les Ressources Minières

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? 

Over the past 50 years, humans have extracted the Earth’s groundwater stocks at a steep rate, largely to fuel global agro-economic development. Given society’s growing reliance on groundwater, we explore ‘peak water limits’ to investigate whether, when and where humanity might reach peak groundwater extraction. Using an integrated global model of the coupled human–Earth system, we simulate groundwater withdrawals across 235 water basins under 900 future scenarios of global change over the twenty-first century. Here we find that global non-renewable groundwater withdrawals exhibit a distinct peak-and-decline signature, comparable to historical observations of other depletable resources (for example, minerals), in nearly all (98%) scenarios, peaking on average at 625 km3 yr−1 around mid-century, followed by a decline through 2100. The peak and decline occur in about one-third (82) of basins, including 21 that may have already peaked, exposing about half (44%) of the global population to groundwater stress. Most

Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1–6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average tempe

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.

L’Agenda 21 local de la commune de Saint-Gilles (Bruxelles, Belgique) est désormais remplacé par le Plan Climat Saint-gillois (PCSG) qui s’articule autour de trois axes: l’énergie, la mobilité et la nature. Ce Plan est complété par la présente étude qui effectue : 1) la synthèse des perspectives climatiques pour la Belgique et Bruxelles à l’horizon 2050-2100 pour les principaux aléas concernés par le changement climatique ; 2) l’analyse des risques et vulnérabilités du territoire de Saint-Gilles en lien avec le changement climatique et l’identification des inégalités environnementales corollaires.

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.

Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security. Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger such events, but so far this has not been quantified. Specifically, the ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. Here we find an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models. While climate models accurately simulate atmospheric patterns, associated surface weather anomalies and negative effects on crop responses are mostly underestimated in bias-adjusted simulations. Given the identified model biases, future assessments of regional and concurrent crop losses from meandering jet states remain highly uncertain. Our results suggest that model-blind spots for such high-impact but deeply-uncertain hazards have to be anticipated and acc

This Research Plan was prepared in response to a requirement in the joint explanatory statement accompanying Division B of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to provide a research plan for “solar and other rapid climate interventions.”

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

Several nations plan to build new coal power plants, with China alone approving nearly 100 gigawatts. Each gigawatt is the equivalent of installing more than 3 million solar panels.

Seafloor landforms reveal that ice sheets can collapse at 600 metres per day.

The new study shows that every increment of sea level rise will cover more than twice as much land as older models predicted, and marks another advance in providing more accurate models of rising seas

The destruction of global forests slowed in 2021 but the vital climate goal of ending deforestation by 2030 will still be missed without urgent action, according to an assessment. The area razed in 2021 fell by 6.3% after progress in some countries, notably Indonesia. But almost 7m hectares were lost and the destruction of the most carbon- and biodiversity-rich tropical rainforests fell by only 3%. The CO2 emissions resulting from the lost trees were equivalent to the emissions of the entire European Union plus Japan.

Tussen 1982 en 2020 is de periode van sneeuwbedekking in berggebieden wereldwijd met gemiddeld vijftien dagen afgenomen. Dat blijkt uit een nieuwe studie van het Zwitserse onderzoekscentrum Eurac Research.

Op 22 augustus lag de marktprijs voor aardgas bij de Duitse gasnetbeheerder THB (Trading Hub Europe) meer dan 1000% hoger dan een jaar geleden. De meeste Duitsers krijgen van de regering Scholz te horen dat de schuld ligt bij Poetin en diens oorlog in Oekraïne. Maar dat is ver bezijden de waarheid. EU-politici en belangrijke financiële belangen gebruiken Rusland als dekmantel voor wat eigenlijk een energiecrisis van Duitse en Brusselse makelij is. De gevolgen zijn dan ook geen toeval.

The federal effort could set the stage for more studies into the feasibility, benefits and risks of one of the more controversial means of combating climate change.

Conference: Doctorales 2022 de la Société Française des Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication (SFSIC)At: Dijon

Projected growth in rocket launches for space tourism, moon landings, and perhaps travel to According to new NOAA research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, a 10-fold increase in hydrocarbon fueled launches, which is plausible within the next two decades based on recent trends in space traffic growth, would damage the ozone layer, and change atmospheric circulation patterns.

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego used an unprecedented technique to detect that levels of helium are rising in the atmosphere, resolving an issue that has lingered among atmospheric chemists for decades.

A liquified natural gas (LNG) crisis is brewing for European countries dealing with energy insecurity in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as demand will outstrip supply by the end of this year, Rystad Energy research shows. Although soaring demand has spurred the greatest rush of new LNG projects worldwide in more than a decade, construction timelines mean material relief is unlikely only after 2024. Global LNG demand is expected to hit 436 million tonnes in 2022, outpacing the available supply of just 410 million tonnes. A perfect winter storm may be forming for Europe as the continent seeks to limit Russian gas flows. The supply imbalance and high prices will set the scene for the most bullish environment for LNG projects in more than a decade, although supply from these projects will only arrive and provide relief from after 2024 The European Union’s REPowerEU plan has set an ambitious target to reduce dependence on Russian gas by 66% within this year – an aim that will clash with the EU’s goal of

Les exportations de combustibles fossiles ont rapporté à la Russie près de « 63 milliards d’euros au cours des deux premiers mois de la guerre en Ukraine », selon une étude publié ce 28 avril par le CREA (Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air)(1).

Les derniers engagements de Pékin en matière de climat, ont déjà conduit à l'annulation de 15 projets de centrales électriques au charbon, financés à l'étranger par la Chine, mais certains chantiers "dans une zone grise" pourraient aboutir, anticipent des experts. Les 15 projets annulés représentaient l'équivalent de 12,8 gigawatts (GW) d'électricité, selon une étude publiée vendredi par le Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), un institut de recherche basé en Finlande.

The world may be facing a devastating “hidden” collapse in insect species due to the twin threats of climate change and habitat loss.

La transition énergétique en Europe pourrait connaître « une petite accélération », en raison de l’invasion russe de l’Ukraine, selon une nouvelle analyse de l'Energy Transition Research de DNV publiée ce 6 avril(1).

New data suggests forests help keep the Earth at least half of a degree cooler, protecting us from the effects of climate crisis

Depuis le début de l’invasion russe en Ukraine, la question de la dépendance de l’Europe au gaz, et plus généralement aux combustibles fossiles, a surgi dans les discussions publiques. Cette crise, ajoutée à l’urgence climatique, nous rappelle que notre système énergétique doit fortement se transformer. Mais aussi que la transition énergétique sera fortement dépendante des importations de métaux. Analyse de Greg de Temmerman, docteur en physique expérimentale et directeur général du think tank Zenon Research.

La guerre en Ukraine a remis la question de notre (in)dépendance énergétique dans beaucoup de discussions, notamment car l’Europe importe beaucoup de gaz et de pétrole de Russie (entre autres matières). La transition énergétique est une opportunité de faire fortement évoluer cette dépendance… Mais au risque d’en créer de nouvelles. Décryptage par Greg De Temmerman, physicien, chercheur associé aux Mines-ParisTech PSL et directeur général du think tank Zenon Research.

To this day, the demand for metals has kept increasing. The energy transition necessary to meet climate objectives will add to that demand during the upcoming decades, for low-carbon energy technologies require larger metal quantities than their fossil-fuel based counterparts. This frequently raises concerns over the actual capacity of geological stocks to meet demand at scale, which we investigate in the present analysis.

The world could lose half of its best coffee-growing land under a moderate climate change scenario. Brazil, which is the currently world’s largest coffee producer, will see its most suitable coffee-growing land decline by 79%.

Over the weekend, physical climate scientist David Holland made it to his research base on the Thwaites Glacier — a vast, unstable and vital ice formation in Southern Antarctica that researchers have scrambled to understand.