u/swarrenlawrence

EuroClimateNews: “Meet the scientist heading to Greenland’s fjord glaciers to understand their ‘climate tipping point’” An international team of scientists is determined to understand just how quickly Greenland’s melting glaciers are pushing the Atlantic Ocean towards a “critical climate tipping point.” They will be part of a five-year project known as GIANT (Greenland Ice sheet to Atlantic Tipping Points), with 17 partners—led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)—heading to the autonomous island this summer for a two-month expedition. “Researchers hope to grasp the level of meltwater being released from Greenland’s fjord glaciers, how it enters the North Atlantic Ocean, and how this process impacts the global climate system.” 

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the Greenland ice sheet [GIS] holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 7.4 metres [~24 feet] if it were to melt completely.” The most interesting statistic broached here is that for every centimetre of sea level rise, around 6 million people on the planet are exposed to coastal flooding. “Greenland’s melting ice also discharges vast quantities of freshwater into the ocean, which scientists worry may impact a major Atlantic Ocean current system called the Subpolar Gyre,” part of the Atlantic Meridianal Overturning Circulation [AMOC]. 

“Researchers are travelling to Greenland this summer armed with a “sophisticated suite” of technologies including airborne drones, autonomous marine robots, satellites and instruments that can be embedded directly into glacier ice.” 

“Some estimates warn that the Subpolar Gyre could change in the next four years.” So we should hope these folks hop to it.

AAAS: “After USDA request, Indiana plant biologist locked out of lab by school.” Plant microbiologist Roger Innes is a faculty member at Indiana University (IU), works on improving resistance to a wheat-damaging fungus, + now finds himself locked out of his own lab by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. This is all in retaliation for letters of support that he wrote in support of 2 Chinese nationals. 

The first was, “Yunqing Jian, a plant science postdoc at the University of Michigan who pleaded guilty to smuggling biological material and making false statements.” The letter to Jian’s attorney, intended to be used at her sentencing, argued that what the Chinese postdoc had transported was not dangerous, but she was still ultimately deported. 

“Her conviction triggered an investigation of Youhuang Xiang, a Chinese postdoc in Innes’s lab, that led to Xiang also pleading guilty last month to smuggling loops of DNA known as plasmids.” He was also summarily deported.

Innes says he was told by IU lawyers that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has oversight over the import and export of plant-related biological material, ordered the school to “secure” his lab. “IU police arrived at the lab at 8 p.m. on 7 May, informed one person present that she had to leave, and changed the locks.” Innes says he wasn’t notified ahead of time and has not entered the lab since then. An email the next morning from IU’s vice president of research, Russell Mumper, to the biology department chair, Armin Moczek, explained that USDA had told the university the agency “will be engaging in activity in a laboratory” and the school then locked down six rooms. Moczek wrote to his departmental colleagues shortly after receiving Mumper’s email. that “the overall lockout may take a week or multiple weeks, at this point nobody knows,” 

“Innes says that, in his absence, Moczek has agreed to water a batch of genetically modified Arabidopsis plants being grown in his now locked-down lab to further his research.” I ask you, is this or is this not Kafkaesque?

CanaryMedia: “Pro-coal school curriculum on the rocks in Illinois.” A grinning cartoon character in a hard hat and safety goggles—shaped like the state of Illinois and also evoking a lump of coal—touts how reclaimed coal mines ​“let us balance our energy needs and our environmental needs.” This propagandistic image was part of a coal education program including a K-12 curriculum that the state of Illinois distributed to hundreds of teachers, aiming to bolster the ​“marketability” and use of Illinois coal. 

Over a decade ago Illinois released a 400-page evaluation of this education program. It called for retiring that curriculum + revamping it to ​“provide high-quality scientific content, a balance of perspectives, and present coal as part of an energy portfolio in national and global contexts.” Robustly criticized by many, it was fairly rapidly withdrawn, though the state to this day still has in place a cooperative program between Southeastern Illinois College + Frontier Community College, a 2-yr program of Coal Mining Technology utilizing the latest training panels in hydraulics, electricity and programmable logic controllers, designed to parallel current systems in place at the mines.

The original coal education was established by a state law, the Illinois Coal Technology Development Assistance Act, promoting a ​“positive image for the mining and utilization of coal in Illinois.” Jeff Biggers is an historian + author of the book Reckoning at Eagle Creek exploring coal in his southern Illinois hometown. As a whistleblower he reported that the evaluation was spearheaded by Sallie Greenberg, a University of Illinois professor involved with the FutureGen ​“clean coal” plant; and that Greenberg and evaluator Lizanne DeStefano in Biggers’ words ​“apparently failed to disclose they had both been participants in the same controversial coal education conference program they were hired to evaluate.” 

Foxes in charge of a dusty, coal-smeared hen house.

AAAS: “[Ancient ice core could help explain mysterious shift in Earth’s ice ages](http://Ancient ice core could help explain mysterious shift in Earth’s ice ages).” No, this guy is not trying to pull the Moon out of the sky. Instead, scientists have drilled a record-setting ice core stretching back 1.2 million years. “The core, described this week at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union [in Vienna], is the culmination of 10 yrs of work and 2.8 km of drilling in Antarctica by the European project Beyond EPICA.” It provides the first direct + detailed look at how greenhouse gases [GHG] varied during a critical climatic window between 800,000 and 1.25 million years ago, when Earth’s glacial-interglacial phases shifted from 40,000-year-long cycles to longer, more intense sequences of 100,000 years. 

Our current Ice Age, the Quaternary Glaciation or Late Cenozoic Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago, featured alternating relatively mild glacial episodes alternating with warmer interglacial episodes, in the main driven by the variations of the Earth’s orbit [tilt, wobble, eccentricity] “Nothing had changed in Earth’s orbit; something must have tipped within Earth’s climate system itself.” 

“The Beyond EPICA core shows that about 950,000 years ago, at the end of a warm interglacial period, carbon dioxide spiked by 50 parts per million (ppm) in a few thousand years…after that peak, carbon dioxide sank to 170 ppm, the lowest value ever recorded in a continuous ice core.” Those trends are mirrored in indirect readings of atmospheric composition more than 800,000 years ago, from seafloor sediment cores that contain the remains of shells from marine animals. “These animals incorporate boron into their shells, and its isotopic composition reflects ancient ocean pH, which in turn tracks carbon dioxide in the air.” 

Locate the article by searching for the title above. Enjoy.

The third and last volume of the Trilogy of Dragons is getting close to launch. I was notified this morning by my publisher, Sidekick Press, that the copy editor was about to wrap up work by next Monday, less than a week away. FOSSIL DRAGON is the title, and like the other 2 books, there are no actual dragons, no element of fantasy at all. For historical reasons I am publishing this book last, though chronologically it is the first in the series. Besides disabusing people of the notion that the tales involve dragons, I also have to explain that climate fiction—also known as cli-fi—represents a novel designed to excite people about getting involved in fighting against climate disruption, with characters dedicated to this concept, and the portrayal of multiple climate disasters such as flash floods, heatwaves, and hailstorms. 

All three books involve the same four main characters. All three books involve multiple narrative lines weaving together and culminating only in the last chapter. There are two lines of romance, one line of an exotic but real infectious disease, and one line of pregnancy, because the practice and teaching of obstetrics was a major part of my own career. Additionally, I wrap up all the combined climate disasters as their own distinct narrative line.

Finally, each book has a line or treachery, of thriller. FOSSIL is different in that the three people plotting an audacious attack in our nation’s capital are all women. They succeed outrageously but also fail. I will give you only one hint. Their plot involves a clown car. Really. 

As a teaser, I have started writing a fourth book, this one set on the West Coast instead of the East Coast. Working title is WILD FIRE.

Attached please find the two sides of my updated bookmark, which functions as my business card. On the back side is my website swlawrence.com where you can read the first chapter of all three books. Really.

GeophysicalResearchLetters: “Precursors of Marine Heatwaves in the Eastern Mediterranean.” Marine heatwaves impact ecosystems and fisheries, and are increasing with intensity + frequency under climate change. “Garfinkel et al. investigated the atmospheric precursors that have led to the development of marine heatwaves in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past 30 years.” 

Several points right off the bat. First, marine heatwaves in enclosed seas such as the Mediterranean can have severe ecosystem consequences. Second + perhaps counterintuitively, atmospheric + marine heatwaves do not typically coincide, but the precursors in the 15 days before either type of heatwaves are interesting.

“These 4 precursors comprise a weakened Indian monsoon, a strengthened Sahelian monsoon, a weakened Persian trough with a mid-latitude low-pressure system from the west, and an upper tropospheric ridge. “Both latent heat and incoming shortwave radiation are highly anomalous in the lead-up to marine heatwaves due to increased near-surface atmospheric humidity, reduced wind speed, and reduced cloud cover.” 

Marine heatwaves’ (MHWs) intensification in both frequency and magnitude is increasingly recognized as a key stressor on marine ecosystems globally. Marine species suffer mass mortality events, as heatwaves extend over spatial scales of hundreds of kilometres and persist for weeks to months, often impacting the upper ocean layers as well as the subsurface. An improving understanding of the relationship between large-scale atmospheric processes and marine heatwave development could help improve coastal management and enhance ecosystem resilience in a warming ocean. 

We should give the lion’s shared of credit to the fossil fuel companies that have helped this all come about. And we should also vigorously push back.

CanaryMedia: “Used EVs are on the upswing in America.” When it comes to electric vehicles, old is gold. “In the U.S., sales of new EVs are slumping—but more used EVs are being driven off the lot than ever, per Cox Automotive data.” Although Americans still buy a lot more new EVs than used ones, the Cox data shows the gap beginning to close, as used EV sales jumped by 34% in 2025, compared with the prior year, while new EV sales shrank a bit. “Overall, electric models made up nearly a tenth of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2025, and about 2% of used car sales.” 

And a lot more used EVs are on the market these days than in the past. “About 300,000 EVs will come off of leases this year, up from 123,000 last year, and Cox expects another 600,000 to do so in 2027.” Not all of those will hit the used car market, but many will, providing a rush of inventory that should help drive down prices. “Speaking of prices, on average a used EV is now basically at price parity with a used gas car.” Important, since up-front cost is one of the main barriers preventing people from buying battery-powered vehicles, which are typically cheaper to drive and maintain but have long been more expensive than similar gas-fueled models. 

“A new EV is still about $6,500 more than a new gas car, on average.” But apparently a used EV is a different story. Some analysts expect EV sales to surge as fallout from the war in the Middle East spikes oil + gas + diesel prices globally. “In the U.S., the average cost of a gallon of regular gas is now [$4.39 on May Day]—and climbing—and in some countries, fuel shortages have spurred driving bans and fuel rationing.” 

There was a time in my life when I bought a used Nissan Leaf for $8,000 + drove it for 5 yrs, then bequeathed it to our son, who drove it further, then a year later sold it on to the next owner. All just part of the energy transition to the Electrostate.

ClimateBrinkSubstack: “Higher warming predictions for 2026 and 2027.” Author Zeke Hausfather back in December had ‘provided some initial projections of where both 2026 and 2027 global mean surface temperatures [GMST] might end up.’ Since then we’ve ‘gotten the first three months of data in for 2026¹ (and have a good sense of where April 2026 will end up in reanalysis data—see our Climate Dashboard for daily updates).’ 

Importantly, ‘models are converging on a ‘doozy’ of an El Niño event developing in the latter part of 2026, with the latest multi-model median projection of a peak anomaly of 2.7ºC in the ENSO3.4 region of the tropical Pacific.’ “While the prediction remains uncertain (we remain within the ‘spring predictability barrier’ when its historically hard to predict ENSO development), this would put the 2026/2027 roughly on par with the ‘super’ El Niño the world experienced in 2015/2016.” 

The last time I formally studied statistics was in my sophomore year at university, more than half a century ago. Suffice to say—leaving out the error bars—that the “headline numbers are in the figure…estimate for 2026 has risen from 1.41ºC to 1.46ºC…the 2027 estimate has similarly increased from 1.57ºC to 1.6ºC.” His new equation [which I chose to omit] “includes the year count, prior year’s temperature anomaly, the anomaly over the year to date for 2026 (currently Jan-Mar), the latest month, the observed ENSO state over the year to date, and the forecasted ENSO state over the remainder of the year.” 

First of 2 bottom-line results: “2026 remains more likely than not to end up as the second warmest year on record (~50% chance), but has a non-trial chance of being the warmest year (~19%) with a somewhat larger change (28%) of being above 1.5ºC.” The other result: “2027, by contrast, is likely (~73% chance) to be the warmest year on record and has a 77% chance to be above 1.5ºC.” 

So—if you have cool weather in your part of the northern hemisphere, treasure it while it lasts. But also think of imaginative ways to improve our lot. Then just do it.

CanaryMedia: “Two California bills would push utilities to get more out of their grids.” A set of bills introduced this year would order Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E,] Southern California Edison [SCE] , and San Diego Gas & Electric [SDG & E] to measure + improve how they’re utilizing [their] hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines. The central question is the way utilities handle peaks in electricity demand that happen a few times per yr—because historically the solution was overbuild fossil methane gas peaking plants.

“Assembly Bill 1975, introduced by Assembly Member Nick Schultz, a Democrat, would require utilities to measure grid utilization and find ways to improve it over time.” A complementary measure, “Senate Bill 905, a wide-ranging utility cost-containment package, includes a provision that would mandate ​’additional reporting on how effectively utilities are using existing distribution grid capacity, particularly during off-peak periods,’ when grids have more headroom to deliver power.” 

So-called ‘demand reduction,’ or “ load flexibility programs….help relieve temporary grid constraints by paying customers to reduce the amount of power they use via smart thermostats and other devices, or to share the electricity they’ve stored in plugged-in electric vehicles and home batteries charged with rooftop solar.” 

“A 2023 study commissioned by the California Public Utilities Commission found the state’s 3 major utilities could need to invest up to $50 billion by 2035 to meet growing power demand.  Alternatively, this ​“load shift” approach could cut costs passed on to California customers by up to $13.7 billion through 2030, according to a 2025 analysis prepared for think tank GridLab by grid analytics startup Kevala.

I like this idea, in fact I’m signing up for transient use of the backup batteries in both our primary residence as well as a nearby rental home in Washington State. These batteries can be accessed for only about 1% of charge, a wonderful distributed, ancillary service to the grid, + definitely reimbursable as such. So our batteries can stabilize the grid + make us some money even when we’re sleeping. About the same time bakers somewhere are making our bread.

CleanTechnica: “Nuclear Scaling Requires Discipline. SMRs Deliver Fragmentation.” Original SMR case rested on a simple premise. “Make reactors smaller, build more of them in factories, reduce capital at risk, shorten construction schedules, serve more sites, and avoid the large-project failures that had damaged recent nuclear construction in liberalized electricity markets.” But SMRs only make economic sense if the sector converges on a few designs and builds them many times. 

“Learning curves come from repeated production of the same or similar products, with stable tooling, stable suppliers, stable inspections, stable quality assurance, stable training, and steady demand.” Solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines became cheaper because the world made huge numbers of related products in shorter production cycles. Fundamentally nuclear reactors are different. 

“Each design carries a safety case, a fuel qualification pathway, licensing work, site work, security, emergency planning, operator training, waste arrangements, and decades of liability.” The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s SMR dashboard has ‘tracked more than 120 SMR technologies worldwide, with roughly 70 to 80 included in recent dashboard editions after filtering out some paused, inactive, unfunded, or non-participating designs.’ A light-water SMR, a high-temperature gas reactor, a sodium fast reactor, a molten-salt reactor, and a microreactor are not minor variations around a shared product platform. 

“They create different materials questions, fuel requirements, operating temperatures, inspection regimes, safety cases, and licensing pathways.” Potential roles for SMRs are ‘applications such as AI loads, data centers, industrial sites, remote areas, microgrids, and military or federal facilities.’

One question is whether some of the so-called SMRs “are drifting back toward conventional power-station scale.” Another is whether “HALEU [U enriched to about 20%] will be available at scale on the timelines implied by advanced reactor plans.” 

“Nuclear has large fixed costs that do not shrink in proportion to reactor size” A 50 MW reactor does not need 5% of the licensing effort, 5% of the security analysis, 5% of the operator training, 5% of the emergency planning, 5% of the quality assurance, or 5% of the waste arrangements of a prototypical 1,000 MW reactor.

Personally, I would be very surprised to see significant SMR generation before 2035. But then, I was raised in Missouri, the Show-Me State.

NBCNews: “Hot, dry and hurricane-scarred: How climate change fueled wildfires in Georgia and Florida.” Wildfires raging this week in southern Georgia and [yes, also] northern Florida were ‘fueled by a combination of hot and windy conditions, severe drought and dried-out vegetation from past hurricanes all feeding the blazes.’ 

Hate to say it, but this is a combination that has been easily predicted by climate scientists. “This is not normal at all, but it is consistent with what we’ve been worried about with climate change,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist at the nonprofit science research group Climate Central. “Thousands of acres are on fire across the two states, with one blaze in Atkinson, Georgia, already destroying around 90 homes since it broke out Monday.” Multiple counties in both states have enacted burn bans—including the first burn bans in Georgia—and Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency Wednesday for 91 counties.

“Hurricane Helene in 2024, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida’s Big Bend region, left behind downed trees, branches and other vegetation ripe to burn.” Trudeau said trees all over Georgia + Florida were scattered about like a tossed salad “This kind of dried-out vegetation exacerbates the risk of wildfires, helping them grow and become more destructive when they do break out.”

“As it gets hotter, the amount of moisture that is pulled out of the landscape or sucked out of plants and soils, also increases.” Then add to the fuel load conducive fire weather—such as dry conditions together with lightning and wind, for instance.

The entire state of Florida is currently under some form of drought conditions, with most of the Panhandle area in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Seventy-one percent of Georgia is similarly in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, including huge swaths in the southern portion of the state. 

Apparently not a good time to vacation in some parts of the southeast. Especially with the current price of aviation fuel.

Grist: “A more troubling picture of sea level rise is coming into view.” Scientists have uncovered a “blind spot” in the research on rising seas, revealing that tens of millions of people thought safe from coastal flooding are at risk of inundation. One [major] problem is that more than 90% of local studies estimating current sea levels and future rises cut-and-paste the results of mathematical models of the “geoid,” the shape of the Earth as calculated from the planet’s rotation and gravitational fields.

“Real-world oceans are making a mockery of flood-risk forecasts based on crude global modeling.” Making matters worse, coastal lands almost everywhere are subsiding faster than anyone realized. “We could see devastating impacts much earlier than predicted—particularly in the Global South.” A groundbreaking Dutch analysis of actual sea levels as measured by tidal gauges has found that almost the entire scientific literature has dramatically underestimated current sea levels, including the IPCC reports. 

“Katharina Seeger and Philip Minderhoud, geographers at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, said seas are on average almost 1 foot higher than standard estimates, which are based on global models that assume calm seas and ignore ocean currents and the effect of winds.”

Leonard Ohenhen, an Earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine…used satellite-mounted radar to produce 3D maps of subsidence on 40 of the world’s biggest and most populous river deltas. “Most startlingly, in 18 cases subsidence rates exceed those of rising tides—hence, more than doubling the effective yearly rise in local sea levels, and in some cases multiplying it tenfold.” Of obvious concern, “[their] corrected calculations reveal that up to 37% more area and up to 68% more people will fall below sea level following [3.3 feet] of sea level rise.”

“In North America, the Mississippi Delta has lost 1,900 square miles in the past century…continues to sink by an average of 2 inches per year.” I bet you’re feeling the same sinking feeling that I am. I just can’t quantitate that.