My Climate Change News

Future oil and gas drilling will be limited across more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the nation’s largest expanse of public land, under a sweeping Biden administration plan aimed at protecting sensitive ecosystems and wildlife.

The Interior Department’s final rule represents one of President Biden’s most significant steps to curb fossil fuel development on federal lands. It could help the president’s reelection campaign court young voters, a key Democratic constituency, after many youth climate activists criticized the administration’s approval of a massive drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope last year.

In a separate move, Interior announced Friday that it will block a controversial road crucial to operating a planned copper and zinc mine in northern Alaska, saying it would threaten Indigenous communities and fragment wildlife habitat. Together, the two decisions are aimed at safeguarding some of Alaska’s last wild places ...

The heat fell upon Mali’s capital like a thick, smothering blanket - chasing people from the streets, stifling them inside their homes. For nearly a week at the beginning of April, the temperature in Bamako hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The cost of ice spiked to ten times its normal price, an overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down.

With much of the majority-Muslim country fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic. As their body temperatures climbed, people’s blood pressure lowered. Their vision went fuzzy, their kidneys and livers malfunctioned, their brains began to swell. At the city’s main hospital, doctors recorded a month’s worth of deaths in just four days. Local cemeteries were overwhelmed.

The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month - which scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without human-caused climate change - is just the ...

The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old.

She and her family were living in Charlottesville, where Ahdoot is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. There was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.

About an hour after he left for camp, she received a call from a nearby emergency room. Her son had collapsed from the heat and needed IV fluids to recover.

“It was after that event that I realized that I had to do something,” she said. “That, as a pediatrician and a mother, this was something that I had to learn about and get involved in.”

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Dr. Ahdoot made good on that vow. She is the lead author ...

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Analysis of mooring observations and hydrographic data suggest the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation deep water limb in the North Atlantic has weakened. Two decades of continual observations provide a greater understanding of the Earth's climate regulating system.

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience led by scientists at University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, found that human-induced environmental changes around Antarctica are contributing to sea level rise in the North Atlantic.

"Although these regions are tens of thousands of miles away from each other and abyssal areas are a few miles below the ocean surface, our results reinforce the notion that even the most remote areas of the world's oceans are not untouched by human activity," said the study's lead author Tiago Biló, an ...

The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heat wave from April 1 until April 5, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) triggering many deaths.

Observations and climate models used by researchers at the WWA showed that "heat waves with the magnitude observed in March and April 2024 in the region would have been impossible to occur without the global warming of 1.2C to date", which scientists attribute to human-induced climate change.

While periods of high temperatures are common in the Sahel at this time of year, the report said that the April heat wave would have been 1.4C cooler "if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels".

It added that the five days of extreme heat was a once-in-a-200-year event, but that "these trends will continue with future warming".

The length and severity of the extreme heat led to an increase in the number of deaths and hospitalizations in ...

Senior Couple Walking in London by Themeisle used under CC ZERO 1.0

When climate disasters like wildfires, flooding, heat waves, or polar vortexes grip communities, they hold a sharper threat for older adults, whose numbers in the US and Canada are growing. And even beyond these more headline-grabbing events are the everyday activities that may prove more challenging for older adults to perform independently in a warmer world. In Cascadia, that might look like being able to afford air conditioning to keep cool as the summers get hotter. Or so one can close the windows against wildfire smoke to keep indoor air safer for breathing, especially for those with respiratory ailments.

Housing expert and community resilience advocate Danielle Arigoni argues in her new book that adapting our communities to better serve the needs of older adults - generally defined as those 65 and older - in fact makes our communities safer, more livable, and more climate-resilient for ...

Dr. Manoela Machado, a postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and also at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, and the lead author of the study, said, "Emergency fire bans are not a standalone solution for the fire crises; they can be effective when strategically implemented and rigorously enforced during critical periods to prevent ignitions, but to solve the crises, we need measures that address the motivations behind different types of fires and, most crucially, focus on stopping deforestation."

The Amazon plays an essential role in regulating global climate patterns, supporting biodiversity, and sustaining local and Indigenous communities. The persistent inability to effectively manage these fires not only jeopardizes the ecological integrity of the Amazon but also intensifies global climate change and negatively impacts human health and well-being.

Dr. Erika Berenguer, a co-author of the study, said, "When ...

Development and groundwater pumping are causing land subsidence and heightening the risks of sea level rise.

As China’s cities grow, they are also sinking.

An estimated 16 percent of the country’s major cities are losing more than 10 millimeters of elevation per year and nearly half are losing more than 3 millimeters per year, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

These amounts may seem small, but they accumulate quickly. In 100 years, a quarter of China’s urban coastal land could sit below sea level because of a combination of subsidence and sea level rise, according to the study.

“It’s a national problem,” said Robert Nicholls, a climate scientist and civil engineer at the University of East Anglia who reviewed the paper. Dr. Nicholls added that, to his knowledge, this study is the first to measure subsidence across many urban areas at once using state-of-the-art radar data from satellites.

Subsidence in these cities is ...

Rooftop solar adoption is critical for residential decarbonization and hinges on its value to households. Climate change will probably affect the value of rooftop solar through impacts on rooftop solar generation and cooling demand, but no studies have quantified this effect. In this study, we quantified household-level effects of climate change on rooftop solar value and techno-economically optimal capacity by integrating empirical demand data for over 2,000 US households across 17 cities, household-level simulation and optimization models, and downscaled weather data for historic and future climates. We found that climate change will increase the value of rooftop solar to households by up to 19% and increase techno-economically optimal household capacity by up to 25% by the end of the century under a Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 scenario. This increased value is robust across cities, households, future warming scenarios and retail tariff structures. Researchers, ...

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area and is the first health impact assessment of coal train pollution in the world.

It found that coal train pollution has significant health effects that disproportionately impact communities of color and people who are young, old, or have low incomes.

While centered on East Bay neighborhoods, the study carries implications for communities worldwide living alongside passing coal trains. At least 80 countries use coal power, which generates about 40% of the world's electricity.

"These trains run all over the world, exposing the poorest populations who often live close to the train tracks," said lead author Bart Ostro, a scientist with the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center. "As a result, these impacts have local and global implications."

Coal, and more coal

The study includes parts of Oakland, Berkeley, Martinez and Richmond, where coal is already being ...

A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition - titled "String Quartet No. 1 "Polar Energy Budget" - is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.

The backstory about how the composition was put together is published April 18 in the journal iScience as part of a collection "Exploring the Art-Science Connection."

"I strongly hope that this manuscript marks a significant turning point, transitioning from an era where only scientists handle data to one where artists can freely leverage data to craft their works," writes author and composer Hiroto Nagai, a geo-environmental scientist at Rissho University.

Scientist-composer Hiroto Nagai asserts that music, as opposed to sound, evokes an emotional response and posits that "musification" ...

The disaster, intensified by El Niño, is devastating communities across several countries, killing crops and livestock and sending food prices soaring.

An estimated 20 million people in southern Africa are facing what the United Nations calls “acute hunger” as one of the worst droughts in more than four decades shrivels crops, decimates livestock and, after years of rising food prices brought on by pandemic and war, spikes the price of corn, the region’s staple crop.

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all declared national emergencies.

It is a bitter foretaste of what a warming climate is projected to bring to a region that’s likely to be acutely affected by climate change, though scientists said on Thursday that the current drought is more driven by the natural weather cycle known as El Niño than by global warming.

Its effects are all the more punishing because in the past few years the region had been hit by cyclones, unusually heavy rains and a ...

Images of a saturated desert metropolis startled the world, prompting talk of cloud seeding, climate change and designing cities for intensified weather.

Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of the planet’s driest regions have stunned the world this week. Heavy rains in the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged cars, clogged highways and killed at least 21 people. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a major global hub, were severely disrupted.

The downpours weren’t a freak event - forecasters anticipated the storms several days out and issued warnings. But they were certainly unusual. Here’s what to know.

Heavy rain there is rare, but not unheard-of.

On average, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few inches of rain a year, although scientists have found that a sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in infrequent but severe bursts, not as periodic showers.

U.A.E. officials said the 24-hour rain total on Tuesday was the country’s ...

As a result, the soil organic matter in this region decomposes slowly and accumulates in large quantities, underscoring its substantial potential for carbon release.

In the face of climate warming, the low-temperature limiting effect of soil ecological processes will be weakened or eliminated, thereby affecting the soil carbon cycling in the regional ecosystem. However, the increased input of organic matter in soil caused by warming would strongly affect soil C cycling and microbial activities.

They found that exogenous organic matter input increased the respiration rate and accumulation of aggregates, and changed the respiration rate pattern among aggregates with different particle sizes.

The temperature sensitivity of soil aggregate respiration increased at the beginning of incubation due to exogenous organic matter and decreased thereafter. Microbial carbon use efficiency was negatively correlated with exogenous organic matter input, incubation ...

A drought that pushed millions of people into hunger across southern Africa has been driven mostly by the El Niño weather pattern - not climate change, scientists said on Thursday.

Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have declared a national disaster over the severe dry spell that started in January and has devastated the agricultural sector, decimating crops and pastures.

Appealing for almost $900 million in aid this week, Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema linked the lack of rains to climate change.

But scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group found global warming had little to do with it.

"Over the past year, attribution studies have shown that many extreme weather events have been driven by a combination of both climate change and El Niño," said Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial College London.

"The southern Africa drought appears to be a rarer example of an event fueled primarily by El Niño."

In a study focusing on Zimbabwe, ...

In a webinar on April 19, we'll explore how climate organizations are currently using storytelling in their work, the impacts of these stories, and lessons learned from other movements.

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Yale Climate Connections

A Colorado program is helping more low-income residents afford EVs.

Atiyeh: “We don’t want price to be a barrier to any Coloradan being able to enjoy the benefits of an electric vehicle.”

Carrie Atiyeh is with the Colorado Energy Office. Her team has rolled out the Vehicle Exchange Colorado program. It offers instant rebates of $6,000 for a new EV or $4,000 for a used one to residents who turn in an old gas or diesel-powered vehicle to be recycled.

To qualify, participants can earn no more than 80% of the area median income. The vehicle must be drivable and at least 12 years old or have failed a Colorado emissions test.

Atiyeh: “We ...

A study, published in Nature Energy, is among the first to explore the floating photovoltaics (FPV) at the continental scale, finding that FPV installed at existing major reservoirs could produce 20–100% of the electricity expected from Africa's planned hydropower dams. Using a state-of-the-art energy planning model covering the continent's entire energy system, the researchers found that FPV is cost-competitive with other renewables and thus a key part of Africa's future energy mix.

"Floating solar is fast becoming cost-competitive with land-based solar, and our results suggest it could conceivably avoid the need to build many of the dams planned for hydropower across Africa," said lead author Wyatt Arnold. "This would allow nations to meet future electricity demands while sidestepping the damaging environmental and social impacts of large dams."

"By embracing floating solar and reducing the reliance on hydropower, developing economies can ensure a more ...

In a new study, researchers from Louisiana State University and Tulane University examined the endemic Gulf of Mexico fish species that may have been most impacted by the oil spill to see how their distribution has changed over the years. To get their data, they studied museum specimens from natural history collections, looked at relevant literature, and combed biodiversity databases.

With 1541 fish species known from the region, and 78 endemic fish species, the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most biologically rich and resilient marine environments in the world, but how much of this diversity is still left intact?

The study found that 29 out of the Gulf's 78 endemic fish species haven't been reported in museum collections since 2010. The Yucatan killifish, for example, which is considered endangered, was last reported pre-spill, in 2005, off the Yucatán Peninsula.

Six of the non-reported species are considered of greatest concern, because their areas of ...