Periodically, we share the news (good and bad) around climate change and the efforts to fight it:
‘Glacier blood’ could be key to understanding impacts of climate change
Atop the French Alps, thousands of feet above sea level, the normally white snow sometimes appears stained with blotches of what appears to be dark red blood, some of which extend for miles. But no, these aren’t the sites of violent mountaintop massacres — the spooky red stains, known as “glacier blood,” actually come from microalgae that live in the snow, and scientists recently trekked into the Alps to study these mysterious organisms.
https://www.livescience.com/glacier-blood-microalgae-expedition.html
Climate ‘tipping points’ could push us past point-of-no-return after <2 degrees of warming
As climate change continues to heat the planet, ice sheets and ocean currents could destabilize each other, leading to a climate domino effect impacting 40% of the world’s population, according to new research. And these effects could be seen at way lower temperatures than previously thought. Scientists ran 3 million computer simulations of a climate model, finding that nearly one-third resulted in disastrous domino effects even when temperature increases were below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit set by the Paris agreement.
https://www.livescience.com/climate-domino-effects-close.html
Earth is trapping twice as much heat as it did in 2005
Planet Earth is now trapping twice as much heat as it did 14 years ago, according to findings of a new study, which raise concerns about the possible acceleration of climate change. For the study, researchers looked at data from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument, which flies on several NASA Earth-observation satellites and measures how much energy the planet absorbs in the form of sunlight and how much of that it emits back into space in the form of infrared radiation.
https://www.livescience.com/earth-trapping-more-heat-energy-imbalance-doubled.html
Enormous Antarctic lake vanishes in 3 days
An enormous, ice-covered lake in Antarctica vanished suddenly, and scientists are worried it could happen again. In this disappearing act, which researchers say occurred during the 2019 winter on the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, an estimated 21 billion to 26 billion cubic feet (600 million to 750 million cubic meters) of water — roughly twice the volume of San Diego Bay — drained into the ocean.
https://www.livescience.com/giant-antarctic-lake-disappears.html
The Amazon rainforest is officially creating more greenhouse gases than it is absorbing
Forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth’s atmosphere, making them a key part of mitigating climate change. But humans may have already rendered the world’s largest rainforest useless in — and perhaps even detrimental to — the battle against greenhouse gases, a new study finds.
https://www.livescience.com/amazon-rainforest-accelerate-climate-change.html