climate change

Natural swings in earth's climate patterns "may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline” in summer sea ice in the Arctic, says a study out in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study suggests that if these natural patterns reversed themselves, it could slow the pace of Arctic ice melt and maybe even produce a recovery of some of the ice that’s already been lost.

President Trump has often doubted the validity of climate change, but his public comments on the topic also haven’t been straightforward, says The New York Times. In 2009, Trump was one of 50 business leaders who took out a full-page ad in the Times urging “meaningful and effective measures to combat climate change.” But just a few years later, in his 2015 book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again,” he writes: “To begin with, the whole push for renewable energy is being driven by the wrong motivation, the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions.”

The world’s oceans are heating up 13 percent faster than previously thought, says a study published in the journal Science Advances. Ocean temperatures are considered a reliable indicator of the earth’s overall rate of climate change, since 90 percent of any extra heat is absorbed by the ocean, writes John Abraham, a thermal sciences professor at University of St. Thomas and one of the study's authors, in The Guardian.

A six-year study of grain crops in the Pacific Northwest says climate change is likely to boost dryland wheat by speeding the hardy crop toward maturity, reports Capital Press. Meanwhile, the journal Science says researchers credit 27 percent of the increase in corn yields over the past three decades to gains in the amount of sunlight that reached farm fields, possibly related to pollution controls.

During an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" program, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said: "No, I would not agree that it (carbon dioxide) is a primary contributor to global warming." The statement was at odds with U.S. scientific agencies, who say the planet's average surface temperature is 2 degrees F higher than in the late 1800s and due largely to increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other human-caused emissions.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who gives little credence to man-made climate change, is packing his agency with other climate skeptics, says The New York Times. “Mr. Pruitt has drawn heavily from the staff of his friend and fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James Inhofe, long known as Congress’s most prominent skeptic of climate science,” says the Times.

The White House wants to cut funding 17 percent at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), one of the government’s chief resources for climate science, according to a budget memo from the Office of Management and Budget obtained by The Washington Post.

The Trump Administration budget calls for cutting EPA jobs by one fifth — from 15,000 to 12,000 — and slicing the agency’s annual budget from $8.2 billion a year to $6.1 billion, says The Washington Post.

In the wettest winter in California in 20 years, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains is 185 percent above average, says the LA Times, according to measurements by the California Department of Water Resources. In the Southern Sierras, the snowpack is even higher — at 201 percent above average.

Spring officially arrives March 20, three weeks from now, but spring-like weather is arriving two to three weeks early in the southern United States and "is likely to keep rolling north," says the U.S. Geological Survey. The Interior Department agency, which links early arrival of warm weather to climate change, says the change in timing poses challenges for human health and for food production.

Climate change is making the Arctic Ocean more acidic as it absorbs C02 from the atmosphere, lowering the water's pH level, says a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Inspired by the Million Woman March on Washington, D.C., scientists are planning their own march to urge policymakers to base their rules on sound research. “There's been a lot of concern about the fate of science under President Trump. His appointees include climate change skeptics; he's met with an anti-vaccination campaigner. He regularly cites false numbers on things like voter fraud and crime rates, while his surrogates defend the use of "alternative facts," says NPR.

Pacific Northwest fishing and conservation groups have filed suit against the EPA for not doing more to protect wild sockeye salmon from rising water temperatures due in large part to climate change. The lawsuit is considered to be the first against President Trump's EPA.

Released under court order, thousands of pages of emails show how Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator, "closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers, electric utilities" and anti-regulation political groups in opposing environmental regulations while Oklahoma attorney general, said the New York Times. "The correspondence points to the tension emerging as Mr Pruitt is now charged with regulating many of the same companies," said the newspaper, adding, "the emails are unlikely to cause Mr. Pruitt significant new problems."

Six ocean “hotspots” of marine diversity are getting walloped by climate change and industrial fishing, says a study in the journal Science Advances.

The new head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week that the agency’s critics are “justified” in wanting to disband it, said The Guardian. “People across the country look at the EPA at the way they look at [the Internal Revenue Service]. We want to change that. There are a lot of changes that need to take place at my agency to restore the rule of law and federalism,” said Pruitt, blaming the EPA under Obama for “regulatory

Urban butterfly populations dropped by 69 percent compared with a 45 percent fall in rural areas since 1995, a study in the journal Ecological Indications says. While industrial agriculture, with its heavy use of chemicals and monoculture cropping, has long been considered the prime suspect in dwindling pollinator numbers, researchers say that urban butterflies are hurting even worse.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.