• The Texas Blackouts Showed How Climate Extremes Threaten Energy Systems Across the U.S.

    Pundits and politicians have been quick to point fingers over the debacle in Texas that left millions without power or clean water during February’s deep freeze. Many have blamed the state’s deregulated electricity market, arguing that Texas prioritized cheap power over reliability. But climate extremes are wreaking increasing havoc on energy systems across the U.S., regardless of local politics or the particulars of regional grids.

  • Climate Change Has Caused Billions of Dollars in Flood Damages

    Flooding has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. over the past three decades. Researchers found that 36 percent of the costs of flooding in the U.S. from 1988 to 2017 were a result of intensifying precipitation, consistent with predictions of global warming.

  • Threshold for Dangerous Warming Will Likely Be Crossed between 2027 and 2042

    The threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042 – a much narrower window than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate of between now and 2052. In a new study, researchers introduce a new and more precise way to project the Earth’s temperature. Based on historical data, it considerably reduces uncertainties compared to previous approaches.

  • Winter Storm Could Cost Texas More Money Than Any Disaster in State History

    Lawmakers and analysts say it is too soon for an exact estimate, but the financial damage from the storm has left state lawmakers scrambling to account for the storm in the middle of the 2021 legislative session.

  • Is Climate Change a National Emergency?

    Climate change is unlike any problem facing the nation and the world, Mark Nevitt writes: It has been aptly described as the “mother of all collective action” problems and a “super-wicked” problem. “Climate change is complicated by a unique temporal characteristic that penalizes inaction. Because greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stay in the atmosphere for decades, dithering on climate action imposes escalating costs that rise over time,” he writes. “At some point, the effects of climate change will be too acute, have had too much impact, or be too late to stop or reverse.”

  • Power Outages across the Plains: 4 Questions Answered about Weather-Driven Blackouts

    Amid record cold temperatures and skyrocketing energy demand, utilities across the central U.S. have ordered rolling blackouts to ration electricity, leaving millions of people without power. Weather-related power outages are increasing across the U.S. as climate change produces more extreme storms and temperature swings. States that design their buildings and infrastructure for hot weather may need to plan for more big chills, and cold-weather states can expect more heat waves. As conditions in Texas show, there’s no time to waste in getting more weather-ready.

  • Security Threats which Bind Us

    The Converging Risks Lab of the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) released a report last week which identifies ecological disruption as a major and underappreciated security threat and calls on the United States to reboot its national security architecture and doctrine to better respond to this evolving threat landscape.

  • Erratic Weather Slows Down the Economy

    If temperature varies strongly from day to day, the economy grows less. Through these seemingly small variations climate change may have strong effects on economic growth. In a new study, researchers  juxtapose observed daily temperature changes with economic data from more than 1,500 regions worldwide over 40 years – with startling results.

  • Climate Change May Have Driven the Emergence of SARS-CoV-2

    Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favored by bats.

  • Why Projects to Adapt to Climate Change Backfire

    Many internationally funded projects aimed at combating the impacts of climate change can make things worse - by reinforcing, redistributing, or creating new sources of vulnerability in developing countries, according to a new study.

  • Role of Dams in Reducing Global Flood Risks under Climate Change

    Flood is amongst the costliest natural disasters. Globally, flood risk is projected to increase in the future, driven by climate change and population growth. The role of dams in flood mitigation, previously unaccounted for, was found to decrease by approximately 15 percent the number of people globally exposed to historical once-in-100-year floods, downstream of dams during the twenty-first century.

  • Earth to Reach Temperature Tipping Point in Next 20 to 30 Years

    Earth’s ability to absorb nearly a third of human-caused carbon emissions through plants could be halved within the next two decades at the current rate of warming, according to a new study. Researchers have identified a critical temperature tipping point beyond which plants’ ability to capture and store atmospheric carbon—a cumulative effect referred to as the “land carbon sink”—decreases as temperatures continue to rise.

  • A Climate in Crisis Calls for Investment in Direct Air Capture

    There is a growing consensus among scientists as well as national and local governments representing hundreds of millions of people, that humanity faces a climate crisis that demands a crisis response. New research explores one possible mode of response: a massively funded program to deploy direct air capture (DAC) systems that remove CO2 directly from the ambient air and sequester it safely underground.

  • It's Getting Hot in Here: Warming World Will Fry Power Plant Production

    There’s no doubt the Earth’s temperatures are going up. The power plants that keep air conditioners pushing out cold air could soon be in a vicious cycle in a warming world–not able to keep up with growing demands on hotter days and driving up greenhouse gas emissions to dangerous levels.

  • 2020 Was on Par with Warmest Year Ever Recorded, Ends Warmest Decade on Record

    Globally, 2020 was tied with the previous warmest year 2016, making it the sixth in a series of exceptionally warm years starting in 2015, and 2011-2020 the warmest decade recorded.