Climate Change
- phys.org Computer models show heat waves in north Pacific may be due to China reducing aerosols
A team of oceanographers and planetary scientists at the Ocean University of China, working with a pair of colleagues from the U.S. and one in Germany, has found via computer modeling, that recent heat waves in the north Pacific may be due to a large reduction in aerosols emitted by factories in Chi...
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Fears of another 'forest collapse' event in Western Australia after record dry spell
www.abc.net.au Ecologists warn of second 'forest collapse' event in WA as record dry spell continuesIt's been likened to coral bleaching, but on land — and experts are fearful dry conditions have Western Australia on the brink of another devastating 'forest collapse' event.
- www.wired.com Cities Aren’t Prepared for a Crucial Part of Sea-Level Rise: They’re Also Sinking
Coastal land is dropping, known as subsidence. That could expose hundreds of thousands of additional Americans to inundation by 2050.
New study linked-to in this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07038-3
- phys.org Scientists outline a bold solution to climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice
An international team of scientists led by Oregon State University researchers has used a novel 500-year dataset to frame a "restorative" pathway through which humanity can avoid the worst ecological and social outcomes of climate change.
- news.bloomberglaw.com US Becomes Top LNG Exporter After Overtaking Australia, Qatar
The US has become the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas for the first time, with 2023 shipments overtaking leading suppliers Australia and Qatar.
- apnews.com How are people supposed to rebuild Paradise, California, when nobody can afford home insurance?
Efforts to rebuild a California town nearly wiped out by wildfire five years ago are being stymied by high home insurance costs.
theyre so close! how stupid are people?!
- www.newyorker.com The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle
Offsetting has been hailed as a fix for runaway emissions and climate change—but the market’s largest firm sold millions of credits for carbon reductions that weren’t real.
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Good #infographics: It suggests that the most frequent #summer [#temperature](https://fediscience.org/tags/temperatu
Good #infographics: It suggests that the most frequent #summer #temperature (the mode) in the Northern Hemisphere is currently close to the maximum temperature for the 1951-1980 period. Figure from @nytimes https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/extreme-summer-heat.html
\#NewYorkTimes #climatechange @climate @ecology @[email protected] @[email protected]
- www.theguardian.com Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests
Better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, data shows
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1072810
Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.
Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favour of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertiliser, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Using better farming techniques to store 1% more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigatonnes gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.
The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment programme and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30cm of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.
McGlade now leads a commercial organisation that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.
“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”
She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertiliser, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier.
She estimated it would cost about $1m (£790,000) to restore 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of what is currently badly degraded farmland in Kenya, an area that is home to about 300,000 people.
Downforce data could also allow farmers to sell carbon credits based on how much additional carbon dioxide their fields are absorbing. Soil has long been known to be one of Earth’s biggest stores of carbon, but until now it has not been possible to examine in detail how much carbon soils in particular areas are locking up and how much they are emitting. About 40% of the world’s farmland is now degraded, according to UN estimates.
Carbon dioxide removal, the name given to a suite of technologies and techniques that increase the uptake of carbon dioxide from the air and sequester the carbon in some form, is an increasing area of interest, as the world slips closer to the critical threshold of 1.5C of global heating above pre-industrial levels.
Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.
Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend metres into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers.
- www.politico.eu EU will regret making farmers scapegoats for climate change
Brussels is well on the way to losing rural Europe — and it only has itself to blame.
