Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back.

These arboreal graveyards are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ east coast, in pockets of the west coast and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, leaving behind woody skeletons typically surrounded by marsh.

What happens next? That depends. As these dead forests transition, some will become marshes that maintain vital ecosystem services, such as buffering against storms and storing carbon. Others may become home to invasive plants or support no plant life

After floods devastate Congo, scientists say climate change is making heavier rains more likely and call for better data to better prepare

Extra-hot oceans could spawn monster storms. Researchers worry that cuts at the agency will interrupt the flow of data for forecasts.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32910625

The UN’s International Maritime Organization [IMO] has just agreed to start charging ships for the greenhouse gases they emit. After decades of ineffective incremental tweaks to shipping emissions, the breakthrough came on April 11 at a summit in London. It makes shipping the first industry subject to a worldwide – and legally binding – emissions price.

[...]

There was sustained opposition to ambitious action from Saudi Arabia and other petrostates, as well as from China and Brazil. Second, the US had already disengaged from negotiations. Even so, from outside the meeting, the US administration’s tariff war and explicit threat to retaliate against states supporting a shipping pricing regime could have affected talks far more than they did.

But researchers are not sure that this agreement can be considered a success. While there is little traditional climate change denial at the IMO, “mitigation denial” is alive a

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/27804314

In the Amazon, gold mining is a thriving business, pushing deep into the rainforest and indigenous lands. Small-scale operations set up primarily illicitly and operated in the shadows use mercury, a substance with neurotoxic properties, for gold extraction. Now, a team of researchers examined if trees native to the Peruvian Amazon could be used as biomonitors for gold mining activities. By examining mercury concentrations in tree rings, they concluded that some species could bear witness to illegal mining activities.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32829556

On February 18, a dam failed and a Chinese-owned copper mine spilled 50 million liters of acidic effluent into the Kafue River, damaging the lives of millions of people as pollution was detected at least 100 kilometers downstream.

Water supply was cut off in nearby towns. Fish populations have been devastated. Groundwater has likely been contaminated. Crops have been destroyed. And huge amounts of livestock have been killed, crashing the livelihoods of farmers.

“Prior to the 18th of February this was a vibrant and alive river,” Sean Cornelius, a local resident, told the Associated Press. “Now everything is dead, it’s like a totally dead river. Unbelievable. Overnight, this river died.”

“People unknowingly drank contaminated water and ate affected maize. Now many are suffering from headaches, coughs, diarrhea, muscle cramps and even sores on their legs,” Nsama Musonda Kearns, executive director of the Care for N

A sandstorm in central and southern Iraq sent more than 1,800 people to hospitals with respiratory problems on Monday, health officials said.

Iraq, which endures blistering summer heat and regular sandstorms, is one of the five countries most impacted by some effects of climate change, says the United Nations.

The environment ministry has warned the country can expect to experience a rising number of "dust days" in coming decades.

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European State of the Climate report ‘lays bare’ impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32656229

China recently approved the construction of the world’s largest hydropower dam, across the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet. When fully up and running, it will be the world’s largest power plant – by some distance.

Yet many are worried the dam will displace local people and cause huge environmental disruption. This is particularly the case in the downstream nations of India and Bangladesh, where that same river is known as the Brahmaputra.

[...]

The Yarlung Tsangpo begins on the Tibetan Plateau, in a region sometimes referred to as the world’s third pole as its glaciers contain the largest stores of ice outside of the Arctic and Antarctica. A series of huge rivers tumble down from the plateau and spread across south and south-east Asia. Well over a billion people depend on them, from Pakistan to Vietnam.

Yet the region is already under immense stress as global warming melts glaciers and changes rainfall patte

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• article
• research cited

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20771863

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Amid all the bad climate news flowing out of the Trump administration, you might have missed a quiet new consensus congealing in think tanks and big business. The targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, they argue—to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—are a lost cause. It’s time to prepare for a world warmed by at least three degrees Celsius.

Owing to “recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research report last month, they “now expect a 3°C world.” The “baseline” scenario that JP Morgan Chase uses to assess its own transition risk—essentially, the economic impact that decarbonization could have on its high-carbon investments—similarly “assumes that no additional emissions reduction policies are implemented by governments” and that the world could reach “3°C or more of warming” by 2100. The Climate Realism Initiative launched on Monday by the Council on Foreign Relations similarly p

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20675754

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