Stay Current with GSS

The GSS google group receives “Stay Current” weekly emails with excerpts and links to articles. To join, email gssmail@berkeley.edu with subject line “Join GSS” and in the body your name, city, state, country, and school (if any).

“Stay Current” links are in the Contents table in each book. If a news source limits the number of articles one person can read for free, try “divide and conquer” with different students reading and reporting to the class on different articles.

See updates from 2024 -|- 2023 -|- 2022 -|- 2021

RECENT UPDATES (2025)

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2025-02-10. Rice Paddies, Like Cows, Spew Methane. A New Variety Makes Them a Lot Less Gassy. By Matt Simon, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: …cows are really gassy, and that’s really bad for the planet: Microbes in their guts produce methane—a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide—which comes out as burps. Consequently, livestock is responsible for 30 percent of humanity’s methane emissions. …Rice cultivation, surprisingly enough, accounts for another 12 percent of humanity’s global methane emissions. …Growing rice requires flooding fields, called paddies, with staggering quantities of water. Microbes known as archaea multiply in the wet, oxygen-poor conditions, releasing methane. One way to reduce those emissions is to inundate the fields less often, but that’s not always feasible given local irrigation infrastructure, and less water can lead to reduced yields. …Now, though, scientists have gone to the source, announcing a breakthrough in breeding a variety of rice they say reduces methane emissions by 70 percent—while delivering yields nearly twice the global average. “The only drawback is that it cannot be cultivated throughout the whole of China, because the climate is so different in the different regions,” said Anna Schnürer, a microbiologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and coauthor of the paper published in the journal Molecular Plant. “We are still working on finding additional varieties that can handle different temperatures.”… Full article at https://eos.org/articles/rice-paddies-like-cows-spew-methane-a-new-variety-makes-them-a-lot-less-gassy. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.

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2025-02-10. Earth’s inner core might harbor volcanoes and landslides. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: More than 5000 kilometers beneath our feet, Earth’s iron inner core seems to be spinning, growing, and occasionally speeding up or slowing down. It’s also likely changing shape, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience, with some areas rising and falling up to 1 kilometer within a few years. Although most changes are likely subtle bumps in the iron landscape, some could mirror rising mountains and tumbling landslides. Though these movements—picked up as seismic waves traveling through the planet—have scant effect on us surface dwellers, they help bring into focus a more dynamic picture of Earth’s insides. …As for what drives these deformations, there are a slew of ideas. Because the freezing point of iron is a balmy 1500ºC, Vidale thinks material at the boundary between the inner and outer core may be continually melting and freezing into new structures. There may also be “burps” of iron bubbling out of the inner core to its surface. Or the inner core’s surface could be getting more bumpy and textured as it’s pushed around by gravity and the flowing outer core…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-s-inner-core-might-harbor-volcanoes-and-landslides. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 3.

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2025-01-31. Asteroid 2024 YR4 reaches level 3 on the Torino Scale. By Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS), JPL/CalTech. Excerpt: CNEOS analysis of near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4, which is estimated to be about 40 to 90 meters wide, indicates it has a more than 1% chance of impacting Earth on Dec. 22, 2032 — which also means there is almost a 99% chance this asteroid will not impact. These analyses will change from day to day as more observations are gathered. The CNEOS analyses are used for NASA’s contribution to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). After the impact probability for this asteroid reached 1%, IAWN issued its official notification for the potential impact…. Full article at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news210.html. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7. See also: International Asteroid Warning Network – https://iawn.net/obscamp/2024YR4/index.shtml, explanation of the Torino Scale on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale, European Space Agency Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center – https://neo.ssa.esa.int/-/latest-cafs, https://neo.ssa.esa.int/documents/d/guest/close-approach-fact-sheet-for-asteroid-2024yr4-version-1-0-, and Planetary Defense at NASA – https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-defense/.

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2025-02-TEMPLATE. . By . Excerpt: . Full article at URL. For GSS chapter .

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2025-02-07. Renewables provided 90% of new US capacity in 2024 – FERC. By Michelle Lewis, Elektrek. Excerpt: Renewable energy – solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, biomass – accounted for more than 90% of total US electrical generating capacity added in 2024, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and reviewed by the SUN DAY campaign. Solar alone accounted for over 81% of the new capacity. Moreover, December was the 16th month in a row in which solar was the largest source of new capacity. …In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through December 31, 2024), FERC says 105 “units” of solar totaling 4,369 megawatts (MW) came online in December, along with two units of wind (324 MW) and two units of biomass (45 MW). Combined, they accounted for 86.9% of all new generating capacity added during the month. Natural gas provided the balance: 717 MW…. Full article at https://electrek.co/2025/02/07/renewables-90-percent-new-us-capacity-2024-ferc/. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-02-07. Trump administration suspends $5bn electric vehicle charging program. By Maya Yang, The Guardian. Excerpt: The Trump administration has ordered US states to suspend a $5bn electric vehicle charging station program in a further blow to the environmental movement since the president’s return to the White House. In a memo issued on Thursday to state transportation directors, the transportation department’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ordered states not to spend any funds allocated to them under the Biden administration as part of the national electric vehicle infrastructure (NEVI) program…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/trump-electric-vehicle-charging-station-program. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.

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2025-02-06. Clean energy costs to continue to fall this year, report says. By Reuters. Excerpt: The cost of clean energy technologies worldwide, such as wind, solar and battery storage, are expected to fall further this year, a report by BloombergNEF showed on Thursday, despite rising protectionism in the form of tariffs on green energy imports. …On average, the China can produce a megawatt-hour of electricity from major power-generating technologies 11-64% cheaper than other markets, the report said. …The cost of clean power technologies is expected to fall further by 2-11% in 2025. While trade barriers could stall declines temporarily, BNEF expects the levellized cost of electricity for clean technologies to fall by 22-49% by 2035…. Full article at https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/clean-energy-costs-continue-fall-150909361.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-02-06. Disappearing landscapes: The Arctic at +2.7°C global warming. By Julienne C. Stroeve et al, Science. Abstract: Under current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, global warming is projected to reach 2.7°C above preindustrial levels. In this review, we show that at such a level of warming, the Arctic would be transformed beyond contemporary recognition: Virtually every day of the year would have air temperatures higher than preindustrial extremes, the Arctic Ocean would be essentially ice free for several months in summer, the area of Greenland that reaches melting temperatures for at least a month would roughly quadruple, and the area of permafrost would be roughly half of what it was in preindustrial times. These geophysical changes go along with widespread ecosystem disruptions and infrastructure damage, which, as we show here, could be substantially reduced by increased efforts to limit global warming…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads1549. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8. See also Arctic Ice Is Getting Smoother and Moving Faster (Eos/AGU).

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2025-02-05. Climatic and ecological responses to Bennu-type asteroid collisions. By Lan Dai and Axel Timmermann, ScienceAdvances. Abstract summary: Asteroid Bennu has a 0.037% chance of colliding with Earth in 2182 CE.  The potential collision of such medium-sized asteroids would inject dust into the atmosphere and disrupting climate, vegetation, and marine productivity. Simulations show global temperature drop of 4°C, reduced precipitation, and significant decreases in terrestrial and marine net primary productivity…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq5399. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 1. See also Life’s Building Blocks Found in Bennu Samples (Eos/AGU)

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2025-02-05. Supply-side relief for the world’s largest coral reef. By Robert Steneck et al, ScienceAdvances. Abstract: Zoning to prevent fishing on 30% of the Great Barrier Reef yields 50% more larvae and biomass of coral grouper on fished reefs…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv5639. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.

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2025-02-03. Increased crevassing across accelerating Greenland Ice Sheet margins. By Thomas R. Chudley et al, Nature Geoscience. Excerpt: The Greenland Ice Sheet, which measures more than 3 kilometers at its thickest point and covers an area three times the size of Texas, is the world’s second largest body of ice. If all of it were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise a whopping seven meters. And while such a complete meltdown would likely take thousands of years, Greenland—already one of the largest contributors to sea level rise—is poised to add up to 30 centimeters by 2100. Now, new research published in Nature Geoscience has revealed that this enormous mass of ice is breaking apart faster than expected…. Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01636-6. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-02-01. They Give Moth Holes a Makeover. By Emma Orlow, The New York Times. Excerpt: Emma Villeneuve …and …Bjorn Eva Park …opened Eva Joan in 2021, …a kind of business …where mending, alterations, embroidery and education could be brought under the same roof. They also wanted to sell one-of-a-kind pieces and hard-to-come-by fabrics for others to pursue their own projects. …mending jobs were also a way to salvage supposedly unsalvageable items languishing in the back of closets. …As many people confront the reality of clothing waste and the environmental damage wrought by cheap, mass-produced fashion, Eva Joan joins spots in New York …which are introducing a younger generation to clothing repair…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/style/eva-joan-clothing-repair-shop.html. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-31. Warmer, more crowded cities bring out the rats. By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: Climate change emerged as a driving factor behind urban rat swarms, the researchers report today in Science Advances. As temperatures rise, they conclude, and people flock to urban areas and convert formerly “green” spaces into neighborhoods and shopping centers, they created a perfect storm for rat populations to explode. And the city that’s fared the worst over the past decade? Washington, D.C….. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/warmer-more-crowded-cities-bring-out-rats. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-30. Climate change has really messed up polar bears’ lives. By Louise C. Archer et al, Science. Summary: …polar bear populations have declined over the past 50 years as the extent of sea ice has decreased. Archer et al. used data collected from polar bears in the western Hudson Bay Area over nearly all of that time…. Energetic patterns at the individual level successfully predicted larger-scale population dynamics. A single driver, energy limitation, emerged as being responsible for the population decline, confirming that polar bears face food shortages due to the loss of ice. —Sacha Vignieri…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp3752. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-31. A new ‘mini-CRISPR’ flexes its editing power in monkey muscles. By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science. Excerpt: In the years since the gene-editing strategy CRISPR burst onto the scene, it’s run into a big limitation: The classic CRISPR system is too unwieldy to get into many of the body’s tissues and do its slicing and dicing. Now, researchers from a company co-founded by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for helping develop CRISPR, are reporting what they hope will be a significant step forward. In a preprint posted last night, the team describes a “mini-CRISPR” successfully shipped into muscle cells in mice and monkeys, where it efficiently edited a gene linked to neuromuscular disorders…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/new-mini-crispr-flexes-its-editing-power-monkey-muscles. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 4.

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2025-01-29. Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu. By Daniel P. Glavin et al, Nature Astronomy. Abstract Excerpt: Organic matter in meteorites reveals clues about early Solar System chemistry and the origin of molecules important to life…. Samples returned from the B-type asteroid Bennu by the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer mission …show that Bennu samples are volatile rich, with more carbon, nitrogen and ammonia than samples from asteroid Ryugu and most meteorites. …Bennu’s parent asteroid developed in or accreted ices from a reservoir in the outer Solar System where ammonia ice was stable. …The transport and delivery of organic compounds from these bodies could have been a source of molecules available for the emergence of life on Earth and potentially elsewhere…. Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9. See also Nature article An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples [Brines …are environments in which life could have evolved or might persist in the Solar System] For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.

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2025-01-29. Wide range of Earth’s species are showing a decline in diversity. By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: Variety is more than just the spice of life. Genetic variation is what allows a species to adapt as climate changes, new diseases arise, and novel predators come on the scene. A slightly different genetic makeup can ensure at least some individuals will still do OK in times of crisis. But just as the number of species is declining worldwide, so, too, is the genetic diversity within many species, an international team reports today in Nature…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/wide-range-earth-s-species-are-showing-decline-diversity. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.

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2025-01-28. Scientists Finally Get a Good Look at a Disintegrating Exoplanet. By Javier Barbuzano, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The James Webb Space Telescope offers astronomers a rare glimpse into the chemical composition of a rocky planet’s interior—and the results are “very surprising.” …disintegrating planet, K2-22b, …Discovered in 2015, …orbits a small star 787 light-years away, completing one orbit every 9 hours. …The spectroscopic results are “very surprising,” said University of Leeds astronomer Richard Booth, who wasn’t involved with the study. “We expected to see a composition akin to Earth’s mantle with minerals like magnesium silicate, and they see hints of that,” Booth said. “You just wouldn’t expect any icy material surviving at these temperatures.”…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/scientists-finally-get-a-good-look-at-a-disintegrating-exoplanet. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 8.

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2025-01-28. Chevron Joins Race to Generate Power for A.I.. By Rebecca F. Elliott, The New York Times. Excerpt: The artificial intelligence boom has turbocharged demand for electricity, and everyone who is anyone in the U.S. energy industry wants a piece of the action. The latest entrant is Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil and gas company, which sees opportunity in building natural gas-fueled power plants that will feed energy directly to data centers…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/business/energy-environment/chevron-power-plant-ai.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 4.

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2025-01-24. Nevada’s Lithium Could Help Save the Earth. But What Happens to Nevada? By Meg Bernhard, The New York Times. Excerpt: …the expansion of renewable-energy infrastructure is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of the West, often at the expense of ecosystems. Lithium mining in particular alarms conservationists. Depending on the type of process used, mining can pollute groundwater, emit carbon dioxide, create toxic waste and destroy habitats. As companies scramble to acquire mineral rights, in many cases under an antiquated mining law, some conservationists are criticizing the fact that there isn’t a federal plan to protect the landscape, without which they fear a ruinous mining free-for-all. This rush to mine has put them in tension with proponents of the federal government’s green-energy projects, who warn against slowing an urgent process. Conservationists, in turn, worry that those supporters are being shortsighted in their disregard for the value of biodiversity…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/magazine/nevada-lithium-mines.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.

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2025-01-24. Antarctic krill vertical migrations modulate seasonal carbon export. By A. J. R. Smith et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Shrimp-like krill constitute the greatest biomass of any living animal: up to 379 million tonnes in the Southern Ocean. Dead krill and their feces sink and are assumed to export tens of millions of tons of carbon annually; however, these data are gleaned from patchy observations. Smith et al. deployed a seafloor lander carrying an echosounder, camera, lights, and other equipment offshore of East Antarctica to provide consistent direct observational data, including difficult-to-obtain winter data, to feed into a carbon flux model. The year-long observations showed heterogeneous migratory behaviors by krill, including strong seasonal shifts. Migration means that recirculation of carbon can occur, so krill may make a smaller contribution to net carbon storage than what is found in current estimates. —Caroline Ash. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adq5564. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 5.

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2025-01-24. Put some wiggle in your mowing. Bees will love it. By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt:  Mowing along curves, rather than straight lines, can boost the abundance and diversity of butterflies and wild bees, researchers report this week in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/put-some-wiggle-your-mowing-bees-will-love-it. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-23. Mechanically robust and stretchable organic solar cells plasticized by small-molecule acceptors. By Zhenye Wang et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Stretchable organic solar cells for powering wearable devices have been achieved by blending a ductile donor semiconductor polymer with a plasticizing small-molecule acceptor to overcome the inherent brittleness of the photoactive components. Wang et al. have shown that the acceptor actually enhances ductility in the blend and maintains electron mobility despite its lack of crystallinity. Devices achieved a power conversion efficiency of greater than 16% and could maintain 80% of that efficiency at 80% strain. —Phil Szuromi
Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9709. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-23. Variable impacts of land-based climate mitigation on habitat area for vertebrate diversity. By Jeffrey R. Smith et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Nature-based solutions are increasingly part of the strategy for achieving net zero carbon emissions to curb climate change. However, promoting tree growth in previously forested areas (reforestation) or unforested areas (afforestation) and planting bioenergy crops may help or harm biodiversity in the process. Smith et al. modeled projected vertebrate biodiversity responses to these land use changes in 2050. Although both strategies had positive effects on biodiversity by reducing climate change, local effects through habitat conversion were much stronger. Because most modeled species inhabit forests, forest growth had a mean positive effect, whereas bioenergy cropping had a mean negative effect. Reforestation can benefit many vertebrates, but models suggest that for most nonforest areas, doing nothing is better for biodiversity than afforestation or bioenergy cropping. —Bianca Lopez …“This research shows fighting climate change is not enough to safeguard biodiversity,” said co-author Susan Cook-Patton in a statement. “It’s critical that, in our work to address climate change, we do not inadvertently worsen the biodiversity crisis,” added lead author Jeffrey Smith…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9485. For GSS A New World View chapter 6.

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2025-01-22. Astronomers just deleted an asteroid because it turned out to be Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster. By Mark Zastrow, Astronomy. Excerpt: On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit …came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth. But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid. It was a car. To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018…. Full article at https://www.astronomy.com/science/astronomers-just-deleted-an-asteroid-because-it-turned-out-to-be-elon-musks-tesla-roadster/. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.

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2025-01-21. A Seychelles Shoreline Resists the Rising Seas. By Caroline Hasler, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: With global sea levels projected to rise 44 centimeters (17 inches) by the end of the century, atolls such as Aldabra—a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in Seychelles and home to the world’s largest population of giant tortoises—may be at risk of sinking into the ocean. A new study, however, shows that despite consistently rising sea levels, most of Aldabra’s shoreline hasn’t changed since 1960. …An atoll forms when corals attach to the margins of a volcanic island or platform in the ocean. Over time, the volcano is eroded and subsides into the sea, leaving a ring-shaped reef. Winds and waves deposit crushed coral from surrounding reefs on top of the ring, ultimately forming islands that rise above sea level. …“Our research shows that Aldabra’s resilience to sea level rise is likely linked to its high protection status. This serves as a crucial lesson, especially now, when a significant tourism development within the Aldabra group of islands just started,” Constance wrote…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-seychelles-shoreline-resists-the-rising-seas. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-01. These homeowners’ PG&E bills reveal California’s dramatic shift on solar. By Chase DiFeliciantonio, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: When the California Public Utilities Commission slashed the price PG&E had to pay to buy electricity from solar customers, the industry nearly collapsed. But experts say the goal was equity — and a sustainable model that encouraged installing batteries to store power locally. …In late 2022, [California] state regulators voted to slash the level of that payment by around 75% to bring it closer to market prices. …“We were on a completely unsustainable path,” said UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein. “Households producing solar were compensated at the full retail price — at least double the market value of the electricity — for the quantities they sold back to the grid.” That money had to come from somewhere, and the result was that customers in PG&E’s service area who did not have solar panels were effectively subsidizing those that did, according to Borenstein and some experts. One state analysis found that solar credits were on track to increase the power bills of consumers without panels by an average of 25% by the end of 2024, to the tune of $8.5 billion. …The high price from PG&E for electricity also had another consequence, motivating solar owners to sell their excess power back to the utility rather than storing it locally in batteries. The lower compensation that took effect in April 2023 was meant to reverse that topsy-turvy incentive structure and encourage more consumers to buy batteries. Though they represent a higher up-front cost to consumers, batteries decentralize the power system and help relieve stress on the grid…. Full article at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-solar-cpuc-pge-nem3-batteries-19970591.php. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-23. Can green hydrogen replace fossil fuels? By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: Hydrogen is often touted as the future of green energy, and the allure is clear. When burned or run through a fuel cell, the fuel produces water as exhaust, not carbon dioxide (CO₂). It is energy-rich enough to drive semitrailer trucks, cargo ships, and other heavy-duty vehicles that are tough to power with batteries. And for many industrial processes requiring high-temperature reactions, such as fertilizer production and steel manufacturing, hydrogen is basically the only alternative to fossil fuels, says Kathy Ayers, a water electrolysis expert at Nel Hydrogen, a Norwegian electrolyzer producer. “Low-carbon hydrogen is absolutely essential if we are going to address the climate crisis.” …According to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to churn out more than 300 million tons of green hydrogen annually if it is to have a shot at limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. Yet today, operating green hydrogen plants, mostly in Europe and China, produce just 1 million tons per year. …Manufacturers already produce some 97 million tons of it, largely to make fertilizer and refine oil. But almost all of it comes from steam methane reforming, which …spews roughly 1 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere—equivalent to Japan’s emissions—to make so-called gray hydrogen. Green hydrogen comes instead from electrolyzers powered by renewable electricity. …“Hydrogen may be the best way to decarbonize some sectors of the economy,” Schrag says. “But it’s a lot more expensive than people are portraying.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/will-new-generation-water-splitting-devices-help-green-hydrogen-replace-fossil-fuels. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-23. Bloomberg charity to cover UN funds revoked with Paris Agreement withdrawal. By  Zack Budryk, The Hill. Excerpt: Businessman and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week his philanthropic foundation will contribute the U.S.’s financial obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after President Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the agreement. In a statement Wednesday through Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bloomberg said the organization will both cover the U.S.’s funding gap and its reporting requirements for planet-warming emissions. The announcement does not specify a dollar amount the organization will contribute, but it committed about $15 million to the UNFCCC between 2017 and 2020 after Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the agreement in his first term. The U.S. ordinarily pays about a fifth of the UNFCCC budget, which amounted to about $7.5 million in 2024. “Bloomberg Philanthropies has made significant investments in empowering local leaders, providing businesses with the data to track emissions while driving economic growth, and building coalitions across public and private sectors. Now, philanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever — and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said in a statement…. Full article at https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5103697-bloomberg-philanthropies-paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.

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2025-01-22. Microplastics in the bloodstream can induce cerebral thrombosis by causing cell obstruction and lead to neurobehavioral abnormalities. By Haipeng Huang et al, Science. Abstract: Human health is being threatened by environmental microplastic (MP) pollution. MPs were detected in the bloodstream and multiple tissues of humans, disrupting the regular physiological processes of organs. Nanoscale plastics can breach the blood-brain barrier, leading to neurotoxic effects. …This work uses high-depth imaging techniques to investigate the MPs within the brain in vivo. We show that circulating MPs are phagocytosed and lead these cells to obstruction in the capillaries of the brain cortex. These blockages …cause reduced blood flow and neurological abnormalities in mice. Our data reveal a mechanism by which MPs disrupt tissue function indirectly through …interference with local blood circulation, rather than direct tissue penetration. This revelation offers a lens through which to comprehend the toxicological implications of MPs that invade the bloodstream…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr8243. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-21. Geological ammonia: Stimulated NH₃ production from rocks. By Yifan Gao et al, Joule. Paper summary: Although ammonia production is crucial for global agriculture, it comes with substantial carbon footprints. [ammonia production is the chemical industry’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter] Here, for the first time, we propose and demonstrate a different method for stimulated (proactive) and in situ geological ammonia (Geo-NH₃) production directly from rocks. Our approach demonstrated that NH₃ can be efficiently generated by reacting natural (Fe,Mg)₂SiO₄ (olivine) minerals with nitrate-source water at 130°C–300°C and 0.25–8.5 MPa, and even at ambient temperature and pressure. Using both actual rocks and synthetic mineral Fe(OH)₂, we investigated mechanisms and optimized conditions through experiments and theoretical calculations. We revealed the basic chemistry enabling Geo-NH₃ production: Fe²⁺ contained in rocks reduces the nitrate source to NH₃. Our approach, involving only the injection of nitrate-source water into the subsurface to utilize in situ subsurface heat and pressure, requires no external H₂ or electric current and emits no direct CO₂, offering a feasible alternative to sustainable NH₃ production at scale…. Full article at https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(24)00541-5. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-21. A minute-by-minute account of the Pompeii eruption, revealed in agonizing detail. By Evan Howell, Science. Excerpt: Mount Vesuvius …79 C.E. eruption that entombed Pompeii and Herculaneum…. New research refines the eruption’s timeline and behavior in remarkable detail, …that unfolded over 32 agonizing hours…. Geologists have long recognized two major phases of the infamous 79 C.E. Vesuvius eruption: an initial rain of debris, followed by lethal pyroclastic currents—scalding, fast-moving flows of gas and debris that devastated the surrounding area. …[The new research’s] timeline was pieced together by looking at volcanic deposits and cross-referencing them with Pliny the Younger’s vivid eyewitness accounts, who witnessed the eruption from across the Bay of Naples. Now, in two studies published this month, volcanologists from the University of Naples Federico II have mapped the deposits in unprecedented detail and uncovered previously undetected eruption pulses. Study author Claudio Scarpati says the findings enable a minute-by-minute reconstruction, extending the timeline of the eruption from 19 to 32 hours and revealing a complex event with 17 destructive pyroclastic currents…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/minute-minute-account-pompeii-eruption-revealed-agonizing-detail. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.

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2025-01-21. U.S. Wind Power Faces Huge Challenges After Trump Orders a Crackdown. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: President Trump launched a broad attack on the wind power industry in the United States, with a sweeping executive order that could block not just new offshore wind farms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but potentially many smaller wind farms on federal land and even on private property across the country. The order…would halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms pending a fresh government review of the industry. It also directs federal agencies to stop issuing permits for all wind farms anywhere in the country for the time being, a move that could disrupt projects on private land, which sometimes need federal wildlife or other environmental permits. While the order does not call for a freeze on wind projects that are already under construction, Mr. Trump directed the U.S. Attorney General and secretary of the interior to explore the possibility of “terminating or amending” any leases that have already been issued. That means projects that have already received federal approvals could face new hurdles. Taken together, the moves could prove crippling for the U.S. wind industry, which provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and is a major source of power in Republican-led states like Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas. The wind industry currently has nearly 40 gigawatts worth of projects — enough to power tens of millions of homes — under development in the Atlantic Ocean and in states like Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/climate/wind-power-executive-order-trump.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.

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2025-01-21. Early supernovae may have filled the universe with planet-forming dust. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: “Dust is the building block of the universe,” says Melissa Shahbandeh, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Over millions of years, specks of cosmic dust and gas clump together to form large, dense clouds from which planets and stars are born. But the dust’s own origins have been mysterious. Now, in data from NASA’s JWST space observatory, Shahbandeh and her colleagues have found a source for the dust that filled the early universe: giant stellar explosions called interacting supernovae, whose intense shockwaves can blast out dusty plumes that accumulated in the supernovae’s surroundings. These results, presented last week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal are “impressive,” says Lifan Wang, an astrophysicist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the work. …The findings…deepen understanding of where Earth and everything on it came from, Shahbandeh says. “If we can understand how [dust] formed from the early times … then maybe we can understand how we got here.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-supernovae-may-have-filled-universe-planet-forming-dust. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 6.

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2025-01-16. The growing threat of multiyear droughts. By David L. Hoover and William K. Smith, Science. Excerpt: Droughts have major societal and ecological impacts, including drinking water shortages, crop failures, tree mortality, wildfires, and reduced ecosystem productivity (1). Shifts in the hydrological cycle and continued warming with climate change are leading to rapidly evolving droughts that are more intense and longer lasting (2). Extreme but short-term droughts (<1 year) can have a wide range of consequences, depending on the severity and timing of the drought as well as an ecosystem’s resistance (3, 4). However, as a drought extends to a multiyear event, these ecological effects can amplify because short-lived buffering from physiological adaptations or water storage may weaken, leading to longer-lasting results (4). On page 278 of this issue, Chen et al. (5) report that increasing precipitation anomalies and atmospheric moisture demands are leading to multiyear droughts with growing impacts on vegetation. This highlights the need to better understand the ecological responses to such drought events…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7419. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-16. Climate change may be driving spread of a deadly fungus from U.S. Southwest. By Meredith Wadman, Science. Excerpt: …The disease [Coccidioides fungus] causes …Valley fever is familiar in the Southwest, where it has infected wildland firefighters; carrot, beet, and radish pickers; solar power farm builders; and cast and crew members on a Ventura County film set. …the fungal spores, nourished in the warm, wet confines of the lung, morph into structures called spherules that burst to release boatloads of tiny endospores that become new spherules, continuing the cycle. Most of these people have a flulike illness lasting weeks or months. But 5% to 10% of cases result in lifelong lung infections, sometimes forcing people to be on powerful antifungal medications permanently. …cases are escalating fast. Diagnoses …have ballooned from about 2800 annually at the turn of the century to about 20,000 in 2023, with at least 200 people dying each year. Arizona and California, where roughly 97% of U.S. cases are reported, have seen dramatic increases recently: Incidence in Arizona has grown by 73% in the past 10 years—to 146 cases per 100,000 people. In California, incidence quadrupled between 2014 and 2023 to 23.2 cases per 100,000 people. …One likely contributor is a warming climate. The fungus thrives in hot, dry soil where it can get the best of competitors by going dormant during drought, then rebounding after rain returns. Valley fever cases tend to spike after wet winters that follow droughts, says Tom Chiller, chief of the mycotic diseases branch at CDC…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-may-be-driving-spread-deadly-fungus-u-s-southwest. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-16. Drought in a warmer, CO₂-rich climate restricts grassland water use and soil water mixing. By Jesse Radolinski  et al, Science. Summary: With climate change, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in many regions, but temperature and elevated CO₂ may modify its effects on soil, water, and vegetation: temperature by increasing plants’ water needs and CO₂ by decreasing them. Radolinski et al. conducted a field experiment in an Austrian montane grassland to determine the effects of these changes on soil water. Under drought, elevated CO₂, and warming, plants reduced transpiration, conserving water. Plants treated in this way (but not those with only one manipulated factor) used a larger proportion of recently precipitated water from large pores and with little mixing, showing that future drought will likely fundamentally change how water moves in soil. —Bianca Lopez. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0734. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 5.

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2025-01-16. A Meteorite Is Caught on Camera as It Crashes Outside a Front Door. By Amanda Holpuch, The New York Times. Excerpt: A couple in Canada were returning home from walking their dogs some months ago when they found a burst of dusty debris on their walkway. They turned to their security-camera footage for answers and found it showed a mysterious puff of smoke appearing on the tidy walkway where the mystery splotch was. The source of the splotch was officially registered on Monday as the Charlottetown meteorite, named after the city on Prince Edward Island, in eastern Canada, where it landed…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/science/meteorite-debris-security-camera-canada.html. [includes video of the camera] For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.

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2025-01-12. Rising tides could wipe out Pacifica, but residents can’t agree on how to respond. By Connor Letourneau, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: “When people fight the ocean,” [Pacifica, City Council member Christine] Boles said, “the ocean always wins.” …Pacifica, a picturesque surf town of roughly 35,000 just south of San Francisco, has become an important case study for the increasingly urgent questions climate change raises for many coastal communities. Should residents stay to defend their homes from rising tides that grow fiercer by the year? Or, should they admit defeat and cede the land back to nature? …“Managed retreat” — a term coined by geologists to describe the process of removing people, homes and businesses from at-risk areas — is at the root of the debate. …“We can’t build seawalls high enough to protect us forever,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “So, in the long run, it’s either going to be managed retreat or unmanaged retreat. It’s up to each community to decide.”… Full article at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/pacifica-climate-change-rising-oceans-20007281.php. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-10. “Exceptional” Global Warming Spike Continued in 2024. By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: More than 3 billion people experienced their hottest year ever in 2024 because of anthropogenic climate change. The world is speeding toward its 1.5°C warming target. …“Even if we likely exceeded [1.5°C] this year, that doesn’t mean that we’ve exceeded it in the context of the Paris accord, which is over a longer time period,” Schmidt said. “But I will say that we anticipate future global warming as long as we are emitting greenhouse gases, and until we get to net zero, we will not get a leveling off of global mean temperature.”…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/exceptional-global-warming-spike-continued-in-2024. For GSS Climate Change chapter 4.

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2025-01-09. Grazing can reduce wildfire risk amid climate change. By Valério D. Pillar and Gerhard E. Overbeck, Science. Excerpt: Over half of Earth’s land surface is covered with fire-prone vegetation, with grassy ecosystems—such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, and shrublands—being the most extensive. In the context of the climate crisis, scientists worldwide are exploring adaptation measures to address the heightened fire risk driven by more frequent extreme climatic conditions such as droughts and heatwaves, as well as by non-native plant invasions that increased fuel loads and altered fire regimes. Although fire is intrinsic to grassy ecosystems, rising exposure to wildfire smoke harms human health and the environment. Here, we argue that grazing management in grassy ecosystems could help reduce wildfire risk and its consequences…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7471. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-09. Built to remove carbon. By Christopher Bataille, Science. Excerpt: According to current climate science, global temperatures will continue to rise until net carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reach zero (1)—that is, when the amount of CO₂ added to the atmosphere is balanced by the amount removed. Given current projected emissions, 2 billion to 15 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO₂ may need to be removed from the atmosphere annually to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming below 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures (2, 3). …Van Roijen et al. (4) report that replacing traditional building materials with CO₂-storing alternatives could sequester carbon at the billion-tonne level. …Building materials such as asphalt, wood, stone, steel, and concrete are foundational to human civilization and have large global demands, …~30 Gt of concrete are used each year in the world (5). Some of these materials are also major contributors to CO₂ emissions. …Cement production accounts for 7.8% of CO₂ and 5.1% of greenhouse gas emissions (6). …Van Roijen et al. performed quantitative analyses of CO₂ storage capacities of key building materials based on 2016 global consumption of each material. …Although several different building materials were analyzed for their CO₂ storage potential, asphalt aggregates, bricks, cement, and concrete aggregates demonstrated the largest storage potentials because of their sheer demands. Van Roijen et al. show that replacing just traditional cement and concrete aggregates with CO₂-storing materials could remove 13.1 Gt of atmospheric CO₂ annually…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7379. For GSS Energy Use chapter 8.

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2025-01-08. Darker, Less Cloudy Earth Contributed to Record Heat. By Nathaniel Scharping, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In a string of ever-hotter years, 2023 stood out: It was the warmest on record (though 2024 will likely surpass it), with temperatures 1.4°C (2.5°F) above the preindustrial average and 0.17°C (0.3°F) above the previous record set in 2016. One cause for the spike may have been that Earth was just a little darker than it’s been in recent history. Earth’s albedo, a measure of how reflective the surface is, hit a record low in 2023, according to the authors of a study in Science. That record was due mainly to a dearth of bright, low-level clouds, which reflect more solar radiation than land or ocean. The answers to why these clouds were absent and, crucially, whether the trend will continue are still unclear…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/darker-less-cloudy-earth-contributed-to-record-heat. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 6.

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2025-01-08. Warm Seawater Encroaches on Major Antarctic Ice Shelf. By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The vast Antarctic Ice Sheet holds more than half of Earth’s freshwater. In several places around the continent, the ice extends over the ocean, where it forms large floating shelves. Observations suggest many of these ice shelves are thinning as they melt from below, with implications for ocean dynamics, global sea level, and Earth’s climate. For now, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—one of Antarctica’s biggest, extending over the Weddell Sea—appears to be relatively stable, thanks to near-freezing currents circulating over the continental shelf beneath it. However, climate models predict that shifting ocean currents may bring warmer water to the continental shelf in the future. To gain a clearer picture of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf’s future, Steiger et al. analyzed water temperature and velocity data from 2017 to 2021. …In this study, researchers found that the summertime flow of warm water occurs not just along the Filchner Trough but also along a second, smaller trough to the east and that the relative importance of each path varies from year to year. During warmer-than-average years, the warm water flows more rapidly across the continental shelf…. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JC020700, 2024). Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/warm-seawater-encroaches-on-major-antarctic-ice-shelf. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-07. The Fleet-Winged Ghosts of Greenland. By  Caroline Van Hemert, bioGraphic. Excerpt: …Peregrine falcons hold near-mythical appeal in our collective imagination, and for good reason. Topping out at speeds of more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) per hour, they’re the fastest species on Earth, plummeting from the sky like amber-eyed missiles. …Perhaps more cosmopolitan than any other wild bird species, peregrine falcons live on every continent except Antarctica, in habitats ranging from polar deserts to subtropical rainforests. They’re flexible in what they eat—from songbirds to seabirds, carrion to chickens—and in where they nest—on cliffs, in trees, on the ground, or on buildings. Some individuals barely budge throughout their lifetimes, whereas others, like the Greenlandic variety, embody the roots of their scientific name—Falco peregrinus, or “wandering falcon”—making migrations upwards of 25,000 kilometers per year. …Since birds like peregrines feed high on the food chain, contaminants accumulate in their bodies and cause severe eggshell thinning, among other health impacts …making the species an unfortunate poster child highlighting the hazards of DDT to living creatures. Rachel Carson’s influential “Silent Spring” unveiled the environmental crisis that postwar scientists had created: by attempting to improve agriculture through the production of pesticides, they had inadvertently poisoned the world. By the early 1970s, humans had decimated peregrine populations across much of their native range. …For Greenlandic peregrines, the impacts of warming are decidedly mixed. …extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and large temperature swings, can be fatal for nesting birds. …Warmer summers have also given rise to new residents such as mosquitoes, which have moved into the Pituffik area within the past two decades. …mosquitoes can carry diseases such as avian malaria, which, though not yet detected in Greenland, has infected falcons elsewhere in their range and decimated other bird species on remote islands. Even insects themselves can be deadly. In northern Canada, for instance, peregrine nestlings have been killed by hordes of biting black flies, whose abundance has been linked to warming-induced weather events. …Despite such challenges, peregrines have again demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt. An increasing number of peregrines have nested at Pituffik over the past three decades, with birds venturing hundreds of kilometers north of their previously described range limits and possibly even edging out long-resident gyrfalcons. This trend is likely to continue…. As the ultimate shapeshifters of the avian world, such flexibility bodes well for their future…. Full article at https://www.biographic.com/the-fleet-winged-ghosts-of-greenland/. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 6.

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2025-01-09. Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations. By Samuel D. Arman et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Much can be said about what a species ate based on the form of their teeth. In Australia, it has been hypothesized that the extinction of many large marsupial species by about 40,000 years ago may have been due to a narrow diet in the face of a changing climate. Arman et al. looked at extant and extinct kangaroo species using a tooth microwear approach and concluded that most species were generalists, not specialist grazers or browsers, and thus were adapted to deal with climate-driven vegetation changes. Thus, their demise was likely not driven by climate change, leaving humans as the probable cause. —Sacha Vignieri. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4340. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.

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2025-01-09. 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaching a critical climate goal and capping 10 years of unprecedented heat. By Laura Paddison, CNN. Excerpt: It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus [https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level]. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5-degree limit countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Scientists are much more concerned about breaches over decades, rather than single years — as above that threshold humans and ecosystems may struggle to adapt — but 2024’s record “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London…. Full article at https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/climate/2024-hottest-year-record/index.html. See also https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/. For GSS Climate Change chapter 4.

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2025-01-08. New research shows a quarter of freshwater animals are threatened with extinction. By CHRISTINA LARSON, AP. Excerpt: Nearly a quarter of animals living in rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Wednesday. “Huge rivers like the Amazon can appear mighty, but at the same time freshwater environments are very fragile,” said study co-author Patricia Charvet, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Ceará. Freshwater habitats – including rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and wetlands – cover less than 1% of the planet’s surface, but support 10% of its animal species, said Catherine Sayer, a zoologist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in England. The researchers examined around 23,500 species of dragonflies, fish, crabs and other animals that depend exclusively on freshwater ecosystems. They found that 24% were at risk of extinction – classified as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered – due to compounding threats from pollution, dams, water extraction, agriculture, invasive species, climate change and other disruptions. …The tally, published in the journal Nature, is the first that time researchers have analyzed the global risk to freshwater species…. Full article at https://apnews.com/article/freshwater-species-threatened-extinction-cec91afc657bb0922c1d2966adf031ee. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.

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2025-01-08. ‘Good boy!’ Truffle-sniffing dogs are helping uncover hidden underground ecosystems. By Christie Wilcox, Science. Excerpt: Mere moments after getting out of the car, Rye—a golden retriever with a nose for truffles—has already sniffed out something in this oak forest about an hour east of Portland. “What’d you find, Rye?” Heather Dawson asks. She puts what looks like a brown, lumpy pebble to her nose and inhales a somewhat garlicky odor. “Tuber candidum,” she says. “Good boy,” she tells Rye as she tosses a blue and orange tennis ball, his reward for finding a truffle. …Whereas most people train their dogs to find the region’s two tastiest treasures—Oregon white truffles (Tuber oregonense) and Oregon black truffles (Leucangium carthusianum)—Dawson has embraced, and benefited from, Rye’s ability to sniff out a wider range of fungi. …Because of their intimate ecological relationships with plants, truffles play critical roles in ecosystems. Yet their biology and diversity are poorly understood because of the inherent difficulty in studying species that live their whole lives up to a meter and a half underground. Mycologists suspect many may be vulnerable to extinction, the victims of habitat loss, human activities, and climate change. To gather data, researchers such as Dawson are turning to dogs…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/good-boy-truffle-sniffing-dogs-are-helping-uncover-hidden-underground-ecosystems. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 5.

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2025-01-06. Ancient Romans likely breathed lead pollution. By Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: From 27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E., Rome enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana. It witnessed the beginning of the Roman Empire, the building of the Colosseum, and the expansion of the empire to encompass the entire Mediterranean and much of the British Isles. However, the industrial-scale silver smelting that accompanied such prosperity came with a dark side: lead pollution. In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists for the first time quantified atmospheric levels of this pollutant and found the toxic metal likely led to diminished IQs for many ancient Romans. …No matter its impact, ancient Rome produced the earliest “unambiguous” example of widespread human pollution of the environment, McConnell says. “I leave it to epidemiologists and historians to determine if, and by how much, it changed history.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-romans-likely-breathed-lead-pollution. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-03. Antarctic Ice Melt May Fuel Eruptions of Hidden Volcanoes. By Madeline Reinsel, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A slow climate feedback loop may be bubbling beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. The continent…includes volcanic giants such as Mount Erebus and its iconic lava lake. But at least 100 less conspicuous volcanoes dot Antarctica, with many clustered along its western coast. Some of those volcanoes peak above the surface, but others sit several kilometers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Climate change is causing the ice sheet to melt, raising global sea levels. The melting is also removing the weight over the rocks below, with more local consequences. Ice sheet melt has been shown to increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes elsewhere on the globe. Coonin et al. ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions. The reason is that this unloading of ice sheets reduces pressure on magma chambers below the surface, causing the compressed magma to expand. This expansion increases pressure on magma chamber walls and can lead to eruptions…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/antarctic-ice-melt-may-fuel-eruptions-of-hidden-volcanoes. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.

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2025-01-03. A New Tornado Database Helps Researchers Worldwide. By Andrew J. Wight, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In the past 70 years, more than 75,000 tornadoes have been recorded in the United States. Recordkeeping of these phenomena outside this region has been largely fragmented, sitting isolated in books, government databases, and research archives. But a new effort to scour as many publicly accessible records as possible is highlighting the scale of this hazard around the world. In a new study, Malcolm Maas, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a team of tornado researchers compiled a tornado database that they hope will boost tornado research globally. …The United States accounts for 21,548 of the recorded fatalities in the database published by Maas and his collaborators. But tornadoes in other countries wreak havoc as well: Bangladesh accounts for 8,325 fatalities in the database, India has seen 1,473, and the rest of the world combined accounts for 3,824…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-new-tornado-database-helps-researchers-worldwide. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-02. Disentangling the drivers of wildfires. By Jianbang Gan, Science. Excerpt: Wildfire occurrence and scale worldwide have risen over recent decades, with the most destructive wildfires in North America taking place in the past decade (1, 2). …On page 91 of this issue, Wang et al. (3) report the key drivers of burn severity…. …These studies led to the development of predictive models that are used to project wildfire effects under different scenarios over time in locations where no historical fires have been recorded. However, the drivers of wildfire effects are complex and involve multiple interlinked factors, such as climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. …Among all the factors, fuel aridity, which reflects the abundance and moisture content of flammable vegetative fuels, was determined to be the primary driver for most Canadian forest fires between 1981 and 2020. …Wang et al. found a large increase in burn severity in northern Canada compared with other regions in Canada. …Whereas weather condition was the dominant driver of the effect of wildfires in northern Canada, fuel aridity and vegetation type were key drivers of wildfires in southern areas. …From an ecological perspective, the increase in fire activity in boreal forests, especially in the northern regions of the world, has raised grave concerns about the health and function of biomes that act as important carbon sinks (11). …Cooperation between the US, Canada, and Russia, which share 93% of the global boreal forest, is needed to effectively manage fire while preserving this valuable ecosystem of the northern hemisphere (12)…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5463. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-01. The Panama Canal Has a Big Problem, but It’s Not China or Trump. By Dennis M. Hogan, Guest Essay for The New York Times. Excerpt: In 2023, …July, the middle of Panama’s rainy season. But the rains had been sparse, and water levels in the canal had sunk to troubling lows. Without freshwater from rain, our guide explained, the locks on the canal could not operate. …the true threat to U.S. commerce through Panama. If the goal is securing affordable access to the transit point over the long term, it is climate change, not Chinese influence, that U.S. policymakers should worry about. …Sending a single ship through the canal’s locks can use around 50 million gallons of water, mainly freshwater collected from Lake Gatún. Though the canal is, for the moment, operating at full capacity, a drier climate and greater demand for drinking water have in recent years reduced the volume of available water. That has forced the state-run Panama Canal Authority at times to limit the number of daily passages through the canal, at one point by as much as 40 percent. …With less rain, the reservoirs fill up more slowly, which means less water available to operate the locks, which means fewer ships can pass. Hence, the 2023-24 drought, among the worst on record, slowed transits and drove up transit prices, causing long delays, more expensive consumer goods and greater instability in shipping routes. …The limited number of passages has led to auctions for passage rights that further inflated the growing cost of shipping goods through the canal. (The canal authority increased tolls just before the 2023 drought began.) … Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/opinion/panama-canal-trump-china-drought.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.

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2025-01-03. John Deutch recalls how Jimmy Carter left his mark on energy research. By Jeffrey Mervis, Science. Excerpt: John Deutch …joined President Jimmy Carter’s energy team shortly after the Georgia Democrat took office in January 1977. And for the next 3 years Deutch had a front-row seat to history as Carter, who died on 29 December 2024 at age 100, worked to make the country less dependent on imported oil and in the process reshaped the direction of federal energy research. …Within 6 months Deutch would become the founding director of the Office of Energy Research at the newly created Department of Energy (DOE), the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the short-lived Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). …Meeting DOE’s mandate also meant launching programs outside the legacy energy sources, notably fossil fuels and nuclear power, that had been the mainstay of DOE research under its predecessor agencies. …Although the Carter administration tried hard to get people in the U.S. to conserve energy and to find alternatives to foreign oil, including putting solar panels on the White House, climate change was not a significant part of OER’s portfolio under Deutch. …“But there was really no competence in that area within the department at the time,” he says. “And its importance was not yet clearly recognized except among a very restricted set of environmentalists.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/john-deutch-recalls-how-jimmy-carter-left-his-mark-energy-research. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-03. E.V. Demand Leads Automakers to a Strong 2024 Finish. By Neal E. Boudette, The New York Times. Excerpt: General Motors was the biggest winner in U.S. sales in the final quarter, with a gain of 21 percent. It more than doubled its electric vehicle sales. …Ford Motor sold more than 530,000 vehicles in the quarter, a gain of nearly 9 percent. Ford’s E.V. sales climbed 16 percent, to more than 30,000 vehicles. …Analysts said the year-end jump in E.V. sales might also have been spurred somewhat by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has suggested he will eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit on electric vehicles priced under $80,000. The tax credit has helped manufacturers offer the attractive lease deals…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/business/ford-gm-vehicle-sales.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.

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2025-01-03. Wind and solar power drive Germany’s renewable energy surge. By DW. Excerpt: Europe’s largest economy saw a rise in renewable energy generation in 2024. Germany made a notable shift toward renewable energy sources last year, according to a report from the Federal Network Agency released on Friday. Renewable energy accounted for 59% of the country’s total electricity generation, up from 56% in 2023. Wind energy was the leading source, contributing 31.9% to the nation’s energy mix, while solar energy contributed 14.7%. …Last year also marked Germany’s first full year without nuclear power, following the final shutdown of its nuclear plants in April 2023. The country aims to be climate-neutral by 2045…. Full article at https://www.dw.com/en/wind-and-solar-power-drive-germanys-renewable-energy-surge/a-71213890. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

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2025-01-03. California tribes celebrate historic dam removal: ‘More successful than we ever imagined’. By Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian. Excerpt: Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border. In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed – the largest project of its kind in US history. …The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles (423km) from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way. Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years. “It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a non-profit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.” …In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging. Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered. …In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters. …The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/03/california-klamath-dam-removal. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.

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2025-01-02. Farmers are abandoning land worldwide. What should happen to it? By Dan Charles, Science. Excerpt: …“This is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Verburg, a land use researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. Global trade in food has fueled the clearing of forests in Brazil and Bolivia for agriculture, but elsewhere it has sidelined small farms with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water. “People give up because they cannot compete,” Verburg says. …Farmers, or their children, are walking away from land in Eastern Europe, southern France, South Korea, Japan, and mountainous parts of India. It’s difficult to measure the exact extent of the trend. Land is often abandoned, then reclaimed and farmed again. But an estimated 120 million hectares have been left fallow in Europe alone since 1990. Globally, the figure since 1950 could be as high as 400 million hectares—half the area of Australia. “Abandonment will continue, I think there’s no doubt,” Verburg says. In fact, climate change is likely to accelerate it as droughts afflict more farming areas. The phenomenon raises thorny questions that ecologists and policymakers are now debating. What sort of nature will reclaim this land? Does it add up to environmental restoration or degradation? Should policymakers step in to steer the fate of the land or even stop it from being abandoned?…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/farmers-are-abandoning-land-worldwide-what-should-happen-it. For Ecosystem Change GSS chapter 6.

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