Amazon drought: 'We've never seen anything like this'
BBC News
The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world's biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return. […]
The rainy season in the Amazon should have started in October but it was still dry and hot until late November. This is an effect of the cyclical El Niño weather pattern, amplified by climate change.
El Niño causes water to warm in the Pacific Ocean, which pushes heated air over the Americas. This year the water in the North Atlantic has also been abnormally warm, and hot, dry air has enveloped the Amazon. […]
"When it was my first drought I thought, 'Wow, this is awful. How can this happen to the rainforest?'" says Flávia Costa, a plant ecologist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, who has been living and working in the rainforest for 26 years.
"And then, year after year, it was record-breaking. Each drought was stronger than before."
She says it's too soon to assess how much damage this year's drought has done, but her team has found many plants "showing signs of being dead".
With half its surface water area lost, an Amazonian state runs dry
Mongabay
[…] For the past 20 years, the nine countries that make up the Amazon Basin have seen drastic reductions in their total water surface area. In Brazil alone, home to 12% of the world’s freshwater sources, bodies of water have shrunk in size by 14.5%.
During this period, Roraima was the worst-affected state, having lost 53% of its water area, according to a study published in 2022 by MapBiomas, a collaborative network that produces mapping of land cover and water coverage.
“The Amazon Rainforest is experiencing the driest decade in recorded history,” says Bruno Ferreira, a forestry engineer and researcher at Brazilian conservation nonprofit Imazon, one of the organizations behind the study. “Nine out of the past 10 years were among the driest ever registered,” he adds.
The Most Important Thing That Happened This Year Was the Heat
Bill McKibben @ Common Dreams
The world—its politics, its economy, and its journalism—has trouble coping with the scale of the climate crisis. We can’t quite wrap our collective head around it, which has never been clearer to me than in these waning days of 2023.
Because the most important thing that happened this year was the heat. By far. It was hotter than it has been in at least 125,000 years on this planet. Every month since May was the hottest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures set a new all-time mark, over 100°F. Canada burned, filling the air above our cities with smoke.
And yet you really wouldn’t know it from reading the wrap-ups of the year’s news now appearing on one website after another. […]
Indeed, yesterday the Times and The Washington Post both published fine stories about 2023’s record temperatures, but they were odd: In each case, they centered on whether the year was enough to show that the climate crisis was “accelerating.” It’s an interesting question, drawing mainly on a powerful new paper by James Hansen (one that readers of this newsletter found out about last winter), but the premise of the reporting, if you take a step back, is kind of wild. Because the climate crisis is already crashing down on us. It doesn’t require “acceleration” to be the biggest—by orders of magnitude—dilemma facing our species.
Next Year Likely to Surpass 2023 as the Hottest Ever
Yale Environment 360
With climate change and an incipient El Niño driving up temperatures, 2024 is likely to eclipse 2023 as the hottest year ever, meteorologists project.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, the first 10 months of this year measured 1.40 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial baseline, a product of both human-caused warming and, to a lesser extent, the onset of El Niño, when warm waters pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The previous hottest year, in 2016, also coincided with an El Niño.
Next year is likely to surpass 2023 as the hottest ever, according to the U.K. Met Office, which projects that 2024 will likely measure 1.46 degrees C warmer than preindustrial times, but could conclude up to 1.58 degrees C warmer. The Paris Agreement aims to keep long-term warming below 1.5 degrees C.
Permafrost: a ticking time bomb beneath our feet
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land surface is permanently frozen. These areas, known as permafrost, are found in northern polar regions and at high altitudes. But the permafrost is now starting to thaw – with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate. Here, we look at what scientists currently know about this potential threat.
Permafrost is a layer of soil, rock or sediment that remains at a temperature of 0°C or below all year round. While it gets little public attention, permafrost nevertheless covers 22% of the Earth’s land surface. It’s mostly found at northern latitudes – in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia – and at altitudes above the tree line. Around 5%–6% of Switzerland is covered by permafrost. We asked Michael Lehning, head of EPFL’s Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, for his insights on what the thawing permafrost means for our climate. […]
Is it true that permafrost is thawing faster than expected?
Yes. Early climate models predicted that we wouldn’t reach the current stage of permafrost melt until 2090! That shows just how hard it is to forecast permafrost dynamics. The margin of uncertainty is much larger than for glaciers, whose changes are more visible. Studying permafrost is really complicated – not just because everything happens deep beneath our feet, but also because of the sheer extent of the Earth’s surface it covers. A sample taken in one location tells us nothing about the composition and dynamics of permafrost as a whole.
In a win for the climate, urban speed limits are dropping
Yale Climate Connections
Since 2015, Seattle has lowered speed limits across much of its road network, setting residential streets at 20 miles per hour and most larger urban corridors at 25 miles per hour. After these changes took effect, studies showed that car crashes fell by approximately 20%, while the crashes that did occur resulted in significantly fewer injuries.
Cities across the U.S. are following Seattle’s lead, with speed limits dropping from Denver and Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., and Hoboken. Although these changes are motivated by the need to reduce deaths and injuries from car crashes, there’s a growing recognition that they also benefit the climate.
“Safety and environmental goals go together. They’re inevitably interlinked,” said Venu Nemani, the chief safety officer of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Inside AI's giant land grab
Business Insider
[…] The arms race over artificial intelligence, which runs on special chips that suck up even more energy, has accelerated the boom. In the first half of 2023, North America set a record for data-center construction, up 25% in the top eight markets. And that's just for data centers that lease out server space to other businesses. Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta — so-called hyperscalers — are spending billions of dollars more to build out their own data centers. Jensen Huang, the CEO of the AI-chip giant Nvidia, predicts that in the next four years alone, companies will spend $1 trillion to add to their arsenal of data centers — creating what Blackstone, one of the world's largest asset managers, calls a "once-in-a-generation engine for future growth in data centers."
But that growth may come at a steep cost. At the heart of the data-center boom lies a strange paradox: The more the internet has consumed our lived reality, the easier it's been to ignore the physical infrastructure required to power that reality. […]
Faced with this pressure, local utility companies are making tough environmental trade-offs. Virginia's Dominion Energy recently predicted electricity demands in its service area would nearly double in the next 15 years, an unprecedented growth rate that the utility attributed, at least in part, to data centers. Amazon alone plans to invest $35 billion in data centers in Virginia, adding to the $52 billion it's already spent there. (Full disclosure: I'm married to an Amazon employee.) To keep up with power demands, Dominion says that while 95% of its new power plants will be carbon-free, it will also need to build new gas-powered plants and keep some fossil fuel plants that were set to be retired operating for far longer than expected. The utility now predicts that in 25 years, its carbon emissions will be 65% higher than it was expecting just two years ago, but Dominion says those estimates are subject to change.
Buckle Up. Climate Change Could Destroy Half Our Economies
The Issue
So. How bad is it going to get? Climate change. It's economic effects, in particular—which is just a way of saying: what scale, scope, level of havoc will it wreak? That's today's Issue.
Startling new landmark research has just been published. It's conclusion? Half of our economies could be destroyed by 2070. Let me emphasize that again: 50% of GDP. By 2070. Gone. Burned, drowned, incinerated, levelled, flooded. How bad is that? It's even worse...than it might sound. I'm going to put that in context for you in just a moment, but first I want you to understand why this research matters, beginning with the source.
Where does this research come from? "Alarmists"? An advocacy group? Activists? Is it based on tenuous logic and cherry-picked data? It comes from a place that's about as sober and serious and conservative a group of professionals as you can get. The British Institute of...Actuaries. I'm going to cite their report, which I recommend you peruse, too, if you're interested. Because, well...
It's hard to think of a more objective source than an Institute of Actuaries. That's because they have no reason, none whatsoever--to be alarmist, to overstate the case. In fact, they have every reason to understate the case, because of course actuarial science is at the heart of insurance, and insurance companies generally want to sell more of it.
Snow Shortages Are Plaguing the West’s Mountains
The New York Times
With gusts of wind howling around Mount Ashland’s vacant ski lodge this week, Andrew Gast watched from a window as a brief snowfall dusted the landscape. It was not nearly enough.
The ski area’s parking lot remained largely empty. On the slopes, manzanita bushes and blades of grass were poking through patches of what little snow had landed. Even the 7,533-foot summit — the highest point in the Siskiyou Mountains along the Oregon-California border — still had bare spots. These days Mr. Gast has been checking the weather forecast the moment he wakes up, only to learn that warmer and drier days lie ahead.
“I’m trying not to pay attention to it too much right now because it’s just going to cause me heartburn,” said Mr. Gast, who manages the nonprofit community ski area south of Ashland, Ore. He spent much of this week in his office, preparing to issue furloughs or layoffs.
Across much of the West Coast, from the Cascades in the north to the Sierra Nevada in the south, mountain sites are recording less than half of their normal snowpack for this point in winter. The situation has created serious problems for dozens of ski resorts during the holiday weeks, which are crucial to their livelihoods, and has stirred wider concerns about the future — for the coming summer agriculture season and for the region’s altered ecosystems amid a warming climate.
Minnesota Ice Festival canceled because of warm weather
St. Paul Pioneer Press
The 2024 Minnesota Ice Festival has been canceled. Organizers said that unseasonably warm weather raises safety concerns for both ice construction workers and visitors. […]
The ice festival is not the only casualty of hotter-than-expected weather this year. The Twin Cities Marathon was canceled this fall amid an October heat wave that smashed all-time high temperature records for the state. And across the U.S., the rate of climate change over the past five decades has been significantly above the world average.
Now, meteorologists say we’re on track for a “brown Christmas” this year, a stark contrast to the eight inches of snow that descended on the Twin Cities this time last year. These snowless holiday seasons are becoming common: Since 1899, only 36 seasons have been “brown Christmases,” but these include 2015, 2018 and 2021.
Extreme weather is driving food prices higher. Here are some of the crops facing the biggest impacts
World Economic Forum
What’s in your regular shopping basket? What are the foods you can’t live without? And what are your occasional treats?
Whatever they are, it’s pretty likely you’ve noticed a change in their price in the past year – some more than others. Shortages and supply issues caused by events including the pandemic and war in Ukraine have been felt through food price inflation for some while now. But for some foods, the impact of climate change is also making itself felt, through record high temperatures and extreme weather.
It’s entirely usual for food prices to fluctuate alongside the seasons, but the exceptionally hot and dry summer in Europe, the US, Asia and beyond caused poor harvests and many crops to fail.
The climate crisis is making extreme weather – from heatwaves and droughts to storms and floods – more common, and some crops are more susceptible to these changes than others.
Saffron supplies dry up as climate change shrivels Iran’s ‘desert gold’
Financial Times
[…] More than nine-tenths of the world’s saffron comes from Iran. It is known as “desert gold” due to its ability to thrive in drier climates and prized for its powerful aroma, rich flavour and deep colour.
But changing weather patterns and water shortages are having a dramatic effect on the industry, according to producers and traders, leading to significant falls in yields that have pushed the price of the world’s most expensive spice to fresh highs.
Growers in the Khorasan region that includes Torbat-e Jam said this year’s yields would be less than half those of 2022. “Total production is expected to fall to about 170 tonnes from nearly 400 tonnes,” said Ali Shariati-Moghaddam, chief executive of Novin Saffron, a leading Iranian producer and exporter.
‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
The Guardian
When the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road. But its last breaths were not taken in an isolated corner of American geography. It succumbed to a long-dreaded disease in the backcountry of Yellowstone national park, north-west Wyoming – the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country’s most famous nature reserve.
For years, chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by prions – abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents – has been spreading stealthily across North America, with concerns voiced primarily by hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.
The prions cause changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare” that led some to call it “zombie deer disease”. It spreads through the cervid family: deer, elk, moose, caribou and reindeer. It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.
Water increasingly at the center of conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East
Los Angeles Times
Six months ago, an explosion ripped apart Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, unleashing floods that killed 58 people, devastated the landscape along the Dnipro River and cut off water to productive farmland. […]
In countries including India, Kenya and Yemen, disputes over water have triggered bloodshed.
And on the Iran-Afghanistan border, a conflict centering on water from the Helmand River boiled over in deadly clashes between the two countries’ forces.
These are some of the 344 instances of water-related conflicts worldwide during 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to data compiled by researchers at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. Their newly updated data, collected through an effort called the Water Conflict Chronology, shows a major upsurge in violent incidents, driven partly by the targeting of dams and water systems in Ukraine as well as an increase in water-related violence in the Middle East and other regions.
Billions of dollars in new tax credits aim to cut jet emissions -- but experts worry the benefits are exaggerated
The Washington Post
The proposal calls for giving subsidies to support the development of “sustainable aviation fuels,” capable of powering jet engines from agricultural products. Examples of such fuels include biofuels engineered out of soybeans, diesel made with animal fat and conventional types of ethanol.
Senior White House officials said the program would make the airline industry cleaner while bringing prosperity to rural America.
But environmental groups and some scientists expressed reservations about the plan, which would award subsidies based on a scientific model that has previously been used to justify incentives for corn-based ethanol. Studies have found the gasoline additive is exacerbating climate change.
A Natural Gas Project Is Biden’s Next Big Climate Test
The New York Times
On a marshy stretch of the Louisiana coastline, a little-known company wants to build a $10 billion facility that would allow the United States to export vast stores of liquefied natural gas.
Supporters of the project, known as CP2, say the export terminal would be a boon for the United States economy and help Europe decrease its reliance on gas imported from Russia. They also claim that because burning natural gas produces fewer planet-warming emissions than burning coal, the project is a good thing for the climate.
But a nationwide movement is working to stop the export terminal from ever being built.
Opponents, including major environmental groups, scientists and activists, say that CP2 would lock in decades of additional greenhouse gas emissions, the main driver of climate change. They add that the project would be harmful to the people who live in the area, as well as the fragile ecosystem that supports aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico.
It will be up to the Biden administration to decide whether or not the project moves forward.
‘We’re in for some big changes’: Takeaways from 2023’s environmental law battles
E&E News
It’s been a year of legal whiplash for federal environmental regulators who — after being dealt a blow last year on a plan to tackle a leading source of climate pollution — are now adapting to a new framework for protecting wetlands.
More transformations are expected in 2024 as the nation’s highest bench gears up to hear oral arguments in a case that has the potential to end a tool that helps federal agencies defend environmental rules in court.
“We’re in for some big changes,” said Dietrich Hoefner, a partner at the law firm Lewis Roca.
Three years past the entrenchment of the Supreme Court’s Republican supermajority, the justices have taken up a trio of significant environmental cases and handed victories to conservative interests.
African Penguins Have Almost Been Wiped Out by Overfishing and Climate Change. Researchers Want to Orchestrate a Comeback.
Inside Climate News
A weathered, green building stands at the edge of the cozy suburban Table View neighborhood in Cape Town, just a few blocks down from a Burger King and a community library. Upon stepping inside, visitors’ feet squelch on a mat submerged in antibacterial liquid—one of the first signs this isn’t just another shop on the street.
A few steps further down the main hallway, a cacophony of discordant brays and honks fill the air. A couple more strides reveal the source of these guttarall calls: African penguins.
Welcome to the nonprofit Southern African Foundation for the Conservation Of Coastal Birds’ hatchery and nursery, where hundreds of these birds are hand-reared after being injured or abandoned in the wild.
While this conservation center is a flourishing refuge for African penguins, the species as a whole is in dire straits. Over the past century, African penguin populations have plummeted, dropping from around one million breeding pairs in the early 1900s to less than 10,000 in 2023 as environmental conditions have worsened due to increased fishing pressure and climate change, which have both decreased fish populations on which penguins rely.
To combat climate change, companies bury plant waste at sea
Science
Dror Angel, a marine ecologist at the University of Haifa, had for years heard his archaeologist colleagues talk about ancient shipwrecks on the bottom of the Black Sea that were perfectly preserved by the low-oxygen environment. “You can see ropes,” Angel says. “It’s something which is quite spectacular.”
Now, Angel wants to combat climate change by purposefully adding to the wreckage, sinking waste wood to the sea floor, where carbon that the trees stored up while living can remain locked away for centuries.
Angel is a science lead for an Israeli company called Rewind, one of many companies riding a wave of investment in technologies that could help limit global warming by drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it up. Whereas some carbon capture schemes require expensive machines and complex chemistry, burying terrestrial biomass at sea is exceedingly simple: It requires tugboats, barges, and woody waste from forestry and agriculture.
40% of US electricity is now emissions-free
Ars Technica
Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. […]
The only thing that's keeping carbon-free power from growing faster is natural gas, which is the fastest-growing source of generation at the moment, going from 40 percent of the year-to-date total in 2022 to 43.3 percent this year. (It's actually slightly below that level in the October data.) The explosive growth of natural gas in the US has been a big environmental win, since it creates the least particulate pollution of all the fossil fuels, as well as the lowest carbon emissions per unit of electricity. But its use is going to need to start dropping soon if the US is to meet its climate goals, so it will be critical to see whether its growth flat lines over the next few years.
Outside of natural gas, however, all the trends in US generation are good, especially considering that the rise of renewable production would have seemed like an impossibility a decade ago. Unfortunately, the pace is currently too slow for the US to have a net-zero electric grid by the end of the decade.