Recently in Environment and climate change Category

Nature: In a Nature opinion column, Ryan Meyer, a science integration fellow at the California Ocean Science Trust in Oakland, discusses the revamping of a government agency's strategic plan. For the past 20 years, the US Global Change Research Program has spent more than $30 billion on climate change studies. Although the program has improved our understanding of climate systems, Meyer writes, it has been less successful at providing decision makers with useful information. So the program has added three more objectives: to inform decisions, to sustain assessments, and to communicate and educate. Meyer points out that problems may arise regarding the reallocation of funds among the new priorities and that there may be tradeoffs between the increasing complexity of climate models and the need of policymakers for simplicity. Nevertheless, he applauds the program administrators for "taking such an important conceptual step in the right direction."

BBC: A plan to levy charges on flights in EU airspace based on carbon emissions has been criticized by the US, Canada, and China—and China has barred its airlines from participating. The plan was implemented at the beginning of the year. The EU has estimated that airline passengers will be charged €2–12 more per flight as a result of the plan. China claims that the plan would cost Chinese airlines €95 million a year if they took part. Although the EU could forbid Chinese airlines from flying in EU airspace, doing so could damage its relationship with China. Ultimately, the issue may have to be resolved by the World Trade Organization or another international body.

Nature: According to a study released yesterday by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, severe flooding will be the most urgent problem the country could face as a result of climate change. The study examines 100 potential consequences of climate change for the UK in a number of different climate scenarios, drawing on climate projection models made in 2009. Flooding currently costs the UK around £1.3 billion (US$2.04 billion) per year; the study predicts that by the 2080s, it could cause £2.1 billion to £12 billion worth of damages each year.

New York Times: As climate scientists increasingly find themselves under attack and facing litigation for their stance on human-induced global warming, a nonprofit group and monetary fund have been set up to help them fight their legal battles. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) offers aid and advice to government whistleblowers and scientists working on environmental issues. Recently it became affiliated with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which was set up last fall to raise money to defend climate scientists involved in litigation and to provide lawyers representing scientists with information about past cases and strategies. In his New York Times Q&A, Andrew Revkin interviews Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, about the alliance of the two organizations.

New Scientist: After decades of fighting over the teaching of evolution in classrooms, US science education advocates are bracing themselves for the next battle—concerning the teaching of human-caused climate change. Over the past few years, several states, including Texas, Louisiana, and South Dakota, have introduced legislation that requires teachers to include the views of climate change skeptics. "Climate change education is kind of where evolution education was 30 years ago," says Steven Newton, programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California. Whereas creationism is a religious belief, however, climate change denial is mainly political and therefore may be harder to fight in court.

Science: Although it may seem counterintuitive, warmer-than-average summers may trigger more severe winter cooling and excessive snowfall, writes Sid Perkins for Science. The relationship showed itself in a new study published in Environmental Research Letters by Judah Cohen and colleagues at the consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts. Warming in the Arctic in recent decades, along with other factors, has caused widespread melting of sea ice. More open water has led to more evaporation and increased cloudiness over the Arctic Ocean. That, in turn, can trigger increased snow coverage in Siberia as early as October. The Arctic Oscillation then steers the frigid air from Siberia southward to midlatitude regions throughout the winter. Researchers hope that by incorporating better accounts of autumn Siberian snow-cover variability into climate models, they will be able to provide more accurate winter weather forecasts.

Science: A new kind of plastic that can remove large amounts of CO₂ from the air has been produced by a research team led by George Olah of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Olah and his team needed a CO₂ absorber for iron-based batteries they were working on; they tried using polyethylenimine (PEI), an inexpensive CO₂ absorbing polymer. PEI grabs CO₂ only on its surface, so to increase its surface area, Olah dissolved the polymer in a methanol solvent and spread it atop a batch of fumed silica, an industrially produced porous solid made from microscopic droplets of glass fused together. When the solvent evaporated, it left solid PEI with a high surface area. When the team tested the new material's ability to absorb CO₂, they found that in humid air each gram of the material absorbed an average of 1.72 nanomoles of CO₂. That's one of the highest levels of CO₂ absorption from air ever tested. The material also sheds CO₂ when it's heated to 85 °C, whereas other solid CO₂ absorbers have to be heated to over 800 °C to shed CO₂. The new polymer could be used to scrub CO₂ from the air, although it couldn't be used in industrial smokestacks or automobile tailpipes without additional tinkering to make it more heat-resistant.

BBC: According to research published in Nature Geoscience, human carbon emissions could insulate Earth against the next ice age, writes Richard Black for the BBC. Ice ages result because of subtle variations in Earth’s orbit, although exactly how those variations cause global temperature change is not known. The next ice age should begin within about 1500 years, say Luke Skinner of Cambridge University and colleagues, but it will likely be deferred because of the abnormally high level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, currently around 390 parts per million; that would have to drop to below about 240 ppm before glaciation could begin. And other research groups have shown that even if emissions were cut instantly, CO₂ concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1000 years. Despite the fact that delaying an ice age may sound desirable, says Skinner, humans are doing too good a job of heating the planet: "We're . . . not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO₂ to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate. The rate of change with CO₂ is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can't cope with that."

Nature: The Exploradores Glacier in southern Chile is disappearing, slowly. Part of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field, the glacier is remote enough that it would be too costly to install and maintain satellite or radio transmission stations to report changes. To try to understand how weather conditions affect the rate at which Exploradores melts and how the water released flows through and out of the bottom of the glacier, Takane Matsumoto, a glaciologist at the Center for Ecosystem Research in Patagonia, makes regular journeys to the glacier to gather data on temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind speed.

About 100 glaciers in Chile are being monitored, and of those, almost 90% are in retreat, according to Chile’s Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia. Glaciologist Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University in the UK and colleagues have estimated that the Northern Patagonian Ice Field has lost more than 100 cubic kilometers of ice since 1870. The melt rate has increased in recent decades, and it remains to be seen how that will affect local water resources.

Daily Mail: The UK's Windsor Castle is going green: Yesterday two 40-ton turbines were lifted into the River Thames. Once installed, they are expected to churn out 300 kW of energy every hour—enough to provide about half the estate’s electricity needs. Resembling giant steel screws, the turbines are based on a 2000-year-old design by Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes. The project could help further the UK's goal of obtaining 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. As part of the installation a new fish pass is being installed, which will facilitate the migration of 12 species around the turbines and through that stretch of the river.

Los Angeles Times: The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to approve more stringent limits on power-plant emissions, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. Companies will have three years to clean up their emissions of mercury and about 70 other toxic substances, with the possibility of appealing for an additional year. First proposed in March, the new rule is expected to be approved today and formally announced on Monday. However, utility companies claim the emissions limits are too strict and the timetable too tight; their opposition could delay approval and implementation. "In the history of the Clean Air Act, there has never been a greater intervention into the power sector than with this regulation," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry lobbying group. "So it stands to reason that we will likely see a substantial amount of litigation around this."

Daily Mail: At least 100 plumes of methane bubbles, some more than 1 km in diameter, have been discovered to be rising to the surface of the sea over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a shallow, methane-rich area that stretches some 1500 km into the Arctic Ocean. As Earth warms and sea levels rise, the permafrost beneath the shelf melts, releasing the powerful greenhouse gas. In deep water, methane release is not a problem because the gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. But because the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is so shallow, the methane doesn’t have time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. Scientists are concerned that such continuous and powerful release of methane could have a huge effect on climate change.

BBC: Canada announced that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Peter Kent, the country's minister of the environment, said that meeting Canada's obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6 billion. He added that greenhouse emissions would continue to rise globally regardless of Canada's actions because the US and China aren't covered by the agreement. He described the agreement just reached in Durban, South Africa, in more positive terms, saying it represents "the way forward" for international cooperation on climate change. The Durban agreement states that talks on a new and legally binding agreement covering all countries will begin in 2012 and end by 2015.

New York Times: Created by Congress in 1937, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) operates all the federally owned hydroelectric plants in the Pacific Northwest. During strong storms earlier this year, the BPA faced a glut of power from its plants and from wind turbines that are connected to its grid. Sending water around the dams and into spillways would have reduced the plants' power output, but it would also have exposed salmon to harmful levels of dissolved nitrogen. The BPA chose instead to turn off the wind turbines, whose operators lost money and federal tax credits as a result. According to a ruling issued on Tuesday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the BPA's decision was wrong. The BPA, said the the commission, should have kept the turbines running and instead paid its customers to take the excess power.

BBC: Another potential casualty of global warming may be Alpine glaciers. According to research presented this week at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco, glaciers in the French Alps have lost a quarter of their area over the past 40 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, ice fields in the Mont Blanc range and surrounding mountains covered some 375 km². By the late 2000s, that area had shrunk to 275 km². Marie Gardent of the University of Savoie in France and colleagues used map archives, satellite imagery, and aerial photographs to conduct their study.

BBC: New imagery of Antarctica is being presented at today’s American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Called BEDMAP 2, the project incorporates more than 27 million data points collected from decades of surveys conducted by plane, satellite, ship, and dogsled. More than 99% of the continent’s rock base lies beneath an icy cover, but with the relatively recent addition of airborne radar, scientists can now map the troughs, valleys, and mountains that make up Antarctica’s subglacial surface. As they review and sift through the data, they have been seeing significant changes at the continent’s margins. Increasing volumes of ice melt are raising global sea levels. The new information is crucial in the quest to understand how Antarctica is responding to global warming, reports Jonathan Amos for the BBC.

New York Times: Delegates from 194 nations gathered today in Durban, South Africa, for the opening of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Topics to be discussed include the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, the goal of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology, and, most important, the future of the Kyoto Protocol, writes John Broder for the New York Times. But political problems threaten to derail the talks, according to Rajendra K. Pachauri, director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of those problems can be blamed on the US, which has not shown leadership on this issue, said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to NPR's Richard Harris. The Obama administration is hamstrung by the current economic crisis and by Republicans' widespread denial of human-induced climate change.

New York Times: Another batch of stolen emails from climate scientists was posted yesterday by the hacker or group of hackers responsible for Climategate two years ago. Involving the same scientists and many of the same issues, some of them also carried a similar tone: “catty remarks by the scientists, often about papers written by others in the field,” write Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman for the New York Times. The release of the emails, which is intended to cast doubt on the integrity of leading climate scientists and of climate research in general, comes less than a week before the United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, which starts on 28 November. “It smacks of desperation,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA.

Washington Post: Congress has refused a request by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish a National Climate Service, even though no new funding was required, writes Brian Vastag for the Washington Post. According to the NOAA website, the climate service would have provided “a single, reliable and authoritative source for climate data, information and decision-support services to help individuals, businesses, communities and governments make smart choices in anticipation of a climate changed future.” Demand for climate information has been growing. Between 2009 and 2010, the amount of climate data retrieved from NOAA websites shot up 86%, and climate-related phone calls and emails jumped from 26 000 to 30 000. But several House Republicans believe that the climate service “could become little propaganda sources instead of a science source,” according to Representative Andy Harris (R-MD). Christine McEntee, executive director of the American Geophysical Union, expressed her disappointment in the decision: “We think it’s very unfortunate. Limiting access to this kind of climate information won’t make climate change go away.”

Nature: Extreme weather, such as the 2010 Russian heat wave or the drought in the horn of Africa, will become more frequent and severe as the planet warms, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a report released Friday, writes Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. The frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes will increase, and those of cold extremes will decrease. But how climate change will affect rainfall, flood risk, and storminess remains to be seen. The report, which lists a variety of adaptation strategies such as early-warning systems and improved building codes, is also meant to inform the United Nations’ upcoming climate talks in South Africa.

Guardian: A test of a UK geoengineering project has been postponed pending further discussion of its implications. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which was conceived in March 2010, would inject particles into Earth’s atmosphere to try to cool the planet and mitigate climate change. In mid-September 2011, SPICE announced the UK’s first field trial. However, the trial was postponed later that month by the project’s scientific advisers, who say further public discussion is needed. Among the objections to the plan is the charge that such a project would “deflect political and scientific action away from reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” write Phil Macnaghten, chair of the advisory panel, and Richard Owen, architect of the project's governance process, who describe in Nature the first attempt to govern a climate-engineering research project.

BBC: Australian environmentalists won a victory with the Senate’s approval of the Clean Energy Act. The plan—part of a global policy to combat climate change—will force the country’s 500 worst-polluting companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions. Hardest hit by the tax will be mining and energy companies, airlines, and steel makers. Consumers can also expect higher fuel bills as a result. Nevertheless, Australia’s government hopes that the legislation will force advances in renewable energy technologies and wean the country away from fossil fuels.

Comcast Xfinity: Global carbon dioxide output in 2010 increased by 6% over that in 2009, according to the US Department of Energy. It is a "monster" increase, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate DOE figures in the past. More than half of the increase in emissions can be attributed to extra pollution in China and the US. Interestingly, the US did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The developed countries that did have reduced their emissions about 8% below 1990 levels. Developing countries are also contributing to the problem, as their economies grow and improve. Greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries may already be surpassing those from developed countries.

New York Times: Although the promise of “smart” textiles—clothing with electronics woven into the fabric—is exciting for those who want to stay plugged in yet hands free, ecologists are questioning their potential impact on the environment. The conductive yarns, thermochromic inks, and electronics found in such fabrics will add to the some 50 million tons of electronic waste already accumulating annually, they say. A study in the Journal of Industrial Ecology addresses the issue of the impacts of such e-textiles on recycling and disposal. The study’s authors found that although the designers, engineers, and policy makers involved in e-textile manufacturing acknowledged that it’s important to safely dispose of the waste, none seemed to have any plan for it. In fact, currently, some 50–80% of “recycled” electronics are illegally shipped from developed to developing countries, where laborers, often children, use hazardous materials and burning to recover trace amounts of valuable metals.

On a greener note, in response to global water shortages, Levi Strauss and Co is working to reduce the amount of water used in producing its blue jeans. According to the company, about 919 gallons of water are used in the manufacture of one pair of jeans, which includes irrigating the cotton crop, sewing the jeans, and washing them at home. To address the issue, Levi Strauss is mounting a two-pronged campaign: To make better use of available water resources, the company is underwriting a nonprofit program that teaches farmers in India, Pakistan, and other major cotton-producing countries the latest irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques. And to conserve water, it has introduced a brand of stone-washed jeans smoothed with rocks but no water and urges customers to wash less and with cold water only.

Talking Points Memo: Tuesday Google published a new Google Earth map of the geothermal resources in the continental US. In keeping with the drive to make the US more energy efficient and energy independent, Google reports that the technical potential of geothermal in the US is nearly 3 million megawatts, or 10 times the capacity of all the installed coal power plants in the country today, writes Carl Franzen for TPM’s Idea Lab. “Our study assumes that we tap only a small fraction of the available stored heat in the Earth’s crust, and our capabilities to capture that heat are expected to grow substantially as we improve upon the energy conversion and exploitation factors through technological advances and improved techniques,” said David Blackwell of Southern Methodist University, whose geothermal laboratory collected the data for the new map. However, a viable geothermal demonstration project is estimated to be 10–15 years away.

BBC: As more evidence arises in support of rapid climate change, Xie Zhenhua, who is in charge of China's climate-change policy, has clarified his country's position regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Like the US, China considers CO₂ emissions per person, instead of a country-wide cap, to be the basis for international climate-change negotiations.

On a visit to the UK, Xie told members of parliament that China will not allow its per capita CO₂ emissions to reach US levels because that would be a "disaster for the world." Without intervention, China would reach those levels by 2017.

China is already the top emitter of CO₂, mainly due to its extensive investment in heavy industries and coal-fired power plants.

To reduce emissions, said Xie, China will improve energy efficiency by 40% and invest more in low-carbon power sources. China invested more in renewable and nuclear power plants last year than did any other country.

Economist: Recent findings by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) confirm the warning of climatologists at three prominent research organizations: Earth is warming up. From data gathered over the past 150 years, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the UK, independently had determined that global temperatures have risen about 0.9 °C in the past half century. To challenge those findings, the BEST team, led by Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, used a novel statistical methodology “that incorporates more data than other climate models and requires less human judgment about how to handle it,” according to an article in Mother Jones. Nevertheless, BEST reached much the same conclusion as the other three organizations. "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK," said Muller in an article for the BBC.

New Scientist: A 2010 report on Galveston Bay has been delayed by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) because of edits TCEQ made to the portion of the report the research center provided to the commission. TCEQ officials deleted all references to sea-level rise, human-induced climate change, and human-caused change in other contexts, such as wetlands destruction. The three scientists involved in the paper—Jim Lester, vice president of HARC and editor of the publication; Lisa Gonzales, a co-editor; and John Anderson of Rice University, the author—have asked that their names be removed from the edited version of the report, citing issues of scientific credibility.

Science: On 9 January 2012 Thomas Bogdan becomes president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NSF’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Bogdan previously worked as a senior scientist at NCAR, whose nearly 600 scientists and engineers study severe weather, climate change, geomagnetic storms, and other environmental factors. Currently he is director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Bogdan will succeed current UCAR president Richard Anthes, who is retiring after 23 years.

New York Times: Plants and animals may be shrinking in size due to climate change, according to biologists at the National University of Singapore who published a paper describing the phenomenon in the journal Nature Climate Change. As some parts of the world become warmer and drier, plants there are growing smaller. Another factor is forest fires, which reduce the amount of nitrogen in the soil, a critical factor in plants’ growth. As plants become smaller, the animals that depend on them for food must also adjust—either by eating more of them or by growing smaller in size in turn. Size disparities can upset the overall balance of the ecosystem when some animals or plants are affected and others aren’t. Although the researchers caution that it’s too early to make any detailed predictions, they do want to call attention to potential problems so that ecologists can better monitor the situation.

Guardian: For the Earthwatch annual debate, which takes place tomorrow in London at the Royal Geographical Society, five experts have been tapped to debate why their chosen topic should be the number one global priority to tackle over the next 40 years; audience members will then vote on the most compelling argument for support. The topics are food security, a zero-carbon future, protection of the oceans, education, and water scarcity. "By bringing together leading environmental thinkers and activists," said Earthwatch executive vice president Nigel Winser, "this event will give our audience an opportunity to consider some of these serious issues, and some possible solutions in an entertaining and thought-provoking format."

SciDev.net: What "green economy" means to different countries was discussed by representatives from more than 40 countries at a meeting held 3–4 October in New Delhi, India. Developed countries tend to focus on a low-carbon growth model, even it if involves high-end, costly technologies, whereas developing countries are more likely to aim for a sustainable, natural-resource-based model. Other topics included integrating food and energy security with green economy strategies and barring developed countries from imposing "green protectionism," or trade barriers, on goods whose production is based on high-carbon-emission technologies. The event was one of several that will lead up to the major United Nations conference on sustainable development, Rio+20, set to take place in June 2012.

New York Times: Two new tools for calculating greenhouse gas emissions are being announced today. The World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development first established guidelines for greenhouse gases in 2004. Those guidelines covered emissions from direct operations such as running a factory and emissions from energy-related, indirect sources such as the coal or natural gas burned to make the electricity that powers the lights at headquarters. One new tool provides a way of calculating the amount of climate-warming gases released through a company's supply chain; the other offers a way of calculating, across a consumer product's life cycle, the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and four other gases linked to climate change. Advocates claim that the mere act of measuring greenhouse gas emissions encourages companies to manage and reduce what they emit.

Science: In preindustrial Europe, climate shifts were a statistically significant cause of social disturbance, war, migration, epidemics, famine, and nutritional status, write David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers analyzed socioeconomic, ecological, and demographic data from the years 1500–1800 to try to determine whether cause-and-effect relationships existed between some 14 variables, such as human height, the price of gold, tree-ring width, and temperature. The researchers found that extreme climate shifts influenced human society, primarily through agriculture. Falling crop yield can drive up the price of gold and cause inflation, for example. Whether the research is relevant for the present day remains to be seen. Halvard Buhaug of the Peace Research Institute Oslo points out that trade, technological development, and other processes of modern industrial society make us less sensitive to the climate.

New Scientist: For the first time since observations began, ozone destruction over the Arctic in early 2011 was comparable to that over Antarctica. Although the Arctic ozone layer suffers a little damage every winter, the effect is usually short-lived. In the first three months of this year, however, more than 80% of the existing ozone was destroyed at a height of 18–20 km—a loss twice that seen in the two previous record-setting Arctic winters, 1996 and 2005, according to Nathaniel Livesey of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is an author of a paper published in Nature. Scientists are now looking to see whether climate change could be partly responsible.

Geophysical Research Letters: The 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan last March caused a massive tsunami that devastated whole communities and led to a release of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Nobuhito Mori of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues have now surveyed and mapped the impact of the tsunami along a 2000-km stretch of the coast. In the map below, red bars show the height above sea level, and blue shading indicates how far inland the sea reached. "This tsunami was the first case where modern, well-developed tsunami countermeasures faced such an extreme event," say the authors. One conclusion they reached was that both hard protection (barriers, structures, and the like) and soft countermeasures (evacuation planning) were "insufficient in this disaster."

Image credit: Geophysical Research Letters 38, L00G14, 6 PP., 2011. Permission obtained from the American Geophysical Union.

Nature: A diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the Clean Development Mechanism projects in India should not have been certified, writes Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. The CDM, established under the Kyoto Protocol, allows rich countries to offset some of their carbon emissions by investing in climate-friendly projects in developing countries; verified projects earn carbon credits that count toward meeting rich nations’ carbon-reduction targets. The cable, written in 2008 by the US consulate in Mumbai to the US secretary of state, summarizes a discussion among officials that many CDM projects in India may not have reduced emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. If true, the revelation could cast doubt on the principle of carbon trading. In defense of the program, Martin Hession, head of global carbon markets at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and chairman of the CDM executive board, says that since 2008, the board has adopted more stringent guidelines. The European Union maintains that the carbon-trading system remains crucial in tackling climate change.

New York Times: Scientists have observed significant increases in the crevasse fields of the Greenland ice sheet, the second largest body of ice in the world. Those changes could influence how the ice sheets move toward the ocean and raise sea levels, according to their paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado at Boulder, compared high-resolution images from 1985 and 2009 in Sermeq Avannarleq, in western Greenland. They observed that an increase in crevasses can cause both a slowing and an accelerating effect. More crevasses mean fewer tunnels in the ice that transport surface water to the base of the sheet, and therefore less lubricant to assist the ice sheet’s sliding across the landscape. However, the increased surface area that results from the higher number of crevasses means more of the ice’s interior is exposed to warming by surface melt water—as the ice sheet warms, it flows faster. What that means for overall sea-level rise remains to be seen, according to William Colgan, the report’s lead author.

Think Progress: In a stunning move, the editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Remote Sensing has resigned over the journal's publication of what he calls a "fundamentally flawed" paper by climate science deniers Roy Spencer and William Braswell of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In an editorial published 2 September, Wolfgang Wagner announces his resignation and accepts full responsibility for the paper's publication. He states that the problem with publishing the paper was not that it was controversial or expressed a minority view, but that it "essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents." He admits that the three reviewers selected by the editorial team, albeit all senior scientists from renowned US universities, may have shared "some climate skeptic notions of the authors."

Nature: Pili, which are hairlike filaments that sprout from some bacteria, can enable the bacteria to remove uranium from contaminated groundwater without becoming poisoned in the process. Geobacter sulfurreducens, for example, obtains energy by reducing, or adding electrons to, metals in the environment; when pili are present, the bacterium is able to do this outside the cell envelope. In addition to keeping uranium out of the bacterium itself, pili provide a greater surface area for electron transfer, increasing the amount of uranium removed. Gemma Reguera of Michigan State University, who participated in the discovery, is most excited about the possibility of developing nonliving nanowires that share the pili's properties of electron transfer. Such devices could be used in environments where bacteria can't live, such as the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. It's possible that conductive nanowires could also be used to remove radioactive isotopes of plutonium or cobalt.

Daily Mail: To mitigate climate change, scientists in the UK have proposed a method of geoengineering that uses a giant helium balloon and a large hose to mimic the cooling effect of an erupting volcano. The balloon would be tethered some 22 km above Earth by the hose, through which tons of chemical particles could be pumped into the stratosphere. Those droplets of sulfates and aerosol particles would reflect the Sun’s energy back into space and prevent it from heating Earth. Called Spice, for stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering, the project is backed by the Royal Society and a £1.6 million (about $2.6 million) government grant. However, critics point out that weather is very complex and any attempt to manipulate it could have unforeseen consequences.

What the rest of the world knows about the bomb was learned from seismic waves. Tremors registering at 4.52 on the Richter scale suggested that the yield was on the order of a few kilotons.

Three researchers from Ohio State University detect a different unexpected signature however: an atmosphere shockwave spread out from the test site across the planet and high into the ionosphere. Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists they state that GPS radio waves suffer interference from atmospheric disturbances and by chance the North Korean test occur while they were testing equipment to reduce interference.

By timing when the shockwave from the test hit different GPS stations the three researchers were able to calculate the location of the initial explosion, which matched the seismic data. They suggest that the addition of GPS data to the monitoring stations spread about the world to watch for clandestine nuclear explosions, will strengthen the case for the US to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

NSF: The National Science Foundation has cleared Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann of any misconduct in the 2009 "Climategate" controversy. Climategate refers to the thousands of emails that were stolen and made public by a hacker who broke into servers owned by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. The emails, in which climate scientists discussed their work, have been used by global-warming skeptics to dispute that carbon dioxide emissions from industry are impacting Earth’s climate.

This is the fifth investigation into the science behind the emails, and in every case, the scientists involved have been exonerated.

Mann was accused of falsifying research data, concealing and/or deleting information, misusing information, and deviating from accepted practices for conducting research and other scholarly activities.

The report by NSF's Office of the Inspector General states that "no direct evidence has been presented that indicates the Subject fabricated the raw data he used for his research or falsified his results."

"Lacking any direct evidence of research misconduct," the review concludes, "as defined under the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation, we are closing this investigation with no further action."

Science: Six months after the initial request by a politician and a conservative environmental policy research group, the University of Virginia has turned over documents related to scientist Michael Mann’s climate change research. The documents had been requested in January, under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, by Robert Marshall, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and the American Tradition Institute (ATI). Alleging that the university was deliberately delaying the process, they later filed suit in May. Mann, a physicist and climatologist now at the Pennsylvania State University, was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia from 1999 to 2005. Mann’s paleoclimatological studies have been criticized by global-warming skeptics who deny that Earth's climate is changing because of human activity. The documents released so far represent only about a third of what was requested, according to Paul Chesser, ATI’s executive director.

CERN: How do clouds form? The answer has implications for our understanding of climate change, because clouds can reflect the Sun’s radiation back toward space, thus reducing the amount of heat that reaches Earth.

Providing unprecedented insight into cloud formation is the Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment at the CERN research center in Switzerland. Researchers there have been studying the effects of cosmic rays on the formation of atmospheric aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere—thought to provide the seeds that form cloud droplets.

By current estimates, about half of all cloud droplets begin with aerosols. Trace sulfuric acid and ammonia vapors are used in all of CLOUD's atmospheric models as the genesis for droplet production, but the mechanism and rate by which they form clusters together with water molecules have remained poorly understood.

The CLOUD experiment simulates atmospheric conditions inside a chamber and uses CERN’s Proton Synchrotron accelerator to provide an artificial and adjustable source of cosmic radiation. Results confirm that a few kilometers up in the atmosphere sulfuric acid and water vapor can rapidly form clusters, and that cosmic rays enhance the formation rate by up to 10-fold or more.

However, in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, within about a kilometer of Earth's surface, the CLOUD results show that additional vapors such as ammonia are required to generate the aerosols.

According to Jasper Kirkby, the lead CLOUD spokesperson, the group's results, which were published in Nature, show that these trace vapors, which were assumed to account for aerosol formation, can explain only a small fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production.

“It was a big surprise to find that aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere isn’t due to sulfuric acid, water, and ammonia alone,” said Kirkby. “Now it’s vitally important to discover which additional vapors are involved, whether they are largely natural or of human origin, and how they influence clouds. This will be our next job.”

BBC: Scientists have produced what they say is the first complete map of how the ice moves across Antarctica, writes Jonathan Amos for the BBC. Published online by Science, the map was assembled from billions of radar data points collected between 1996 and 2009 by satellites belonging to Europe, Canada, and Japan. "We designed acquisition plans, switching on and off the satellites, in all the right desired geographic locations so we could fill the gaps we didn't have data in before," said Mark Drinkwater from the European Space Agency. "That was a mammoth effort." Ice movement is detected using a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, which compares images from repeat passes over the same location. The map work, which was completed as part of the 2007-08 International Polar Year, should contribute to our understanding of how Antarctica might evolve in the warmer world being forecast by climatologists.

Nature: Traditionally, environmental monitoring has been a small-scale local science, but now the US is moving it toward a continental-scale group enterprise. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will comprise 20 core observatories, each representing a distinct eco-region throughout the US, and a number of temporary stations that can be relocated wherever needed. The result will be a vast database that scientists can mine to tackle broad questions such as how global warming, pollution, and land-use change are affecting ecosystems across the country, writes Jeff Tollefson for Nature. On 28 July NSF awarded NEON $434 million over the next decade. The money could jump-start site preparation and construction as early as this year, probably starting near its home base in Boulder, Colorado, and in the Northeast, then expanding from there, according to David Schimel, the project's chief science officer.

Science: To better manage the world’s coral reefs—many of which are suffering because of overfishing of algae-eating fish, pollution, and temperature spikes—ecologists have performed a global assessment of the most susceptible ones. They believe that by focusing on the reefs that have the best chance of surviving, and ignoring the ones that are likely to die anyway, reef managers can be more effective. Ways to help restore coral reefs include restricting fishing and reducing pollutants in the water that then runs off land near reefs. More than 100 million people depend on coral reefs for food and many more rely on reefs as buffers against high waves. Yesterday the team published its findings in PLoS ONE.

Talking Points Memo: The US Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego, California, has earned the distinction of being the first ever green Marine Corps facility. It is showcasing a new landfill gas recovery project, whereby the natural gas released by a San Diego landfill is expected to generate about 25 million kilowatt-hours per year, or about half of Miramar’s electricity needs. Landfills release natural gas through decomposition, as microorganisms break down the organic materials in garbage. Miramar’s gas recovery project will serve an additional purpose as well: Landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions from human activity in the US, so the project will also reduce the amount of that greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere.

Guardian: It is impossible to know for certain whether climate change is to blame for the famine in the Horn of Africa, but several disturbing observations have been made. Borana communities in Ethiopia report that droughts now occur every one to two years, whereas they used to be recorded every six to eight years. In addition, mean annual temperatures increased between 1960 and 2006 by 1 °C in Kenya and 1.3 °C in Ethiopia, and the frequency of hot days is increasing in both countries. That combination can pose problems for food production. However, as the Guardian points out, drought is caused by lack of rainfall, whereas famine is manmade. Rich and emerging economies therefore must not only strive to cut greenhouse gas emissions but also help east Africa and other vulnerable regions adapt to any resulting climate change.

BBC: A paper published today in Nature warns of a feedback mechanism that could accelerate the impact of global warming in the Arctic region. The unusually dry summer of 2007 helped to fuel the Anaktuvuk River fire, which destroyed as much Alaskan tundra as did all previous fires since 1950. Led by Michelle Black of the University of Florida in Gainesville, the paper's authors determined that the Anaktuvuk River fire burned vegetation down to depth of 15 cm and released into the atmosphere 50 years' worth of sequestered carbon. Because increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide raises global temperatures, Arctic wildfires could become more frequent and widespread. And if that happens, Mack and her colleagues warn, even more sequestered carbon could be released and lead to a vicious cycle of runaway warming.

National Geographic: India's plan to build the world's largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur, a port city 250 miles south of Mumbai, faces vigorous, sometimes violent opposition from the city's inhabitants. And as National Geographic's Rebecca Byerly, the power plant serves as a focus for a wider debate within India about nuclear power. Most of India's households lack direct access to electricity. Meeting that need through nuclear power is, according to the Indian government, the cleanest, cheapest option. Whether nuclear power is also the safest option is the principal point of contention, especially in the wake of the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Dai'ichi power plant in March.

Guardian: The warming of the Arctic is releasing toxic materials such as pesticides and industrial chemicals that have been trapped in ice and cold water. Called persistent organic pollutants (POPs), the manmade compounds, which can cause cancers and birth defects, were banned under the 2004 Stockholm Convention. Because POPs take a very long time to degrade, they can be transported long distances in the atmosphere; the low Arctic temperatures then induce their disposition, according to the researchers, who published their findings in Nature Climate Change. The amounts of POPs that are released will depend on the speed of warming and on the chemicals’ interactions with snow and rain.

Independent: Climate researchers are seeking help from Australian and US naval forces—to fight pirates. The Argo project, which involves 30 nations, uses some 3000 robotic instruments to provide data on the heat and saltiness of the world’s oceans. Its researchers, however, have not been able to deploy 20 of the instruments in an area of the west Indian Ocean, north of Mauritius, because it’s one of the world’s most dangerous areas for piracy; in the first half of this year, 163 of 266 attacks reported globally were carried out by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean—an increase of 100 over the same period last year. The area is of special interest to climatologists because it has had a major influence on Australian and south Asian weather and climate.

New York Times: As increasingly severe weather destroys crops and urban infrastructure, and as scientists explore the implications of climate change, TV weather forecasters have gained in importance. And since the advent of Doppler radar in the 1980s, their role has gone from delivering National Weather Service reports to making their own local predictions based on data from a plethora of high-tech equipment. With advanced degrees that include courses in calculus and atmospheric thermodynamics, broadcast meteorologists are the ones who “bring it home,” with potentially life-saving local warnings of tornadoes, fires, and floods. “The broadcast meteorologist has emerged as an unlikely hero,” writes Kim Severson for the New York Times. According to Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, “The weather is more extreme, the floods are wetter and the droughts are drier. That’s going to have real implications on society, and it elevates the need for more information and a need for those on-air personalities. It’s beyond what to wear for the day or do I need to carry an umbrella.”

New York Times: The Brookings Institution has compiled what it describes as one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date analyses of the US’s enigmatic green economy. For its report “Sizing the Clean Economy,” the institution collected data from every county and major metropolitan area in the US from 2003 to 2010. One point the report makes, writes Joanna Foster for the New York Times, is that although green initiatives are driving growth and innovation, market and policy challenges—such as financing shortfalls, inadequate support for innovation, and policy gaps that undercut market demand—are preventing those initiatives from reaching their full potential.

Science Daily: Climate change may be having a negative impact on the ocean carbon sink. Until now the ocean has been taking up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, decreasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and mitigating its associated global changes. In a new analysis published online 10 July in Nature Geoscience, Galen McKinley of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and colleagues found that rising global temperatures are slowing the carbon absorption across a large portion of the subtropical North Atlantic. Warmer water cannot hold as much carbon dioxide, so the ocean’s carbon capacity is decreasing as it warms. This information could be critical for decision making, since any decrease in ocean uptake may require greater human efforts to control carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

National Geographic: Japan is in the middle of one of the most severe electricity shortfalls in history, according to a report by the International Energy Agency. Before the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March, nuclear energy provided a third of Japan's electricity. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has set a goal of 10 million solar-powered homes by the year 2020 and has abandoned prior plans for nuclear expansion. That realignment doesn't address the immediate problem, however; the government has asked residents of Tokyo to reduce electricity consumption by 25% and residents of the rest of Japan to reduce consumption by 15%—at a time of year when air conditioning usually places high demands on the grid. But Japan's electricity demand is already 20% below the world average, and 30% below that of the US, and it's unclear how much more small and medium-sized businesses will be willing to cut their demand. Individual citizens aren't resisting conservation, but their acceptance of it seems more resigned than enthusiastic, so far.

Washington Post: Massive coal burning in China may have slowed global warming over the past 10 years, according to a study by Robert Kaufmann of Boston University and colleagues, which was published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Burning coal releases carbon dioxide, which traps heat from the Sun and raises temperatures. But it also emits particles of sulfur that deflect the Sun's rays, which can have a cooling effect. Unfortunately, the cooling is only temporary, whereas the carbon dioxide from coal burning stays in Earth's atmosphere for a long time. As China works to reduce its pollution, and hence the amount of sulfur it emits, temperatures could begin to climb again. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have listed 2010 as tied for the warmest year on record, and the Hadley Center of the British Meteorological Office lists it as second warmest, after 1998.

BBC: Precise prediction of catastrophic climate events remains impossible for even the best computer models, according to Paul Valdes of Bristol University in the UK. Models have not been able to "predict" at least four major transformations in the past: the rapidly rising temperatures of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, the drying trend over North Africa, the serial weakening or shutting down of the Gulf Stream, and the sharp warmings recorded in Greenland ice cores. "State-of-the-art climate models are largely untested against actual occurrences of abrupt change," writes Valdes in a commentary published in Nature Geoscience. "It is a huge leap of faith to assume that simulations of the coming century with these models will provide reliable warning of sudden, catastrophic events." Valdes believes that Earth's climate is sensitive to small changes and suspects computer models are underestimating climate change.

New York Times: A new reality-based cooking show, Stoveman, which airs today on Vimeo, documents the efforts of two men who travel to developing countries to provide the residents with rocket stoves. The show is part of the Paradigm Project, a "low profit" business that depends on revenue earned from the sale of carbon credits; with Stoveman, credits are generated because the highly efficient wood-burning stoves get more cooking power with less combustion and heat-trapping pollution. In the first episode of the new series, principals Greg Spencer and Austin Mann experience the challenges facing wood-collecting women of the nomadic Gabbra culture of northern Kenya.

New York Times: This year’s Stanley Cup Finals between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins was the first “water neutral” series in the history of the National Hockey League, according to a spokesperson for the league. The NHL purchased water restoration certificates through the Oregon-based Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which in turn paid water-rights holders in the Pacific Northwest to conserve water. Margaret Palmer, an environmental science professor at the University of Maryland, said the program is more philanthropic than anything else; she likened it to a donation to water-rights holders to preserve or restore water they don’t need. “I doubt it’s going to explode, but it is a good program,” she said. The NHL calculated that during a seven-game playoff series about 800 000 gallons of water are used, for the ice, concessions, and toilets. The league, which has agreed to restore at least a million gallons by purchasing certificates from Bonneville, is the first major sports organization to commit to such a large-scale effort, writes Jeff Dinunzio for the New York Times.

Washington Post: The Western Regional Air Partnership and other environmental groups have succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce provisions of the Clean Air Act in the Western US. Provided a deal struck between the EPA and the groups passes a judicial review, coal-fired plants in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming will be required to install devices called scrubbers to reduce their emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides—or be shut down. Besides being a source of atmospheric pollution, the emissions are responsible for reducing visibility at the Grand Canyon and other national parks.

New York Times: This year has seen the second-highest annual total of tornadoes recorded in the US in modern times, with 875 reported in April alone. Heavy rain and snowmelt contributed to the flooding of the Mississippi River, which surpassed the historic floods of 1927 and 1937. And drier than average conditions across the southern US have resulted in above-average fire activity there. Whether the extreme weather events are the result of human-caused global warming remains to be seen, however. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which issued a report on the extreme weather of spring 2011, were careful not to blame humans for this year's rash of deadly events. They said that in some ways weather patterns were returning to those seen at the beginning of the last century.

USA Today: More colleges are turning to eco-friendly materials for their graduates’ caps and gowns, according to Wendy Koch for USA Today. Some students, such as Caltech’s 2011 graduating class, wore GreenWeaver gowns made from recycled plastic bottles. More than 250 institutions ordered the attire this year from Virginia-based Oak Hall Cap and Gown, up from 60 in 2010, said vice president Donna Hodges. Another company, Minneapolis-based Jostens, makes gowns from wood fiber from sustainably harvested North American forests. Omaha-based Willsie Cap and Gown sells a GreenGown made of the same resin used in plastic bottles and reuses the fabric if it's returned; sales are up 300% from a year ago, says the company's Steve Killen. Unfortunately, the green gowns can cost more than the traditional polyester ones. And because graduation gowns usually do not get reused (students are usually required to purchase them), some students have suggested a gown swap, which would make the gowns greener yet.

New York Times: A recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that while the clean technology sector has been booming in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—because of direct government investment, tax breaks, loans, and laws and regulations that cap or tax emissions—its competitive position was “at risk” in the US because of “uncertainties surrounding key policies and incentives,” writes Elisabeth Rosenthal for the New York Times. The US Congress’s disagreement over whether climate change is real has allowed companies overseas to profit by exporting their goods and expertise to the US. “This is a $5 trillion business and if we fail to be serious players in the new energy economy, the costs will be staggering to this country,” said Hal Harvey, a Stanford engineer who was an adviser to both the Clinton and the first Bush administration and is now chief executive of the San Francisco–based energy and environment nonprofit organization Climate Works.

Los Angeles Times: Yesterday Bruce Babbitt, former secretary of the Department of the Interior, charged that President Obama has failed to answer “forcefully and persuasively” Republican attacks on environmental safeguards, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. According to an Interior Department spokesperson, Obama instituted a conservation plan more ambitious than those of his recent predecessors. Since the midterm elections, however, the Obama administration has delayed or weakened several regulations opposed by congressional Republicans and business lobbyists. Babbitt urged the president to reject all future environmental riders and to restore land and waterways by using executive authority to create more parks and wilderness areas.

Independent: Although regional tree species have been suffering due to human-induced climate change and deforestation, the density of some forests and woodlands across much of the world is actually increasing, according to a new study published in the online, peer-reviewed journal PLoS One. Written by researchers at Finland's University of Helsinki and New York's Rockefeller University, "A National and International Analysis of Changing Forest Density" suggests that forests are thickening in 45 of 68 countries, which together account for 72% of global forests. Aapo Rautiainen and his coauthors believe that evidence of denser forests, which could be crucial in reducing the world's carbon footprint, is due to more sustainable government forestry practices. However, some critics have expressed concerns that what is being planted are species that grow faster and taller, which will eventually result in a loss of biodiversity. For example, writes the Independent's Andrew Marszal, "China's ambitious reforestation programme has added three million new hectares (nearly eight million acres) to the country's forests every year over the past decade, but green campaigners believe this is predominantly composed of one species—eucalyptus."

BBC: The International Energy Agency, an independent watchdog established by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has estimated that the world's emissions of carbon dioxide from energy generation amounted to 30.6 gigatons in 2010. That annual total is the highest on record. The agency had detected a drop in emissions in 2008 and 2009 that it attributed to the global recession. According to Fatih Birol, the agency's chief economist, the renewed upward trend jeopardizes the goal of the most recent climate summit to limit the global rise in temperature to 2°C by 2020.

New York Times: Yesterday Governor Chris Christie announced that New Jersey would become the first state to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state trading system, reports Mireya Navarro for the New York Times. Under RGGI, 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states ranging from Maine to Maryland set a ceiling on carbon dioxide emissions and require power plants to purchase credits that allow them to emit specified amounts of carbon dioxide. According to Christie, the initiative “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment.” Environmental advocates called the decision a serious blow to the state’s efforts to reduce emissions from power plants and foster a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Nevertheless, Christie says that New Jersey would continue to work to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by increasing the proportion of electricity generated by natural gas, the Sun, and the wind.

Guardian: The president of the Royal Society, Nobel laureate Paul Nurse, believes that freedom of information laws need to provide for both transparency and protection from harassment, writes Alok Jha for the Guardian. Climate scientists have been targeted by aggressive and organized campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, including unpublished drafts of papers later published in journals—with annotations explaining every change in each successive version of the paper. Complying with one such request is cumbersome. Complying with many of them can prevent much else from getting done, and that appears to have been the intent in some cases. The situation is made more difficult by the relative anonymity of the people filing requests; usually, not much is known about their sources of funding or the context from which they are making the request.

New Scientist: Countries such as China, India, and Saudi Arabia have begun to lease well-watered land in Africa to grow food crops. Doing so is cheaper and easier than maintaining and improving the water resources back home, writes Anil Ananthaswamy for New Scientist. To study this global virtual water trade network, researchers Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe of Princeton University and Samir Suweis of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have built a mathematical model—the first of its kind. According to their findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, a small number of countries have a large number of connections to other countries to access their water resources, whereas a much larger number of countries have very few connections, rendering them more vulnerable to market forces. Thus, the richer countries tend to monopolize the world’s water supply. In another study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Paolo D'Odorico of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville and coworkers found that while, in the short term, a rise in the virtual water trade can prevent famine, in the long term such trade reduces societies’ resilience to catastrophes like exceptional droughts and crop failure, which could be on the rise due to climate change.

New York Times: Chicago is preparing for a wetter, steamier future based on climate scientists’ predictions. Inspired by the Kyoto international treaty of 2006, then mayor Richard Daley initiated efforts to reduce carbon emissions and raise Chicago’s profile as an environmentally friendly town. Alleys, bike lanes, and parking spaces are being repaved with water-permeable materials; more vegetation is being planted to provide more shade, absorb carbon dioxide, sponge up excess water, and reduce energy use; plans for air conditioning all public schools are in the works; and thermal radar is being used to map the hottest spots to target for pavement removal and more vegetation. “Cities adapt or they go away,” said Aaron Durnbaugh, deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Environment. “Climate change is happening in both real and dramatic ways.” Chicago is often called the Second City, but it is way out in front of most in terms of adaptation, writes Leslie Kaufman for the New York Times.

Telegraph: The UK has committed to an ambitious plan to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. To meet the target, the country will have to move to nuclear and wind power, adopt strict energy efficiency measures to make businesses and homes less wasteful, and increase the number of electric cars. Critics warn that such measures could damage the competitiveness of British industry and limit economic growth. Energy secretary Chris Huhne, however, has “promised a support package for industry to help them move to renewable or low energy power,” writes Louise Gray for the Telegraph.

Los Angeles Times: Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency rescinded for reconsideration a rule that would limit emissions from power plants at major industrial facilities, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. Although the Obama administration claims that it is just trying to curtail burdensome regulation, critics believe the decision was a political one made to appease industry and congressional Republicans, who insist that new environmental regulations will kill jobs. The delay will allow further study and the opportunity to develop regulations that are “reasonable and scientifically based,” said Robert Bessette, president of the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners. It remains unclear when the EPA will issue a new rule.

Nature: The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to heal, say researchers in Australia, who have published their findings in Geophysical Research Letters. Thanks to the Montreal Protocol of 1989, which banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-destroying chemicals, levels of anthropogenic ozone depleters detected in the region's stratosphere have been falling since around the turn of the millennium, writes James Mitchell Crow for Nature. Before Murry Salby, an environmental scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues could investigate manmade ozone depletion, however, they first had to account for the naturally occurring annual fluctuation in ozone levels. The researchers found that average springtime levels are linked to changes in a particular pattern of stratospheric weather known as dynamical forcing. Once they figured that out, they were able to detect the gradual recovery of the ozone levels, which had declined precipitously until the late 1990s before beginning a slow rebound. A complicating factor in predicting future ozone levels will be the influence of climate change, said David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

New York Times: A new LED is being developed for sale later this year that will be comparable to a 75-watt incandescent bulb in brightness, yet it will use less power and last longer. To date, LEDs have had limited appeal for consumers because of their limited brightness and high initial cost. According to Philips Lighting, its EnduraLED A21 will cost about $40, last 25 000 hours, produce 1100 lumens of light, and consume just 17 watts of electricity. Although 75-watt-equivalent LED lamps have been available in PAR sizes (for recessed ceiling fixtures), Philips says its EnduraLED is the first 75-watt equivalent in a standard “A” lamp shape, writes Eric Taub for the New York Times.

New York Times: The Arctic Council, meeting today in Greenland, is expected to sign its first treaty on maritime search and rescue for the Arctic region. The council—which is composed of representatives from Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the US, Sweden, and Finland—was formed in 1996 to promote cooperation and coordination among the Arctic states on such issues as environmental protection and sustainable development. According to Steven Myers of the New York Times, “Officials said they hoped [the treaty] would become a model for increasing international cooperation in the Arctic on far more difficult issues as the pursuit of natural resources sharpens unresolved territorial disputes and raises the prospect of pollution and environmental catastrophes.” Among the attendees is US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is the first US secretary of state to attend one of the council’s biannual meetings.

National Geographic: A study by Robert Jackson, of Duke University, and colleagues, has found evidence that methane has escaped into ground and drinking water in areas where shale gas drilling was under way. Shale gas is extracted via hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"; water is pumped into rock deep underground until the resulting pressure causes the rock to crack, which in turn releases the natural gas within. The researchers found methane in the majority of water wells they sampled. They analyzed methane concentrations in 60 ground-water wells across Pennsylvania and New York and found explosive concentrations of the gas as far away as 3200 feet from an active drilling site. Average methane concentrations in wells near drilling sites were 17 times those in wells where shale gas drilling had not occurred. Methane isn't regulated in drinking water because it doesn't alter color, taste, or odor, nor does it affect water's potability. However, it is an asphyxiation and explosion hazard in confined spaces.

Calgary Herald: Last week Plains Midstream Canada's Rainbow pipeline in northern Alberta ruptured, sending 28 000 barrels of oil onto the Canadian prairie. Although most of the oil has been contained near the rupture, some has leaked into nearby wetlands. The pipeline is owned and operated by Plains Midstream, a subsidiary of the Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline. On Friday, Stephen Bart of Plains Midstream told reporters that his company's investigation into the spill had found the likely cause: Soil beneath the ruptured pipe had not been sufficiently compacted, causing the pipe to sag and experience stress. A badly welded joint was also a factor. Before the spill, the pipeline carried about 187 000 barrels of oil per day from Zama in northwestern Alberta south to Edmonton, 480 miles away.

Guardian: Agricultural practices evolved over a period of about 11 000 years of stable climate, but now they will need to adapt to a changing climate and an increase in global population, writes Damian Carrington for the Guardian. In a recent study, David Lobell, Wolfram Schlenker, and Justin Costa-Roberts found that global productivity of crop plants has dropped, increasing food prices by 18.9% over recent decades. The drop in productivity was not due to changes in rainfall; rather, higher global temperatures caused dehydration, prevented pollination, and slowed photosynthesis. The researchers used computer models to separate the effects of climate change from natural variations in weather and other factors. Between 1980 and 2008, wheat production was 5.5% lower than it would have been without global warming, and corn production was 3.8% lower. Some countries' production dropped far more; Russia lost 15% of its potential wheat crop, and Brazil, Mexico, and Italy all suffered above-average losses.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Oceanographers used to rely on military submarines to gather data on the salinity, temperature, and other properties of the seawater beneath Arctic ice. Now, a new means has been developed: instrument-laden robotic submarines known as seagliders. About the size and shape of a car-top cargo box, seagliders can determine their own courses to sample a range of depths and locations. The data they collect are transmitted back to the lab via satellite when the seagliders surface. Each unit costs about $150 000.

BBC: For the first time since the Tohoku earthquake of 11 March, workers have entered the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Twelve engineers will work inside the number 1 reactor building in 10-minute shifts—four people at a time—to install ventilation systems to filter out radioactive material from the air. The quake disabled reactor cooling systems, which caused fuel rods to overheat, but radiation levels must be lowered before new cooling systems can be installed. The Tokyo Electric Power Company plans to begin ventilation later today and then connect a new, external cooling system to reduce temperatures inside the building.

New York Times: Environmentalists sued the US government yesterday, claiming "that key agencies had failed in their duty to protect the earth's atmosphere as a public trust to be guarded for future generations," writes Felicity Barringer for the New York Times. The plaintiffs—who belong to Our Children’s Trust, a coalition of groups concerned about climate change—will be filing similar lawsuits against states around the country. Two novel aspects of the suit are that most of the individual plaintiffs are teenagers and that the suit relies on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times. Legal experts said they were unsure whether the new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that it presents issues that overlap in some ways with a public nuisance case already brought by several states against the five largest US utilities.

Science: The National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad, India, will launch a 30-month project to create an earthquake observatory in Koyna, a region in western India that experiences frequent small to moderately sized earthquakes. An 8-kilometer-deep borehole will be drilled and laced with sensors that measure chemical, electrical, and gravitational perturbations. Koyna's borehole will be unique because it will be the first intraplate borehole—three similar ones drilled thus far are all on the boundaries of tectonic plates—and because it will be near a large dam, where the rise and fall of reservoir water levels often induces earthquakes. Concerns that drilling could increase regional seismicity and thus pose a risk to the nuclear power plant in Maharashtra, 64 kilometers away, have been dismissed as unrealistic: Earthquakes in the region are triggered by water in the many thousands of water-filled cracks in the earth, and seismologists believe that one more hole will not have any significant effect.

National Geographic: The tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Wednesday was the result of an unusual confluence of meteorological conditions. Current estimates put the twister's wind speed at about 260 mph, and it may have remained in contact with the ground for more than 200 miles. An unusually strong jet stream over the region, with wind speeds of 150 mph, caused intense upward motion in the atmosphere. The colder, drier air within combined with the warm, moist air already in place to create rotating thunderstorms known as supercells—one of the few types of storms that spawn tornadoes. A 50 mph wind closer to the ground only increased the storms' rotation. Wednesday's tornado outbreak included more than 100 twisters across 6 states and killed at least 283 people, making it the worst outbreak since 3 April 1974, when 330 people were killed in an area that stretched from Alabama to Indiana.

Science: Kamaljit Bawa of the University of Massachusetts Boston and his graduate student Pashupati Chaudhary interviewed 250 farmers who live in the Darjeeling Hills of India and Nepal. The researchers' goal was to discover whether the farmers had noticed and felt the effects of climate change over the past 20 years. The answer was yes, but in surprising ways. To avoid biasing their study, Bawa and Chaudhary did not ask the farmers about climate, but about general changes. One respondent said she had to wash her kitchenware more frequently than before because food spoiled more quickly. Others had noticed that rhododendrons were growing at higher altitudes. Bawa and Chaudhary's study, which will appear in Biology Letters, complements space- and ground-based measurements and could help farmers and others cope with climate change.

Daily Mail: The Green Microgym franchise in Portland, Oregon, is harnessing the energy created during its clients’ workouts and turning it back into electricity. At both of its gyms in Portland, custom-made exercise bicycles power a generator, which creates electricity. The electricity is then fed back into the building, to help power the lights, fans, stereo, and flat-screen TVs. Because gyms tend to use a lot of power, mostly for lights, heating, and cooling, the electricity-generating machines can’t power the entire gym, but they can reduce the gym’s draw from the electrical grid. Owner Adam Boesel says that the eco-machines have been garnering a lot of interest but that they're “just the shiny wrapper on a package, which is energy efficiency.” Besides the bikes, the gym uses solar panels, renewable-source flooring, and toilet paper made from recycled materials.

New York Times: On Tuesday the US Supreme Court examined the issue of who should be responsible for regulating carbon emissions. Six states (California, Connecticut, Iowa, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont) and New York City brought a lawsuit against five power companies that are responsible for a quarter of carbon-dioxide emissions by utilities in the nation. The suit said the courts should step in to protect the states from a "public nuisance" created by the defendants. The court countered that regulating greenhouse-gas emissions is more the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2004, the legal and political landscapes have changed—the EPA under the Bush administration took the view that the Clean Air Act did not permit it to issue regulations addressing climate change, while in 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate some emissions. Nevertheless, the New York solicitor general, Barbara D. Underwood, urged the court "to keep the federal courts open to states exercising their historic power to protect their land and their citizens from air pollution emitted in other states."

New York Times: Solar panels that float on water are being manufactured and marketed by several startup companies. Sunengy of Australia, Solaris Synergy of Israel, and SPG Solar of Novato, California, are marketing their panels for use on agricultural and mining ponds, hydroelectric dams, and canals. Although floating solar arrays are a niche market, they could have global appeal—particularly in areas where land is too valuable to cover over with panels, such as vineyards in California’s Napa Valley, and in developing countries that have plenty of water and sunshine but shortages of electricity. In addition, solar panels floating on water could help control algae and reduce water loss to evaporation.

Los Angeles Times: A cap-and-trade carbon emissions plan in California, modeled on Europe's six-year-old system, may be delayed by litigation. Scheduled to begin in January 2012, the program has been challenged by local environmental groups that contend the California Air Resources Board failed to analyze alternatives to trading. "We have to be open to the possibility that there could be other approaches and that we could achieve [carbon] reductions in a different way," said board chairwoman Mary Nichols. Because the European cap-and-trade system has been plagued by tax fraud schemes and cybertheft, it was hoped that the California plan would set a better example for the US. The court's decision is expected to be appealed, but any delay in the January start date could throw a wrench into the financial planning of hundreds of companies, writes Margot Roosevelt for the Los Angeles Times.

New York Times: On 18 April, TEPCO unveiled its plans for stabilizing the reactors at its Fukushima Daiichi power plant, for bringing them into cold shutdown within the next nine months, and for reducing the levels of radioactive release in the meantime.The first part of the plan is expected to take three months and includes the building of new cooling systems. The three badly damaged reactor buildings would then be covered and filters would be installed to reduce the release of contamination into the air. Since the plant's cooling systems failed, TEPCO has been cooling the reactors and the pools that hold spent fuel rods by pouring tons of water on them. That water would boil, which in turn led to the release of radioactive steam and runoff. Water in a reactor that is in cold shutdown is below the boiling point, which allows cooling to continue and keeps the fuel rods under water. The Japanese government said that evacuees would be able to start returning to the area in six to nine months.

Science: Language banning US government contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been dropped from the compromise spending bill of 2011. The language had been included as a "policy rider" in the House of Representatives draft of the spending bill; the rider was first authored by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) as a standalone bill. Paul Sloca, a spokesperson for Luetkemeyer, says that the congressman intends to reintroduce the bill and may broaden it to bar the federal government from supporting any meetings aimed at negotiating a global treaty on climate change. A February press release from the congressman states that the IPCC "is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science" and that his legislation would stop the government from spending "$13 million" on the IPCC. The US contribution to the IPCC last year was about $3 million, according to the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Washington Post: TEPCO, operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, announced that it would pay initial compensation in the amount of ¥1 million (about $12 000) to each family and ¥750 000 (about $9000) to each single adult evacuated from the zone around the plant; the company expects to pay ¥50 billion in the initial round of compensation. Some residents of the area near the plant have expressed doubt that the initial payment will be sufficient to cover the costs they've sustained, and the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, has criticized both TEPCO's and the national government's handling of the disaster, demanding faster action and full compensation for the evacuees. Japanese law exempts nuclear plant operators from liability when nuclear accidents are "caused by a grave natural disaster of an exceptional character." While the tsunami was indeed of exceptional character—the last time Japan saw one of that magnitude was probably in 869 AD, in Sendai—it would be politically disastrous for TEPCO to refuse to pay damages on that basis. Whether the company will face lawsuits going forward is unclear; Japan relies heavily on nonjudicial resolution of disputes.

Los Angeles Times: According to a new report by the Pew Environment Group, mining claims pose an environmental threat to territory near the borders of 10 iconic US national parks and wilderness areas. The Grand Canyon is especially at risk, where uranium claims have increased 2000% since 2004, because of possible damage to the Colorado River watershed. In the wake of rising global prices, companies have filed claims at an increased rate to mine copper, gold, and other metals as well as uranium. Critics blame an outmoded 1872 law, which allows corporations to stake out rights to federal lands for mining without a competitive bid and to extract resources without paying royalties. "We're still dealing with an antiquated law that in its wake has left huge cleanup and contamination problems all over," said Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ).

NPR: On 12 April the Japanese government raised the rating of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). The change in status at Fukushima was prompted by new data on the amount of radiation released rather than by a change in conditions at the plant. The only other nuclear incident to earn that rating to date has been the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine; the rating indicates a major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects that require extended countermeasures. The two incidents have significant differences: The amount of radioactive material released by the Fukushima plant to date is one-tenth the amount released at Chernobyl; the reactor cores at Fukushima are still largely protected, albeit with some damage to the containment vessels, whereas the entire reactor at the Soviet plant exploded and was not surrounded by a containment structure. The World Health Organization stated Tuesday that there was very little public health risk outside the 18-mile evacuation zone around the plant.

BBC: The Yellowstone Caldera feeds the hot springs, mud pots, and geysers associated with Yellowstone National Park. Seismic images created in 2009 of the subterranean molten plume showed it dipping downward from Yellowstone at a 60-degree angle and extending about 150 miles west-northwest to a point about 410 miles underground, under the Montana-Idaho border. Michael Zhdanov and colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City have used electrical conductivity to create new images of the plume; they found that it dips less steeply, at about 40 degrees, and extends about 640 miles from east to west. The two sets of images may look different because they measure different things; seismic images highlight materials that slow seismic waves, and geoelectric images highlight fluids that conduct electricity. The difference may indicate that there are more fluids underground than previously thought, and that the smaller region imaged by seismic waves may be enveloped by a broader region of partly molten rock and other liquids.

Guardian: A new study has found that the legal requirement in the UK and Europe to put biofuels in gas and diesel is unethical. An 18-month inquiry by the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics found that the need to meet rising biofuel targets has led to exploitation of workers, damage to the environment, loss of wildlife, and higher food prices. Food prices have risen because the main biofuels currently used come from food crops such as corn and sugar cane. Also, biofuel targets have driven rapid expansion of biofuels production in parts of the world with lower ethical standards, which has led to the destruction of rainforest and to near-slavery conditions for workers. Several corrective measures have been suggested, including switching from using food crops to agricultural waste, such as straw and fast-growing perennials, and adopting an international certification scheme, like Fairtrade, to guarantee that the production of biofuels is fair, equitable, and sustainable.

Science: Research has indicated that sonar and other anthropogenic sounds can damage a wide spectrum of ocean fauna, but the effect of such sound on cephalopods was unknown. Now Michel André of the Technical University of Catalonia in Spain and colleagues have been studying the effect of high-decibel, low-frequency sound on wild cephalopods held in laboratory aquariums, and discovered that all of the animals exposed to the noise suffered severe damage to their statocysts (sound-detecting structures behind the cephalopod eye). Damage ranged from crumpled or displaced sensory cells to large lesions. More damage appeared to develop as post-exposure times increased. Peter Madsen at Aarhus University in Denmark expresses some skepticism about the results, partly because the control animals used by the researchers were not housed in an aquarium as the experimental animals were, which leaves open the possibility that captivity caused or contributed to the sensory damage in the latter group. T. Aran Mooney at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts questions how André and his team measured the animals' exposure to noise, but also says their research is "a good first step" in determining whether anthropogenic noise harms cephalopods.

Nature: The cleanup process at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant could last for many decades, and some estimates suggest it may take as much as a century. The process can't begin until the reactors are stabilized; radiation levels around the plant are beginning to fall, but there is still a danger of further release of radioactivity. Radioactive water in the buildings and trenches around the site will be a high priority of any cleanup effort. The reactor cores themselves are another concern. At Three Mile Island, it took three years for radiation levels in the core to fall sufficiently to allow access to the reactor. The boiling water reactor (BWR) design at Fukushima complicates matters further. The reactors are sealed with a solid stainless steel cap that must be removed by a heavy crane located above the reactor. Explosions at three of the reactors mean that the cranes have almost certainly been destroyed, and another way in will have to be found.

Washington Post: A Texas man has been awarded this year's Goldman Environmental Prize for the North America category. Hilton Kelley grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, known for its oil refineries and petrochemical plants. After a stint in the US Navy, he revisited his hometown in 2000 and was troubled by the pollution—the city and surrounding county had one of the highest levels of air pollution in the US, and residents suffered from cancer rates that were 23% higher than the state average, according to the Texas Cancer Registry. In response, he started the Community In-power and Development Association, which held protests and threatened legal action to expose the lack of pollution controls and lax protocols of such companies as Shell Oil. According to Lorrae Rominger, the Goldman group's deputy director, Kelley won this year's prize because "his community had almost been destroyed from the pollution, which was the reason people were moving out. It was the children's health. He did something that affected thousands of people."

Inside Science News Service: The largest earthquake on record was the magnitude-9.5 Chile earthquake of 1960. It accounts for about a quarter of the total seismic strain released worldwide since 1990. The magnitude-9.0 quake in Japan on 1 March released one twentieth of the global total. Richard Aster, of the New Mexico institute of Mining and Technology, says that we may be in the middle of a period of large earthquakes after a lull in the 1980s and 1990s. Global seismic data show periods of relative quiet, with fewer large earthquakes, as well as spikes of activity. The records only go back to the beginning of the 20th century, so there is uncertainty about what, if anything, the clusters of large quakes might mean. Andrew Michael, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, has concluded that the overall pattern of large earthquake occurrences is random, once aftershocks are removed from the data.

Nature: According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, most of a person's background-radiation exposure comes from natural sources and from some medical exams, with less than 1% coming from nearby nuclear reactors. The agency has asked the National Academy of Sciences to examine the potential cancer risk involved in living near a nuclear power plant, and the NAS is consulting experts on the best way to go about this. The feasibility and usefulness of the study are already a matter of debate. The last US-wide study, published by the National Cancer Institute in 1990, found no evidence of significantly increased risk. However, that study grouped people by county regardless of their actual distance from a nuclear plant, and it only considered cancer deaths. Two decades later, GPS devices can now pinpoint where people live in relation to a reactor and researchers can now look for patterns in cancer diagnosis, not just cancer deaths. Nonetheless, various potential problems with the new study have been cited: It can't control for the presence of confounding factors, as laboratory research can; low-dose effects of radiation might not be picked up; epidemiological studies measure correlation and do not prove causation. Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that if there is an effect, it will be easiest to see in children and fetuses, as their rapidly dividing cells make them more sensitive to radiation. Wing and his colleages wrote an article on how best to design the NAS study in the 1 April issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

CNN: Ozone depletion has now reached the highest level observed to date in the northern hemisphere. The World Meteorological Organization stated Tuesday that the Arctic region lost 40% of its ozone layer from the beginning of this winter to late March. The usual winter ozone loss there is about 25%; the highest ozone loss previously recorded was approximately 30%. Although cuts in the production of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-destroying chemicals have been made, and the concentration of them in the atmosphere is slowly falling, the chemicals stay in the atmosphere for several decades. When temperatures in the stratosphere fall below −78 °C, chemical reactions turn the ozone-destroying chemicals into highly reactive substances that break apart the three oxygen atoms of ozone, leading to an ozone hole.

Washington Post: As Washington, DC, celebrates its National Cherry Blossom Festival this week, the Post's Brian Palmer interviewed Ove Nilsson of Sweden's Umea Plant Science Center concerning the genetic basis for when the plants bloom. According to Nilsson, the blossom festival started last June, when the buds were actually initiated. The longer days of summer kick-start the growth processes by allowing a molecule in the plants' cells, the FT protein, to be produced. Winter's shorter days signal the plants to go dormant. In the spring, however, it is not the longer days but rather the warmer temperatures, Nilsson has found, that signal the blossoms to open. Thus global warming could challenge the system, for two reasons: It could throw off the plants' ability to sense spring and disrupt the pollination schedule of bats, birds, and bees, which spread the plants' seeds.

Science: Daily computer simulations indicate that the radioactive water being released by the Fukushima power plants is still restricted, for the most part, to areas near the coast. The International Atomic Energy Agency asked the SIROCCO group, at the University of Toulouse in France, to run its SYMPHONIE-NH ocean model centered on the Fukushima plant. Daily simulations are posted on SIROCCO's website. The site cautions that these models are only meant to provide "scenarios of dispersion" and not quantitative data on radioactivity in the sea. However, the models thus far confirm what oceanographers thought would be the case: The highest concentrations of radionuclides in the modeling thus far are within about 5 kilometers of the shore.

Various: Despite three weeks of effort by employees in trying and dangerous conditions, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has not been able to cool reactors 1–4 at its Fukushima I power plant in northeastern Japan. Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata pledged maximum efforts to stabilize them and added that they would have to be shut down for good. The company is still considering whether to decommission the plant's other two reactors, 5 and 6, which appear to be undamaged. It is likely that the entire station will be decomissioned. The entire process may take as long as three decades to complete.

New York Times: Frustrated by the Obama administration’s slow pace in restarting offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon accident last year, Republicans in Congress are proposing a range of bills to force the administration to accelerate the granting of drilling permits and open new offshore areas to oil and gas exploration, writes John Broder for the New York Times. Republicans in the Senate and House are also moving on bills to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate climate-altering gases and are using pending budget measures to limit enforcement of a variety of other environmental laws. President Obama will answer some of their arguments in a speech on national energy policy scheduled for today.

Various: It's still too dangerous for humans to look inside three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Instead, robots and remote cameras will give operators details of the conditions. Other remote tools, such as unmanned fire engines, will help douse the reactors, writes David Hambling for New Scientist. This may be the start of a long robotic engagement. "I would anticipate that we are going to see a phenomenal enterprise of remote work systems that are brought to bear over the weeks, months, and years of recovering Fukushima," says Carnegie Mellon University robotics researcher Red Whittaker to NPR's Geoff Brumfiel.

New York Times: Hong Kong’s anti-pollution organization, the Clean Air Network, has launched a new effort to raise awareness and fight for clean air: an art auction. Fifty-one environment-inspired works of modern art went on display Monday in Hong Kong’s financial district. Sotheby’s will auction them off on 4 April, part of the auction house’s twice-yearly sale of contemporary Asian art. Many of the artists, who include well-known names from Hong Kong and elsewhere, created works especially for the event. The Clean Air Network has tried imaginative approaches to campaigning before, including a spoof infomercial featuring Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu selling canisters of “fresh air,” which became an instant hit among YouTube users. In her New York Times's article, Bettina Wassener describes some of the pieces to be auctioned.

New York Times: As the price of oil continues to rise, one company, Gevo in Englewood, Colorado, is pursuing a greener alternative to the fossil fuel: It has just bought a plant that turns corn into ethanol—used as vehicle fuel—and plans to convert the plant to make a different chemical, isobutanol, which is a building block for many other chemicals. Isobutanol is easily converted to butanol, which can be used as fuel as well as in rubber and plastics. A green aspect of this process is that when making rubber and plastics, butanol not only replaces the oil but also becomes a “carbon sink,” a place where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, can be stored after it is pulled out of the atmosphere.

Nature: The acidity of seawater has climbed by 30% over the past 150 years, and some regions have already become corrosive enough to inhibit the growth of corals and other species for part of the year. Carbonic acid is produced when the oceans absorb carbon dioxide, which reacts with the water. Unless nations sharply curb their emissions, atmospheric CO₂ is expected to at least double from its preindustrial concentration by sometime in the second half of this century. Countries are only now revving up the coordinated research programs needed to assess how marine ecosystems will react to the increasingly acidic waters. Quirin Schiermeier examines this problem in his Nature news story.

BBC: A team led by Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, has just published the results of a 20-year study into the extent and causes of global sea-level rise. The gradual warming of Earth's lower atmosphere raises sea levels in two ways—by warming seawater, thereby lowering its density, and by melting icecaps and glaciers, thereby increasing the amount of seawater. Until recently, the warming of seawater was the bigger contributor. Now, however, the melting of ice has taken the lead. On average, sea levels now are rising at a rate of 3 mm a year.

Nature: China's premier Wen Jiabao announced on Saturday that China would aim to cut its energy intensity (carbon emission per unit of GDP) by 16% within five years. The target is ambitious. At the same venue, the annual Communist Party congress in Beijing, Wen also pledged that China would end poverty and continue to grow its economy at a rate of 7% per year. To reduce its use of fossil fuels, China must not only shift to low-carbon technologies, but also raise the efficiency with which it uses all forms of energy.

Nature: A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has quantified emissions from clearing peat-swamp forest in Southeast Asia for palm-oil plantations, writes Gayathri Vaidyanathan for Nature. By the early 2000s, up to 6% of the carbon-rich forests had been cleared in peninsular Malaysia and on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra to make way for oil-palm plantations, according to the study. The clearances, a response to rising demand for food and biofuel, released as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the entire UK transport sector does in a year. Those clearings also put numerous species of wildlife at risk of extinction. The study is the first attempt to systematically assign a value to the carbon loss due to peatland destruction in Southeast Asia that can be attributed directly to conversion to oil-palm plantations.

Science: Although species naturally come and go over long periods of time, a new study says that Earth’s creatures are on the brink of a mass extinction, the sixth in its history, writes Ann Gibbons for Science. A mass extinction is defined as when three-quarters of all species vanish quickly, such as the dinosaur disappearance 65 million years ago after an asteroid struck Earth. Conservationists have warned for years that we are in the midst of a human-caused extinction, with species from frogs to birds to tigers threatened by climate change, disease, loss of habitat, and competition for resources with nonnative species. The study’s lead author, Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley, says, "This is really gloom-and-doom stuff. But the good news is we haven't come so far down the road that it's inevitable." If humans work quickly to protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats now, the mass extinction can be prevented or at least delayed by thousands of years.

Daily Mail: A group of designers based in Boston has put together a proposal for a floating city to be located on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Inspired by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the structure can take the blast of a storm with little impact on the community inside. Covering 30 million square feet and 1200 feet high, the city would boast hotels, shops, schools, gardens, and moving walkways and is designed to house up to 40 000 residents. Designers say the structure could be used in any coastal urban area and is at the forefront of the new urban growth possibilities in a warmer, wetter, and stormier world.

Daily Mail: Water demand in many countries will exceed supply by 40% within 20 years due to the combined threat of climate change and population growth, scientists have warned. About 300 scientists, policymakers, and economists are attending the Connecting Water Resources 2011 conference in Ottawa 28 February–3 March; it is hosted by the Canadian Water Network. The event is a precursor for World Water Day to be held 20–22 March in Cape Town, South Africa. “What people don't often realise is how much water there is in everything we make and buy, from T-shirts to wine,” said Nicholas Parker, chairman of Cleantech Group, an international environmental technology consulting company. A variety of water conservation measures are being proposed.

New York Times: Five of nine multibillion-dollar solar thermal power plants planned for the Southern California desert are facing legal challenges. As the New York Times's Todd Woody reports, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations claim that the plants would threaten fragile ecosystems. Another challenge facing the plants is financial. When the plants were originally proposed, solar thermal generators, which convert light into electricity via heat, were cheaper than solar panels, which convert light directly into electricity. Now, thanks to the advent of mass-produced solar panels from China, that price advantage has disappeared.

New York Times: If you’re itching to visit the new advanced waste management plant that will open in 2016 in Copenhagen, be sure to bring your skis, writes Jim Witkin for the New York Times. An urban ski park will cover the plant, which will incinerate the waste from five municipalities to generate heat and electricity for 140 000 homes. While their trash is burning inside, locals will be able to take an elevator to the top of the building, then ski down one of three different slopes. Although municipal incinerators in Europe often take on decorative coverings to overcome negative public perceptions, the Copenhagen plant will be the first to engage the public in a sport. Designers call it “hedonistic sustainability”—sustainable cities and buildings that actually increase the quality of life.

Nature: The temperature and salinity of the Arctic Ocean are among the science data that US Navy submarines will collect under a newly resurrected program. When it ran in the 1990s, the Science Ice Exercise (SCICEX) program allowed scientists aboard nuclear submarines that sailed beneath the Arctic ice cap. In its second version, scientists won't join the sailors, but they will gain prompt access to data that the subs collect. Like the scientists, the navy is interested in learning more about the Arctic environment, especially climate-induced changes. Two scientists involved with the program describe its goals in a Q&A with Nature's Daniel Cressey.

New York Times: The idea that net zero energy use is not only attainable but also affordable and even elegant is meant to inspire builders and architects of the future. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's new hyperefficient office building in Golden, Colorado, serves as an example. The $64 million research support building opened last year as a kind of physical assertion by the US Energy Department, the lab's parent agency, that office space can be driven down to zero net energy use through a combination of on-site energy production (rooftop solar) and fanatical attention to detail everywhere else, writes the New York Times's Kirk Johnson.

Travel and Leisure: Joshua Bernstein, writing for Travel and Leisure magazine, profiles some of the world’s most visionary cities. From Seoul’s planned Nam June Paik Media Bridge—with gardens, a library, museum, and stores—to Cleveland’s shopping-mall greenhouse, which grows vegetables for the weekly farmers’ market, some cities are taking unique approaches to redefine how they function. Because traffic is one of the biggest and most visible issues plaguing cities, Hangzhou, China, has implemented a novel bike-share program, and Curitiba, Brazil, has developed a rapid transit bus system that rivals a subway for speed and efficiency.

New York Times: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar addressed the issue of offshore wind farms at a news conference yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia, announcing up to $50.5 million in federal spending over the next five years. Because about 78% of the nation’s electricity demand lies in 28 coastal states, harnessing the ocean breezes would be advantageous. However, the effort will require a lot of work, they say. Offshore wind generation is more expensive than conventional power generation from coal, gas, or even onshore wind due to such issues as reliability, parts manufacturing, and maintenance. Chu said the goal is to get the price of offshore wind down to levels where it could compete without subsidies.

BBC: A paper in today's Science quantifies the extent and severity of last year's drought in the Amazon basin. The drought troubles climate scientists because it could represent a dangerous feedback loop. If, because of global warming, the Amazon suffers increasingly from droughts, the region's trees will become less and less able to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby worsening global warming and, with it, Amazonian droughts.

Spectator: James Delingpole, a conservative writer, blogger, and climate-change skeptic, was interviewed last week for a BBC TV documentary called Science Under Attack. His interviewer was Paul Nurse, a Nobel laureate and the current president of Britain's Royal Society. From Delingpole's point of view, which he describes in a recent blog post for Spectator magazine, the interview was a setup. He writes

Using a crude but effective mixture of appeal to authority ("Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate, President of the Royal Society, speaks from on high…"), judicious editing, and a cynical, dishonest narrative in which climate-change sceptics are bracketed with violent anti-GM protestors and people who think Aids isn’t caused by HIV, this programme sought not to understand the science behind global warming but merely to smear those who dissent from the true faith.

New York Times: Over the last 8000 years, forest cover on the planet has shrunk from about 24 000 square miles to around 13 000 square miles, the advocacy group Global Forest Watch estimates. To call attention to the problem, the United Nations has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests. Various activities are planned to educate the public about the consequences of destroying the planet’s forest cover, including a film series, a commemorative stamp, and an interactive website.

Physics Today: Rare-earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy—from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Ironically, mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear, writes Stuart Biggs for Bloomberg. In a related story, two writers for the Daily Mail, Simon Parry and Ed Douglas, describe the environmental devastation in China resulting from rare-earth processing.

Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles sanitation officials have been talking to companies about an idea they think could reduce the confusion concerning what can and cannot be recycled: Get products marked with dots in green (compost), black (garbage), or blue (recycle). And in several cities, more attention is being paid not just to recycling but also to producing and buying products that more easily return to the earth. Mary MacVean, writing for the Los Angeles Times, describes the progress made so far.

Los Angeles Times: Carol Browner, President Obama's controversial climate and energy czar, will step down soon, White House officials said Tuesday, in a move that some energy lobbyists saw as another signal that the administration wants to make amends with an alienated business community by reconsidering environmental regulation, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. Many environmentalists said that Browner's resignation in itself did not signal a retreat from environmental protections, however.

New York Times: The Nissan Leaf, a mildly futuristic four-door hatchback, arrives as so much a pioneer that the systems necessary to keep it moving down the road are still being put in place, writes Jerry Garrett for the New York Times. He likens the process to the progression of the first transcontinental railroad: Tracks are being laid as a locomotive sits steaming impatiently behind. Garrett goes on to describe the fascinating experience of operating an all-electric vehicle.

BBC: By creating fake websites and impersonating real climate scientists, online fraudsters have been inviting climate scientists to attend a fake conference in London. Money appears to be the motive. Although the invitations say all expenses will be covered, including lodging at the supposed conference hotel near Buckingham Palace, invitees are asked to pay an up-front reservation fee. The BBC's Richard Black reports that climate scientists from poor countries are being targeted, presumably because they would be especially attracted by an all-expenses-paid trip.

New York Times: The ink is barely dry on the White House commission’s investigative report into the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, but deepwater drilling seems to be continuing to expand around the world. The New York Times’s Clifford Krauss writes in his Green blog about how BP has now secured permits to drill in the Bight basin in the south of Australia, and will go substantially deeper than the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Science: A team led by Ulf Büntgen of the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape in Zurich correlated modern climate data with the thickness of growth rings in modern European trees. Having performed that calibration, the team then examined samples of ancient European trees going back 2500 years. They found a striking correlation between periods of political order, such as the rise of the Roman Empire between 300 BC and 200 AD, and periods of good, crop-growing weather. Conversely, periods of disorder, such as the the turmoil that surrounded the Black Death in the 14th century, correlated with periods of bad crop-growing weather. Büntgen's findings appear in today's Science.

New York Times: Having analyzed climate data from 2010, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that the year was the wettest since 1880, when reliable record-keeping on a global scale began. Last year also tied 2005 as the hottest. In both years, the mean global temperature was 14.51 °C, 0.62 °C higher than the 20th-century mean. Although the US was also wetter and hotter than average for the 20th century, the country as a whole did not break or equal records. Still, last year's summer in the US was the fourth hottest on record.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Citing technical and financial challenges, Colorado State University in Fort Collins has abandoned its project to build what would have been the largest university wind farm in the US. The project's 75 turbines would have generated electricity at a rate of 150 megawatts. As the Chronicle's Scott Carlson reports, some of the factors that doomed the project would face most wind farms: upgrading transmission lines, making sure the towers satisfy the Federal Aviation Authority's height restrictions, and securing the necessary loans to finance the project.