Ellsworth Glacier in Landsat images from 2018, 2019 and 2020. Red arrow is the 2016 terminus location, yellow arrow is the 2020 termins location, pink arrow is the rift, purple dots is the snowline, iceberg is Point A. Glacier retreated 2.4 km, main iceberg 1 km2 Ellsworth Glacier is a valley glacier draining south from Sargent Icefield on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. Along with the Excelsior Glacier it has been the longest … The post Ellsworth Glacier, Alaska Calves Major Iceberg in 2020 appeared first on From a Glacier's Perspective.
Nature, Published online: 23 September 2020; doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2686-xA one-kilometre-resolution map of aboveground carbon accumulation rates of forest regrowth shows 100-fold variation across the globe, with rates 32% higher on average than IPCC estimates.
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE01638A, Review Article Huwei Wang, Dengyun Zhai, Feiyu Kang Potassium-ion batteries (PIBs) have attracted considerable interest as large-scale energy storage candidates owing to a naturally abundant potassium resource and low cost. Since the birth of PIBs, the solid electrolyte... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Solar energy generation has grown far cheaper and more efficient in recent years, but no matter how much technology advances, fundamental limitations will always remain: solar panels can only generate power during the daytime, and much of the sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere during its journey to the ground. What if instead we could collect solar power up in space and beam it down to the surface? We're seeking ideas for technologies and concepts for solar power satellites that will do precisely this.
Earth’s oceans help to slow global warming by absorbing carbon from our atmosphere – but fully observing this crucial process in the upper ocean and lower atmosphere is difficult, as measurements are taken not where it occurs, the sea surface, but several metres below. New research uses data from ESA, NASA and NOAA satellites to rectify this, and finds that far more carbon is absorbed by the oceans than previously thought.
Corbett, Charles R. (2020): "Extraordinary" and "Highly Controversial": Federal Research of Solar Geoengineering Under NEPA. (September 21, 2020). Northwestern University Law Review Online (forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3696942. "This Essay argues that NOAA should use its discretion to conduct a programmatic environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) as an initial step in complying with Congress’s mandate. Federal research into solar geoengineering is an extraordinary and highly controversial policy. The agency should carefully consider the environmental, social, and political impacts that may come with this undertaking. Further, the public deserves an opportunity to weigh in on the matter and to be appraised...
"Country targets reducing carbon emissions to net zero for all sectors by 2050 to tackle climate change." LINK
"As part of that effort, the Firm recently joined the Steering Committee of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) and will seek to play a leadership role in capacity building." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02016H, Paper Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. Nixon Sunny, Niall MacDowell, Nilay Shah In comparison with the power sector, large scale decarbonisation of heat has received relatively little attention at the infrastructural scale despite its importance in the global CO 2 emissions landscape. In... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Air pollution is estimated to have caused 30.8 million premature deaths in China and Taiwan since 2000, according to an algorithm that was trained on satellite data
Even the normally frozen North Pole had some open water when visited by an historic Arctic expedition toward summer's end.
Monitoring the cryosphere is essential to fully assess, predict and adapt to climate variability and change. Given the importance of this fragile component of the Earth system, today ESA, along with Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space, have signed a contract to develop the Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter mission, known as CRISTAL.
"The new package will include more than $300 million towards pilot carbon capture projects, grants for businesses for hydrogen, electric and bio-fuelled vehicles, new microgrids in regional and remote communities and a sector-specific grant program for hotels to increase energy productivity." LINK
"The European Commission on Thursday (17 September) defended its plan to bring carbon removals from agriculture, land use and forestry into the EU’s updated climate target for 2030, saying this was in line with UNFCCC standards." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02589E, Communication Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. Balázs Endrődi, Egon Kecsenovity, Angelika Samu, Tibor Gergo Halmagyi, Santiago Rojas-Carbonell, Lan Wang, Yushan Yan, Csaba Janaky The poly(aryl piperidinium)-based anion exchange membrane (PiperION) with high carbonate conductance is employed for CO2 electrolysis to CO in conjunction with a tailored electrolyzer cell structure. This combination results in... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center are playing an important role in a bold new initiative intended to fill the biggest data gap in water management known as OpenET . The OpenET project will enable farmers and water managers in arid western states to accurately track water consumption by crops and other vegetation through a web application that uses data from satellites and weather stations. Evapotranspiration—the ET in OpenET—is the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere through evaporation from land surfaces and transpiration from plants. ET can be tracked by satellites because the energy transfer process cools plants and soil down, so irrigated fields appear cooler and greener in satellite...
"The controversial technology of reflecting sunlight away from the planet could help blunt the worst impacts of climate change." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE01694B, Review Article Wenhua Zuo, Mingzeng Luo, Xiangsi Liu, Jue Wu, Haodong Liu, Jie Li, Martin Winter, Riqiang Fu, Wanli Yang, Yong Yang Due to their high specific capacities beyond 250 mAh g-1, lithium-rich oxides have been considered as promising cathodes for the next generation power batteries, bridging the capacity gap between traditional... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02769C, Communication Zhi Chang, Yu Qiao, Huijun Yang, Han Deng, Xingyu Zhu, Ping He, HaoShen Zhou Detrimental decompositions of electrolytes, especially the dehydrogenation of solvents, would accelerate the batteries’ degradations and hinder the development of high-energy-density lithium-metal batteries (LMBs). The nature of building classic concentrated electrolytes... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
"The UK's Climate Assembly published a report today putting forward its recommended approach to meeting the UK's legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050." LINK
Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems of our time. According to a new report from the European Environment Agency (EEA), air pollution now contributes to one in eight deaths in Europe. Observations from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite have been vital in tracking the evolution of air pollution, specifically nitrogen dioxide concentrations, across Europe.
"It is this daunting reality ― that the best-case scenario still poses major hazard for generations to come ― that has drawn me to study solar geoengineering." LINK
"This agreement marks the first partnership between a DAC technology company and a UK development partner and signifies the next step towards establishing a UK DAC industry that will create significant environmental and economic benefits." LINK
"This unit aims to offer basic information about large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches and the need for their governance." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE01690J, Paper Younghye Kim, Sojung Park, Seung-Jae Shin, Woong Choi, Byoung Koun Min, Hyungjun Kim, Wooyul Kim, Yun Jeong Hwang In the electrochemical CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR), Cu has been spotlighted as the only electro-catalyst that can produce multi-carbon molecules, but the mechanism of the selective C 2+ production reaction remains... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE01834A, Paper Shijian Jin, Min Wu, Roy Gerald Gordon, Michael J. Aziz, David Kwabi We perform a thermodynamic analysis of the energetic cost of CO2 separation from flue gas (0.1 bar CO2(g)) and air (400 ppm CO 2 ) using a pH swing created by electrochemical... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
"Running Tide grows kelp, which sucks carbon from the atmosphere. Then it just lets it sink to the ocean floor, where the carbon will stay for a thousand years." LINK
In the first week of September, sea ice extent took a sharp downward turn, exceeding the pace of decline for any previous year during that period, and placing the 2020 sea ice minimum firmly as second lowest—after 2012—in the 42-year continuous … Continue reading →
"This research note assesses the technology deployment, emissions, and employment impacts of the 45Q credit in the industrial sector under current policy." LINK
"The company embraces a culture of experimentation and, as part of that, it’s leaning into negative emissions." LINK
Hurricane Sally is inching ashore in southeast Alabama Wednesday morning and has started to flood parts of the central Gulf Coast with an expected 1-2 feet of rain, maybe more. With that much rain forecast, it seems likely to join other recent catastrophic flood disasters Harvey (2017) and Florence (2018) in ushering in a new era […]
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE01435D, Review Article Xianguang Miao, Huiyang Wang, Rui Sun, Chengxiang Wang, Zhiwei Zhang, Zhaoqiang Li, Long-Wei Yin The high fluidity and flammability characteristics of conventional organic liquid electrolyte make it vulnerable for currently employed commercial lithium batteries to suffer from potential safety risks and premature cell failure.... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Abstract Sea-level rise, a consequence of climate change, is progressively affecting coastal areas around the globe. In turn, protected areas are keystones for protecting coastal biodiversity and the ecosystems services ensuring sustainable livelihoods. Effective management and adaptation plans are needed to maintain ecological function and integrity. In the present article, we used a coastal digital elevation model to simulate inundation surfaces and a prioritization index for ranking management interventions in 278 coastal protected areas from 27 African countries. Of these, 15 areas and eight countries demonstrated a high need for proactive management actions because of high levels of biodiversity, international conservation relevance, and exposure to sea-level rise. From the array of management...
"Functioning ecosystems are not only central to the carbon cycle; they are the basis of livelihoods, culture and identity for people. Healthy ecosystems protect biodiversity, water cycles, disaster risk reduction, global health, and – perhaps most crucially of all – food." LINK
"An interview with Dr Kevin Surprise, an educator, academic and researcher on the political economy of climate change, with a special focus on the rapidly evolving field of solar geoengineering." LINK
"Mike then moved the conversation toward geoengineering, which Paul believes needs more attention. Mike sees a fundamental problem in pretending like the world could geoengineer its way out of climate change without causing other problems, whereas Paul thinks there is a balance to be found." LINK
Deadline: 08. October 2020 "You will be responsible for carrying out research on the international policies and politics of Greenhouse Gas Removal/Carbon Dioxide Removal, as part of InSIS research activities in this area." LINK
To limit global warming while feeding an expanding population, every part of the food system... The post In-depth Q&A: What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Brienen, R. J. W.; Caldwell, L.; Duchesne, L.; Voelker, S.; Barichivich, J.; Baliva, M. et al. (2020): Forest carbon sink neutralized by pervasive growth-lifespan trade-offs. In Nat Comms 11 (1), p. 4241. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17966-z. "Here we show that growth-lifespan trade-offs are indeed near universal, occurring across almost all species and climates. This trade-off is directly linked to faster growth reducing tree lifespan, and not due to covariance with climate or environment. Thus, current tree growth stimulation will, inevitably, result in a lagged increase in canopy tree mortality, as is indeed widely observed, and eventually neutralise carbon gains due to growth stimulation." LINK
Deadline: 09. October 2020 "The Department of Ocean Systems (OCS) is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate with a background in environmental sciences or chemistry to develop and test methods to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases and contaminants from dredged harbor sediment (principal investigator dr. Peter Kraal)." LINK
World Meteorological Organization et al. (2020): United in Science 2020. A multi-organization high-level compilation of the latest climate science information. Report. "The findings of the reports are sobering: despite scientific warnings, increased political and societal attention and the Paris Agreement, global GHG emissions have continued to increase and the emissions gap is larger than ever." LINK
Melara, A. Jasmin; Singh, Udayan; Colosi, Lisa M. (2020): Is aquatic bioenergy with carbon capture and storage a sustainable negative emission technology? Insights from a spatially explicit environmental life-cycle assessment. In Energy Conversion and Management 224, p. 113300. DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2020.113300. "[T]his study applies life-cycle assessment (LCA) incorporating a geographic information system (GIS) framework to estimate the environmental impacts of A-BECCS over all stages of its life-cycle." LINK
"Hugh makes the point that the risks of Geoengineering are less than the risks from climate tipping points that we are facing if we don’t do it." LINK
"The "road map" is designed to help Australia cut its carbon emissions while helping boost the post-pandemic economic recovery, and was announced earlier this year but did not contain any detail." LINK
IEAGHG Technical Report (2020): Review of Constructability and Operational Challenges faced by CCUS Projects. IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme. "This study covers a new area and aims to serve as a guidance for future projects. IEAGHG will continue monitoring the constructability and operability aspects of large scale CCUS projects in the next years." LINK
"Companies are starting to pioneer plans to erase not just this year’s carbon footprint, but their historical carbon footprints as well." LINK
"Direct air capture or DAC is one of the many strategies we need to employ to achieve the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. So, how do we scale up the DAC industry to capture the hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 we need to remove from the atmosphere? And what would that kind of growth mean in terms of business opportunities and job creation?" LINK
( Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology ) As a side effect of their metabolism, microorganisms living on methane can also convert ammonia. In the process, they produce nitric oxide (NO), a central molecule in the global nitrogen cycle. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen (DE), and Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL), now discovered the enzyme that produces NO, closing an important gap in our understanding of how methanotrophs deal with rising environmental ammonia concentrations.
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02175J, Review Article Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. Dmitry Bogachuk, Salma Zouhair, Konrad Wojciechowski, Bowen Yang, Vivek Babu, Lukas Wagner, Bo Xu, Jaekeun Lim, Simone Mastroianni, Henrik Pettersson, Anders Hagfeldt, Andreas Hinsch Carbon-based electrodes have been widely applied in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) because of their chemical inertness and compatibility with up-scalable techniques, signifying their solid potential for mass-production. The material scarcity... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
A group of more than 100 UK citizens tasked with recommending ways to reduce the country's carbon emissions to net zero has backed scaling taxes for flights and bans on new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars
In January 2020, more than 100 randomly selected members of the public met in a... The post Q&A: How the ‘climate assembly’ says the UK should reach net-zero appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Brack, Duncan; King, Richard (2020): Managing Land‐based CDR: BECCS, Forests and Carbon Sequestration. In Global Policy. DOI: 10.1111/1758-5899.12827. "To date there has been little focus on the optimum strategies for integrating land‐based CDR approaches – under which circumstances forest areas are best left undisturbed, managed for conservation, and/or managed for harvested wood products, and how these options affect the availability of residual feedstocks for BECCS. This paper reviews this debate and suggests appropriate policy measures." LINK
Morrow, David (2020): Integrated Assessment Modeling of Carbon Removal at ICRLP. Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy, September 2020. "The Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy is helping to push the boundaries of integrated assessment modeling of carbon removal with two ongoing projects." LINK
Capital City Fire Rescue responded to the 2000 block of Glacier Bear Avenue for reports of a home filled with smoke Tuesday evening. Assistant Fire Chief Ed Quinto said the fire call came in at 5:48 pm. Crews said all of the occupants got out safely. A neighbor was able to put out most of the fire with an extinguisher as crews responded to the scene. - PUB DATE: 9/9/2020 8:45:29 AM - SOURCE: KINY-AM 800
Stronger wind speeds, rising sea levels and increases in water temperature add up to create more potential for destruction.
Digdaya, Ibadillah A.; Sullivan, Ian; Lin, Meng; Han, Lihao; Cheng, Wen-Hui; Atwater, Harry A.; Xiang, Chengxiang (2020): A direct coupled electrochemical system for capture and conversion of CO2 from oceanwater. In Nat Comms 11 (1), p. 4412. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18232-y. "Capture and conversion of CO2 from oceanwater can lead to net-negative emissions and can provide carbon source for synthetic fuels and chemical feedstocks at the gigaton per year scale. Here, we report a direct coupled, proof-of-concept electrochemical system that uses a bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPMED) cell and a vapor-fed CO2 reduction (CO2R) cell to capture and convert CO2 from oceanwater." LINK
A recent report confirms that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, whose mass-loss rates have been rapidly increasing, are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case sea-level rise scenarios.
"Reviewer 2 and Walker Lee get into the guts of this paper in a lively discussion. Walker's research breaks new ground in stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, raising interesting questions about a more refined technique that potentially creates surprising socio-economic effects." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02585B, Communication Feng Zheng, Dushyant Barpaga, Paul Mathias, Deepika Malhotra, Phillip Koech, Yuan Jiang, Mukund Bhakta, Marty A. Lail, Aravind Rabindran, Greg Whyatt, Charles Freeman, Andy Zwoster, Karl Weitz, David J Heldebrant A comprehensive evaluation of a recently developed water-lean amine-based solvent, namely N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA), has been performed to analyze its post-combustion CO2 capture performance. This evaluation comprises (1) fundamental characterization of... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
China’s main energy-consuming and producing provinces are directing the equivalent of hundreds of billions of... The post Analysis: China’s Covid stimulus plans for fossil fuels three times larger than low-carbon appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China surprised the world yesterday when president Xi Jinping told the United Nations general assembly that the country would achieve carbon neutrality before 2060
Bats that normally migrate more than 1500 kilometres in the winter are staying closer to home as the world warms, with young males being the first to make the change
"The study will examine people’s responses to terms such as “adaptation,” “mitigation,” “carbon dioxide removal” and “sustainable development.”" LINK
"With a range of marine geoengineering field trials inching forward, attention is turning to how research and eventual deployment should be governed." LINK
Domke, Grant M.; Oswalt, Sonja N.; Walters, Brian F.; Morin, Randall S. (2020): Tree planting has the potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity of forests in the United States. In PNAS, p. 202010840. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010840117. "Here we use data from more than 130,000 national forest inventory plots to describe the contribution of nearly 1.4 trillion trees on forestland in the conterminous United States to mitigate CO2 emissions and the potential to enhance carbon sequestration capacity on productive forestland." LINK
"We face a stark reality. We urgently need to slash greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, but this alone will not be enough to keep global temperatures in line with the Paris Agreement goals." LINK
Title: EPA Approves Pine-Sol as Coronavirus Disinfectant Category: Health News Created: 9/21/2020 12:00:00 AM Last Editorial Review: 9/21/2020 12:00:00 AM
Arctic sea ice has reached its second lowest level on record, data shows. Each year,... The post Arctic sea ice shrinks to second-lowest summer minimum on record appeared first on Carbon Brief.
On September 15, Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 3.74 million square kilometers (1.44 million square miles). The minimum ice extent is the second lowest in the 42-year-old satellite record, reinforcing the long-term downward trend in Arctic ice extent. Sea … Continue reading →
Singh, M.; Krishnan, R.; Goswami, B.; Choudhury, A. D.; Swapna, P.; Vellore, R. et al. (2020): Fingerprint of volcanic forcing on the ENSO-Indian monsoon coupling. In Science Advances 6 (38). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba8164. "Here, we investigate how LVEs influence the nonlinear behavior of the ENSO and IM dynamical systems using historical data, 25 paleoclimate reconstructions, last-millennium climate simulations, large-ensemble targeted climate sensitivity experiments, and advanced analysis techniques." LINK
"Put most simply, Carbon Engineering is a green tech company that has technology that captures carbon dioxide from the air. It has been doing so since 2015 at its plant on the Squamish Oceanfront." LINK
Deadline: 03. November 2020 "In this Research Topic, we invite submissions from a broad group of stakeholders who are eager to move the needle on advancing negative emissions to the tens of gigaton scale by mid-century" LINK
"The concept of net zero means these residual emissions need to be removed from the atmosphere through negative-emission technologies, including carbon capture and storage, or natural carbon sinks such as forests. However, many negative-emission technologies cannot currently operate at scale, so companies may pledge net zero to signal their future intentions. This makes it difficult to hold companies to account for emission reductions." LINK
Biniek, Krysta; Henderson, Kimberly; Rogers, Matt; Santoni, Gregory (2020): Driving CO2 emissions to zero (and beyond) with carbon capture, use, and storage. McKinsey Quarterly. "Any pathway to mitigate climate change requires the rapid reduction of CO2 emissions and negative-emissions technologies to cut atmospheric concentrations. Technology and regulation will be the key." LINK
Before the Covid-19 pandemic and its lockdown restrictions, air travel had become an almost unquestioned... The post Guest post: Calculating the true climate impact of aviation emissions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
( RUDN University ) A soil scientist from RUDN University studied soil samples collected at the Tibetan Plateau and discovered that high soil moisture content (caused by the melting of permafrost and glaciers) leads to further temperature increase. Therefore, the rate of soil bogging should be held back in order to slow down global warming.
German article on environmental injustice in the Global South, colonial history, and current solution approaches. LINK
"The head of the independent body set up to advise governments on the climate emergency has suggested Scotland could become a carbon capture “hub” for the rest of Europe as part of plans to transform into a zero carbon economy." LINK
Deadline: 31. July 2022 "To capture the interrelated research amongst these projects, the special issue is set up jointly between Atmospheric Chemistry and Physicsand Earth System Dynamics. In ACP, we invite papers that emphasize process-level understanding and stratospheric dynamics; in ESD, submissions on Earth system effects, feedbacks, and impacts (like agriculture or ecosystem responses) are invited." LINK
"Promising interventions exist, and it wouldn’t be all that expensive to deploy them." LINK
Longman, Jack; Palmer, Martin R.; Gernon, Thomas M. (2020): Viability of greenhouse gas removal via the artificial addition of volcanic ash to the ocean. In Anthropocene, p. 100264. DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2020.100264. "This article discusses advantages of an approach based on enhanced input of tephra to the ocean, to increase the drawdown of atmospheric CO2." LINK
"According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), meeting climate goals would require adding some 2000 carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) facilities by mid-century—up 100-fold from today." LINK
To mark a week-long series of articles looking at food and climate change, Carbon Brief... The post Webinar: Do we need to stop eating meat and dairy to tackle climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02230F, Paper Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. Yeonguk Son, Taeyong Lee, Bo Wen, Jiyoung Ma, Changshin Jo, Yoon-Gyo Cho, Adam Boies, Jaephil Cho, Michael De Volder Lithium plating on conventional graphite anodes in lithium-ion batteries is typically considered an undesirable side reaction, a safety hazard or a degradation mechanism. However, lithium plating and stripping allow for... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Copernicus Sentinel-5P’s high revisit rate combined with GHGSat’s high-resolution commercial imagery can give landfill operators and regulators the information they need to reduce methane emissions from landfill sites.
As the coronavirus pandemic disrupts supply chains around the world, it is likely that more... The post Guest post: Coronavirus food waste comes with huge carbon footprint appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Today, at her State of the Union address before the European Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, proposed a new target of a 55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The current target is a 40% reduction. With such ambitious goals ahead for Europe, understanding how greenhouse gases end up in the atmosphere and the intricacies of the carbon cycle is essential – something that satellites observing Earth can help provide.
"This bill takes key steps to strengthen federal research on blue carbon and improve efforts to protect and utilize ocean and coastal ecosystems." LINK
"Over the next 12 months, fellows will tackle some of the biggest obstacles facing carbon removal and work to develop and socialize ambitious policy ideas that will enable carbon removal solutions to scale over the coming decade." LINK
"We are funding innovative companies focused on reducing carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere. Our investments will enable these companies to scale and commercialize their technologies, kickstarting market forces and spurring solutions that will help protect and restore our planet." LINK
The food system is a major contributor to climate change and, without significant shifts in... The post Experts: How do diets need to change to meet climate targets? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The world has already passed “peak oil” demand, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the... The post Analysis: World has already passed ‘peak oil’, BP figures reveal appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Giddings, L. Val; Rozansky, Robert; Hart, David M. (2020): Gene Editing for the Climate: Biological Solutions for Curbing Greenhouse Emissions. Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. "This report describes how ancient biological processes have been reforged by researchers into new tools that can reshape the characteristics of plants, animals, and microbes to help reduce GHG emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere." LINK
"With a range of marine geoengineering field trials moving forward, attention is turning to how research and eventual deployment should be governed globally." LINK
"The potential impacts of CDR activities on biodiversity need to be at the forefront of decision-making around whether to engage in research and the eventual deployment of these techniques." LINK
Energy Environ. Sci. , 2020, Accepted Manuscript DOI : 10.1039/D0EE02017F, Review Article Xuesong Lin, Danyu Cui, Xinhui Luo, Caiyi Zhang, Qifeng Han, Yanbo Wang, Liyuan Han Inverted perovskite solar cells (IPSCs) have attracted great attention in recent years due to reliable operational stability, negligible hysteresis and low-temperature fabrication process. To accelerate its commercialization, the focus of... The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Record-setting blazes fueled in part by climate change have destroyed homes and upended live across the West -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
No Deadline "Oxford Open Climate Change is a broad reaching interdisciplinary journal that aims to cover all aspects of climate change, including its impacts on nature and society, as well as solutions to the problem and their wider implications." LINK
"Due to limited research, scientists aren't sure exactly how much carbon is captured and stored—or sequestered—by the ocean each year or how increasing CO2 emissions will affect this process in the future." LINK
Buck, Holly; Geden, Oliver; Sugiyama, Masahiro; Corry, Olaf (2020): Pandemic politics—lessons for solar geoengineering. In Commun Earth Environ 1 (1), pp. 1–4. DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-00018-1. "Responses to the COVID-19 emergency have exposed break-points at the interface of science, media, and policy. We summarize five lessons that should be heeded if climate change ever enters a state of emergency perceived to warrant stratospheric aerosol injection." LINK
Morton, Evvan V. (2020): Reframing the Climate Change Problem: Evaluating the Political, Technological, and Ethical Management of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States. Doctoral Dissertation. Arizona State University. Available online at https://repository.asu.edu/items/57290. "Although research also confirms that negative emission technologies (NETs) are necessary to stay within 1.5-2°C of global warming, this dissertation proposes that the climate change problem has been ineffectively communicated to suggest that CO2 emissions reduction is the only solution to climate change." LINK
Deadline: 15. May 2021 "We invite submissions to a Special Issue of the journal Energies on the topic of ‘Negative Emissions Technologies: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities’." LINK
"It’s been a long and costly two decades of carbon capture and storage (CCS) studies and test centers. Now Europe has reached a stage where big-scale developments make financial sense and could trigger up to $35 billion in development spending until 2035 – by which time as much as 75 million tonnes of CO2 could be captured and stored per year on the continent, a Rystad Energy analysis shows." LINK
IEAGHG Technical Report (2020): Understanding the Cost of Reducing Water Usage in Coal and Gas Fired Power Plants with CCS. IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme. "Findings from this study show that adding a CO2 capture system to the power plant may increase the water consumption of the whole facility. However, this increase can be mitigated through the implementation of different fitted strategies." LINK
"These projects will develop technologies that bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain by quantifying feedstock-related GHG emissions and soil carbon dynamics at the field-level. These technologies will allow for improved efficiency in feedstock production and enable new ag-sector carbon removal and management opportunities." LINK
Food production accounts for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and takes up half... The post Interactive: What is the climate impact of eating meat and dairy? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
2018-2023 Landsat Science Team member Matt Hansen, professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland in College Park. Looking for ways to get a finer spatial scale, to increase revisit rates, to push for hyperspectral looks at the planet—those conversations, Hansen says, “will never end, really.” Yet here’s where a bit of frustration enters the conversation for Hansen, a specialist in large area land cover and land use change mapping whose work has influenced the management of natural resources across the globe in everything from deforestation to biodiversity monitoring. Technology and the benefits of it, he says, fall short if they aren’t used to inform local, regional, even global policies. For example, Brazil slowed its deforestation rates from almost...
As the UK moves into autumn, it offers the opportunity to look back at the... The post Met Office: The UK’s record-breaking August 2020 heatwave appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Khasankoi Glacier in 1985, 1998, 2013 and 2020 Landsat imagery with Point 1-4 indicating locations where bedrock expansion is occurring with Point 1 and 3 separating the glacier into three parts. Note complete lack of snowcover on 8-26-2020. Khasnakoi Glacier is a north facing slope glacier just south of Mount Elbrus that drains into the Kuban River. The Greater Caucasus contain approximately 2000 glaciers with a total area of ~1200 … The post Khanasankoi Glacier, Russia Separation and Full Snowcover Loss appeared first on From a Glacier's Perspective.
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 10 September 2020; doi:10.1038/s41558-020-00926-2Publisher Correction: Climate-driven changes in the composition of New World plant communities
On 19 August 2020, the world’s largest and longest polar research expedition – known as MOSAiC – reached the North Pole after making an unplanned detour owing to lighter-than-usual sea ice conditions. The expedition is now entering its final stage, during which researchers will study the last piece of the Arctic puzzle: the growth of new sea ice marking the end of the summer season.
"In our new article Managing Land‐based CDR, we outline three key messages for the policy communities considering the sequestration potentials of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) – the main technology currently considered by climate models – and how these interact with more nature-based solutions such as forest management and afforestation." LINK
Rickels, Wilfried; Proelss, Alexander; Geden, Oliver; Burhenne, Julian; Fridahl, Mathias (2020): The Future of (Negative) Emissions Trading in the European Union. In Kiel Working Paper (2164). "This conceptual paper explores various design options for integrating negative emissions technologies (NETs) into the EU ETS. We discuss their potential implications for emissions trading at large and address the specificity of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS); repealing the provision that installations exclusively using biomass are not covered by the ETS Directive, BE(CCS) installations could in principle fall within the scope of the ETS Directive." LINK
( American Society of Agronomy ) Wild relatives of our domestic crops already cope with harsh conditions and resist disease. Can we use them to help our preferred crops adapt?
Trees are growing faster because of rising CO2 levels and temperatures, but also dying younger, meaning existing forests will store less carbon than forecast and climate change will be worse than expected
"Conservation and agriculture have often been at odds. But as Ottawa develops the first federal carbon offset standard, farming techniques that reduce greenhouse gas emissions are having a moment." LINK
Puno, Railla Veronica D. (2020): A Rights-Based Approach to Governance of Climate Geoengineering. In ELR 10744. "This Article explores a rights-based approach for the governance of geoengineering in international law, including the impetus, rationale, and options for implementation. The approach would take into account the need for participation, accountability, nondiscrimination, and equality in its development and deployment, while addressing the potential of such technologies in mitigating the impacts that climate change would have to the full enjoyment of human rights, including the right to a healthy environment." LINK
"Today Andrew talks to Daniele Visioni about his new paper on the Reduced Poleward Transport Due to Stratospheric Heating Under Stratospheric Aerosols Geoengineering." LINK