My Climate Change News

One of Europe's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals has confirmed plans to expand capacity at its site after backing from investors.

South Hook in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, processes about 20% of UK current demand for natural gas.

But new research has revealed LNG's environmental costs, and Friends of the Earth Cymru are "very concerned".

The Welsh government said it is developing Wales' pathway to a net zero system.

South Hook has been importing liquefied gas from various parts of the world before turning it into gas and delivering it to homes since 2010.

At the moment, the site can process about 15.6m tonnes of gas per year and can handle 20% of the UK's natural gas demand.

Whether new gas pipelines will be needed from Milford Haven to accommodate South Hook's expansion remains unknown.

Dr Carol Bell, an energy market expert, said Milford Haven is a "vital port" for the UK's import ...

The power plants, due to be shut down, would be kept in reserve to provide electricity if Russia ended shipments of natural gas.

Germany plans to order coal-fired power plants that were due to be shut down to be placed in reserve, as part of a plan to ensure the country can keep the lights on if supplies of natural gas from Russia are abruptly cut.

A bill drawn up this week by the economy ministry, led by Robert Habeck, a member of the Greens, envisions maintaining power plants that burn coal and brown coal, or lignite, so they could be fired up on short notice.

“This means that the short-term use of coal-fired plants in the electricity sector is made possible on demand, should the need arise,” it states. The measure still requires approval by the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Natural gas, much of it from Russia, accounted for 15 percent of Germany’s electricity generation in 2021, the ministry said, although it expected that number to be lower ...

Breathe, due out next year, will see the London mayor draw on his own experience with adult-onset asthma to address the crisis

London mayor Sadiq Khan to is to publish his first book, described by his publisher as a “warm and practical guide” to tackling the climate emergency.

Khan became mayor of London in 2016, and since then has brought in a range of environmental measures, including introducing the world’s first ultra-low emission zone, overseeing hundreds of kilometres of new cycle lanes and announcing plans to rewild Hyde Park.

He was diagnosed with adult-onset asthma when he was 43, while training for the London Marathon. He has said his asthma is down to breathing polluted London air, and it was his diagnosis that drove his interest in addressing air pollution and climate change.

Khan’s book Breathe, which will be released in 2023, will outline seven ways in which “environmental action gets blown off course”, said publisher Hutchinson Heinemann. ...

Sixteen youth plaintiffs are suing the state of Montana for their right to access a clean and healthful environment in a case scheduled to go to trial next year.

Attorneys for the Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust, the Western Environmental Law Center and Kalispell-based McGarvey Law representing the kids announced the trial date this week. The group says in Held v. Montana, that the state’s support of fossil fuels have contributed to climate change.

According to University of Montana law professor Anthony Johnstone, broad climate change challenges like this one are rare, but they have become more common in recent years.

“Almost all of them have failed for one reason or the other, so this would be the first one in Montana, and possibly the first one in the nation, to get as far as a trial.”

According to Our Children's Trust, the trial will be the first youth climate trial in US history

Johnstone said the lawsuit is unlike similar lawsuits because ...

This post is part of a series of quarterly roundups on scientific integrity.

During the third quarter of 2022, Congress passed major legislation to subsidize clean energy but failed to authorize new funding for the COVID-19 response or strengthen requirements for evidence in Food and Drug Administration user fee programs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weakened guidance for preventing COVID-19 transmission while EPA proposed new rules to protect communities from hazardous chemicals.

Over the past few months, Congress has passed several science-informed laws. Most notable is the Inflation Reduction Act, which responds to the evidence about global warming and the imperative to take immediate action to slow it. A problematic “dirty deal” between leadership and Senator Joe Manchin promised that in exchange for Manchin voting yes on the bill, his federal permitting bill that would fast-track more fossil fuel projects would be included in the must-pass ...

China will end subsidies for electric and hybrid cars at the end of the year, authorities have announced, saying the strength of sales in the sector meant state support was no longer needed. In a statement published Friday, the Ministry of Finance said purchase subsidies would be reduced by 30 percent from the beginning of 2022 before being scrapped completely by the end of the year.

"Given the growth of the industry for vehicles with new energy, the sales trends and the smooth transition of manufacturers, the subsidies... will end on December 31," the ministry said.

Sales of electric and hybrid cars have boomed in China, with increases of more than 100 percent year-on-year in recent months.

The cars are set to represent 18 percent of all vehicle sales in 2022, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) estimated last week. In 2019, they accounted for only five percent.

Of the 27.5 million vehicles set to be sold this year, according to ...

In our quest for clean energy and sustainable health solutions, advanced materials with unique, customizable properties play a crucial role. Among them, a new generation of porous solids known as three dimensional (3D) covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have generated considerable interest owing to potential applications in catalysis, separation, semiconduction, proton conduction, and biomedicine. The novelty of these materials lies in their synthesis as well as their applications. 3D COFs are porous organic materials developed from linking molecular building blocks with strong covalent bonds into crystalline, extended, net-like reticular three-dimensional structures.

However, synthesis of 3D COFs from pre-designed building units leading to net-like "reticular" arrangement of constituent parts or "network topologies" remains challenging. This is due to the shortage of 3D building units and inadequate reversibility of the linkages between the building ...

A study into the impact of global warming on the biodiversity of the Antarctic has identified how predicted expansion of ice-free areas will impact native animals and plants, paving the way for the invasion of non-native species in Antarctica.

An international team of all-women researchers, who published their study in Global Change Biology, included researchers from Australia, the UK, and the United States, including QUT's Dr Justine Shaw and Dr Jasmine Lee, who is also a research fellow at the British Antarctic Survey. Dr Shaw and Dr Lee are researchers with the Australian Research Council special research initiative Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF).

Dr Lee, the first author of the study, said although permanently ice-free land currently covered less than one percent of Antarctica, it is predicted to increase by nearly 25 percent by 2100. Ice free area is crucial habitat for most of Antarctica's terrestrial biodiversity, including its iconic ...

More and more trees are suffering the consequences of decades of human-made climate change. The growth of the European beech has so far suffered decline mainly in southern Europe. European beech is Germany's most important native forest tree species and it is most commonly found in Central Europe. A research team from the University of Göttingen has now been able to show that the European beech is suffering from increasing drought stress in summer in northern Germany as well. This climate stress is particularly pronounced at warmer sites, when there is a higher density of these trees together, and on very sandy soils. The results have been published in the journal Global Change Biology.

In their study, the researchers specifically selected a wide range of sites ranging from wet to very dry, because even in northern Germany there are very dry beech forests. The scientists took numerous wood samples at all these sites to measure the tree rings in the tree trunks. ...

Years of research show that climate change signals are amplified in the Arctic, and that sea ice in this region is sensitive to increases in Arctic warming. Sea ice greatly modifies the exchanges of heat, momentum and mass between the atmosphere and the ocean. So, the timings of the sea ice melt and freeze onsets, as well as the length of the melt and freeze seasons, play a key role in the "heat budget" of the atmosphere-ice-ocean system.

Until now, most studies calculated the Arctic melt and freeze onsets using remote sensing observations from the surface, but rarely investigated the freeze-thaw process at ice bottom.

In a new study published today in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, an international team of scientists synthesized multisource data from 2001 to 2018 to explore the spatiotemporal variations of both surface and basal melt/freeze onsets and uncover the mechanism behind them. These findings could improve our understanding of ...

Methane mitigation has been identified as essential for addressing climate change. Intensive research in the past decade has resulted in a better understanding of factors driving enteric methane emissions in dairy cattle. In a recent article in the Journal of Dairy Science, published by FASS Inc. and Elsevier, researchers from The Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA, USA) and the International Livestock Research Institute (Nairobi, Kenya) shared their findings from a meta-analysis of studies on possible mitigation solutions. The authors concluded that some methane inhibitors and dietary changes could decrease emissions with no negative effect on milk production.

Livestock is responsible for 94% of methane emissions within agriculture in the United States. "Governments and the public are interested in finding solutions to climate change, and it is believed that mitigation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is part of the solution," said lead author ...

A forest's resilience, or ability to absorb environmental disturbances, has long been thought to be a boost for its odds of survival against the looming threat of climate change.

But a new study suggests that for some Western U.S. forests, it's quite the opposite.

In the journal Global Change Biology, researchers have published one of the first large-scale studies of U.S. forest land exploring the link between forest resilience and mortality.

The study is based on more than three decades of satellite image data used for assessing forest resilience, and more than two decades of ground observations of forest tree death across the continental United States.

The results show that while high ecosystem resilience correlates with low mortality in eastern forests, it is linked to high mortality in western regions.

"It's a surprising finding. … It was widely assumed that greater forest resilience indicates lower mortality risk, but this relationship ...

Major ice streams can shut down, shifting rapid ice transport to other parts of the ice sheet, within a few thousand years. This was determined in reconstructions of two ice streams, based on ice-penetrating radar scans of the Greenland ice sheet, that a team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have just presented in the journal Nature Geoscience.

How quickly the sea level rises in the future will to a great extent depend on how dynamic or stable the Greenland ice sheet is -- ice that has, through its mass loss, contributed ca. 40 mm to sea-level rise since 1900. In addition to melting on its surface and base, the sheet loses mass through ice streams -- essentially conveyor belts for rapid ice transport from the inner sheet to its edge. The routes of past ice streams can now be accurately reconstructed in the now glacier-free areas at the sheet's edge, as the landforms they leave behind offer clearly visible clues. However, until recently, very little was ...

An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth's oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of harvesting oceanic water vapor as a solution to limited supplies of fresh water in various locations around the world.

The study, led by civil and environmental engineering professor and Prairie Research Institute executive director Praveen Kumar, evaluated 14 water-stressed locations across the globe for the feasibility of a hypothetical structure capable of capturing water vapor from above the ocean and condensing it into fresh water -- and do so in a manner that will remain feasible in the face of continued climate change.

Kumar, graduate student Afeefa Rahman and atmospheric sciences professor Francina Dominguez published their findings in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

"Water ...

As winter approaches, many species of animals -- from bears and squirrels to parasitic wasps and a few lucky humans -- hunker down for some needed rest. The northern star coral (Astrangia poculata)also enters a hibernating state of dormancy, or quiescence, during this time. But what happens to its microbiome while it's sleeping?

A study led by University of California, Davis, Assistant Professor Anya Brown found that microbial communities shift while this coral enters dormancy, providing it an important seasonal reset. The work may carry implications for coral in warmer waters struggling with climate change and other environmental issues.

"Dormancy, at its most basic, is a response to an environmental stressor -- in this case, cold stress," said Brown, who is part of the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory in the Department of Evolution and Ecology. "If we understand more about this recovery period, it might help us understand what microbes may be responsible for ...

Lithium-ion batteries -- used in products from appliances to cell phones, as well as in most electric vehicles -- are composed of a cathode and an anode with an electrolyte in between. Ions move from anode to cathode through the electrolyte in a reaction that converts chemical energy to electrical energy.

The drive toward decarbonization and the demand for electric cars has increased the focus on sustainably producing energy-dense cathodes. However, traditional processing presents challenges.

The first obstacle is a reliance on cobalt, a rare metal mined and refined abroad. This dependence on foreign sources poses risks to American manufacturing supply chains and transportation infrastructure.

The availability of cobalt is not the only complication. The balance of other metals common in cathodes can also make the manufacturing process longer and more hazardous. For example, high nickel concentration has led to the widespread use of a chemical mixing method ...

A new analysis of more than 20,000 trees on five continents shows that old-growth trees are more drought tolerant than younger trees in the forest canopy and may be better able to withstand future climate extremes.

The findings highlight the importance of preserving the world's remaining old-growth forests, which are biodiversity strongholds that store vast amounts of planet-warming carbon, according to University of Michigan forest ecologist Tsun Fung (Tom) Au, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Global Change Biology.

"The number of old-growth forests on the planet is declining, while drought is predicted to be more frequent and more intense in the future," said Au, lead author of the study published online Dec. 1 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Given their high resistance to drought and their exceptional carbon storage capacity, conservation of older trees in the upper canopy should be the top priority from a climate mitigation ...

A new study shows how plants "encode" specific chemistries of their lignin to grow tall and sustain climate changes: each plant cell uses different combinations of the enzymes LACCASEs to create specific lignin chemistries. These results can be used both in agriculture and in forestry for selecting plants with the best chemistry to resist climate challenges.

Lignin is an important carbon sink for the environment as it stores about 30 percent of the total carbon on the planet. It allows plants to hydrate and reach tremendous heights up to 100 metres; without lignin, plants could not grow nor survive climate changes. At the cell level, specific lignin chemistries adjust the mechanical strength and waterproofing to support plant growth and survival.

Scientists at Stockholm University recently demonstrated that lignin has a chemical "code" that is adapted at the cell level to fulfill different roles in plants. How each cell "encodes" specific lignin chemistry however ...

University of California scientists have a new way to demonstrate which neighborhoods returned to pre-pandemic levels of air pollution after COVID restrictions ended.

Vehicle emissions are the biggest source of carbon dioxide in Southern California's air. As people drove their cars far less in 2020 compared to 2019 due to the pandemic, there was a major drop in CO2 on regional highways. A new study published in AGU Advances using a mobile laboratory shows the CO2 drop was roughly 60%.

By analyzing grass samples from across the state, the same study also showed in fine detail that some parts of California were back to high levels of emissions by 2021, while others -- generally in more affluent areas -- were not.

"Community scientists sent us hundreds of wild grass samples. We analyzed them for radiocarbon content, which is a proxy for fossil fuel emissions," said Francesca Hopkins, UC Riverside assistant professor of climate change and study ...

Using smart technology to monitor the health, reproductivity, location, and environmental conditions of cattle can help with food safety and supply chain efficiency, but this monitoring adds energy cost to an already highly emissive industry. To combat this, researchers publishing in the journal iScience on December 1 have designed a wearable smart device for cows that captures the kinetic energy created by even their smallest movements and uses it to power smart ranch technology.

"On a ranch, monitoring environmental and health information of cattle can help prevent diseases and improve the efficiency of pasture breeding and management," says co-author Zutao Zhang, an energy researcher at Southwest Jiaotong University in China. "This information can include oxygen concentration, air temperature and humidity, amount of exercise, reproductive cycles, disease, and milk production."

The team's smart ranch design involves cows wearing small sensory devices around their ...