on YouTube: 100 HOURS TO SAVE AMERICA'S FORECASTS Whether it's tomorrow's temperatures or the sea level in fifty years, Americans need to plan for our futures. For generations, the US government has invested in the science that helps us do so , building one of the greatest meteorology and climate science communities in the world. In recent months, this community have been thwarted in our mission of serving the public due to substantial cuts and firings . These actions have already hurt our forecasts , endangering Americans as hurricane season approaches . Legally required assessments of the climate are being stopped , and far more drastic cuts are being proposed . But it's...
As any reader is likely aware, in the United States big deletions are being made to the capabilities of a plethora of federal agencies. These include the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has a mission including that of keeping us safer in the case of "bad luck" due to weather. The National Weather Service (NWS) was already operating in an environment of scarcity, and now resources for operational synoptic and forecast reporting capacity are being stripped to the bone and beyond. But wait: there's more. Other agencies such as the US Department of Energy (DOE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are seeing deep cuts to research. Across the entire spectrum...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate scientists weren't expecting 2023. The planet's temperature is increasing thanks to that whole burning fossil fuels thing. But 2023 was different: Temperatures lurched upwards. And 2024 was even hotter, passing the crucial 1.5 degree global warming limit. Now, scientists are trying to work out what's driven this climate spike - and work out whether it's just a bump in the road, or a sign that our planet's engine might have become turbo charged... Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam Follow Gavin Schmidt on Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/climateofgavin.bsky.social...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 11, 2025 thru Sat, May 17, 2025. Plugging the Weather & Climate Livestream planned to start on May 28 During the past week and thanks to Andrew Dessler's ClimateBrink article listed below, we became aware of an initiative started by early career scientists which is well worth highlighting. Here is the information from the event's website: SAVE AMERICA'S FORECASTS Whether it's tomorrow's temperatures or the sea level in fifty years, Americans need to plan for our futures. For generations, the US government has invested in the science that helps us do so , building one of the greatest meteorology and climate science communities in the world. ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In August 2023, during an especially brutal Texas heat wave , I opened my electricity bill and was stunned by the total. As someone who studies climate change, I couldn’t help but connect the dots: global warming had made the heat wave worse, and that extra heat was driving up how much I had to spend on electricity. That realization led me to a simple question: how much of this bill was due to climate change? I set out to answer it and, 1.5 years later, I published a peer-reviewed paper . This post explains the method behind that analysis and why I estimate that climate change added about $80 to electricity costs for every Texan in 2023. Understanding the link between climate and electricity...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 4, 2025 thru Sat, May 10, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles) How the political consensus on climate change has shattered Despite unswering public attitudes on climate change, for a number of reasons both benign and malign the UK finds itself...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson Alandmark policy crafted in April by members of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization, or IMO, will tax international shippers based on the carbon content of their fuels. The draft policy is due to be finalized in late 2025. The agreement that emerged from the 83rd meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee was undeniably a compromise – critiqued by activists and oil-rich nations alike. Yet it’s also undeniably historic. As the organization put it , “The IMO Net-zero Framework is the?first in the world to combine mandatory emissions limits and [greenhouse gas] pricing across an entire industry sector.” Key measures of the approved draft include:...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 27, 2025 thru Sat, May 3, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Scientist Who Helped Prove Humans Changed the Climate Watches Evidence Being Erased Livermore Lab’s Ben Santer spent decades tracing humanity’s imprint on the atmosphere...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 20, 2025 thru Sat, April 26, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Education and Communication (6 articles) Climate change is transforming how scientists think about their roles CU Boulder researcher Pedro DiNezio emphasizes solving the problems of climate change in the here...
As mentioned in the recently published prolog to EGU2025 article , I submitted an abstract to talk about some of our translation activities and the challenges we have been facing with those. This blog post is a "companion article" to that presentation in session EOS4.3 Geoethics and Global Anthropogenic Change: Geoscience for Policy, Action and Education in Addressing the Climate and Ecological Crises and will go into somewhat greater details than is possible in the 8 minutes available during the oral session which will be happening on May 2. Please note that what follows is by no means meant as a crtiicism of the many volunteer translator teams, of whom we are very appreciative for the work they did over the years, creating the many translations available on our website!...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Pearl Marvell (Photo credit: Pearl Marvell. Image credit: Samantha Harrington. Dollar bill vector image: by pch.vector on Freepik) Igrew up knowing that when you had extra money, you put it under a bed, stashed it in a book or a clock, or, if there was enough of it, it went into a savings account at a bank. It hadn’t occurred to me that my bank account could be contributing to the climate crisis until I learned that since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, 60 of the world’s largest banks have invested $5.5 trillion into the fossil fuel industry. And they’re using our money to do it. When we deposit our paychecks, the money doesn’t just sit there. Generally...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 13, 2025 thru Sat, April 19, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (13 articles) EPA plans target climate change initiatives Environmental law experts say rollbacks will reverse advances in recent decades Nation & World, Harvard Gazette, Alvin Powell...
Open access notables Recent intensified riverine CO2 emission across the Northern Hemisphere permafrost region , Mu et al., Nature Communications: Global warming causes permafrost thawing, transferring large amounts of soil carbon into rivers, which inevitably accelerates riverine CO2 release. However, temporally and spatially explicit variations of riverine CO2 emissions remain unclear, limiting the assessment of land carbon-climate feedback. Using new and published 5685 riverine CO2 partial pressure data in the Arctic and Tibetan Plateau, we show that current riverine CO2 emission across the Northern Hemisphere permafrost zone is 200 ± 15 Tg C yr?1. The emission offsets 28.1 ± 2.1% of the land carbon uptake...
This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from April 27 to May 2. This year, I'll join the event on site in Vienna for the full week and I've already picked several sessions I plan to attend. Among them are two sessions, I'll be presenting in. This blog post provides an overview of my itinerary. Monday To start my week at EGU25, I plan to attend a Union Symposia (US5) at 8:30am: Bridging Policy and Science for EU Disaster Preparedness One of the greatest risks to our security is the impact of climate change. Extreme weather continues to ravage ever greater areas of Europe through floods, fires and droughts, throughout the year and across the European Union...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is the sun responsible for global warming? Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, not solar variability, is responsible for the global warming observed since the Industrial Revolution. Cyclical variations in Earth’s orbit and changes in the amount of energy released by the sun have caused gradual climatic changes over tens of thousands of years. However, total solar activity has been decreasing since the 1980s. Meanwhile, global average temperatures have been rising at an accelerating rate. The ten hottest years on record were the most recent ten while 2024 was the hottest on...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 30, 2025 thru Sat, April 5, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (18 articles) Mar 28, 2025: If sea levels are rising, why is the Maldives still above water? , Climate, Science Feedback , Rahul Rao. Mar 28, 2025: South Korea wildfires become biggest on...
In February 2025, John Cook gave two webinars for republicEN explaining the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. 20 February 2025: republicEN webinar part 1 - BUST or TRUST? The scientific consensus on climate change In the first webinar, Cook explained the history of the 20-year scientific consensus on climate change. How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? How did we get there, and what exactly does it all mean? The webinar "Bust or Trust? The scientific consensus on climate change," focused on establishing that there is a scientific consensus on climate change and how to communicate that effectively. The existence of a scientific consensus is supported by multiple studies conducted over the past...
Open access notables New coasts emerging from the retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers in the twenty-first century , Kavan et al., Nature Climate Change: Accelerated climate warming has caused the majority of marine-terminating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere to retreat substantially during the twenty-first century. While glacier retreat and changes in mass balance are widely studied on a global scale, the impacts of deglaciation on adjacent coastal geomorphology are often overlooked and therefore poorly understood. Here we examine changes in proglacial zones of marine-terminating glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere to quantify the length of new coastline that has been exposed by glacial retreat between 2000 and 2020. We identified a...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Wang Zhongying, chief national expert, China Energy Transformation Programme of the Energy Research Institute, and Kaare Sandholt, chief international expert, China Energy Transformation Programme of the Energy Research Institute China will need to install around 10,000 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, according to new Chinese government-endorsed research . This huge energy transition – with the technologies currently standing at 1,408GW – can make a “decisive contribution” to the country’s climate efforts and bring big economic rewards, the China Energy Transformation Outlook 2024 (CETO24) shows. The report was produced by our research...
Open access notables The severe 2020 coral bleaching event in the tropical Atlantic linked to marine heatwaves , Rodrigues et al., Communications Earth & Environment: Marine heatwaves can amplify the vulnerabilities of regional marine ecosystems and jeopardise local economies and food resources. Here, we show that marine heatwaves in the tropical Atlantic have increased in frequency, intensity, duration, and spatial extent. Marine heatwaves are 5.1 times more frequent and 4.7 times more intense since the records started in 1982, with the 10 most extreme summers/falls in terms of marine heatwave cumulative intensity and spatial extension occurring in the last two decades. The extreme warming during the summer/fall of 2020 led to the largest bleaching event recorded...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 9, 2025 thru Sat, March 15, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category and number of articles shared: Climate Policy and Politics (10 articles) `We`re losing our environmental history`: The future of government information under Trump The administration’s wrecking-ball approach has raised profound questions about the integrity and future...
Open access notables Would Adding the Anthropocene to the Geologic Time Scale Matter? , McCarthy et al., AGU Advances: The extraordinary fossil fuel-driven outburst of consumption and production since the mid-twentieth century has fundamentally altered the way the Earth System works. Although humans have impacted their environment for millennia, justification for a new interval of geologic time lies in the radical shift in the geologic record that marks this “Great Acceleration” of the human enterprise. The rejection of a proposal to define the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch with a “golden spike” in varved sediments from Crawford Lake, Canada, means that we officially we still live in the Holocene, when in practical terms we do not. Formal recognition...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Finally, there’s some good news to report from NOAA, the parent organization of the National Hurricane Center, or NHC: During the highly active 2o24 Atlantic hurricane season, the NHC made record-accurate track forecasts at every time interval (12-, 24-, 36-, 48-, 60-, 72-, 96-, and 120-hour forecasts), according to the preliminary 2024 NHC Forecast Verification Report released on Feb. 24. And 2024 research suggests that the research dollars spent since 2007 on improved hurricane forecasts could have led to over $10 billion in combined benefits just for the two major hurricanes that hit in 2024, Helene and Milton. But the budget for hurricane research could be slashed under the Trump administration...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is Greenland losing land ice? Data from satellites and expeditions confirm Greenland has been losing land ice at an accelerating rate for decades. Glaciers gain ice via snowfall, while melting and ice breaking off into the ocean account for nearly all of Greenland’s ice-sheet loss. Rates vary season to season and year to year due to weather variation—however, multi-decade trends show ongoing loss. Satellites launched in the early 1990s measure ice sheet height and gravity to detect changes in mass. They have found that Greenland has lost ice every year since 1998; from 2010 to...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters and Bob Henson One month into the new Trump administration, firings of scientists and freezes to U.S. research funding have caused an unprecedented elimination of scientific expertise from the federal government. Proposed and ongoing cuts to agencies like the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, could hobble efforts to keep Americans safe during and after disasters. Meanwhile, slashed funding for climate research risks blindfolding the U.S. as the dangers from climate change escalate in the coming years and decades, scientists warn. Mass layoffs at FEMA When Hurricanes Helene and Milton – both made more destructive by climate change – devastated...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are high CO 2 levels harmless because they also occurred in the past? While the Earth adapted to high carbon dioxide levels in the past, modern civilization cannot without major consequences. Past periods of high CO 2 brought about a climate vastly different from our own. During the Eocene “hothouse” period around 55 million years ago, CO 2 concentrations peaked at 1,600 parts per million. That epoch saw ice-free poles and palm trees above the arctic circle. The last time CO 2 was as high as today was 3 million years ago. Global temperatures were as much as 7°F (4°C)...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections . Climate journalism and its funding are under attack right now. If you value this kind of work, please consider donating to help ensure that it can continue. Among his Day One executive orders, President Donald Trump declared that his administration would eliminate what he called “the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate,” and “promote true consumer choice” by terminating regulations and subsidies that he claimed make EVs too affordable compared to combustion-engine cars. That order could undermine efforts to decarbonize cars and trucks, which is necessary if the world is to reach net zero emissions. Road transportation accounts for 12% of global and 22% of American climate...
Open access notables Long-lasting intense cut-off lows to become more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere , Mishra et al., Communications Earth & Environment: Cut-off Lows are slow-moving mid-latitude storms that are detached from the main westerly flow and are often harbingers of heavy and persistent rainfall. The assessment of Cut-off Lows in climate models is relatively limited, in fact, there are no studies conducted on the future changes of Cut-off Lows within climate models. Given the importance of Cut-off Lows in leading to severe hazards, here we study them in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6’s worst-case future simulations (SSP5-8.5). Most (80%) of the models show that Cut-off Lows with high intensity and longer lifetimes are...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #20 based on Sabin's report. When properly sited, offshore wind farms need not pose a serious risk of harm to whales or other marine life. During installation, the impact from construction noise can be mitigated by implementing seasonal restrictions on certain activities that coincide with whale migration. Once operational, wind turbines generate far less low-frequency sound than...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 9, 2025 thru Sat, February 15, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Climate change is worsening diabetes worldwide Heat waves exacerbate the danger of the disease. by Sanket Jain, Health, Inside Climate News, Feb 4, 2025 New German Government Report Highlights Growing Climate Security Risks Climate-driven extreme weather disasters...
Open access notables A year above 1.5 °C signals that Earth is most probably within the 20-year period that will reach the Paris Agreement limit , Bevacqua et al., Nature Climate Change: The temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are measured as 20-year averages exceeding a pre-industrial baseline. The calendar year of 2024 was announced as the first above 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, but the implications for the corresponding temperature goal are unclear. Here we show that, without very stringent climate mitigation, the first year above 1.5 °C occurs within the first 20-year period with an average warming of 1.5 °C . Twelve months at 1.5 °C signals earlier than expected breach of Paris Agreement...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #15 based on Sabin's report. Multiple studies have found that the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by wind turbines are lower than those generated by most common household appliances and that they easily meet rigorous international safety standards (McCallum et al. 2014, Alexias et al. 2020, Karanakis et al. 2021). For context, the average home that is not located near power...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 2, 2025 thru Sat, February 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Marshall Islands` vanishing kit for a team under threat from climate crisis The isolated Pacific nation is trying to build its first football team amid a battle for survival against rising sea levels by Niall McVeigh, The Guardian, Feb 02, 2025 January sets an unexpected temperature...
Open access notables Doing better rather than promising more: A basic principle applicable to both climate modelling and climate policies , Douville, PLOS Climate: A growing number of scientists are expressing concerns about the inadequacy of climate change policies. Fewer are questionning the dominant climate modelling paradigm and the IPCC’s success to prevent humanity from venturing unprepared into hitherto unknown territories. However, in view of an urgent need to provide readily available data on constraining uncertainty in local and regional climate change impacts in the next few years, there is a debate on the most suitable path to inform both mitigation and adaptation strategies. Examples are given how both common statistical methods and emerging technologies...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #14 based on Sabin's report. A 2023 study that examined 75 emissions-reduction scenarios concluded that global reserves of critical materials are likely adequate to meet future demand for electricity generation infrastructure 1 (also Wang et al. 2023). According to that study, production rates for many critical materials will need to grow substantially, but “[g]lobal mineral...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 26, 2025 thru Sat, February 1, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Dangerous temperatures could kill 50% more Europeans by 2100, study finds Net increase of 80,000 deaths a year projected in hottest scenario, with milder winters failing to redress balance by Ajit Niranjan, Environment The Guardian, Jan 27, 2025 Climate change made deadly Los...
Open access notables Revisiting the Last Ice Area projections from a high-resolution Global Earth System Model , Fol et al., Communications Earth & Environment: The Last Ice Area—located to the north of Greenland and the northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago—is expected to persist as the central Arctic Ocean becomes seasonally ice-free within a few decades. Projections of the Last Ice Area, however, have come from relatively low resolution Global Climate Models that do not resolve sea ice export through the waterways of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Nares Strait. Here we revisit Last Ice Area projections using high-resolution numerical simulations from the Community Earth System Model, which resolves these narrow waterways. Under...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters The planet was besieged by 58 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024, ranking second-highest behind only 2023, which had 73, said insurance broker Gallagher Re in its annual report issued 17. The total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 was $402 billion, 20% higher than the 10-year inflation-adjusted average. (Gallagher Re’s historical database extends back to 1990.) A separate report issued January 18 by insurance broker Aon put the total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 at $348 billion, with 53 billion-dollar weather disasters. Increasing numbers of billion-dollar disasters primarily driven by increases in wealth and population Gallagher Re said that 2024 had...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). 2025 has only just begun, but already climate scientists are working hard to unpick what could be in store for us. As greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive more and more climate change, the overall trend is for more global warming. But other factors - like the El Niño oscillation moving towards La Niña - will also have a major impact. So how hot will 2025 be? And how will climate change affect us in the form of extreme weather disasters? Whether that's heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires - like the ones ravaging Los Angeles right now? Support...
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 12, 2025 thru Sat, January 18, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Los Angeles burns: What you need to know This is terrible. This is climate change. by Andrew Dessler, The Climate Brink, Jan 13, 2025 How Two Words from a 24-Year-Old Pasadena Climate Specialist Saved Hundreds of Lives Edgar McGregor’s timely Eaton Fire alert:...
Open access notables Long-term trends in heat wave gaps for the New York City metropolitan area , Lin & Colle, Urban Climate: Heat waves occurring in close succession to one another are hazardous because of the prolonged stress on the human body and energy demand. A heat wave gap metric, the time between two adjacent heat wave events, was utilized to examine the gap length and frequency trend for several stations around New York City (NYC) during the last several decades. From 1961 to 1990 to 1991–2020, the average heat wave gap for the various stations decreased by 15–41 %, the number of short gaps (≤5 days) increased by 33–300 %, while the number of long gaps (>5 days) remained relatively constant. Pervasive ...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #11 based on Sabin's report. Unsubsidized solar energy is now generally cheaper than fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency’s 2020 World Energy Outlook, photovoltaic solar power is “the cheapest source of new electricity generation in most parts of the world,” and “[f]or projects with low cost financing that tap high quality resources...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 5, 2025 thru Sat, January 11, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts The Risks of Climate Change to the United States in the 21st Century CBO assesses how climate change will pose risks to the United States through its effects on economic activity, real estate and financial markets, human health, biodiversity, immigration, and national security. by Congressional...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink Global surface temperatures have risen around 1.3C since the preindustrial (1850-1900) period as a result of human activity. 1 However, this aggregate number masks a lot of underlying factors that contribute to global surface temperature changes over time. These include CO2, which is the primary driver of long-term warming, as well as non-CO2 greenhouse gases like CH4, N2O, and halocarbons. But it also includes planet-cooling aerosols that have masked a sizable portion of the warming of our greenhouse gas emissions to-date. Rounding out the list are other anthropogenic factors (tropospheric ozone, albedo changes due to land use change), and natural forcings (primarily volcanic eruptions and variations in solar...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Much like 2023 , many climate and energy records were broken in 2024. It was Earth’s hottest year on record by a wide margin, breaking the previous record that was set just last year by an even larger margin. Human-caused climate-warming pollution and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reached new heights. But the record deployment of clean technology solutions in 2024 prevented emissions from rising even higher yet. Scientists found many other planetary vital signs also at record levels , including ocean acidity, sea level rise, ice cover, heat-related mortality rates, meat production, and loss of forest cover. But they also noted that the level of global deforestation due directly to human activities...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by John Wihbey. A version of this article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections on Nov. 11, 2008. (Image credits: The White House, Jonathan Cutrer / CC BY 2.0 ; President Jimmy Carter, Trikosko/Library of Congress; Solar dedication, Bill Fitz-Patrick / Jimmy Carter Library; Solar panel installation film, Department of Energy) The glass, aluminum, and stainless steel panels reclined at low angles and basked in the sun as the men in suits and ties, flanked by reporters, took to the West Wing roof to look at what they thought was the future. That day, June 20, 1979, was clear enough for the sun to bring out a bright reflection on the panels, and for shadows of those on the roof to be drawn dark and tight around them...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). 2024 has been a series of bad news for climate change. From scorching global temperatures leading to devastating extreme weather, to the rise of climate denying politicians and directionless negotiations. As global warming approaches 1.5 degrees, I thought it was vital to break down how this year has affected me - a climate scientist working on the topic for over a decade. So I'm sharing some of the lessons I've learned, and why the last thing we should be doing right now is despairing. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 15, 2024 thru Sat, December 21, 2024. Based on feedback we received, this week's roundup is the first one published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts How much should you worry about a collapse of the Atlantic conveyor belt? Scientists warned recently that the risk “has so far been greatly underestimated.” by Bob Henson, Yale Climate Connections, Dec 11, 2024 Shrinking wings...
Open access notables An intensification of surface Earth’s energy imbalance since the late 20 th century , Li et al., Communications Earth & Environment: Tracking the energy balance of the Earth system is a key method for studying the contribution of human activities to climate change. However, accurately estimating the surface energy balance has long been a challenge, primarily due to uncertainties that dwarf the energy flux changes induced and a lack of precise observational data at the surface. We have employed the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) method, integrating it with recent developments in surface solar radiation observational data, to refine the ensemble of CMIP6 model outputs. This has resulted in an enhanced estimation of Surface Earth...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson In this aerial view, fingers of meltwater flow from the melting Isunnguata Sermia glacier descending from the Greenland Ice Sheet on July 11, 2024, near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. According to the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE), the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass continuously since 1996, with an accumulated loss since 1986 approaching 6,000 metric gigatons, or 6 trillion tons. Meltwater pouring from the Arctic into the far North Atlantic in massive amounts seems to be capable of triggering collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) Several high-profile research papers have brought renewed attention to the potential...
Open access notables: Regional Impacts Poorly Constrained by Climate Sensitivity , Swaminathan et al., Earth's Future: Climate risk assessments must account for a wide range of possible futures, so scientists often use simulations made by numerous global climate models to explore potential changes in regional climates and their impacts. Some of the latest-generation models have high effective climate sensitivities (EffCS). It has been argued these “hot” models are unrealistic and should therefore be excluded from analyses of climate change impacts. Whether this would improve regional impact assessments, or make them worse, is unclear. Here we show there is no universal relationship between EffCS and projected changes in a number of important climatic drivers...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #6 based on Sabin's report. The impact of solar development on biodiversity depends on-site specific conditions, such as the local ecosystem, the existing land use, the density of development, and the management practices employed at the site. When applying best practices for project design, including by incorporating pollinator habitat and minimizing soil disturbance, large-scale...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 1, 2024 thru Sat, December 7, 2024. Alternative listing prototype Instead of a "Story of the Week" we added a listing by assigned category, so this installment will have the same list of articles twice, first by category and then by publication date. Please let us know in the comments which format you prefer, if the manually assigned categories actually fit the articles and if additional categories might make sense without getting too fine grained. To keep things simple, an article can only be assigned to one category. Climate change impacts Doomsday Glacier collapse! Time for MORE human intervention?? by Dave Borlace, "Just have...
Open access notables Global emergence of regional heat wave hotspots outpaces climate model simulations , Kornhuber et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science s: Multiple recent record-shattering weather events raise questions about the adequacy of climate models to effectively predict and prepare for unprecedented climate impacts on human life, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Here, we show that extreme heat in several regions globally is increasing significantly and faster in magnitude than what state-of-the-art climate models have predicted under present warming even after accounting for their regional summer background warming. Across all global land area, models underestimate positive trends exceeding 0.5 °C per decade...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). We're choking our planet with pollution - whether that's greenhouse gases or plastics. But these two crises are deeply connected - and it all goes back to fossil fuels. And for both, the world needs to tackle the problem at source. Right now, the world is coming together to discuss the Global Plastic Treaty - a unique opportunity to get to grips with waste, and clean up our environment. But with fossil fuel companies up to their usual tricks, will we finally start to tackle the plastic problem and the climate crisis? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
Open access notables Progression of ocean interior acidification over the industrial era , Müller & Gruber Gruber, Science Advances: Ocean acidification driven by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 represents a major threat to ocean ecosystems, yet little is known about its progression beneath the surface. Here, we reconstruct the history of ocean interior acidification over the industrial era on the basis of observation-based estimates of the accumulation of anthropogenic carbon. Across the top 100 meters and from 1800 to 2014, the saturation state of aragonite (Ωarag) and pH = −log[H+] decreased by more than 0.6 and 0.1, respectively, with nearly 50% of the progression occurring over the past 20 years. While the magnitude of the Ωarag change...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Hurricane Milton approaching landfall in Florida on October 9, 2024. (Image credit: NOAA/CIRA/Colorado State University) Human-caused climate change boosted the wind speeds of recent Atlantic hurricanes, making them more damaging and costly, according to a pair of scientific reports released today. Research published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate, “ Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes ,” found that between 2019 and 2023, the maximum sustained winds of Atlantic hurricanes were 19 mph (31 km/h) higher because of human-caused ocean warming. And a parallel report by Climate Central , a nonprofit scientific research organization, applied the...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Has human-caused climate change increased extreme weather? Planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather, jeopardizing the stability of ecosystems and human populations. Warmer temperatures increase evaporation while warmer air holds more moisture. This has caused prolonged heat waves and drought in some regions and intensified precipitation, storms, and flooding in others. Global warming has also increased...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink The world is emitting over 40 gigatons of CO2 per year, contributing to an accelerating warming of the planet. The world needs to cut emissions rapidly to be remotely on track to meet our Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to well-below 2C, and we should be spending the vast majority (>95%) of our resources today on reducing emissions. But once we get close to zero emissions, we will need to rely on an increasing amount of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to stabilize temperatures. As I discussed in an earlier Climate Brink article , every ton of CO2 we put in the atmosphere continues to warm the earth for millennia to come. Getting to zero emissions will stop the Earth from warming, but will...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Governments around the world face a conundrum. Virtually none are on track to meet their Paris climate commitments. That includes the United States, which committed to cut its emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 but is only on track for 32-43% cuts by 2030 based on current policies. And many of those policies, like the clean energy incentives passed in the Inflation Reduction Act – the landmark 2022 climate law – could be rolled back by the incoming Republican administration and Congress, leaving the U.S. even further short of its climate targets. President-elect Trump has pledged to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, which would mean...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #2 based on Sabin's report. Roughly 40% of new solar panels in the United States and 5% of new solar panels in the world contain cadmium 1 , but this cadmium is in the form of cadmium telluride, which is non-volatile, non-soluble in water, and has 1/100th the toxicity of free cadmium 2 . Most solar panels, like many electronics, contain small amounts of lead 3 . However, the Massachusetts...
A listing of 33 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 3, 2024 thru Sat, November 9, 2024. Summary of this week's topics We asked Google's Gemini again for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week, but it couldn't do it this time around. So, we tried with OpenAI's ChatGPT instead, which is why the format is different compared to last week's . Now that we have two different versions of generated summaries, we'd like to know which format you prefer, so please let us know in the comments! International Climate Conferences and Agreements COP16 Outcomes and Challenges Nature , Carbon Brief , The Guardian : Coverage of COP16, including biodiversity agreements and developing nations’...
Open access notables Anthropogenic warming has ushered in an era of temperature-dominated droughts in the western United States , Zhuang et al., Science Advances: Historically, meteorological drought in the western United States (WUS) has been driven primarily by precipitation deficits. However, our observational analysis shows that, since around 2000, rising surface temperature and the resulting high evaporative demand have contributed more to drought severity (62%) and coverage (66%) over the WUS than precipitation deficit. This increase in evaporative demand during droughts, mostly attributable to anthropogenic warming according to analyses of both observations and climate model simulations, is the main cause of the increased drought severity and coverage. The unprecedented...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #1 based on Sabin's report. The electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated at a solar farm are similar in strength and frequency to those of toaster ovens and other household appliances—and harmless to humans. A detailed analysis from North Carolina State University concluded that there is “no conclusive and consistent evidence” of “negative health impact[s]...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are most glaciers growing? The vast majority of glaciers have continued to shrink worldwide. To maintain stability, snowfall must equal ice loss from processes like surface melt, wind erosion, and avalanches. In most of the world, glaciers are shrinking due to warming and snowfall changes. By 1990, glaciers worldwide had lost 7% to 28% of their 1901 mass. Glacier research dates back to the 1890s, while specific “reference glaciers” have been continuously tracked since...
Open access notables Communicating the most accurate and reliable science on climate change to society: A survey of editors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , Molina & Abadal Abadal, Geoscience Communication: This study focuses on the perspectives of scientists involved in the IPCC AR5 and AR6 synthesis reports, examining their views on the communication of climate change knowledge and its dissemination to the public. The objectives include understanding scientists' opinions on the state of climate change knowledge, the effectiveness of current communication strategies, and recommendations for improving public engagement. A survey was conducted among 72 IPCC scientists, assessing their perceptions on various aspects of climate communication, including...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). From hurricanes like Helene and Milton, to typhoons like Gaemi, vast storms are causing devastation: destroying cities and tearing up lives. So what's actually behind these tropical cyclones? Are they just natural disasters, or caused by burning fossil fuels? The links between climate change and these storms are crucial, but they're also complex. So let's talk about how global warming is turning up the heat on hurricanes, and what we can do to shelter from the storm. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans? Volcanoes release CO 2 , but the amount is minimal compared to human-caused emissions. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, volcanoes emit around 180-440 million tons of CO 2 annually. In contrast, human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels, emitted 41.5 billion tons of CO 2 in 2022—over 100 times more. Volcanoes are part of the Earth’s slow carbon cycle, where carbon is gradually recycled between the Earth’s...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler California prides itself on its climate leadership. And the state’s work on transportation – its largest source of emissions – is no exception; its electric vehicle policies have been adopted by other states across the country. Sacramento lawmakers have also taken ambitious steps to reduce car use altogether, developing regulations aimed at reshaping communities to encourage walking, biking, and taking public transportation. But on-the-ground reality often doesn’t live up to this vision. In particular, communities throughout the state continue to invest heavily in highway expansion projects that undermine efforts to change how people get around. Because of a phenomenon known as...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 13, 2024 thru Sat, October 19, 2024. Story of the week Here's another week of stories describing how our species has become a force of nature by creating a mighty industry now spewing unintended consequences, spanning from the upper atmosphere down to the rotational behavior of our entire planet Earth. In the middle: us and our fellow creatures, buffeted by violent weather, pestilence, starvation, dehydration and various other horrors, all made more dire by our big accident of changing our climate. We've accidentally taken on god-like powers. But we're more like Greek gods; our efforts seemingly end in hubristic folly as much as they do acts of virtue. The Greeks...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tree Meinch A person bicycles through floodwaters remaining from Hurricane Helene on October 4, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Hundreds of people were killed in six states in the wake of the powerful hurricane, which made landfall as a Category 4. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) You could say James Guill has been running from hurricanes for his whole life. The New Orleans native was just two years old when Hurricane Katrina swallowed his city in 2005 and became the most costly hurricane in U.S. history , claiming 1,833 lives. During and after the storm, Guill’s family evacuated and sheltered in Virginia for two months. Then they returned, salvaged their house, and spent nearly two more decades...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 6, 2024 thru Sat, October 12, 2024. Story of the week For the third week in a row our Story of the Week involves hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Milton which led a brief life distinguished by explosive intensification , placing it as the Gulf of Mexico's most energetic late-season storm on record. The word cloud here captures the flavor of the past week's journalistic preoccupation with this storm as a feature related to and at least partially dependent on human-caused climate change. Thanks to our increasing the efficiency of Earth's insulating blanket of greenhouse gases, we're having an affect on all features of the weather we experience...
Open access notables Manifold increase in the spatial extent of heat waves in the terrestrial Arctic , Rantanen et al., Communications Earth & Environment: It is widely acknowledged that the intensity, frequency and duration of heatwaves are increasing worldwide, including the Arctic. However, less attention has been paid to the land area affected by heatwaves. Here, using atmospheric reanalysis and global climate models, we show that the area covered by heatwaves is substantially expanding in the terrestrial Arctic. Compared to the mid-20th century, the total land area affected by severe heatwaves in the Arctic has doubled, the area of extreme heatwaves has tripled, and the area of very extreme heatwaves has quadrupled. Furthermore, climate model...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink Much of my immediate family lives in Asheville and Black Mountain, NC. While everyone is thankfully safe, this disaster struck much closer to home for me than most. There is lots that needs to be done for disaster relief, and I’d encourage folks who can to donate to the recovery effort . But as Western North Carolina and other areas of the Southeastern US work to recover after the catastrophic flooding caused by Helene, its worth exploring the role that climate change may have played in the event. While Helene would have been a disaster even in a world without climate change, the intensification of severe rainfall events is one of the most clear-cut impacts of a warming world. Research in recent years ...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 29, 2024 thru Sat, October 5, 2024. Story of the week We're all made of standard human fabric so it's nobody's particular fault but while "other" parts of the world have very recently lived (mostly) through enormous floods with huge consequences, only over the past week has the United States focused its immediate attention on hydrometeoological extremes— thanks to the arrival and massive hammer blow of Hurricane Helene (see " psychological distance "). Our Story of the Week is statistically obvious by headcount in the list below. It's all about Hurricane Helene. A common theme in reportage from affected areas is the element of surprise in...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sanket Jain Noushadbi Mujawar has created a community health model that helps people in India build resilience amid the rising climate disasters. (Photo credit: Sanket Jain) Community health care worker Noushadbi Mujawar safely evacuated everyone from Rajapur, an isolated village in India, as its streets began flooding in August 2019. Mujawar, 42, remained in the village herself even as floodwaters rose 12 feet above her house. “I moved to a nearby taller building and decided to stay,” said Mujawar, who wanted to help those villagers who stayed with their property as the floodwaters rose. “Many people stay in their homes during floods to care for their cattle, as evacuating them involves significant...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler link You should probably learn the term compound climate event . It refers to the occurrence of multiple weather- or climate-related hazards happening simultaneously or in close succession, leading to amplified impacts. One of the most feared compound events is a hurricane causing massive infrastructure damage followed by extreme heat. If the damage caused a blackout, it could leave a huge population without access to air conditioning, leading to heat-related illnesses and fatalities. This is far from a theoretical occurrence: It just happened in Houston when Hurricane Beryl hit the city, knocking out power for days. Various news reports put the number of deaths due to Beryl at a few dozen. A...
Open access notables Refined Estimates of Global Ocean Deep and Abyssal Decadal Warming Trend s , Johnson & Purkey, Geophysical Research Letters: Deep and abyssal layer decadal temperature trends from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s are mapped globally using Deep Argo and historical ship-based Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) instrument data. Abyssal warming trends are widespread, with the strongest warming observed around Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) formation regions. The warming strength follows deep western boundary currents transporting abyssal waters north and decreases with distance from Antarctica. Abyssal cooling trends are found in the North Atlantic and eastern South Atlantic, regions primarily ventilated by North Atlantic Deep Water...
This video includes conclusions of the "Just have a Think" channel's creator Dave Borlace . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). From the video‘s description : Arctic Sea ice reaches it's minimum extent each year around the middle of September. This year is one of the lowest in recorded history. Ocean temperatures have been so 'off the charts' in 2023 and 2024 that scientists fear those waters have reached their capacity to mop up after us humans and are now starting to release that energy. On our current trajectory, by 2100, our planet will reach a temperature not seen for 3 MILLION years!. So...what's the plan??? Support Dave Borlace on Patreon: https://patreon.com/justhaveathink
This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics I wrote a post a little while ago commenting on a Sabine Hossenfelder video suggesting that she was now worried about climate change because the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) could be much higher than most estimates have suggested. I wasn’t too taken with Sabine’s arguments, and there were others who were also somewhat critical . Sabine has since posted a response to the various reactions . I think this response is rather unfortunate and doesn’t really engage with the criticisms of her earlier video. She suggests that Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather have lost touch with reality because they say: Arguments over ECS are distractions. Whether it’s...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink My inaugural post on The Climate Brink 18 months ago looked at the year 2024, and found that it was likely to be the warmest year on record on the back of a (than forecast) El Nino event. I suggested “there is a real chance that the world exceeds 1.5C above preindustrial levels in 2024 in the Berkeley Earth record” but that “it is still more likely than not that 2024 temperatures come in below that level.” Since that post, I think its safe to say that the intervening year and a half surprised us all . We saw extreme (one might even say gobsmacking) global surface temperatures in the second half of 2023, which pushed the year above 1.5C in the Berkeley Earth record (and just shy of 1.5C in...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with John Mason. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does manmade CO2 have any detectable fingerprint? Atmospheric chemistry shows that humans are driving the recent CO2 increase. A key piece of evidence involves carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere. Isotopes are different versions of the same element. Carbon comes in three isotopes of different weights and amounts: carbon-12 (98.9% of all carbon), carbon-13 (1.1%) and carbon-14 (trace amounts only). Photosynthetic plants prefer the lightest isotope, carbon-12, because it is favored in photosynthesis...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk The Inflation Reduction Act is the Biden administration’s signature climate law and the largest U.S. government investment in reducing climate pollution to date. Among climate advocates, the policy is well-known and celebrated, but beyond that, only a minority of Americans have heard much about it. Once voters learn a bit about this landmark law, however, a large majority support it. These findings are from a survey of U.S. registered voters, conducted jointly by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (the publisher of this site) and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. In the nationally representative survey, participants were first...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections In February 2021, several severe storms swept across the United States, culminating with one that the Weather Channel unofficially named Winter Storm Uri. In Texas, Uri knocked out power to over 4.5 million homes and 10 million people. Hundreds of Texans died as a result, and the storm is estimated to have cost the state $130 billion . Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, quickly sought to blame the crisis on renewable energy. While the storm and blackouts were still ongoing, Abbott told Sean Hannity of Fox News, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America … fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make...
Open access notables Diurnal Temperature Range Trend s Differ Below and Above the Melting Point , Pithan & Schatt, Geophysical Research Letters: The globally averaged diurnal temperature range (DTR) has shrunk since the mid-20th century, and climate models project further shrinking. Observations indicate a slowdown or reversal of this trend in recent decades. Here, we show that DTR has a minimum for average temperatures close to 0°C. Observed DTR shrinks strongly at colder temperature, where warming shifts the average temperature toward the DTR minimum, and expands at warmer temperature, where warming shifts the average temperature away from the DTR minimum. Most, but not all climate models reproduce the minimum DTR close to average temperatures of...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Every summer brings a new spate of headlines about record-breaking heat – for good reason: 2023 was the hottest year on record , in keeping with the upward trend scientists have been clocking for decades. With climate forecasts suggesting that heat waves will only become more frequent and severe in the future, it’s increasingly clear that the world needs new ways to adapt to heat – in addition to eliminating climate-warming pollution. Heat waves pose a serious (and costly ) public health risk, given that extreme heat can prompt heat exhaustion, dehydration, and heat stroke and can also worsen chronic conditions like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Cranking up...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 25, 2024 thru Sat, August 31, 2024. Story of the week After another crammed week of climate news including updates on climate tipping points, increasing threats from rising seas, burgeoning disease threats and tropical storms juiced by too much warmth, Our Story of the Week is about root cause and excacerbator for all of the above. Writing for Jacobin , former Rhode Island state representative Aaron Regenburg delivers a critique and rebuttal of a previous essay in the same publication. Regenburg's target is a sincerely delivered but incorrect argument that climate disinformation is not a matter of priority when talking to the general public about...
Open access notables Arctic glacier snowline altitudes rise 150 m over the last 4 decades , Larocca et al., The Cryosphere: We mapped the snowline (SL) on a subset of 269 land-terminating glaciers above 60° N latitude in the latest available summer, clear-sky Landsat satellite image between 1984 and 2022. The mean SLA was extracted using the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). We compared the remotely observed SLA observations with available long-term field-based measurements of ELA and with ERA5-Land reanalysis climate data. Over the last 4 decades, Arctic glacier SLAs have risen an average of ∼152 m ( 3.9±0.4 m yr...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Osha Davidson For 20 years now, Ken Nedimyer has been strapping on his scuba gear and diving into the waters off the Florida coast in a desperate effort to restore coral reefs that have been decimated by climate change and pollution. In 2019, he founded his latest venture, Reef Renewal USA. The group’s YouTube channel shows Nedimyer and other members underwater, carefully attaching nursery-grown coral to structures designed to build healthy reefs. “We’re working hard under pressure with innovation, speed, and efficiency to repopulate our coral reefs,” the narrator says. Diver-conservationists like Nedimyer will lose the race against time, scientists say, unless humanity acts quickly...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 18, 2024 thru Sat, August 24, 2024. Story of the week Our Story of the Week is another stab at "connecting the dots," drawing a line between not one but two different stories sharing common foundations. First there's Emily Atkin writing for HEATED with a critical commentary on Elon Musk, in Why vilify the oil and gas industry? . As detailed by Atkin, i n a recent interview with a US presidential party nominee and candidate Musk made an odd statement, one that with all charity can only be interpreted as remarkably chumpish and naive. Musk asserted in connection with climate change that "I don’t think we should vilify the...
Open access notables The ocean losing its breath under the heat waves , Li et al., Nature Communications: The world’s oceans are under threat from the prevalence of heatwaves caused by climate change. Despite this, there is a lack of understanding regarding their impact on seawater oxygen levels - a crucial element in sustaining biological survival. Here, we find that heatwaves can trigger low-oxygen extreme events, thereby amplifying the signal of deoxygenation. By utilizing in situ observations and state-of-the-art climate model simulations, we provide a global assessment of the relationship between the two types of extreme events in the surface ocean (0–10 m). Our results show compelling evidence of a remarkable surge in the...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Anthony Lieserowitz This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of Climate Connections , our national radio program. Launched during a low point in mainstream media coverage of climate change, when only about 15% of Americans believed human-caused global warming was an urgent threat, the program was designed to get listeners talking about climate change and climate solutions. From the beginning, we aimed to use our bite-sized, 90-second segments to show that climate action wasn’t just the province of scientists and distant technocrats who lead negotiations in United Nations meetings. Instead, anyone – including someone like you – could be part of the climate story. You...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 11, 2024 thru Sat, August 17, 2024. Story of the week At the risk of becoming monotonous, our Story of the Week yet again is Project 2025 . This would be true if only by numbers alone; assessed by article count Project 2025 dominates this week's listing. Leaving that aside, Skeptical Science's mission is that of combating groundless skepticism over human-caused climate change, a constraint on our choices. While we share a wide variety of climate-related stories each week, we'd be off-piste and ignoring our purpose if we didn't focus on Project 2025. Why? Because Project 2025's climate policy intentions and implications are what can be thought of as...
Open access notables The ocean losing its breath under the heat waves , Li et al., Nature Communications: Here, we find that heatwaves can trigger low-oxygen extreme events, thereby amplifying the signal of deoxygenation. By utilizing in situ observations and state-of-the-art climate model simulations, we provide a global assessment of the relationship between the two types of extreme events in the surface ocean (0–10 m). Our results show compelling evidence of a remarkable surge in the co-occurrence of marine heatwaves and low-oxygen extreme events. Hotspots of these concurrent stressors are identified in the study, indicating that this intensification is more pronounced in high-biomass regions than in those with relatively low biomass...
In common with climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy's purpose and in keeping with Skeptical Science's philosophy and role as a US 501(c)(3) non-profit, we present this video to our readers as a perspective informed by verifiable facts, not as an endorsement or recommendation. Please see video description for references. Before it's even begun, the race for the White House has made headlines - from the attempt on Donald Trump's life, to Joe Biden suddenly quitting the race, and Kamala Harris stepping up to take his place. But what could this race for Presidency mean for our planet? How could the next President of the United States affect climate change? Fortunately we can look at Harris and Trump's records to find out - both have acted (for better or worse) many times in their careers...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 4, 2024 thru Sat, August 10, 2024. Story of the week What's our Story of the Week ? Is it the AMOC being more likely than not to collapse by 2050? The eye-popping late-winter Antarctic heatwave? Ordinarily any of a half-dozen stories in this week's listing could have been our focus. Instead, "we interrupt regular programming" to bring you a special bulletin, via ProPublica . This news is connected with Project 2025 , a scheme fostered by the conservative (self-described) Heritage Foundation to jump start the next US presidential administration (of the politically Right variety) with a freeze-dried, fully comprehensive policy suite...
Open access notables Absence of causality between seismic activity and global warming , Verbitsky et al., Earth System Dynamics: There is no more consequential scientific matter today than global warming. The societal and policy implications, however, hinge upon the attribution of that warming to human activity and, specifically, continued societal reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. It was recently suggested that this warming could be explained by the non-anthropogenic factor of seismic activity. If that is the case, it would have profound implications. We have assessed the validity of the claim using a statistical technique (the method of conditional dispersion) that evaluates the existence of causal connections between variables, finding no evidence...
This article by Delphine Farmer , Professor of Chemistry, Colorado State University and Mj Riches , Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental and Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . When wildfire smoke is in the air, doctors urge people to stay indoors to avoid breathing in harmful particles and gases. But what happens to trees and other plants that can’t escape from the smoke? They respond a bit like us, it turns out: Some trees essentially shut their windows and doors and hold their breath. As atmospheric and chemical scientists , we study the air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants. In a study that started...
A listing of 33 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 28, 2024 thru Sat, August 3, 2024. Story of the week Like a stuck phonograph record , our Story of the Week continues as "the entire Earth's temperature is higher than our species has ever before seen." We think of heatwaves as regional features; here it's our whole planet seeing prolonged bulging temperatues. In a crowded news environment crammed with urgencies (and fluff), this news is largely flying beneath the radar of wide public notice but it is nonetheless (somewhat axiomatically) historic, truly remarkable. Only last week it was phenomenal to see two days in a row exceeding our pevious experience. A few days later and we're in a thicket of multiple...
This article by Nicola Jones originally appeared in Knowable Magazine , a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Sign up for Knowable Magazine’s newsletter . As the world races to decarbonize everything from the electricity grid to industry, it faces particular problems with transportation — which alone is responsible for about a quarter of our planet’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions . The fuels for transport need to be not just green, cheap and powerful, but also lightweight and safe enough to be carried around. Fossil fuels — mainly gasoline and diesel — have been extraordinarily effective at powering a diverse range of mobile machines. Since the industrial revolution, humanity...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk s of this writing, every river basin across the entire Western U.S. has below-average snow. Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada – the workplaces of thousands of ski area employees like me – are sitting at 15 to 65% of average snowpack for this time of year. Some ski areas closed in the middle of the season, and others decided to close early this year. Many cut employee hours. “This year was a catastrophic year,” said Auden Schendler, who shepherded the Aspen Ski Company’s sustainability program for 26 years. Winter enthusiasts know that bad years happen. But “in a climate-changed world, you’re more likely to see...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 22, 2026 thru Sat, March 28, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (10 articles) ‘Pushing extremes to new levels’: Record US heat dome made possible by climate change "‘Insurers walking away’ is the clearest sign unpredictable weather extremes are spiralling out of control, one expert says." AP/Euronewsdotcom, Angela Symons, Mar 20, 2026. Record-torching March heat ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change "Friday’s spring equinox may seem like a quaint notion to those already enduring furnace-like 90-110°F summer heat." Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink El Niño and its sister La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific (collectively called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO). The planet shifts back and forth irregularly between El Niño and La Niña every two to seven years, changing ocean temperatures and disrupting wind and rainfall patterns across the tropics. This in turn has a number of second-order effects around the planet. El Niño also has a major effect on global temperatures, reducing the rate of ocean heat uptake and increasing atmospheric temperatures. Global mean temperature can temporarily increase as much as 0.2C during a very strong El Niño event, with...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 15, 2026 thru Sat, March 21, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (11 articles) Summer in March? Unusual Heat Wave Descends on Already Parched Western U.S. "The heat wave could further lower water availability in the region, which has seen staggeringly low levels of snowpack this year." Inside Climate News, Kiley Price, Mar 13, 2026. Q&A: How climate change and war threaten Iran’s water supplies "Climate change, war and mismanagement are putting Iran’s water supply under major strain, experts have warned." Carbon Brief, Multiple Authors, Mar 13, 2026. World on course to breach 1.5°C...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Jeffrey Epstein was a climate change denier. The Epstein Files have uncovered a number of revelations about how power operates across the globe. And this includes the discussion of climate change - and climate denial - within these exchanges between Jeffrey Epstein and the people he associated with – from scientists to Donald Trump. So what did Jeffrey Epstein have to say when it came to climate change? And what do these files reveal about the links between climate denial and power? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler When people debate the cost of fossil fuels versus renewables, the conversation almost always centers on the price at the pump or the cost per kilowatt-hour on your electricity bill. That’s understandable — those are the costs you can see. But they’re not the whole story. The rest of the story are subsidies. In most discussions, it’s laser-focused on subsidies for renewable energy, not fossil fuels. But fossil fuels get enormous subsidies. Those are deeply hidden, though, spread across government budgets, healthcare systems, and military spending in ways most people can’t connect back to their energy choices. To the extent that they do get attention, most of it goes to the implicit...
Open access notables Weather Rescue at Sea: Recovering Historical Weather Observations From 19th Century British Naval Ships , Teleti et al., Geoscience Data Journal Ship logbooks represent a critical source of historical meteorological data, providing valuable observations of barometric pressure, air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind force and direction, and other variables. Substantial quantities of these records are unavailable to climate science as they have not yet been transcribed. We present ‘Weather Rescue at Sea’, a citizen-science project which transcribed millions of weather observations contained in 19th Century UK Royal Navy ship logbooks. We describe the logbook structure and weather observation-taking instructions and...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 1, 2026 thru Sat, March 7, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds "Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño" The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan , Feb 6, 2026. Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’ "Rising temperatures across France since the mid-1970s are putting Tour de France competitors at 'high risk', according to new research." Carbon Brief, Giuliana Viglione, Feb 24, 2026. Wildfire Seasons Are Starting to Overlap...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters In brief The strongest hurricanes are likely to grow stronger as a result of climate change. So far, there has been no significant increase or decrease in the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States. However, it’s likely that there has been an increase in the number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic as a whole since 1946. Also, the intensity of landfalling continental U.S. hurricanes has increased, so even if the total number of landfalls has not increased, their potential to do damage has. When major hurricanes do hit, they will do more damage than they did in the past: They will be stronger, wetter, and bring higher storm tides because of sea...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink I was reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s famous third law the other day, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I’d recently gotten Claude Code set up on my computer, and was using it to help write the code for some reduced-complexity climate model runs. Suddenly projects that would have taken hours or even days were running in minutes. It was not perfect – I needed to carefully help it create project plans, develop tests, and review the results – but it represented a remarkable step up from the capabilities I was familiar with in past web-based LLM interfaces. I’m something of an unusual climate scientist as, rather than working...
Open access notables Relative Vulnerability of US National Parks to Cumulative and Transformational Climate Impacts , Michalak et al., Conservation Letters National Parks are under threat from multiple interacting climatic changes, which have already triggered transformations in these protected landscapes. We conducted a multidimensional analysis of climate-change vulnerability for National Parks to identify which parks are most at risk of climate-change impacts and therefore in the greatest need of targeted climate-change vulnerability assessment and planning. We identified 174 (67%) parks as most exposed to one or more potentially transformative climate impacts including fire, drought, sea-level rise, and forest pests and diseases. Cumulative vulnerability across...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections . Watch the video accompanying this transcript here That’s the report in which the agency concluded that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare and thus must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. It’s the basis of all federal climate regulations. As I wrote back in August when the EPA released its draft proposal, the agency has now – over a decade and a half later – reinterpreted the Clean Air Act to only apply to direct health impacts from local pollution, and not to indirect health effects, like those associated with global climate pollutants. The agency finalized the decision six months later. And the EPA has already been rolling back all...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink With the advent of modern reanalysis products (weather models run backwards in time, ingesting data from satellites, weather balloons, airplanes, and surface observations) we now have an unprecedented look at the real-time evolution of the Earth’s climate. I often use ECMWF’s ERA5 reanalysis (which is arguably the most state-of-the-art of the bunch) to look at current daily global temperature anomalies, to forecast where the current month might end up, or to use as inputs to a model (along with El Nino / La Nina predictions) to estimate what temperatures for the year will be. But rather than manually making these charts every week or so, I (admittedly with the help of Claude Code) have put together an interactive...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sara Peach The Trump administration on Thursday revoked the basis for federal climate regulations, undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect the environment and public health. Here’s what every U.S. resident should know about what just happened. The EPA determined in 2009 that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare. Mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific research shows that climate-warming greenhouse gases are increasing the number of extreme heat waves, severe storms, and other dangerous weather events. Under former President Barack Obama, the EPA reviewed the evidence, and the agency’s “scientific conclusion, known as the...
Open access notables Shifting baselines alter trends and emergence of climate extremes across Africa , Taguela & Akinsanola, Atmospheric Research World Meteorological Organization baselines used to identify climate extremes are routinely updated to reflect recent climate conditions. Yet the implications of these updates for the characterization, trends, and detectability of climate extremes remain poorly understood, particularly in data-sparse and highly vulnerable regions such as Africa. Here, we quantify how updating the reference period from 1981–2010 to 1991–2020 systematically alters the characterization of temperature and precipitation extremes across the continent. Using multiple observational and reanalysis datasets (BEST, ERA5, MERRA-2...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Can nearby solar farms reduce property values? Property values can decline from close proximity with utility-scale solar farms, but the losses are modest and less than from nearby fossil fuel plants. One 2023 study of 1.8 million homes found minor impacts on property values. Homes within 0.5 miles of solar farms experienced around 1.5% price reductions; homes more than one mile away received no significant effects. Another study of 400,000 transactions found an average value decrease of 1.7% within one mile of a solar farm. Most recently, 2025 research indicated a slightly higher decrease...
Open access notables Risk perception and response to changing wildfire hazards: family forest owners in the western US Pacific Northwest , Fischer et al., Climate Risk Management Climate models predict future increases in the frequency, magnitude, and duration of natural hazard events, including heat waves, droughts, and wildfires. People may be aware of these natural hazards but unfamiliar with new patterns expected under climate change. Ideally, people would take action to protect themselves from natural hazard events—even those with which they have limited prior experience. Doing so would likely reduce the public costs of later assisting individuals impacted by events when they occur. Although a large body of research has examined how people perceive...
This article by Mathew Barlow , Professor of Climate Science, UMass Lowell and Judah Cohen , Climate scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . A severe winter storm that brought crippling freezing rain, sleet and snow to a large part of the U.S. in late January 2026 left a mess in states from New Mexico to New England. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power across the South as ice pulled down tree branches and power lines , more than a foot of snow fell in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, and many states faced bitter cold that was expected to linger for days. The sudden blast may have come as a shock to many Americans after a mostly mild start...
Open access notables Are Hibernators Toast? Global Climate Change and Prolonged Seasonal Hibernation , Dausmann & Cooper, Global Change Biology This review examines the multifaceted implications of global climate change on mammalian hibernators, emphasizing physiological, ecological and phenological impacts. While high-latitude habitats are experiencing faster overall warming, tropical and southern hemisphere regions face more unpredictable and variable climate alterations. Increasing temperature can directly affect hibernators by elevating hibernacula temperatures, shortening torpor bouts, increasing arousal frequency, and depleting energy reserves crucial for survival and reproductive success. Conversely, cold anomalies due to climate change may cause disruptive...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 18, 2026 thru Sat, January 24, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (7 articles) Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change "Ignoring the blue economy has left a multi-trillion-dollar blind spot in climate finance, according to a study from Scripps Oceanography." Inside Climate News, Johnny Sturgeon, Jan 15, 2026. ‘Climate change is here’: Experts warn environmental crisis is decades ahead of forecasts "Drought, heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires are arriving sooner than we imagined according to scientists" The Independent, Maria Butt, Jan 17, 2026. 2026 will likely be among...
Open access notables Mapping Europe’s rooftop photovoltaic potential with a building-level database , Kakoulaki et al., Nature Energy Individual building-level approaches are needed to understand the full potential of rooftop photovoltaics (PV) at national and regional scale. Here we use the European Digital Building Stock Model R2025, an open-access building-level database, to assess rooftop solar potential for each of the 271 million buildings in the European Union. The results show that potential capacity could reach 2.3 TWp (1,822 GWp residential, 519 GWp non-residential), with an annual output of 2,750 TWh based on current PV technology. This corresponds to approximately 40% of electricity demand in a 100% renewable scenario for...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Recently there has been quite a debate online about the extent to which opposing near-term oil and gas infrastructure – pipelines, refineries, new production – is both necessary and politically effective as a strategy to reduce US emissions. These conversations have occurred in the context of a broader pivot toward affordability as a rallying cry of the left in the US, driven by concerns around the rapidly rising cost of housing, energy, and other goods. Matt Yglesias had a provocative piece in the NYT arguing that liberals should be less opposed to oil and gas, arguing that it might help make energy more affordable and win more conservative states and labor (without which there would be no climate policy...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Global warming continues to ramp up, with 2025 one of the hottest three years we've ever observed, and probably the hottest in over 100,000 years. With these scorching temperatures, we've seen devastation in the form of natural disasters, like heatwaves, wildfires, floods, storms and droughts. So what will this year bring in terms of climate change? And how are climate scientists able to answer this before the year is even fully underway? Ultimately, though, the biggest questions for a our climate have us much to do with the political as the planetary...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The year that just ended saw numerous records broken on climate and clean energy. It was the second-hottest year on record at Earth’s surface, behind only 2024 . The high temperatures were shocking for a year with a La Niña event. La Niñas draw cold water up to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and hence are relatively cool years at Earth’s surface, while El Niño events have the opposite effect. 2025 was by far the hottest year with a La Niña event. For perspective, 1998 was a record-shattering hot year at the time because it experienced the strongest El Niño event on record, but it was more than half a degree Celsius colder than 2025. Global warming has made 1998 look so unremarkable...
Open access notables A Long-Term Shift in Flow Regimes over the Antarctic Peninsula , Guarino et al., Journal of Climate We present consequences of Antarctic surface warming for the stability of the lower atmosphere since the 1950s. We show that the surface atmosphere over the Antarctic Peninsula has become less stable, and that this reduced stability favors the generation of atmospheric gravity waves from the Peninsula, one of the major sources of atmospheric waves on the planet. We provide a physically based explanation (i.e., a shift in flow regimes) for the increased gravity wave forcing that we find in an unprecedented set of reanalysis products, satellite observations, and model simulations, and that we present here for the first time. Gravity wave forcing...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Renewable energy and climate action boomed in communities, states, and the world in 2025, despite setbacks at the federal level in the U.S, so much so that Science designated the “seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy” as its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year . Climate solutions come in all shapes and sizes, and at Yale Climate Connections, we started off the year with the launch of our climate solutions hub , a page designed to help you easily identify climate actions that fit into your life. It’s a great place to find a climate-related New Year’s resolution if that’s your jam. To close 2025 out on a high note, check out our favorite solutions...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 28, 2025 thru Sat, January 3, 2026. Year 2025 Statistics As this is the first news roundup of 2026 and we therefore have the complete year 2025 "in the can", we thought that you might enjoy some stats about what we shared during the previous 12 months. All told, we shared 1470 links from about 270 different outlets, the vast majority of which provided fewer than 10 links and the bulk of shares originated from just 25 different outlets. The Top10 are: The Guardian (190), Skeptical Science (164), Inside Climate News (108), Yale Climate Connections (67), Phys.org (63), Carbon Brief (58), New York Times (54), The Conversation (52), Grist (47), CNN (38), followed...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 21, 2025 thru Sat, December 27, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Lost Science - She Tracked the Health of Fish That Coastal Communities Depend On Ana Vaz monitored crucial fish stocks in the Southeast and the Gulf of Mexico until she lost her job at NOAA. New York Times, Interview by Austyn Gaffney, Dec 18, 2025. Save NCAR Field notes from New Orleans, where I and 20,000 colleagues learned that Trump intends to destroy the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Deep Convection, Adam Sobel, Dec 21, 2025. “Destroying Knowledge”: Michael Mann on Trump’s Dismantling...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Do solar panels generate more waste than fossil fuels? Waste from discarded solar panels is dwarfed by the waste from coal, oil, and gas. In addition, solar panel recycling capacity continues to expand and improve. A 2023 study estimated that from 2016 – 2050, if power systems do not decarbonize, coal ash would be 300 – 800 times heavier than waste from discarded solar panels, and oily sludge from fossil fuels would be 2 – 5 times heavier. Currently only about 10 – 15% of panels are recycled in the U.S., but governments and companies are funding additional research...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 14, 2025 thru Sat, December 20, 2025. Story of the week As you can see below, five of the six articles in the Climate Policy and Politics category are about the plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. If you live in the US and would like to speak out against this ill-advised plan, you can do so via the action page provided by AGU, the American Geophysical Union: Speak Out to Save NCAR today! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (6 articles) Oil executives once booed Canada`s prime minister. Now they cheer him. Mark Carney, once a U.N. special...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief The past three years have been exceptionally warm globally. In 2023, global temperatures reached a new high, after they significantly exceeded expectations. This record was surpassed in 2024 – the first year where average global temperatures were 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Now, 2025 is on track to be the second- or third-warmest year on record. What has caused this apparent acceleration in warming has been subject to a lot of attention in both the media and the scientific community. Dozens of papers have been published investigating the different factors that could have contributed to these record temperatures. ...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 7, 2025 thru Sat, December 13, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) When climate risk hits home, people listen: Local details can enhance disaster preparedness messaging Phys.org, Stockholm School of Economics, Dec 08, 2025. A 30-year-old sea level rise projection has basically come true Even without today’s advanced modeling tools, scientists made a ‘remarkably’ accurate estimate. Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team, Dec 08, 2025. Nearly 8,000 animal species are at risk as extreme heat and land-use change collide Phys.org, University of Oxford, Dec 09, 2025. ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The electric car market is booming – just not in the United States. One-quarter of new cars sold around the world so far in 2025 have been electric. That share is forecast to continue rising rapidly in coming years, reaching one-half in the early 2030s. But the electric share of new car sales in the U.S. has plateaued at a mere 10% since 2023, and the Trump administration has implemented policies and regulatory changes that have slammed the brakes on a shift to EVs. As a result, many developing nations in regions like Southeast Asia are passing the U.S. in EV adoption, while China and a number of European countries like Norway ( as Will Ferrell comedically informed us in a GM advertisement ) are leaving...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink The extreme global temperatures of the past few years have led a lot of people to ask me if the world is warming faster than expected. To answer that, we need to look at how well climate models reproduce observed global mean surface temperatures. Here I will look at the last three generations of climate models (CMIP3, CMIP5, and CMIP6) as well as a version of the latest generation of models (CMIP6) that excludes the so-called “ hot models ” whose climate sensitivity is higher than the range deemed likely in the most recent IPCC report. It turns out that that the resulting picture is complex. Earlier generations of models better reproduce the rate of warming observed since 1970, while the latest generation better captures...
Open access notables Bedrock uplift reduces Antarctic sea-level contribution over next centuries , van Calcar et al., Nature Communications The contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to barystatic sea-level rise could be as high as eight metres around 2300 but remains deeply uncertain. Ice sheet retreat causes bedrock uplift, which can exert a stabilising effect on the grounding line. Yet, sea-level projections exclude bedrock adjustment, use simplified Earth structures or omit the uncertainty in climate response and Earth structure. We show that the grounding line retreat is delayed by 50 to 130 years and the barystatic sea-level contribution reduced by 9–23% when the heterogeneity of the solid Earth is included in a coupled ice – bedrock model under...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does the recent slowdown in Arctic sea-ice extent loss disprove human-caused warming? The recent pause in Arctic sea-ice loss is natural variability on top of a long-term, human-driven decline. Arctic sea ice naturally expands in winter and contracts in summer, but satellite records since the late 1970s show a steep multi-decade decline in the yearly minimum of sea ice. Short-term fluctuations such as changes in ocean currents and regional weather can temporarily slow or accelerate melt, but cannot reverse the overall downward trajectory. Although the record low minimum ice extent occurred...
Open access notables Observed large-scale and deep-reaching compound ocean state changes over the past 60 years , Tan et al., Nature Climate Change Multiple climate-related stressors affect the ocean, including warming, acidification, deoxygenation and variations in salinity, with profound effects on Earth system cycles, marine ecosystems and human well-being. Nevertheless, a global perspective on the combined impacts of these changes on both surface and subsurface ocean conditions remains unclear. Here, applying a time-of-emergence methodology to observed physical and biogeochemical variables, collectively referred to as compound climatic impact-drivers, we show individual and compound ocean state changes have become increasingly prominent globally over the past...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator Dave Borlace . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description There is a quiet revolution happening across the vast content of Africa. Imports of solar PV panels jumped 60% in the 12 months to June 2025. Millions of microgrids and individual solar installations are now driving the electrification of just about every African nation. But fossil fuels still dominate most existing utility scale grids. So, can the people of Africa by pass the centralised monopolies and drive their own renewable prosperity. Because if they can, they might just save all of us! Support Dave Borlace and his "Just have a Think" channel on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/justhaveathink
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 16, 2025 thru Sat, November 22, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: International Climate Conferences and Agreements (9 articles) Extreme Heat, Leaks and Security Issues Roil COP30 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change raised multiple concerns about the makeshift venue in Belém. Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Nov 18, 2025. Keeping promises on renewables, energy efficiency and methane `would avoid nearly 1C of global heating` Analysis published at Cop30 summit shows adhering to pledges offer world hope of avoiding climate breakdown The Guardian, Fiona Harvey and Jonathan Watts in Belém, Nov...
Open access notables Observed changes in the temperature and height of the globally resolved lapserate tropopause , Ladstädter et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physic The tropopause is a key indicator of atmospheric climate change, influenced by both the troposphere and stratosphere. Here we present a global view of tropopause changes, using high-resolution GNSS radio occultation data from 2002 to 2024. We identify significant trends in lapse rate tropopause (LRT) temperature and height with seasonal and regional detail. The tropical LRT has warmed, with particularly strong warming ( >1 K per decade) over the South Pacific during austral spring and summer, while height changes remain largely insignificant. Outside the tropics, LRT temperature...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Climate change is here, today, and it's threatening our lives. Whether through the direct danger of extreme weather - from floods, to heatwaves, to wildfires - the dangers of diseases and new pandemics, or the harms from climate change's causes: whether that's toxic air or unhealthy diets. So let's take a look at all the ways climate change harms our lives, what we can do to protect ourselves, and what we have to gain by halting global warming. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 9, 2025 thru Sat, November 15, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: International Climate Conferences and Agreements (11 articles) Landmark Paris Agreement set a path to slow warming. The world hasn't stayed on it The world has seen faster climate change than expected since the Paris Agreement a decade ago The Independent News, Seth Borenstein, Nov 09, 2025. Amid squabbles, bombast and competing interests, what can Cop30 achieve? Climate summit in Brazil needs to find way to stop global heating accelerating amid stark divisions The Guardian, Fiona Harvey, Nov 09, 2025. Climate conference's webpages emit 10 times more carbon...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink There are a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates’ new memo on climate change. The recent cutbacks on international spending on vaccination, malaria control, feeding the hungry, and poverty alleviation by many of the richest countries (driven in part by a desire for more military spending) is a catastrophe that will cost thousands if not millions of lives. Adaptation is a critically important part of addressing climate change, and a world with more prosperity and less inequality is one where we can better deal with the impacts of climate change – at least up to a point. But in other areas I feel that it needlessly sets up a conflict between laudable goals: we can both mitigate emissions and alleviate poverty...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Joe Rogan has one of the most popular podcasts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and a combined 50 million followers on YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram. And like nearly all of today’s most popular online shows , Rogan’s spreads climate misinformation. In an October episode of his podcast, Rogan interviewed two octogenarian fringe climate contrarians, Richard Lindzen and William Happer, who together have been spreading climate misinformation since at least 2012 . For over two hours, the trio discussed climate myths and conspiracy theories, many of them identical to the misinformation Lindzen and Happer were peddling well over a decade ago. ( See here for a brief debunking...
Open access notables Tropical cyclones expand faster at warmer relative sea surface temperature , Wang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Tropical cyclone (TC) size strongly affects its hazards and impacts. This study shows that observed TC size expands substantially faster over relatively warmer water across the major Northern Hemisphere ocean basins. Expansion rates increase much more slowly with global-mean warming as found in simple model simulation experiments. Hence, ocean regions that warm more quickly are more likely to support storms that expand more rapidly, potentially increasing their potential to cause damage and make forecasting the area of their impacts more difficult. Increasing extreme winds challenge offshore...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Visible satellite image (with lightning) of Hurricane Melissa at 4:55 p.m. EDT Sunday, Oct. 26, when it was a Category 4 storm with 145 mph (230 km/h) winds. (Image credit: NOAA/CIRA) Human-caused climate change increased Hurricane Melissa’s wind speeds by 7% (11 mph, or 18 km/h), leading to a 12% increase in its damages, found researchers at the Imperial College of London in a rapid attribution study just released. A separate study by scientists at Climate Central found that climate change increased Melissa’s winds by 10%, and the near-record-warm ocean waters that Melissa traversed — 1.2 degrees Celsius (1.2°F) warmer than average — were up to 900 times...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Solar power has become ridiculously cheap. And unbelievably powerful at tackling climate change. Today I discuss two of the most absolutely overpowered places we can build solar photovoltaics: reservoirs (floatovoltaics) and deserts. But the future of solar is so bright, that it's worth building even in less-than-ideal locations. Let's take a look at the sunny story of today's solar PV, and what that means for our climate! Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics There’s a recent Carbon Brief article about a supposedly controversial methane metric . The metric in question is GWP*, which I’ve actually written about before . Methane emissions are typically compared to CO 2 using a metric known as Global Warming Potential (GWP). These are often measured over periods of 20 years (GWP20) or 100 years (GWP100). For methane GWP20 has a value of about 80, while GWP100 has a value of about 30. As the Carbon Brief article says, these are often interpreted as suggesting that one tonne of methane causes the same amount of warming as around 80 tonnes of CO2, when measured over a period of 20 years…….. When calculated over 100 years, methane’s...
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment is a new book from Brown University’s global Climate Social Science Network, for which a team of more than 100 scholars explored who’s blocking action on climate change and how they’re doing it. John Cook - founder of Skeptical Science and senior research fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne - co-authored chapter 7 in the book titled " Understanding the Political and Psychological Roots of Climate Misinformation and Its Impact on Public Opinion ". The book is available open access for download from the Climate Social Science Network . The book In addition to an introduction by the editors J. Timmons Roberts, Carlos R. S. Milani, Jennifer Jacquet, and Christian...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its power sector fell by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 and by 0.2% over the past 12 months, only the second drop in almost half a century. As a result, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest rate in the first half of the year since 2001 – excluding Covid – according to new analysis for Carbon Brief. The analysis is the first of a regular new series covering India’s CO2 emissions, based on monthly data for fuel use, industrial production and power output, compiled from numerous official sources. (See the regular series on China’s CO2 emissions, which began in 2019 .) Other key findings...
Open access notables Mountain glaciers recouple to atmospheric warming over the twenty-first century , Shaw et al., Nature Climate Chang Recent studies have argued that air temperatures over many mountain glaciers are decoupled from their surroundings, leading to a local cooling which could slow down melting. Here we use a compilation of on-glacier meteorological observations to assess the extent to which this relationship changes under warming. Statistical modelling of the potential temperature decoupling of the world’s mountain glaciers indicates that currently glacier boundary layers warm ~0.83 °C on average for every degree of ambient temperature rise. Future projections under shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) climate scenarios SSP 2-4.5...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does increasing CO 2 have a noticeable effect? The warming effect of increasing atmospheric CO 2 is well-established physics, confirmed by direct observation. Experiments in the 1800s by Fourier, Foote, and Tyndall demonstrated how CO 2 absorbs infrared radiation — the heat Earth emits back toward space — and re-radiates some downward, keeping the planet warmer. In 1896, Arrhenius calculated that doubling CO 2 would raise global temperatures by 5-6°C (9-10.8°F) . Modern estimates hover around 3°C (5.4°F), with an upper range near 4.5°C (8.1°F)...
A listing of 24 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 5, 2025 thru Sat, October 11, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (7 articles) Climate change behind 36% of damage inflicted by Typhoon Ragasa in China "In the Atlantic, we’re watching a tropical wave that emerged from the coast of Africa on October 3 that might develop in about a week as it approaches the Lesser Antilles Islands." Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, Oct 3, 2025. Most of the world has recently set all-time heat records Regional exceptions like the 1930s in the continental US notwithstanding The Climate Brink, Zeke Hausfather, Oct 06, 2025. Climate change...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the last few weeks, I’ve often been asked, “What’s the most significant mistake in the DOE Climate Working Group Report?” While the report contains numerous issues, one in particular stands out for its far-reaching implications. I write about it in this post. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (DOE CWG) attempts to analyze and critique the findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In doing so, the DOE CWG Report makes several fundamental errors due to a misunderstanding of the peer-reviewed literature. One in particular stands out, as it leads the authors to incorrectly represent the established...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Adam Levy breaks down the latest Trump speech, sifting through the wide-ranging climate change misinformation it contains. On September 23rd 2025, President Donald Trump took to the United Nations. Instead of calling for harmony and co-operation, his one hour speech fixated on migration and climate change. This might just be the first time a president of the USA has spent so much time talking about climate... but the speech wasn't a call to action. It was dismissal and denial of everything from basic science to renewable technologies. So what's the truth behind Trump's claims?...
Open access notables The first emergence of unprecedented global water scarcity in the Anthropocene , Ravinandrasana & Franzke, Nature Communications Access to water is crucial for all aspects of life. Anthropogenic global warming is projected to disrupt the hydrological cycle, leading to water scarcity. However, the timing and hotspot regions of unprecedented water scarcity are unknown. Here, we estimate the Time of First Emergence (ToFE) of drought-driven water scarcity events, referred to as “Day Zero Drought” (DZD), which arises from hydrological compound extremes, including prolonged rainfall deficits, reduced river flow, and increasing water consumption. Using a probabilistic framework and a large ensemble of climate simulations, we attribute...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are humans responsible for climate change? Our rapid burning of fossil fuels has caused a buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in our atmosphere. Until we started burning fossil fuels, the CO 2 moving between the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land remained relatively steady for thousands of years. Fossil fuel burning took trapped carbon from the solid Earth, where it had been safely stored for millions of years, and injected it — as CO 2 — into our atmosphere. Humans have emitted more than one trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 21, 2025 thru Sat, September 27, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (7 articles) Tens of thousands more people will die from wildfires in US over next 25 years, researchers say "Western states will be most impacted overall, with the largest number of projected deaths in California" Cilmate, The independent, Julia Musto, Sep 19, 2025. Hurricane Gabrielle makes a run for the Azores "A hurricane watch is up, while two other Atlantic systems percolate, and far south China braces for Typhoon Ragasa." Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Bob Henson, Sep 23, 2025. Super Typhoon Ragasa: 17 killed...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Has the IPCC overestimated climate change impacts? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change compiles the consensus of thousands of models, and many independent lines of research suggest its estimates were more conservative than what was subsequently observed. For example, sea-level rise predictions in earlier IPCC reports were later found to be too low compared to recently observed melting of ice sheets and thermal expansion. Studies show IPCC’s mid-range forecasts have been highly accurate, but reports often understate high-end risks. IPCC reports must be approved by nearly 200...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 14, 2025 thru Sat, September 20, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics Ani Dasgupta talked to 100 climate experts. He came away optimistic. In his new book, ‘The New Global Possible,’ Dasgupta shares what he learned from talking with dozens of climate luminaries and how that can reshape how we think about climate action. Interview, Yale Climate Connections, Michael Svoboda, Sep 9, 2025. Climate impacts are real — denying this is self-defeating The US administration is attempting to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. It will ultimately leave that country, and the world...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections he amount of heat trapped by climate-warming pollution in our atmosphere is continuing to increase, the planet’s sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate, and the Paris agreement’s ambitious 1.5°C target is on the verge of being breached, according to a recent report by the world’s top climate scientists. “The news is grim,” said study co-author Zeke Hausfather, a former Yale Climate Connections contributor, on Bluesky. A team of over 60 international scientists published the latest edition of an annual report updating key metrics that are used in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international scientific authority on climate change...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Is AI saving the world or breaking it? As the era-defining technology leapfrogs from what-if to what-next, it can be hard for us humans to know what to make of it all. You might be hopeful and excited, or existentially concerned, or both. AI can track Antarctic icebergs 10,000 times faster than humans and optimize renewable energy grids in real time – capabilities that could help us fight climate change. But it also consumes incredible amounts of energy, and ever more of it, creating a whole new level of climate pollution that threatens to undermine those benefits. All that dizzying transformation isn’t just the stuff of news headlines. It’s playing out in daily conversations for many...
Open access notables Wild, scenic, and toxic: Recent degradation of an iconic Arctic watershed with permafrost thaw , Sullivan et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science The streams of Alaska’s Brooks Range lie within a vast (~14M ha) tract of protected wilderness and have long supported both resident and anadromous fish. However, dozens of historically clear streams have recently turned orange and turbid. Thawing permafrost is thought to have exposed sulfide minerals to weathering, delivering iron and other potentially toxic metals to aquatic ecosystems. Here, we report stream water metal concentrations throughout the federally designated Wild and Scenic Salmon River watershed and compare them with United States Environmental Protection Agency...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler If you don’t follow climate policy closely, you may not know that the Trump administration is launching an effort to overturn one of the most fundamental pillars of American climate policy : the scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare (the so-called “Endangerment Finding”). If successful, this move could unravel virtually every U.S. climate regulation on the books, from car emissions standards to power plant rules. To support this effort, the Department of Energy hand-selected five climate contrarians who dispute mainstream science to write a report, which ended up saying exactly what you would expect it to say: climate science is too uncertain...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). As the northern hemisphere experiences summer, we have also been experiencing the disastrous impacts of climate change - extreme weather like heatwaves droughts; records being smashed time and time again; and wildfires raging through our cities and our forests. But despite the fact that we're seeing unprecedented conditions, some are still claiming that all this can be explained by simply saying "It's Called Summer". But this form of climate denial - that today's conditions are normal summer, rather than a symptom of a changed climate - is surprisingly widespread... despite...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 24, 2025 thru Sat, August 30, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (9 articles) Trump Administration Orders Work Halted on Wind Farm That Is Nearly Built "The order to stop construction on Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island is part of a campaign against renewable energy." Climate, New York Times, Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer & Maxine Joselow, Aug 22, 2025. Trump's bogus claim about a 'climate religion` is a pathetic political dodge TheHill.com Just In, Lisa H. Sideris, Aug 23, 2025. Don`t let Donald Trump undermine your faith in the climate fight | Gina McCarthy The president’s...
This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics It seems that a slowdown in the melting of Arctic sea ice is now being used to suggest that climate science is melting . This is very silly and is remininsence of the claims of a pause in global warming that dominated much of the discourse in the 2010s. Arctic sea ice is a small part of the climate system and it’s well known that variability can easily mask long-term trends on decadal timescales. Arctic sea ice extent was particularly low in 2012, so maybe it’s not that surprising that there’s been an apparent pause since then. A strong El Nino in 1998 that led to a record warm year was one of the main reasons for the subsequent suppposed pause in global...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Lauri Myllyvirta Clean-energy growth helped China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fall by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024. The CO2 output of the nation’s power sector – its dominant source of emissions – fell by 3% in the first half of the year, as growth in solar power alone matched the rise in electricity demand. The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that record solar capacity additions are putting China’s CO2 emissions on track to fall across 2025 as a whole. Other key findings include: The growth in clean power generation, some 270 terawatt hours (TWh) excluding hydro, significantly...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are surface temperature records reliable? Surface temperature records are consistent and have been confirmed by multiple independent analyses. Measurements come from over 30,000 stations worldwide, with around 7,000 having long, continuous monthly records. Scientists adjust for known local anomalies such as urban heat islands by comparing urban and rural trends and accounting for differences. Allegations in 2009 that poorly located U.S. stations skewed data were tested by NOAA, which found those sites actually read slightly cooler on average. The independent Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature...
This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics Ted Nordhaus has a recent article in The EcoModernist about why he stopped being a climate catastrophist . His basic argument is that we used to think that we were heading for 5 o C of warming, which would have been catastrophic, but are now heading for more like 3 o C of warming. Despite this good news, many in the climate science and advocacy community have refused to become less catastrophic. Ted, on the other hand, has change his mind and is no longer a climate catastrophist. I’ve been involved in discussions about this topic for more than a decade, and I don’t think I’d ever have described Ted as a catastrophist, at least not as I would expect it to be defined. This reminds me of when one of...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The 140-page report – “ A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate ” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation. The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”...
Open access notables BAMS State of the Climate 2024 [Watch this space; we will plug in a summary and a link to the latest report, to be published Aug. 14 ~9a ET.] Best of times, worst of times: record fossil-fuel profits, inflation and inequality , Semieniuk et al., Energy Research & Social Science The 2022 oil and gas crisis resulted in record fossil-fuel profits globally that rehabilitated the oil and gas industry, obstructed the energy transition and contributed to inflation, but their magnitude and beneficiaries have been insufficiently understood. Here we show the size of profits across countries and their distribution across socio-economic groups within the United States, using company income statements, comprehensive ownership data and...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Simon Evans Renewable energy will overtake coal to become the world’s top source of electricity “by 2026 at the latest”, according to new forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The rise of renewables is being driven by extremely rapid growth in wind and solar output, which topped 4,000 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 and will pass 6,000TWh by 2026. Wind and solar are increasingly under attack from populist politicians on the right, such as US president Donald Trump and Reform in the UK. Nevertheless, they will together meet more than 90% of the increase in global electricity demand out to 2026, the IEA says, while modest growth for hydro power will add to renewables’...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 3, 2025 thru Sat, August 9, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (12 articles) Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis The heat that hit Svalbard "The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, 'like it was soft ice cream'." Climate, Grist Magazine, Matt Simon, July 29, 2025. 5 Graphics Explain the Climate-Fire Feedback Loop Insights, World Resources Institute, Kaitlyn Thayer & James MacCarthy, Aug 1, 2025. `A bellwether of change`: speed of glacier shrinking on remote Heard Island sounds alarm Glacial retreat on pristine...
This is a re-post from and Then There's Physics Since Climateball TM (H/T Willard ) is back with the publication of the first report from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Climate Working Group, I thought it was time to start writing posts again. The report is called A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate , and the authors are John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer. The first point to make is that if someone had asked me 10 years ago to guess the names of a group of scientists who might be recruited to write a contrarian report on climate science, I would have guessed a significant number of those listed above. Why are there so few contrarians that it’s pretty easy...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections In a stark juxtaposition, while nearly half of all Americans sweltered under a life-threatening extreme heat wave made several times more likely by climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency declared this week that it will roll back the agency’s 2009 determination that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare. Known as the “endangerment finding,” this determination has been the basis of the EPA’s efforts over the past 15 years to regulate climate pollutants from vehicles, power plants, and other major sources. “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the head of the agency whose mission...
Open access notables Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise , Chandanpurkar et al., Science Advances Changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) are a critical indicator of freshwater availability. We use NASA GRACE/GRACE-FO data to show that the continents have undergone unprecedented TWS loss since 2002. Areas experiencing drying increased by twice the size of California annually, creating “mega-drying” regions across the Northern Hemisphere. While most of the world’s dry/wet areas continue to get drier/wetter, dry areas are now drying faster than wet areas are wetting. Changes in TWS are driven by high-latitude water losses, intense Central American/European droughts...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is the greenhouse effect still debated among climate scientists? There has been broad agreement about the greenhouse effect for over a century. In 1824, Joseph Fourier calculated that Earth ought to be much colder given its distance from the sun, and theorized that the atmosphere acts as a blanket, trapping heat and keeping the planet warmer than it would be otherwise. Scientists later hypothesized that higher concentrations of greenhouse gases could raise temperatures. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius attempted to quantify this; his predictions remain on the high end of current climate models. ...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 20, 2025 thru Sat, July 26, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles) This renowned climate scientist says this is the most difficult time for climate science he’s ever seen Benjamin Santer received enormous pushback when he authored one of the first reports on the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. Today, he says, the reaction to climate research is far worse. FastCompany, Annabelle Choi, June 17, 2025. Flash Floods and Climate Policy As the death toll climbs in Texas, the Trump Administration is actively undermining the nation’s ability to predict—and to deal...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink There is a persistent argument in certain circles that renewable energy is associated with higher costs than fossil fuels, and that states who have build lots of renewables (California is often brought up in this regard) are paying for it in the form of higher electricity prices. Variable renewable energy – wind and solar – are fundamentally fuel-saving resources. They are effectively zero marginal cost to run when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and can reduce the need to run costly gas and coal capacity. As utility scale battery storage scales up, some fossil plants may be fully retired, though much of our current gas capacity will likely remain utilized at lower capacity factors to deal with...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 13, 2025 thru Sat, July 19, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles) Dangerous weather predictions will get tougher after these Trump administration actions The decision by the Department of Defense to stop providing data to NOAA is just the latest challenge for the agency this year. USA Today, Dinah Voyles Pulver, July 10, 2025. US State Department Fires More Than 1,300 Employees Even while climate change inexorably will win the ''war,'' climate denial has won a major battle in the United States, and the United States thus will go unrepresented as the rest of the world deals with reality. NBC...
The videos include personal musings and conclusions of the creators climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy and geologist Dr. Rachel Phillips . They are presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video descriptions for references (if any). Adam Levy and Rachel Phillips collaborated on two videos for their respective Youtube channels explaining the study A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature published by Emily J. Judd and colleagues in 2024. Today's climate is changing. Fast. But what has happened in our planet's past? Have climate changes taken place long ago? In fact, there have been huge shifts in the planet's climate over the past hundreds of millions of years - from ice ages to temperatures far hotter than today. These...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler My heart is breaking for the tragedy that’s unfolding in central Texas right now. At present, more than 70 people have died in the flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Given the widespread interest in this event and numerous requests for comment from the media, I’ve compiled the essential points you need to know here. The role of climate change I’ve written about the influence of climate change in intense precipitation events before , and here’s what I said: Let me emphasize up front that climate change doesn’t cause rain events. Rather, the role of climate change is like steroids for the weather — it injects an extra dose of intensity into existing weather...
Open access notables Americans and policymakers underestimate endorsement for the most popular climate solution narrative, combining personal and political action , Sparkman et al., Communications Earth & Environment A wide variety of existing narratives describe how we might address climate change. Which of these approaches is popular among the American public? Do the general public and their elected officials accurately perceive which climate solutions are popular? We assess personal endorsement and perceptions of public support in national representative samples of the U.S. public (N = 1500) and local-level U.S. policymakers (N = 500). Proactive narratives, like ones advocating for both personal behavior and policy action, are widely...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is global warming just due to El Niño? El Niño Southern Oscillation is a short-term and cyclical weather phenomenon caused by alternating wind patterns that result in heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere; it cannot explain long-term warming. El Niño originates when westward moving trade winds weaken, allowing warm surface waters to shift east across the tropical Pacific. This reverses the La Niña pattern, where trade winds push warm surface water toward Asia, upwelling cold water off the coast of South America. During El Niño, heat is transferred...
A listing of 27 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 29, 2025 thru Sat, July 5, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (4 articles) What does climate change mean for agriculture? Less food, and more emissions New research sheds light on how rising temperatures are squeezing farmers and raising prices for consumers. Grist, Frida Garza, Jun 30, 2025. How unusual is this UK heat and is climate change to blame? A second spell of UK temperatures well over 30C before the end of June - how unusual is this and how much is climate change to blame? BBC News, Mark Poynting, Jun 30, 2025. Climate change has doubled the world's heat waves: How Africa is affected The...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working to pass their version of the budget reconciliation bill before Congress goes on holiday for July 4. As it stands, the bill would terminate most clean energy tax credits long before their original phase-out date in 2032. The tax credits, which include money back on electric cars, electric appliances, energy efficiency improvements, and more, have a lot of public support. In a December 2024 survey , researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this site, found that 91% of liberal Democrats, 70% of moderate or conservative Democrats, 42% of liberal or moderate Republicans, and 28% of conservative Republicans support tax rebates...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink The WMO recently published their WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update that covers the period from 2025 to 2029. This is a regular assessment of near-term dynamic model projections that assess both the forced climate response and short-term natural variability (e.g. ENSO and AMV ). This new update forecasts relatively high global temperatures to likely continue through 2029, with the central estimate form most years similar to what was seen in 2023 and 2024. The figure below shows the 2025-2029 forecast in blue, as well as a “hindcast” of past model performance (green) compared to observations (black). Figure 4 from the WMO report . Despite the central estimate...
Open access notables Increased sea-level contribution from northwestern Greenland for models that reproduce observations , Badgeley et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Greenland Ice Sheet has been thinning over the past several decades and is expected to contribute significantly to sea-level rise over the coming century. Ice flow models that make these projections, however, tend to underestimate the amount of mass lost from the ice sheet compared to observations, which complicates adaptation and mitigation planning in coastal regions. Here, we constrain a model of northwestern Greenland with a time series of satellite-derived surface velocity data and time-dependent physics to infer unknown ice properties. The model reproduces observed mass loss...
A week ago today, we published a blog post highlighting Sabin Rebuttal #33 , which answers the question " What is the effect of hot or cold weather on EVs?" . With that blog post, this phase of our effort to turn the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " into individual rebuttals was done and dusted. In this recap we summarize the happenings and provide some behind-the-scenes glimpses into the tasks needed to pull this off. The report was written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Creating the rebuttals When we first spotted Sabin's report it looked...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is modern warming just a rebound from the Little Ice Age? Global temperatures are warmer today than immediately before the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age was a regional cooling phenomenon caused by internal forcings that mostly moved heat around within Earth’s climate system. This event affected North America and Europe from 1350 to 1850. While external forcings like volcanic eruptions and decreased solar activity occurred, it was a massive export of Arctic sea ice into the North Atlantic by warm currents that disrupted ocean circulation and triggered prolonged regional cooling...
Open access notables Human influence on climate detectable in the late 19th century , Santer et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences When could scientists have first known that fossil fuel burning was significantly altering global climate? We attempt to answer this question by performing a thought experiment with model simulations of historical climate change. We assume that the capability to monitor global-scale changes in atmospheric temperature existed as early as 1860 and that the instruments available in this hypothetical world had the same accuracy as today’s satellite-borne microwave radiometers. We then apply a pattern-based “fingerprint” method to disentangle human and natural effects on climate. A human-caused stratospheric...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections President Donald Trump has promised to reduce gas prices , improve energy security , create domestic manufacturing jobs , boost the economy, and ensure that Americans breathe the cleanest air . But by gutting the Inflation Reduction Act , or IRA, Congress’ big new budget bill would undermine all of these objectives – and more. House Republicans’ top two priorities are to extend the soon-to-expire tax cuts that they passed in 2017, and to minimize the amount that doing so will add to the nation’s over $36 trillion in debt . The massive budget bill they narrowly passed in May is their effort to achieve both. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Was 1934 the hottest year in the global record? 1934 was a particularly hot year in the contiguous United States, but not globally exceptional. Worldwide, 1934 was a relatively cooler year and does not stand out in the global record. The myth began when NASA corrected 6 years of erroneous U.S. temperature data in 2007, shifting 1934 ahead in the U.S. dataset due to earlier calculation errors. Adjustments accounted for factors like time-of-observation bias and weather station changes. Regionally, 1934’s U.S. heat was part of the Dust Bowl, a crisis caused by drought and poor land management...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). To stop global warming, carbon emissions need to be cut to net zero as quickly as possible. And while some countries have been cutting back on fossil fuels, some major polluters - like China - have seen their emissions continue to increase. But thanks to the epic rise in clean energy solutions, it's just possible that that's starting to shift, and China's path to a low carbon future might be about to change for ever... Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 1, 2025 thru Sat, June 7, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (5 articles) Inside EPA`s backdoor bid to stop regulating climate pollution Fossil-fueled power plants don't significantly contribute to climate change? Welcome to the new US EPA. E&E News, Jean Chemnick, May 30, 2025. Scientists long ago envisioned the end of climate cooperation They warned it could happen: a world of surging nationalism, stalling economic development and the unravelling of decades of international cooperation on climate change and other global challenges. France24, Kelly Macnamara, Jun 04, 2025. The Trump EPA tried...
Open access notables Land-based sensors reveal high frequency of coastal flooding , Hino et al., Communications Earth & Environment: Coastal flooding is occurring more frequently due to global sea-level rise, among other factors. However, current understanding of coastal flood frequency and sea-level rise impacts is predominantly based on tide gauges, which do not measure water levels on land. Here, we present data from a novel network of land-based flood sensors in the state of North Carolina, USA. We demonstrate that tide-gauge data are poor indicators of flooding: floods occur 26–128 days annually, an order of magnitude greater than what regional tide gauges suggest in some places. Improving the accuracy of coastal flood measures is critical for identifying...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Because hurricanes are one of the big-ticket weather disasters that humanity has to face, climate misinformers spend a lot of effort muddying the waters on whether climate change is making hurricanes more damaging. With the official start to the hurricane season in the North Atlantic coming up (June 1), I figured it was time to explain why we can be so confident that hurricanes are indeed more destructive today due to climate change. Note: from here on out, I’ll refer to hurricanes as tropical cyclones (abbreviated TCs), which is a more general term for this type of storm. 1. Tropical cyclones are becoming more destructive: sea level We have 100% confidence that sea level is rising because humans are...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Was 'global warming' changed to 'climate change' because Earth stopped warming? Both "global warming" and "climate change" continue to be used as global temperatures continue to rise. The two terms refer to different but related phenomena. Global warming captures increasing average global temperatures observed since the Industrial Revolution. Climate change speaks to the various environmental outcomes of this warming. The last ten years (2015-2024) were the ten hottest on record, with 2024 breaking the record set in 2023. The last colder-than-average year was 1976. Climate scientists calculate...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters (Image credit: Collage by Samantha Harrington. Portrait photos via Jeff Masters and Bob Henson. Hurricane Maria damage photo by U.S. Air Force, Airman 1st Class Nicholas Dutton / Public Domain. Hurricane and satellite by NASA Johnson / Public Domain. If you’ve been following our writing this year, you know it’s a dire time for weather, climate, and science overall in the U.S. Budget and staff cuts at NOAA, FEMA, and more threaten to cut our ability to prepare for and respond to weather disasters. In the midst of all that, hurricane season is coming, and we’re also facing budget limitations at Yale Climate Connections as the philanthropy world tries to make sense of the new administration...
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 18, 2025 thru Sat, May 24, 2025. Plugging the Weather & Climate Livestream planned to start on May 28 Skeptical Science can't and shouldn't tell anybody how to behave; our role is to help people make better decisions by being better informed. With that in mind, we're again highlighting the Weather And Climate Livestream initiative started by early career scientists. We hope that as many people as possible are educated how US climate and weather reporting and research make us all safer! Here is information from the event's website: SAVE AMERICA'S FORECASTS Whether it's tomorrow's temperatures or the sea level in fifty years, Americans need to plan...
Open access notables Shifting Gears in a Shifting Climate: Birds Adjust Migration Speed in Response to Spring Vegetation Green-Up , Amaral et al., Diversity and Distributions Our results have direct implications for the conservation of migratory bird diversity in Eastern North America. While birds show some plasticity in adjusting migration pace, this flexibility has limits—particularly when green-up occurs unusually early. Coupled with the slow pace of climate change mitigation through policy and behaviour, migratory birds face constrained options. Mismatches between migration timing and peak resource availability at stopover and breeding sites may reduce reproductive success and survival (Youngflesh et al. 2023 ). Conservation efforts should therefore...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink The climate has warmed by around 1.4C over the past 170 years as a result of human emissions of CO2 and other GHGs that have accumulated in the atmosphere. However, GHGs are not the only thing that has an impact on the climate system. Major volcanic eruptions can result in cooling that lasts a couple of years after the eruption, by emitting large amounts of light-reflecting sulfur dioxide aerosols high into the atmosphere. The precise climate impacts of an eruption are determined by a number of factors. These include: How much sulfur is emitted. Some volcanic eruptions are more or less sulfur rich, with the total sulfur content determining the potential magnitude of cooling resulting from the eruption. ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Did Viking settlers enjoy a warm beach climate in Greenland? While Greenland’s southern coast supported some vegetation in the Medieval warm period (950-1250 CE), it was not warm enough for a beach climate. The period was primarily a regional event, affecting Europe and parts of the North Atlantic. Studies of glacial sediment in Greenland indicate glaciers were near their maximum extent during these years. This suggests Greenland did not experience the same degree of warming as continental Europe. Exile Erik the Red chose the name "Greenland" to attract settlers rather than accurately describe...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters The new Department of Energy secretary, Chris Wright, until recently was the CEO of Liberty Energy, the nation’s second-largest fracking firm . In 2024, the firm published a manifesto called “ Bettering Human Lives ,” in which Wright makes a provocative statement that would be reassuring – if only it were true: “Another thing that we often hear about climate change is that it leads to a significant increase in extreme weather events with deadly consequences. This claim is false. Extensive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually show no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or weather-related droughts,” Wright...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is the climate as unpredictable as the weather? Climate predictions are more reliable than weather forecasts because they model long-term trends driven by large-scale, predictable factors, like greenhouse gas emissions, rather than short-term local conditions. Weather forecasts aim to predict daily changes in temperature or precipitation with great detail. These are primarily influenced by rapidly shifting conditions, making forecasts less accurate beyond a few days. Small changes in today’s weather can lead to very different outcomes tomorrow. In contrast, climate models project broad...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink There are is a lot of dire news in the world these days – the dismantling of US climate policy, the apparent canceling of the 6th National Climate Assessment, etc. So sometimes its worth taking a break from doomscrolling and indulging in one’s hobbies. Some folks collect trading cards, make miniatures, or do crafts. My hobby is making climate data visualizations (which, I suppose, is not the most uplifting occupation!). A week ago I was playing around with a climate “tree ring” graph that I shared on social media that had daily global surface temperature anomalies between 1940 and 2025 as colored rings. But with reanalysis data (ERA5 here) we have both temperature anomalies (e.g. changes relative...
Open access notables Public opposition to coal-fired power in emerging economies , Alkon et al., Energy Policy: Constructing new coal fired power plants presents significant climate, ecological, health, and economic risks. This presents sometimes acute tradeoffs for leaders in emerging economies, where rapid economic and population growth are driving large increases in electricity generation demand. Against this backdrop, combining a novel conjoint experiment with qualitative interviews, we find widespread public opposition to coal-fired power. We also find that this opposition is politically consequential, diminishing support for politicians who support coal-fired power and increasing expressed propensity to engage in social protest. These findings inform our understanding...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Do the 31,000 signatures of the OISM Petition Project invalidate the scientific consensus on climate change? Climatologists made up only 0.1% of signatories to a 1998 petition denying human-caused climate change — the consensus among qualified scientists stands. Anyone claiming they had a science degree could sign the petition without expertise in climate science. There is a strong consensus among actively publishing climate scientists on the existence of human-made climate change that has only grown since 1998. The 31,487 signatures, many found to be fictional or unverifiable, would...
Open access notables Internal variability effect doped by climate change drove the 2023 marine heat extreme in the North Atlantic , Guinaldo et al., Communications Earth & Environment The year 2023 shattered numerous heat records both globally and regionally. We here focus on the drivers of the unprecedented warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies which started in the North Atlantic Ocean in early summer and persisted later on. Evidence is provided that 2023 should be interpreted as an extreme event in a warmer world because of superimposed internal variability on top of human forcing, which altogether, made the 2023 event all-time high due to extreme air-sea surface fluxes in the subtropics and eastern basin. The effect...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink The world has made real progress toward tacking climate change in recent years, with spending on clean energy technologies skyrocketing from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars globally over the past decade, and global CO2 emissions plateauing . This has contributed to a reassessment of likely climate outcomes this century, with the world now likely heading toward less than 3C warming by 2100 under current policies – compared to the 4C warming that seemed more plausible 15 years ago. 1 However, it is important to emphasize that current policies are neither a ceiling nor a floor on future emissions. While I hope that recent trends in declining clean energy cost, rapid deployment, and stronger...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is climate change a net benefit for society? Human-caused climate change has been a net detriment to society as measured by loss of life, economic harm and ecosystem damage. Between 2000 and 2019, climate change caused $2.86 trillion in damages from extreme weather like storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires. Nearly 61,000 net deaths were linked to climate change during this time. Ocean acidification from CO2 emissions has degraded coral reefs, which provide trillions of dollars in ecosystem services annually by sustaining fisheries and protecting coasts. Habitat loss from climate change...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). From "founder" of Tesla and the OG rocket man with SpaceX, and rebranding twitter as X, Musk has made a name for himself... partly as climate champion. But as his actions and words become increasingly friendly toward Donald Trump and global fascist ideas, can he still be held up as a climate expert? I take back a look at how Musk's climate speech has changed over the past decade - what's stayed the same, and what has fundamentally changed. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 6, 2025 thru Sat, April 12, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (11 articles) Do Climate Goals Matter in a Bad Economy? Climate, Time Magazine, Justin Worland, Apr 4, 2025. We passed the 1.5C climate threshold. We must now explore extreme options...
Open access notables Global and regional drivers for exceptional climate extremes in 2023-2024: beyond the new normal , Minobe et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science: Climate records have been broken with alarming regularity in recent years, but the events of 2023–2024 were exceptional even when accounting for recent climatic trends. Here we quantify these events across multiple variables and show how excess energy accumulation in the Earth system drove the exceptional conditions. Key factors were the positive decadal trend in Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI), persistent La Niña conditions beginning in 2020, and the switch to El Niño in 2023. Between 2022 and 2023, the heating from EEI was over 75% larger than during the onset of similar...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is Mars warming? Mars’ climate varies due to completely different reasons than Earth’s, and available data indicates no temperature trends comparable to Earth’s recent warming. Mars lacking oceans or a robust atmosphere means its climate is highly susceptible to external factors. In the longer term, its non-circular orbit causes heating when passing closer to the sun and cooling when further away. In the short term, weather patterns like dust storms impact how much solar heat reaches Mars. Mars warming would imply that the sun is causing generally rising planetary temperatures...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 23, 2025 thru Sat, March 29, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (11 articles) March 23: Imperiled in the Wild, Many Plants May Survive Only in Gardens , Yale Environment 360, Janet Marinelli. As the impacts of climate change and other threats mount, conservationists...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink Last September the Washington Post published an article about a new paper in Science by Emily Judd and colleagues. The WaPo article was detailed and nuanced, but led with the figure below, adapted from the paper: The internet, being less prone to detail and nuance, ran with the figure, with climate skeptics calling it their “new favorite graph” and reposting it everywhere, claiming that it shows the insignificance of recent human warming relative to the Earth’s long temperature history. The furor over the graph reached its apogee in January when Joe Rogan showed it in a podcast interview with Mel Gibson, saying that “If you believe these silly...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 16, 2025 thru Sat, March 22, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category and number of articles shared: Climate Change Impacts (14 articles) Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, according to NASA analysis Ocean water expands as it warms, researchers said. by Julia Jacobo, International, ABC News, Mar 14, 2025 How Can We...
Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of "Climate Fresk" and at a guess, this will also be the case for many of you. I stumbled upon it in the self-service training catalog for employees at the company I work at in Germany where it was announced as a 3-hours workshop called "Klima Puzzle" (Climate Puzzle). Intrigued, I signed up and was one of 7 colleagues to be led through what turned out to be quite an interesting experience. After the workshop, I spend some time browsing the Climate Fresk website and then signed up for a training to become a "Climate Fresker" myself. This allows me to lead people through a Climate Fresk, which I now "only" need to find some time for! The background story Climate Fresk encourages the rapid and widespread spread of an understanding...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is waste heat from industrial activity the reason the planet is warming? Waste heat’s contribution to global warming is a small fraction of that brought about by carbon dioxide. Waste heat comes from the thermal energy released by human energy use, such as when power plants burn coal or combustion engines burn gasoline. Dividing the total amount of waste heat by Earth’s surface area, Flanner found about 0.03 Watts per square meter of total warming was from waste heat, about 1%. Carbon dioxide’s greenhouse gas effect added 2.9 Watts per square meter. Zhang and Caldeira...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Good data visualizations can help make climate change more visceral and understandable. Back in 2016 Ed Hawkins published a “ climate spiral ” graph that ended up being pretty iconic – it was shown at the opening ceremony of the Olympics that year – and is probably the second most widely seen climate graph after Hawkins’ later climate stripes . However, I haven’t previously come across any versions of the spiral graph showing daily global temperatures, so I thought it would be fun to create my own (with, I should note, a bit of help from OpenAI’s o3 model to code it). Here are daily global temperatures by year between 1940 (when the ERA5 daily dataset begins) and the...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 2, 2025 thru Sat, March 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category and number of articles shared: Climate Change Impacts (13 articles) Australia’s second-hottest summer in 2024-25 ‘not possible without climate change’, scientist says 2024-25 summer at 1.89C above long-term average ‘will be one of the coolest in the 21st...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy and climate communicator Becky Hoag . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). In just a few weeks President Donald Trump has done everything he can to attack climate action - from halting research to censoring data. But Earth's not going down without a fight. Environmental groups, scientists, states and countries are fighting back for our planet - doing what they can to protect climate research and safeguard environmental policy. Becky and I break down all the climate action for ya! Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam Check out Becky's Youtube channel: @beckisphere
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 23, 2025 thru Sat, March 1, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (17 articles) Trump bars federal scientists from working on pivotal global climate report by Ella Nilsen & Laura Paddison, CNN, Climate, CNN, Feb 21, 2025 US Cultural Revolution: Gutting of National Science Foundation & Its Climate Research by...
Open access notables A twenty-first century structural change in Antarctica’s sea ice system , Raphael et al., Communications Earth & Environment: From 1979 to 2016, total Antarctic sea ice extent experienced a positive trend with record winter maxima in 2012 and 2014. Record summer minima followed within the period 2017-2024, raising the possibility that the Antarctic sea ice system might be changing state. Here we use a Bayesian reconstruction of Antarctic sea ice extent which extends the record back to 1899, to show that the sequence of extreme minima in summer Antarctic sea ice extent is unlikely to have happened in the 20th century. We show that they represent a structural change in the sea ice system, manifest by increased persistence in the sea ice...
A listing of 33 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 16, 2025 thru Sat, February 22, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world Extreme weather can harm food production in many different ways. by Orla Dwyer, Design by Tom Prater, Interactive, Carbon Brief,, Feb 13, 2025 `Everything we had floated away`: Hurricane Helene survivors help each...
This article by Eric Nost , Associate Professor of Geography, University of Guelph and Alejandro Paz , Energy and Environment Librarian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . Information on the internet might seem like it’s there forever , but it’s only as permanent as people choose to make it. That’s apparent as the second Trump administration “ floods the zone ” with efforts to dismantle science agencies and the data and websites they use to communicate with the public. The targets range from public health and demographics to climate science . We are a research librarian and policy scholar who belong to a network called...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler “But what about when the sun doesn't shine?!” Ah yes, the energy debate’s equivalent of “The Earth is flat!” Every time someone mentions solar or wind power, some self-proclaimed energy expert emerges from the woodwork to drop this supposedly devastating truth bomb: “Sure, renewables are cheap... until you need backup power for those cloudy, windless days. Factor in those costs, and suddenly fossil fuels are looking pretty sexy again!” takes deep breath Let me explain why this ironclad logic is as scientifically sound as claiming the Earth isn’t warming because it got cold last winter. Not only is the argument wrong — it's so fundamentally wrong...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is sea level rise exaggerated? Sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate, not stagnating or decreasing. Warming global temperatures cause land ice to melt and oceans to thermally expand, elevating sea levels. Since 1880, they’ve risen an estimated 8-9 inches (over 20 cm) based on historical data from coastal tide gauge stations. In the 1990s, scientists began using satellites to measure sea levels. Since 1993, the global average sea level has risen 4 inches (10 cm). These satellites send pulses to the ocean and measure the time it takes for the signal to return. Researchers account...
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Within just a week, the sheer devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires has pushed to the fore fundamental questions about the impact of the climate crisis that have been largely avoided by lawmakers, influencers and the public. Among them: What is the future of insurance when people’s homes are increasingly located in areas of climate risk — whether wildfires, hurricanes, flooding or the rising sea levels? Those questions have bedeviled policy makers in California — where insurance giants like State Farm, Farmers, and Allstate announced last year that they...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Wherever you look, you'll hear headlines claiming we've passed 1.5 degrees of global warming. And while 2024 saw record breaking climate change, this might not actually be true. So what does the 1.5 degree limit actual mean for the climate? Have we already passed this global warming threshold? And what do we do now, to combat climate change? Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is methane the largest driver of recent global warming? Methane only accounts for 20-30% of recent warming, while human-made CO 2 remains the dominant driver of recent climate change. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas significantly more effective at trapping heat than CO 2 ; however, there is approximately 220 times more CO 2 than methane in our atmosphere. Methane is also significantly shorter-lived, with an atmospheric lifetime of around a decade in comparison to CO 2...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk The 119th Congress comes with a price tag. The oil and gas industry gave about $24 million in campaign contributions to the members of the U.S. House and Senate expected to be sworn in January 3, 2025, according to a Yale Climate Connections review of campaign donations. The industry gave an additional $2 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, bringing the total spending on the winning candidates to over $26 million, 88% of which went to Republicans. The fossil fuel industry exerts substantial financial power within the U.S. political system, and these contributions are only the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Outside spending: An order of magnitude more than candidate contributions ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Both 2023 and 2024 were exceptionally warm years, at just below and above 1.5C relative to preindustrial in the WMO composite of surface temperature records, respectively. While we are still working to assess the full set of drivers of this warmth, it is clear that a sizable portion of 2024’s elevated temperatures were driven by a moderately strong El Niño event that peaked in November 2023. 1 For this reason many of us expect that 2025 will be cooler than both 2023 and 2024, and is unlikely to be the warmest year in the instrumental record (though it will very likely be in the top three warmest years). Temperature projections for 2025 from the UK Met Office , ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is global warming promoting biodiversity? Biodiversity is declining, and global warming is a contributing factor. Some species can adapt to environmental change, but many cannot evolve quickly enough, or at all. As habitats degrade and migration paths are blocked, many species have already disappeared, while more face extinction. Adaptation often requires migration to better conditions, but human-made barriers like cities and dams block these paths. Climate change also disrupts migration...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Climate denial is dead. Renewable energy denial is here. As “alternative facts” become the norm, it’s worth looking at what actual facts tell us about how renewable energy sources like solar and wind are lowering the price of electricity. As an example that’s close to home (for me), I’ll focus on the Texas electricity market, which is run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas , known as ERCOT. How ERCOT sets the price of electricity At all times, ERCOT must balance electricity supply and demand, while keeping costs as low as possible. Let’s walk through a simplified example of how they do this. First, ERCOT forecasts tomorrow’s electricity demand based...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 19, 2025 thru Sat, January 25, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Climate change is forcing us to rethink our sense of ‘home’ – and what it means to lose it by Talia Fell and Codie Condos Distratis , The Conversation, Jan 16, 2025 Greenland`s lakes are getting uglier-and fast The transformation could be permanent...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink I have a new paper out today in the journal Dialogues on Climate Change exploring both the range of end-of-century climate outcomes in the literature under current policies and the broader move away from high-end emissions scenarios. Current policies are defined broadly as policies in place today and a continuation of trends in technology costs, but no additional climate policy enacted for the remainder of the century. The figure below shows the literature summary I put together (as of fall 2024), which includes estimates of current policy outcomes (in red), outcomes where countries meet their 2030 Paris Agreement nationally determined contributions (in orange), constrained estimates using socioeconomic factors (or other...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas? While carbon dioxide is a small part of the atmosphere, it has a large impact on climate as a greenhouse gas. Nitrogen and oxygen make up around 99% of the atmosphere, but neither traps heat. Less than 0.05% of the atmosphere is made up of greenhouse gases, which do. Without greenhouse gases, the Earth would be too cold to support most life, with average temperatures 2° F below zero (-18° C). On the other hand, increasing...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Asheville, North Carolina, was once widely considered a climate haven thanks to its elevated, inland location and cooler temperatures than much of the Southeast. Then came the catastrophic floods of Hurricane Helene in September 2024. It was a stark reminder that nowhere is safe from climate-worsened extreme weather risks: Hurricanes arriving from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic seaboard. Hail in the Midwest. Floods in the East. Sea level rise along the coasts. Wildfires in the West, most recently exemplified by the devastating and costly fires around Los Angeles . And worsening extreme weather translates into more expensive property damages, growing insurance claims, and rising insurance rates. Somebody has to...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters and Bob Henson Flames from the Palisades Fire burn a building at Sunset Boulevard amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The fast-moving wildfire had destroyed thousands of structures and burned more than 15,000 acres by Thursday, January 9. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images) [ Haz clic aquí para leer en español ] The New Year has rung in with one of the most horrific wildfire events in world history: an urban firestorm in the Los Angeles metro area that has killed at least five people and reduced thousands of homes to smoking rubble. Two major fires in excess of 10,000 acres – the Palisades fire in the...
Open access notables Large emissions of CO2 and CH4 due to active-layer warming in Arctic tundra , Torn et al., Nature Communications: Climate warming may accelerate decomposition of Arctic soil carbon, but few controlled experiments have manipulated the entire active layer. To determine surface-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide and methane under anticipated end-of-century warming, here we used heating rods to warm (by 3.8 °C) to the depth of permafrost in polygonal tundra in Utqia?vik (formerly Barrow), Alaska and measured fluxes over two growing seasons. We show that ecosystem respiration is ~30% higher in warmed plots than in control plots (0.99 μmol m−2 s−1 versus 0.67 μmol m−2 s−1, p <...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #10 based on Sabin's report. Data across multiple studies show that utility-scale solar projects do not have major impacts on the values of surrounding properties 1 . Rather, the installation of a solar farm typically has only a minor impact on the value of homes closest to it. The most comprehensive study to date, which examined over 1.8 million home transactions near 1,500 large-scale...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 29, 2024 thru Sat, January 4, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts A year of extreme weather that challenged billions Climate change has brought record-breaking heat this year, and with it extreme weather, from hurricanes to month-long droughts. by Esme Stellard, BBC News, Dec 29, 2024 Climate change is the worst. Here's just how bad it got this...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 22, 2024 thru Sat, December 28, 2024. This week's roundup is the second one published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts Climate change could create millions of climate migrants by 2050 Droughts, floods, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts are uprooting people from their homes. by YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, Dec 26, 2024 2024: A year of extreme heat and growing climate...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Johani Carolina Ponce Tacuarembó, Uruguay. (Image credit: Getty Images) [ Haz clic aquí para leer en español ] It has a population of just under 3.5 million inhabitants, produces nearly 550,000 tons of beef per year, and boasts a glorious soccer reputation with two World Cups in its history and a present full of world-class stars. Uruguay, the country of writer Mario Benedetti and soccer player Luis Suárez, has achieved what many countries have pledged for decades: 98% of its grid runs on green energy. Luis Prats, 62, is a Uruguayan journalist and contributor to the Montevideo newspaper El País . He remembers that during his childhood, blackouts were common...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are we heading into an ‘ice age’? The planet has been getting warmer since the Industrial Revolution, not colder. Historically, ice ages have followed changes in the Earth’s relationship to the sun. Natural cycles affect the tilt of Earth’s axis and its orbit around the sun. As Earth’s axis becomes less tilted, and its orbit more elliptical, it receives less solar radiation. These “Milankovitch” cycles occur over thousands of years. Currently...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #7 based on Sabin's report. Ambitious solar deployment would utilize a relatively small percentage of U.S. land when compared to the land currently being used for agriculture. The Department of Energy estimated that total U.S. solar development would take up roughly 10.3 million acres in a scenario in which cumulative solar deployment reaches 1,050–1,570 GW by 2050, the highest...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 8, 2024 thru Sat, December 14, 2024. Listing by Category Like last week's summary this one contains the list of articles twice: based on categories and based on publication date. Please feel free to let us know in the comments - if you haven't already - which one you prefer. Checking if we assigned the (most) relevant category is also appreciated. Thanks for your help with this! Climate change impacts New York Isn`t Ready to Fight More Wildfires New York could see more frequent and destructive blazes, but the state doesn’t have enough forest rangers and firefighters to respond to the growing threat. by Nathan Porceng, Inside...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink As I noted a few months back , despite the end of El Niño conditions in May, global temperatures have remained worryingly elevated. This raises the question of whether this reflects unusual El Niño behavior, or a more persistent change in the underlying climate forcings or feedbacks. At the time I did a fairly basic analysis comparing the current 2023/2024 El Niño event to the two other recent strong El Niño events – those in 1997/1998 and 2015/2016. However, an “N” of two does not tell us all that much, and the approach was overly simplified in not actually accounting for differing El Niño timing or accurately normalizing for the warming between El Niño events. ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Climate pollution caused by burning fossil fuels hit a record 37.4 billion metric tons in 2024, marking a 0.8% rise from the previous year – and dashing hopes that a peak in global emissions might occur this year . That’s according to the latest annual Global Carbon Budget , which underscores a deeper challenge: the world’s ongoing reliance on coal, oil, and gas, which continues to drive emissions and disrupt the climate. The report, organized by a global consortium of scientists centered at the University of Exeter, paints a complex picture of global energy trends, with troubling increases in some areas and signs of progress in others. Emissions from most wealthy countries fell this year...
In March, John Cook met with Adam Ford from Science, Technology & the Future to talk about his work researching misinformation and how to counter it. The interview - published on October 10 - explored the complex and evolving landscape of climate misinformation, covering a range of topics including the different types of misinformation, the role of social media and AI in spreading and combating it, the psychological barriers that prevent people from accepting climate science, and the importance of communicating effectively about climate change. Key takeaways include: The nature of climate misinformation: Misinformation takes many forms, including outright denial of climate science, attacks on climate scientists and solutions, and promotion of conspiracy theories. It...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #5 based on Sabin's report. There is overwhelming evidence that the lifecycle emissions 1 of solar energy are far lower than those of all fossil fuel sources, including natural gas 2 . On average, it takes only three years after installation for a solar panel to offset emissions from its production and transportation. Modern solar panels have a functional lifecycle of 30–35...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 24, 2024 thru Sat, November 30, 2024. Story of the week Before Skeptical Science and an entire fleet of other websites devoted to combating and correcting climate misinformation and disinformation, there was Real Climate ("RC" for short and familiar). For our part we've been slinging climate facts for 17 years, but Real Climate team members Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Rasmus Benestad, Stefan Rahmstorf and Eric Steig are still plugging away after a full 20 years on this often (chronically!) frustrating but entirely necessary beat. Real Climate's archive begins in November of 2004 with a glossary entry covering Antarctic...
On November 6, 2024 the Consortium for Climate Risks in the Urban Northeast (CCRUN) hosted a webinar within the Green Infrastructure, Climate, and Cities Seminar Series about climate change misinformation and disinformation. CCRUN is a NOAA-funded initiative that has been studying the impact of climate change on the Northeast since 2010. The webinar was moderated by Franco Montalto, one of the co-investigators of the initiative. This webinar series began in 2014, and all previous seminars are archived on the CCRUN website for reference. The webinar's topic focused on climate change misinformation and disinformation and included three speakers: Dr. Gavin Schmidt , Dr. John Cook , and Dr. Emily Vraga who each gave a presentation on this critical topic. Below, we feature each...
A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 17, 2024 thru Sat, November 23, 2024. Story of the week This week, we again asked Gemini to create a topical summary of the articles we shared during the week. Based on feedback kindly provided in comments to last week's edition - thanks a lot for that! - we have now updated our Google form used to collect the articles with a new drop-down list from which (for now) one item can be picked which will eventually be used to generate a list based on topic instead of date. Major Climate Change Impacts: Extreme Weather Events: Increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, hurricanes, typhoons, and other extreme weather events due to climate change. (The...
Open access notables Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons , Lopez et al., Science Advances: Future changes to the year-to-year swings between active and inactive North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) seasons have received little attention, yet may have great societal implications in areas prone to hurricane landfalls. This work investigates past and future changes in North Atlantic TC activity, focusing on interannual variability and evaluating the contributions from anthropogenic forcing. We show that interannual variability of Atlantic TC activity has already increased, evidenced by an increase in the occurrence of both extremely active and inactive TC seasons. TC-resolving general circulation models project a 36% increase...
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles " written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #3 based on Sabin's report. The amount of waste that solar panels are expected to generate over the next few decades is trivial compared to the amount of waste that will be generated by fossil fuels. A study published in Nature Physics in October 2023 found that “35 years of cumulative PV module waste (2016-2050) is dwarfed by the waste generated by fossil fuel energy and...
A listing of 33 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, November 10, 2024 thru Sat, November 16, 2024. Story of the week Our Story of the Week is completely "meta" (no, not that Meta). It's about our exploring how to improve the utility of the feature you're reading right now. Sharp-eyed or possibly even distracted regular readers of our weekly climate news roundup will have noticed some distinct differences in the prior two editions to this latest, compared with the past 634 releases. Typically our weekly listing of news and analysis centered on climate change has been displayed in chronological order, more-or-less following the sequence of original article publication dates. This is a perspective that sometimes...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink , and an excerpt from a much more detailed State of the Climate Q3 2024 report that I published over at Carbon Brief today. See that for more details on climate model/observation comparisons, sea ice extent, and other climate variables. The warmest year on record In my latest quarterly state of the climate assessment over at Carbon Brief, I analysed records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASA’s GISTEMP ; NOAA’s GlobalTemp ; Hadley/UEA’s HadCRUT5 ; Berkeley Earth ; and Copernicus/ECMWF . The figure below shows my estimate of where 2024 temperatures will end up in each of the groups...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is there an expert consensus on human-caused global warming? A number of peer-reviewed studies found nearly all climate scientists agree carbon dioxide from human activities is warming the planet by making it more difficult for heat to escape the atmosphere. A 2016 summary of consensus studies confirmed 90%-100% of publishing climate experts agree on global warming. Recent 2021 studies suggested 98% and 99% consensus. Scientific consensus is agreement among the vast majority of specialists...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A person rides past a destroyed church in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene flooding on October 6, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Scientists say that climate change increased the storm’s deadly rainfall by about 10%. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Earth’s climate in 2024 is “in a major crisis with worse to come if we continue with business as usual,” a team of 14 climate scientists warned in “ The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth .” The report did not sugarcoat their view of the dangers humanity is facing. “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,” the report begins. “This is a global emergency beyond any doubt...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 27, 2024 thru Sat, November 2, 2024. Topics covered this week Repeating last week's experiment, we asked Google's Gemini again for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week. The result is the bullet list below and we'd like to know how useful that kind of generated summary is for you, so please let us know in the comments! Climate Change Impacts Extreme Weather Events: Hurricanes and Floods (The Guardian, Inside Climate News, CNN, Yale Climate Connections) Heatwaves and Drought (The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, CNN) Rising Sea Levels and Coastal Erosion (The Guardian, CNN) Global Warming and Temperature...
Earlier this year our volunteer editor Marc Kodack spotted an impressive answer to climate change solutions denial , " Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles ," which he included in our weekly climate research survey. Written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, this was obviously a very useful and timely resource. So, we also shared it widely on social media— where we soon noticed a theme in comments: "Neat report - but it being a single PDF makes it impossible to link to each of the rebuttals directly." We had - not so long ago - explicitly added "solutions denial" to our overall mission...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Neha Pathak Disasters can disrupt medical care both during and long after the event. (Photo credit: U.S. Air National Guard / Sgt. Jorge Intriago) Weeks after Hurricanes Milton and Helene tore paths of destruction across the Southeast, pictures of communities left in ruins continue to emerge. We can easily see damage from the threats we commonly connect with hurricanes and tropical storms: winds, waves, and floodwaters. But the lingering health problems these storms leave in their wake are mostly invisible, damaging well-being and increasing the risk of disease in insidious and silent waves. From immediate risks from disruptions of medical care to a slow worsening of preexisting chronic conditions, these events can...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 20, 2024 thru Sat, October 26, 2024. Story of the week As an experiment, we asked Google's Gemini for help categorizing the articles we shared during the week. The result is the bullet list below and we'd like to know how useful that kind of generated summary is for you, so please let us know in the comments! Here are the main topics extracted from the articles, along with their publishing outlets: Climate Change and its Impacts: Global warming and its effects on weather patterns, ecosystems, and human health (The Guardian, New York Times, Vox, Yale Climate Connections, MIT News, The Independent (UK), CNN) Extreme weather events, such as...
Open access notables The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades , Hamlington et al., Communications Earth & Environment: The rise in globally averaged sea level—or global mean sea level—is one of the most unambiguous indicators of climate change. Over the past three decades, satellites have provided continuous, accurate measurements of sea level on near-global scales. Here, we show that since satellites began observing sea surface heights in 1993 until the end of 2023, global mean sea level has risen by 111 mm. In addition, the rate of global mean sea level rise over those three decades has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. If this trajectory of sea level rise continues over...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler . This is part two of his series on air conditioning. Part one can be found here . Let’s look at Houston’s summertime temperatures: average summertime temperatures at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston Wow, Houston has warmed a lot in the summer. In the 1970s, summers were about 3C (5F) cooler than they are today, enough to turn a 97F day into a 102F day, which is a huge difference. I grew up in Houston in the 1970s and I can personally confirm that summertime Houston was always hot, but you were not a prisoner of air conditioning like you are now. Given this warming, it was probably inevitable that personal cooling devices, designed to cool you and only you, would...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Peter Graham and Mili Majumdar Apartments on the outskirts of New Delhi, India. (Photo credit: Adam Cohn / CC BY-NC 2.0 ) It was 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47°C) in Tunisia in July, yet our colleague Manel Ben Khelifa could not turn on the air conditioning “because the electricity grid has been shut down,” she explained. “The power company is trying to conserve energy during peak periods by doubling electricity prices to discourage people from using air conditioning, but it’s not working,” Ben Khelifa told us during a heat wave in July 2024. “It’s so hot, people would rather turn off anything but the air conditioning,” she said. “So then the...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Kevin Trenberth Have there been other years where multiple hurricanes hit Florida? That is one of the questions I am now getting. The answer is yes: in 2004, for instance. The summer of 2004 was when four hurricanes made landfall in Florida, and the question was whether there was a human global warming role in the activity and thus the damage. To me it was obvious that there was. I had worked extensively on climate change, and had connected the increases in sea surface temperatures, which were clearly and demonstrably linked to global warming, to increases in water vapor in the atmosphere. This link is strong and physically based: over the oceans, where there is ample water at the surface, the water vapor goes up at 7% per 1C warming...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is more CO2 a good thing because it’s plant food? While CO 2 is necessary for plant growth, the negative impacts of climate change, driven by man-made CO 2 emissions, far outweigh short-term productivity gains. Plants need a balance of CO 2 , sunlight, water, and nutrients. Though more CO 2 can initially boost growth, rising temperatures, disease vulnerability, shifting land fertility, and increased water demands offset these benefits. The UN warns that global...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Emily Ogburn, right, hugs her friend Cody Klein after he brought her a meal on October 2, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Ogburn's home was spared and she spent the morning of the storm helping and comforting neighbors who had found shelter on a neighbor’s porch. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images) Deadly Hurricane Helene, wildfires in the Amazon, an extreme monsoon downpour in India, a heat wave during the Summer Olympics, and other dangerous and devastating weather events in 2024 were all made more likely and damaging by climate change, scientists have found. Climate scientists quantified the link by running thousands of simulations in climate models, some that included and some that did not include...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler On Bluesky, it was pointed out that Asheville, NC was recently listed as a place to go to avoid the climate crisis. link Mother Nature sent a “letter to the editor” indicating that she didn’t agree: Flood waters from the French Broad River cover the River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday, September 28, 2024. Jacob Biba/Citizen Times. Link Helene’s climate link While climate change does not cause hurricanes, we are certain it makes them more destructive . Humans have increased sea level, leading to more destructive storm surge, and a warmer atmosphere produces more rain. Many people don’t understand how this will affect...
Open access notables Sloth metabolism may make survival untenable under climate change scenario s , Cliffe et al., PeerJ: Sloths are limited by the rate at which they can acquire energy and are unable to regulate core body temperature (Tb) to the extent seen in most mammals. Therefore, the metabolic impacts of climate change on sloths are expected to be profound. Here we use indirect calorimetry to measure the oxygen consumption (VO2) and Tb of highland and lowland two-fingered sloths (Choloepus hoffmanni) when exposed to a range of different ambient temperatures (Ta) (18 °C –34 °C), and additionally record changes in Tb and posture over several days in response to natural fluctuations in Ta. We use the resultant data...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Hurricane Helene at sunset on Sep. 26, 2024, as the storm was closing in on the Florida coast as a Cat 4 with 130 mph winds. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB-CIRA Satellite Library) After a spectacular burst of rapid intensification, Hurricane Helene made landfall just east of the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 10 miles west-southwest of Perry, Florida, at about 11:10 p.m. EDT Thursday. Top sustained winds were estimated at 140 mph, making Helene a Category 4 hurricane at landfall. We’ll have much more on Helene’s many impacts—some still unfolding on Friday—in our next Eye in the Storm post. Helene’s landfall gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic...
A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 22, 2024 thru Sat, September 28, 2024. Story of the week Given the headlines dominance of hot oceans lofting water into the atmosphere where it then obeys the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship thereby leading to catastrophic rainfall, our Story of the Week might have been a composite of misery brought down on many heads thanks to our having changed Earth's climate. For an example of our hydrometeorological scope of disaster being widened in plain view over the past week alone, simply scan the article listing below to see how the story of Hurricane Helene evolved. But extreme rainfall is not uppermost in the thoughts of our Skeptical Science...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). As the world heats, we face the consequences from rising seas, extreme weather, and the spread of disease. But what can we do to turn the tide? New research is revealing the climate actions that are actually working, and how we can all help build unstoppable momentum towards a climate tipping point to halt global warming. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
A listing of 33 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Mon, September 16, 2024 thru Sun, September 22, 2024. Story of the week Might be added later. Stories we promoted this week, by publication date: Before September 16 Departures From Climate Action 100+ Highlight U.S.-Europe Divide Over ESG Investing , Science, Inside Climate News, Mathilde Augustin. "In recent months, several major U.S. financial firms have left Climate Action 100+ in apparent response to political pressure. Abroad, the initiative is anything but losing steam." When Will the EV Sales Slump End? Here’s What the Experts Say , Clean Energy News, Inside Climate News, Dan Gearino. "Three questions and answers to help get a handle on...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In his last post , Zeke discussed incredible warmth of 2023 and 2024 and its implications for future warming. A few readers looked at it and freaked out: This is terrifying and This update really put me in a spiral. I want to have hope, but when people like Leon Simons surround your articles with scary language, it’s hard not to become a Doomer. Not sure, what I am going for with this comment, just a soul reaching out. and Feeling doomed Please don’t feel this way! There are two facts that keep me grounded, and here they are: When humans stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate will stop warming. We have the technology to...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 8, 2024 thru Sat, September 14, 2024. Story of the week From time to time we like to make our Story of the Week all about us— and this is one of those moments, except that "us" is more than only Skeptical Science. This week we published our 16th Fact Brief of the year, Does manmade CO2 have any detectable fingerprint ? As with all Fact Briefs it's a slightly different look than our ususal output. The "fact brief" format is a less typical communications mode for us but the main effort at Gigafact , our partner and precipitating instigator in creating these bite-sized cognitive correctants. In a fine example...
Open access notables Early knowledge but delays in climate actions: An ecocide case against both transnational oil corporations and national governments , Hauser et al., Environmental Science & Policy: Cast within the wide context of investigating the collusion at play between powerful political-economic actors and decision-makers as monopolists and debates about ‘the modern corporation and private property’ (Berle and Means, 1932/2017), ‘the new industrial state’ (Galbraith, 1967), and ‘the economic theory of regulation’ (Stigler, 1971), the paper reviews the contentious relationship between states, corporations, and markets. Specifically, the article probes strategies of oil corporations and national governments...
This is a re-post from This is Not Cool Here’s an example of some of the best kind of climate reporting, especially in that it relates to impacts that will directly affect the audience. WFLA in Tampa conducted a study in collaboration with the Department of Energy, analyzing trends in hurricane strength, and projecting hurricane activity in to the future. The results are sobering. One of the predictions is for hurricanes with 20 percent stronger maximum winds. As Jeff Berardelli explains below, that 20 percent is actually much, much worse than it sounds.
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 1, 2024 thru Sat, September 7, 2024. Story of the week Our Story of the Week is about how peopele are not born stupid but can be fooled into appearing exactly so. This week we posted a critique of Australian Queensland state senator Gerard Rennick by journalist and author Peter Hadfield , sailing under his Potholer54 YouTube flag. The title " Could this be the stupidest politician in Australia? " is certainly not a flattering introduction to Rennick, but hearing the senator express his understanding of CO2's role in Earth's atmosphere in his own voice and words is far less flattering. He really does sound stupid— obdurately...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler I love thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is like your mom: it may not tell you what you can do, but it damn well tells you what you can’t do. I’ve written a few previous posts that include thermodynamics, like one on air capture of carbon dioxide and one on air conditioning . For whatever reason, they tend to get a lot of traffic. Well, here’s another one. I was charging my electric vehicle (EV) at a DC fast charger the other day and was pumping electrons into my car at around 200 kilowatts (kW). Man, that’s a lot of power , I thought to myself. For reference, 200 kW is the average power draw of around 60 houses. Just going into my car. That got me thinking...
Together with Cristian Rojas, Frank Algra-Maschio, Mark Andrejevic, Travis Coan, and Yuan-Fang Li, I just published a paper in Nature Communications Earth & Environment where we use the Computer Assisted Recognition of Denial and Skepticism (CARDS) machine learning model to detect climate misinformation in 5 million climate tweets. We find over half of climate misinformation tweets involve personal attacks or conspiracy theories. This new paper builds on work published in 2021 which I wrote about in the article How machine learning holds a key to combating misinformation . Here is the abstract of our open access paper " Hierarchical machine learning models can identify stimuli of climate change misinformation on social media ": Misinformation about climate change...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with John Mason. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is recent global warming part of a natural cycle? While natural cycles explain some historical periods of climate change, the current one is due to human activity. Solar energy reaching the Earth varies regularly over thousands of years with "Milankovitch cycles" in the planet's orbital path, tilt, and wobble. As an example of "external forcing", they affect the total energy present in Earth's climate system. But those cycles are in a cooling phase and cannot explain recent warming. Man made...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Coral reefs are in hot water... literally. Climate change is ramping up temperatures, causing increasing bleaching of reefs across the world. On top of that, these unique, vital ecosystems are facing threats from plastic pollution, ocean acidification, and overfishing. And new research shows just how in danger the Great Barrier Reef is. But there are solutions to protect reefs from global warming - helping them adapt to a warming world and removing the threats they face. But if we don't stop climate change as soon as possible, we may live to see the end of coral reefs. Support ClimateAdam...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections At a Republican presidential debate in 2023, several candidates articulated a common sentiment about whose climate policies really matter. “If you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions,” said Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ultimate runner-up to Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary race. “We also need to take on the international world and say, ‘OK, India and China, you’ve got to stop polluting.’” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina agreed, saying, “The places where they are continuing to increase [climate pollution] – Africa, 950...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with John Mason. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Is decreased cosmic ray activity driving global warming? Over 50 years of data has produced no evidence that cosmic rays are driving global warming. While some studies attribute some small contribution to decreased cosmic ray activity, there is a scientific consensus that CO 2 is the primary factor driving temperature increases worldwide. Galactic cosmic rays are high-energy particles released by stars of the Milky Way and other galaxies. These rays hit Earth’s upper atmosphere and produce...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Like an approaching major hurricane whose outer spiral bands are only just beginning to hit, an approaching climate change storm has begun and will soon grow to ferocious severity — a topic I discussed in detail in my previous post, When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? This immense tempest is already exposing the precarious foundations upon which civilization is built — an inadequate infrastructure designed for the gentler climate of the 20th century. What should you do to prepare? On a personal level, you should prepare for the intensifying climate change storm like you would for an approaching major hurricane. If you’re going to stay in place, know...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the world of climate communications, no claim seems to come up more frequently than “The climate models are wrong!” We recently wrote a post responding to claims that the models are running cold and future warming will be larger than models predict. Today, it’s the claim that the models are hot and future warming will be much less than they predict. The source is some internet weirdo named Derwood Turnip, who posted this: First, let’s be clear: climate models have an admirable track record of predicting the global average temperature. Zeke wrote a paper about that and it’s...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with John Mason. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Does CO2 correlate with global temperature long-term? While natural variations cause short-term ups and downs to the weather, CO 2 and global temperatures move together long term. This is because CO 2 in the atmosphere impedes the escape of heat back to space. Humans added 50% more CO2 since the Industrial Revolution by burning fossil fuels. Over multi-decade timespans, CO 2 shows close correlation with global temperature. However, on much shorter timescales (years, months, days)...
This article by Tyler Hansen , Research Associate in Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College ; Abraham Silverman , Research Scholar, Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, Johns Hopkins University ; Elizabeth J. Wilson , Professor of Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College , and Erin Baker , Professor of Industrial Engineering Applied to Energy Policy, UMass Amherst is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . Offshore winds have the potential to supply coastlines with massive, consistent flows of clean electricity . One study estimates wind farms just offshore could meet 11 times the projected global electricity demand in 2040. In the U.S., the East Coast is an ideal location to capture...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Kait Parker Although raw sewage and gastrointestinal illnesses are rarely topics broached in polite conversation, they’re having a glaring impact in hundreds of towns and cities in the United States. The risk of acute gastrointestinal illness increases by up to 62% after certain kinds of sewer overflows, according to recent research led by a team at the School of Public Health at Boston University. And with increasing extreme rainfall events in the forecast, climate change could make the problem worse. So how does sewage treatment affect digestive health, and what does climate change have to do with it all? The answers start with how your community manages its sewers. Sewer management 101 Illustration...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was updated by John Mason in collaboration with members from the Gigafact team. The initial version was published in 2021 and written by John Cook. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline . Are carbon dioxide emissions from human activities enough to affect the climate? Neither land nor oceans have been able to adequately absorb the extra CO 2 released by our fossil fuel burning, causing atmospheric CO 2 to rise and affect our climate. We have understood since the 1850s that adding more CO 2 to our atmosphere will cause global temperatures to rise by making it more difficult for heat to escape the atmosphere...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. As delegates arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July to officially nominate former president Donald Trump as their 2024 candidate, a right-wing policy think tank held an all-day event nearby. The Heritage Foundation, a key sponsor of the convention and a group that has been influencing Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, gathered its supporters to tout Project 2025 , a 900-plus-page policy blueprint that seeks to fundamentally restructure the federal government. Dozens of conservative groups contributed to Project 2025, which recommends changes that would...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Last week we set a record: we experienced the hottest day in the observational record. That record stood for 24 hours, when the next day took the record. In fact, these may have been the hottest days in the last 120,000 years. from the NYT To understand this latter claim, let’s work backwards. We know that the record breaking days last week are the hottest in the observational record, which goes back about 150 years. Now, let’s look at the last 10,000 years. We used to think that the period about 7,000 years ago, a period sometimes referred to as the Holocene Optimum, was warmer. However, scientists have revised their estimates of the temperature at that time and it is probably...
Open access notables The limits of “resilience”: Relationalities, contradictions, and re-appropriations , Davies & Arrieta, WIREs Climate Change [perspective]: We define manufactured irresilience as damage incurred by people, places and planet, which undermines the possibility of resilience, and results from causally discernible and remediable human behaviors. Building on the “critical resilience” literature (De Verteuil & Golubchikov, 2016 ), we propose irresilience as a provocative analytical twist on the pairing of concepts. However, instead of a continuum leading from one condition to another, such as vulnerability-security (Detraz, 2011 ), we position resilience and irresilience as causally related opposites. We argue that...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy . It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). What happens after we stop emitting and changing our climate? Will things go back to normal, or will the global warming and climate changes we've caused stick around long into the future? And what does this mean for the consequences of climate change - from sea level rise to extreme weather? I take a look at what could happen thousands of years from now, and what that means about the choices that we make today. Thanks to Zeke Hausfather for the input x /hausfath and to Lukas Hansen and Tamy Beyrouti for direction. Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
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