Articles 2020

Plus le climat se réchauffe, moins les super El Niño font leur effet habituel. Une étude publiée dans Geophysical Research Letters révèle un paradoxe : ces phénomènes extrêmes deviendront plus fréquents, mais leurs impacts caractéristiques sur l’Amérique du Nord s’atténueront d’un tiers. Dans un monde à +3,5°C, un super El Niño ressemblera à un épisode banal.

Projections of near-term climate change are a potential research tool. However, for that tool to be most useful, the physical basis for a prediction must be made clear. The basis for our projection of record 2026 global temperature is high climate sensitivity, with its implication that aerosol cooling was still increasing during the period 1970-2005. One consequence, global sea surface warming, already has important effects. Causes of climate change must be understood for policy purposes. Figures in this post and our recent papers are continually updated on our website.[1] We are also now on Substack[2].

The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.

Halting and reversing the global decline in biodiversity is now urgent to avoid destabilizing Earth's vital systems that support human well-being. That's the stark message of a new paper published today in Frontiers in Science. The authors warn that without protecting remaining intact biomes and ecosystems, climate and development goals will be impossible to achieve.

World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind research

The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Scenarios serve as a critical tool in climate change analysis, enabling the exploration of future evolution of the climate system, climate impacts, and the human system (including mitigation and adaptation actions). This paper describes the scenario framework for ScenarioMIP as part of CMIP7. The design process has involved various rounds of interaction with the research community and user groups at large. The proposal covers a set of scenarios exploring high levels of climate change (to explore high-end climate risks), medium levels of climate change (anchored to current policy), and low levels of climate change (aligned with current international agreements). These scenarios follow very different trajectories in terms of emissions, with some likely to experience peaks and subsequent declines in greenhouse gas concentrations in this century. An important innovation is that most scenarios are intended to be run, if possible, in emission-driven mode, providing a better representation of the Earth system uncert

Most research on “forever chemicals” focuses on how best to remove them from the environment. But solutions to tricky problems often emerge from the most unexpected of places—as demonstrated by a new study that instead redirects the pollutants into becoming tools for extracting precious lithium. In a recent Nature Water study, a team led by Rice University researchers describes a novel way to use spent perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to recover lithium from high-salinity brine pools. The team tapped into the fluorine content inside PFAS leftovers, using it to attract lithium from briny water. Remarkably, the team was able to collect lithium fluoride at 99% purity and confirmed that the sample was pure enough to boost the stability and performance of lithium-ion batteries.

After holding steady since the 1970s, warming in the last decade nearly doubled its pace, setting a track to 1.5 degrees before 2030

A new international analysis published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on 9 January finds that the Earth's ocean stored more heat in 2025 than in any year since modern measurements began. The finding is the result of a major international collaboration led by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, involving more than 50 scientists from 31 research institutions worldwide. The 2025 heat increase was 23 Zetta Joules (23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy), which is equivalent to ~37 years of global primary energy consumption at the 2023 level (~620 Exa Joules per year). The assessment combines data from major international data centers and independent research groups, including three observational products (Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Copernicus Marine; and NOAA/NCEI) and an ocean reanalysis (CIGAR-RT) from three continents: Asia, Europe, and America. These groups confirm that the 2025 ocean heat content (OHC) reached the h

A new study indicates that anxiety about social and economic collapse due to climate change is pervasive in Australia. The nationwide survey (commissioned by the author and carried out by Roy Morgan Research) reveals that nearly a third of Australians are ‘very or extremely concerned’ about social and economic collapse occurring by 2050. Three in five Australians (60 per cent) are at least moderately concerned.

Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the northern hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea. Until now, only a very few have been found in the Antarctic. In a new study soon to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, I present evidence for hundreds of these quakes in Antarctica between 2010 and 2023, mostly at the ocean end of the Thwaites Glacier – the so-called Doomsday Glacier that could send sea levels rising rapidly if it were to collapse.

22 of the planet’s 34 vital signs are at record levels, with many of them continuing to trend sharply in the wrong direction. This is the message of the sixth issue of the annual “State of the climate” report. The report was prepared by an international coalition with contribution from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and led by Oregon State University scientists. Published today in BioScience, it cites global data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in proposing “high-impact” strategies.

Collapse has historically benefited the 99%. […] That’s the amazing conclusion of Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.  Luke is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and has spent the past five years studying the collapse of civilisations throughout history. He joins me to explain his research, detailing the difference between complex, collective civilisations and what he calls “Goliaths”, massive centralising forces by which a small group of individuals extract wealth from the rest through domination and the threat of violence. Today, he says, we live in a global Goliath.

Four key parts of the Earth’s climate system are destabilising, according to a new study with contributions from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Researchers analysed the interconnections of four major tipping elements: the Greenland ice sheet, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the Amazon rainforest and the South American monsoon system. All four show signs of diminished resilience, raising the risk of abrupt and potentially irreversible changes.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is an important tipping element in the climate system. There is a large uncertainty whether the AMOC will start to collapse during the century under future climate change, as this requires long climate model simulations which are not always available. Here, we analyze targeted climate model simulations done with the Community Earth System Model (CESM) with the aim to develop a physics-based indicator for the onset of an AMOC tipping event. This indicator is diagnosed from the surface buoyancy fluxes over the North Atlantic Ocean and is performing successfully under quasi-equilibrium freshwater forcing, freshwater pulse forcing, climate change scenarios, and for different climate models. An analysis consisting of 25 different climate models shows that the AMOC could begin to collapse by 2063 (from 2026 to 2095, to percentiles) under an intermediate emission scenario (SSP2-4.5), or by 2055 (from 2023 to 2076, to percentiles) under a high-end emission scenar

The White House has instructed NASA employees to terminate two major, climate change-focused satellite missions. As NPR reports, Trump officials reached out to the space agency to draw up plans for terminating the two missions, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatories. They've been collecting widely-used data, providing both oil and gas companies and farmers with detailed information about the distribution of carbon dioxide and how it can affect crop health.

In an analysis of the best available Earth systems models, Northeastern researchers found that by the turn of the next century, 850 million people will feel the effects of declining runoff from the world's major rivers.

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would eliminate its scientific research arm and begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so. The move underscores how the Trump administration is forging ahead with efforts to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies after the Supreme Court allowed these plans to proceed while legal challenges unfold. Government scientists have been particular targets of the administration’s large-scale layoffs.

Research in Chile suggests climate crisis makes eruptions more likely and explosive, and warns of Antarctica risk

Recent simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) indicate that a tipping event of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cause Europe to cool by several degrees. This AMOC tipping event was found under constant pre-industrial greenhouse gas forcing, while global warming likely limits this AMOC-induced cooling response. Here, we quantify the European temperature responses under different AMOC regimes and climate change scenarios. A strongly reduced AMOC state and intermediate global warming (C, Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) has a profound cooling effect on Northwestern Europe with more intense cold extremes. The largest temperature responses are found during the winter months and these responses are strongly influenced by the North Atlantic sea-ice extent. Enhanced North Atlantic storm track activity under an AMOC collapse results in substantially larger day-to-day temperature fluctuations. We conclude that the (far) future European temperatures are dependent o

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently. Of course, anyone who writes about Limits of Growth has to do all the usual disclaimers first. This is because the combination of the words “limits” and “growth” in the title produced a lot of critical responses, on a range from straight-up hatchet jobs which misrepresented the book, to people who didn’t appear to understand the systems dynamics model that sat behind it.

2023 set a number of alarming new records. The global mean temperature also rose to nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, another record.A team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute puts forward a possible explanation for the rise in global mean temperature: our planet has become less reflective because certain types of clouds have declined. The work is published in the journal Science.

Microplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility. The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14.

Recent projections suggest that large geographical areas will soon experience heat and humidity exceeding limits for human thermoregulation. The survivability limits modeled in that research were based on laboratory studies suggesting that humans cannot effectively thermoregulate in wet bulb temperatures (Twb) above 26 to 31 °C, values considerably lower than the widely publicized theoretical threshold of 35 °C. The newly proposed empirical limits were derived from the Twb corresponding to the core temperature inflection point in participants exposed to stepped increases in air temperature or relative humidity in a climate-controlled chamber. Despite the increasing use of these thermal-step protocols, their validity has not been established. We used a humidity-step protocol to estimate the Twb threshold for core temperature inflection in 12 volunteers.

A new groundbreaking German study proves that pesticides spread much further from the field than previously believed. A team of scientists led by Professor Dr. Carsten Brühl tested topsoil, vegetation, streams and puddles from 78 locations over a 180 km stretch, from remote areas in the UNESCO forests on the mountain ranges to the farmland in the Upper Rhine area. The research team detected a total of 63 pesticides. Almost all measurement sites were contaminated. Residues were found in 97% of the soil and vegetation samples, often in complex mixtures of several active ingredients. This cocktail of pesticides is especially problematic because interactions can occur and effects can be amplified. The worrying results are consistent with previous smaller-scale studies in the South Tirol area in Italy. Large scale and prolonged pesticide use is a major factor in the sharp decline in populations of insects and other organisms essential for farming, as highlighted in our biodiversity campaign. The researchers see pe

Amid President Donald Trump’s attacks on government scientists and science funding, researchers are arranging rallies to “Stand Up for Science” in Washington, D.C., and nationwide on March 7

As of February 22, over twenty Stand Up for Science protests are scheduled for March 7 throughout the United States. The protests are being organized by fellow scientists who are concerned about the Trump administration’s feelings and actions towards science (see Robles-Gil, 2025 in Science), includ

US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety

En réponse au lancement de Deep Research par OpenAI, Hugging Face développe Open Deep Research, un agent IA open source créé en seulement 24 heures.

Experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could put humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections

In March 2022, a New York City-sized ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, long thought to be relatively stable against rapid change. The Conger-Glenzer ice shelf collapsed following decades of ocean-induced thinning, allowing its long-stabilizing features to transform into destabilizing ones.

We, the undersigned, are scientists working in the field of climate research and feel it is urgent to draw the attention of the Nordic Council of Ministers to the serious risk of a major ocean circulation change in the Atlantic. A string of scientific studies in the past few years suggests that this risk has so far been greatly underestimated. Such an ocean circulation change would have devastating and irreversible impacts especially for Nordic countries, but also for other parts of the world.

Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change. But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer. As climate change causes hotter and drier weather, can we expect more tree deaths in the future? 

04/17/2024 - Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19 % until 2050 due to climate change, a new study published in “Nature” finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees. Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.

Le débat sur les nouveaux OGM est biaisé par les lobbies qui défendent toute une série d’intérêts économiques. A la faveur de sa présidence européenne, la Belgique doit se positionner dans ce dossier en facilitant l’élaboration d’une politique européenne qui donne la priorité à l’équité, à l’autonomie des agriculteur.e.s, à la santé publique et à l’environnement.

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published in Nature Geoscience. The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard, Norway, identified large stocks of methane gas leaking from groundwater springs unveiled by melting glaciers.

We ran computer programs that simulate ecosystems 70,000 times and the results are very worrying.