My Climate Change News

Amazon on Tuesday reported strong results for the first quarter, driven by growth in its cloud-computing unit and new advertising dollars from its Prime Video streaming service.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said it brought in $143.31 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, a 13% jump compared to the same period last year. Net income came out to $10.43 billion, or 98 cents per share. That soundly beat Wall Street analysts' expectations for 84 cents a share, according to FactSet.

"It was a good start to the year across the business, and you can see that in both our customer experience improvements and financial results," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.

The nation's biggest online retailer is coming off better-than-expected results for the holiday shopping period, when it saw strong consumer spending aided by discounts and faster shipping speeds. Amazon held another discount event in late March, right before the end of the ...

Bangladesh's weather bureau said Wednesday that last month was the hottest April on record, with the South Asian nation and much of the region still enduring a suffocating heat wave.

Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

Punishing heat last month prompted Bangladesh's government to close schools across the country, keeping an estimated 32 million students at home.

"This year the heat wave covered around 80 percent of the country. We've not seen such unbroken and expansive heat waves before," Bangladesh Meteorological Department senior forecaster Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik told AFP.

He said last month was the hottest April in Bangladesh since records began in 1948 "in terms of hot days and area coverage in the country".

Weather stations around Bangladesh had recorded temperatures between two and eight degrees higher than the 33.2 degrees Celsius (91.8 degrees ...

The low water levels that choked cargo traffic were more closely tied to the natural climate cycle than to human-caused warming, a team of scientists has concluded.

The recent drought in the Panama Canal was driven not by global warming but by below-normal rainfall linked to the natural climate cycle El Niño, an international team of scientists has concluded.

Low reservoir levels have slowed cargo traffic in the canal for most of the past year. Without enough water to raise and lower ships, officials last summer had to slash the number of vessels they allowed through, creating expensive headaches for shipping companies worldwide. Only in recent months have crossings started to pick up again.

The area’s water worries could still deepen in the coming decades, the researchers said in their analysis of the drought. As Panama’s population grows and seaborne trade expands, water demand is expected to be a much larger share of available supply by 2050, according to ...

The delay grants companies more time before they’re expected to disclose ESG impacts and data under new reporting regulations.

The delay gives more time to companies that must report sector-specific climate impacts. Source: wutzkohphoto via Shutterstock

The European Council said on Tuesday that it will defer by two years the adoption of sector-specific sustainability reporting standards for EU companies under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

The delay also applies to non-EU companies operating in the region.

This means that U.S.-based companies that were preparing for the first time to disclose Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and other requirements under the CSRD by the end of June now have until the end of June 2026, and EU companies similarly get an additional two years to disclose sector-specific information.

The council stated that the delay will "allow companies to focus on the implementation of the first set of European ...

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent.

Climate change and the outgoing El Niño will likely ignite more weather extremes.

The Pacific Ocean - Earth’s largest body of water - is an engine for weather around the planet, and it’s about to shift gears this year.

The warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, known as El Niño, is now winding down and is poised to move into its counterphase, La Niña. During an El Niño year, warm water starts to spread eastward across the surface of the equatorial Pacific. That warm water evaporates readily, adding moisture to the atmosphere and triggering a cascade that alters rainfall, heat waves, and drought patterns across the world.

The current El Niño is among the strongest humans have ever experienced.

It fueled wildfires, droughts, and floods in South America. It bent the jet stream, trapping heat over the southern United States last summer, and ended the year with the warmest winter on record for much of the country. It fueled both heavy rain and ...

The number of companies with science-based emissions reduction goals grew 500 percent since 2018, but corporate finance supporting those goals is only increasing 5 percent annually.

Investors are making it clear to companies: It’s time for them to put their capital behind their climate commitments.

More are looking for evidence in corporate climate transition plans, which outline steps a company is taking to reach net zero, including how it’s managing capital. Transitioning successfully will require "systemic changes in corporate behavior, facilitated by changes in cash flows," according to the authors of the "Corporate Climate Finance Playbook."

Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an analysis and advisory nonprofit, published the playbook last year as a practical guide for how sustainability professionals can influence corporate cash flow and management, with a view to helping their business reduce emissions and reach their climate goals.

Collaborating ...

The climate phenomenon known as El Niño - and not climate change - was a key driver in low rainfall that disrupted shipping at the Panama Canal last year, scientists said Wednesday.

A team of international scientists found that El Niño - a natural warming of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide - doubled the likelihood of the low precipitation Panama received during last year's rainy season. That dryness reduced water levels at the reservoir that feeds freshwater to the Panama Canal and provides drinking water for more than half of the Central American country.

Human-caused climate change was not a primary driver of the Central American country's unusually dry monsoon season, the World Weather Attribution group concluded, after comparing the rainfall levels to climate models for a simulated world without current warming.

The study has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal yet but follows scientifically accepted techniques, and ...

Utilities must comply with the EPA’s new emissions rules and invest in carbon capture and storage.

A gas-powered electricity generating station in Arizona. Source: Shutterstock/James Mattil

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released new rules Thursday that require newly built natural gas power plants to cut 90 percent of their emissions by 2032, and existing fossil fuel-run power plants will have to comply or exit the grid by 2039.

To reach this goal, utilities will have to invest in carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) technologies, something EPA administrator Michael Regan believes is financially feasible.

"[The EPA] has engaged extensively with industry and their representatives, from multiple power companies, that have indicated that CCS is a viable technology for the power sector today," said Regan on a call with reporters Thursday.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its associated credits, according to Regan, is one ...

A Philippine zoo is giving tigers frozen treats made of animal blood and preventing lions from mating during the hottest time of the day as a heat wave scorches the country.

Unusually hot weather has sent temperatures in the capital Manila to a record high in recent days and forced schools across the archipelago nation to suspend in-person classes.

As people flock to air-conditioned shopping malls and swimming pools for relief from the extreme heat, animals at Manila Zoo are also trying to cool off.

Preventing heat stroke, particularly among the big cats, was the "main priority", zoo veterinarian Dave Vinas told AFP on Tuesday when the mercury hit 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the city.

Water is splashed on the walls and ground of concrete enclosures throughout the day to help lower the temperature inside.

"Bloodsicles" made from frozen ground beef or chicken, animal blood and vitamins are given to the big cats to ...

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Yale Climate Connections

When the sharing economy took off in the 2010s and upended entire industries, the firmest proponents of the model heralded it as an economic revolution that would help slash emissions. Of all the ideas that emerged and dissolved over the years, shareable electric scooters seemed to possess the most promise for climate. Almost anyone with a smartphone and a credit card could grab one and ride it down the block or across town, eschewing automobiles.

Yet, as the industry matures and Lime - which, with operations in 280 cities worldwide, is the biggest player - moves further into its eighth year, researchers have shown that the eco-friendly dreams of shared micromobility have not materialized without problems. The true climate benefits of these fleets depends upon how companies deploy and manage them, and safety remains a concern as injuries climb. ...

At a time when hunting of wildlife and habitat loss are driving long-term changes to ecosystems, including stark wildlife population declines and greater vulnerability to climate change and zoonotic disease transmission, the scientists identified red colobus monkeys as key indicators of tropical forest health and flagships for local and international conservation initiatives.

Writing in the journal Conservation Letters, the authors focus on five priority action areas:

The above actions build on the Red Colobus Conservation Action Plan, initiated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group and the African Primatological Society. The action plan aims to make red colobus a priority conservation target, which will help to secure Africa's tropical forests and reduce unsustainable hunting for wild meat. A Red Colobus Working Group (RCWG) has been formed to guide implementation of the action plan and a ...

In a new study published in the journal Water, researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso have identified a novel means of treating the wastewater generated by oil and gas production: bacteriophages.

Ramón Antonio Sánchez, a doctoral candidate within UTEP's chemistry program, is the first author on the publication, detailing how bacteriophages, viruses that are often highly specific and lethal to a single species of bacteria, can be used as a rapid and cost-effective method to treat produced water on an industrial scale.

Sánchez said if the work is successful, it would give the oil and gas industry a means of treating, reusing and recycling produced water, rather than the current industry practice of disposing the majority of produced water by injecting it into the ground post oil exploration.

Sánchez, along with one of his collaborators, Zacariah Hildenbrand, Ph.D., a UTEP alum, were inspired to use bacteriophages based on ...

According to a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, scientists have found that soil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are more sensitive to climate warming in permafrost-collapsed areas than in non-collapsed areas.

This study, based on field warming experiments combined with laboratory incubation of soils from a large-scale sampling, provides new insights about permafrost carbon–climate feedback in the context of future climate warming.

Warmer temperatures have led to rapid permafrost thawing in high-latitude and high-altitude permafrost regions. Abrupt permafrost thaw, known as thermokarst, occurs in approximately 20% of the northern permafrost region, but this region stores about half of all below-ground organic carbon. This type of thawing can restructure land surface morphology, causing abrupt changes to the soil biotic and abiotic properties, which may significantly alter ecosystem carbon cycling.

Since both thermokarst and non-thermokarst areas are ...

ET includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration from plant leaves. The difference between precipitation and ET indicates the water balance available for societal needs, including agricultural and industrial production. However, measuring ET is challenging. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presents a computer model that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for ET prediction based on remote sensing estimates.

"Ground-based ET estimates capture the local fluxes of water transferred to the atmosphere but are limited in scale. In contrast, satellite data provide ET information on a global scale. Still, they are often incomplete due to clouds or sensor malfunction, and the satellite cycle over an area may require several days."

"We conducted this research to predict missing data and to generate daily continuous ET data that accounts for the dynamics of land use and atmospheric air ...

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline'". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.

It's been many years since 'climategate' - when in 2009, the email server at the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, was hacked. The unidentified hacker helped themselves to thousands of emails. These were sifted through and a selection was in due course made available for public download on a Russian server.

What followed was typical of the tactics used in the campaign to deny the existence of ...

The first warm patch discovered in the northeast Pacific Ocean was the "Blob" event of 2013–2016, followed by another warm blob in 2019–2020.

The Blob stretched from coastal Alaska to the Baja region of California, with sea surface temperatures as much as 6°C above normal. Vital fish stocks such as sockeye salmon and Pacific cod were impacted, and the event saw geographical shifts of a number of species, including phytoplankton, as well as the closures of important fisheries and mass strandings of marine mammals and seabirds. But some species increased in numbers, such as pyrosomes, bioluminescent colonies of millimeter-sized individuals and commonly called "sea pickles," which were attracted to the warm water.

With global warming these marine heat waves are expected to become more frequent, larger in magnitude and longer in duration. The fundamental problem is that warmer waters hold less carbon dioxide and offer fewer nutrients for the plants and ...

Common-pool resources, such as forests, fisheries, and groundwater, need to be managed effectively to reduce over-harvesting and environmental damage. Researchers knew that strong boundaries around a community's common-pool resource could promote effective management, but they weren't exactly sure why.

The new research—in collaboration with mangrove-dependent communities in Tanzania—reveals that boundaries don't just keep others out, but also promote good conservation practices by community members.

Without effective boundaries, communities can be subject to theft from neighbors. The study reveals that if they then believe that this theft is causing deforestation, then they are more likely to want to increase their own harvest—potentially initiating a "race to the bottom."

Secure boundaries, however, lead to collective decisions within the community that keep harvests sustainable.

Tragedy of the commons?

These conclusions are ...

The White House wants federal agencies to keep climate change in mind as they decide whether to approve major projects.

The Biden administration on Tuesday released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells.

As part of a deal to raise the country’s debt limit last year, Congress required changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, a 54-year-old bedrock law that requires the government to consider environmental effects and to seek public input before approving any project that necessitates federal permits.

That bipartisan debt ceiling legislation included reforms to the environmental law designed to streamline the approval process for major construction projects, such as oil pipelines, highways and power lines for wind- and solar-generated electricity. The rules released ...

When countries signed the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty, high-income countries were required to report their aviation-related emissions. But 151 middle and lower income countries, including China and India, were not required to report these emissions, although they could do so voluntarily.

This matters because the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change relies on country reports of emissions during negotiations on country-specific emissions cuts.

"Our work fills the reporting gap, so that this can inform policy and hopefully improve future negotiations," says Jan Klenner, a Ph.D. candidate at NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme and the first author of the new article, which was recently published in Environmental Research Letters.

The new data show that countries such as China, for example, which did not report its 2019 aviation-related emissions, were second only to the United States when it came to total ...