Veille 2.1

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.

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