The United Kingdom’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) plans to invest 81 million pounds in the development of an ambitious early warning system designed to detect climate tipping points.

The new system will use drones, plankton bloom patterns and cosmic ray detection combined with artificial intelligence and detailed, cutting-edge computer models, reported The Guardian.

“Major parts of the Earth system are at risk of crossing climate tipping points within the next century, with severe consequences for biodiversity, food security, agriculture, and humanity. Despite the potential impact, we’re poorly equipped to characterise the long-term trends of our climate systems, or predict the future risk of runaway, self-perpetuating change,” ARIA said in a press release. “Combining expertise in observation and modelling with innovative sensing systems, we’ll look to develop a proof-of-concept for an early warning system for climate tipping points that is affordable, sustainable and justified.”

Early warning system for climate tipping points given £81m kickstart: Ambitious UK project aims to forecast climate catastrophes using fleets of drones, cosmic ray detection, patterns of plankton blooms and more An ambitious attempt to develop an early warning system for climate tipping p…

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— The Guardian Climate News (unofficial) (@guardian-climate.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 9:07 AM

ARIA has awarded roughly $102 million to 27 project teams with a goal of finding signals that warn of the biggest climate disasters that could be triggered by the climate crisis.

ARIA’s early warning system program will be focused on two major tipping points: the collapse of the subpolar gyre (SPG) ocean current — a part of the crucial Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.

The collapse of ocean currents like AMOC would lead to global weather pattern changes, triggering extreme weather and wreaking havoc on the world’s food supplies, while the collapse of Greenland’s ice sheet would cause significant and potentially damaging sea level rise.

“In a similar way to how we use monitoring stations to detect and warn for tsunamis, we’re aiming to establish networks of climate monitoring systems to detect early signs of critical shifts in our climate,” said Sarah Bohndiek and Gemma Bale, who co-lead the ARIA program, as The Guardian reported. “Through these systems, we can equip decision-makers with the data they need to confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on.”

Sarah Bohndiek, 1 of 2 scientists leading the #ClimateChange program at ARIA, warned the world was less prepared for climate #TippingPoints than it was for #COVID19. “What would happen if we cross one of the climate tipping points?"

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— Carbon Tracker Initiative (@carbontracker.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 5:30 AM

At least 16 tipping points have been identified by scientists, some of which may have already been passed, from the thawing of permafrost in the north to a shift in west Africa’s monsoon.

ARIA hopes to come up with an early warning system capable of forecasting tipping points a decade ahead of time, where possible.

Professor Tim Lenton, an ARIA team leader and director of the Global Systems Institute at University of Exeter, said a warning like ARIA is proposing would incentivize the world to speed up climate action, since even if it wasn’t possible to stop a particular tipping point, having advance notice would give society time to prepare.

One of the program’s teams is developing small, high-speed drones to be used to gather better data in Greenland.

“Greenland is the fastest melting place on Earth, but this ice loss has knock-on effects for both North Atlantic ocean currents and fisheries. This crucial research will help us to understand how much freshwater the ice sheet is releasing, and what the subsequent effects will be on the ocean currents that bring warm waters and weather to the UK,” said Kelly Hogan of the British Antarctic Survey in the press release.

Another ARIA team is working on making devices that can move vertically through the ocean to collect data on the SPG.

“The UK and northern Europe could experience much harsher winters, similar to parts of Canada [if the SPG collapses], while the east coast of the U.S. could see dramatic sea level rises,” said Dr. Bieito Fernández Castro, a lecturer at University of Southampton who leads the SPG project, as reported by The Guardian.

One of the projects will develop detailed computer simulations of real-world data to evaluate the reliability of prospective early warning signals.

“We will make use of real-world examples of past tipping points to better understand these events,” said David Thornalley, a professor of ocean and climate science at University College London.

Another team will develop models to pinpoint where and when climate tipping points might happen.

“Forecasting tipping points is a formidable challenge,” said Dr. Reinhard Schiemann, associate professor of climate science at University of Reading. “But the fantastic range of teams tackling this challenge from different angles, yet working together in a coordinated fashion, makes this programme a unique opportunity.”

The post UK Agency Developing Early Warning System for Major Climate Tipping Points appeared first on EcoWatch.

Scientists have found that preservation and restoration for peat swamp forests and mangroves could help lower land-use emissions in Southeast Asia by about 54%. Because the region contributes to about one-third of global land-use carbon emissions, the reduction could also have a big impact globally, with a potential 16% reduction in land-use emissions worldwide.

Peatlands and mangroves account for around 5.4% of land area in Southeast Asia, but they have huge carbon sequestration properties, according to the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature Communications. As National University of Singapore (NUS) reported, peatlands and mangroves can sequester around 90% of carbon in the soil. The natural peatland and mangrove ecosystems also promote biodiversity.

Further, the scientists noted that Southeast Asia is home to a significant portion of the world’s tropical peatlands and mangroves, with Brunei, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam accounting for 33% of global mangroves and 39% of global tropical peatlands.

Half of land use carbon emissions in Southeast Asia can be mitigated through peat swamp forest and mangrove conservation and restoration www.nature.com/articles/s41…

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— Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 6:40 AM

But with land-use changes, these ecosystems are under threat and risk emitting carbon rather than storing it. According to the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, some of the biggest threats to mangroves include coastal development and pollution. As the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported, peatland threats include drainage, burning, agriculture and mining.

“If we conserved and restored the carbon-dense peatlands and mangroves in Southeast Asia, we could mitigate approximately 770 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) annually, or nearly double Malaysia’s national greenhouse gas emissions in 2023,” Massimo Lupascu, senior author of the study and associate professor of geography at NUS, said in a statement.

As Mongabay News reported, restoring the peatlands and mangroves that are currently degraded — which includes around 5.34 million hectares (13.4 million acres) drained peatlands and 2.64 million hectares (6.52 million acres) otherwise degraded peatlands — could reduce emissions by around 94 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year alone.

Conservation of remaining peatlands should be a major focus. As NUS reported, it is difficult to recover sequestered carbon once the natural peatlands or mangroves have been disturbed by human activities. While restoration will still be important, conserving the remaining ecosystems is critical to reducing land-use emissions.

“These ecosystems pack a climate mitigation punch far beyond their size, offering one of the most scalable and impactful natural solutions to combat the planet’s climate crisis,” said Sigit Sasmito, first author of the study and a researcher at TropWATER at James Cook University.

In addition to prioritizing peatland and mangrove restoration and conservation, the study authors pointed out that these carbon-sequestering ecosystems could also provide economic value, such as through carbon credits, to outweigh the potential economic benefits of land-use changes.

“Wetland soils may have little agronomic value, as it is generally not well-suited for traditional farming or crop cultivation, but they are unmatched in their ability to store and preserve carbon,” Pierre Taillardat, co-author of the study and a principal investigator at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore’s Wetland Carbon Lab, said in a statement. “If carbon were valued like other critical commodities, such as being traded on the carbon credits market, it could unlock vast opportunities for conservation and restoration projects. This will enable local communities to lead carbon management efforts with a win-win scenario where livelihoods and sustainable ecosystems thrive together.”

It will be important for countries to act quickly on peatland and mangrove preservation and restoration efforts. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) recently reported that around 500,000 hectares of peatlands are destroyed each year, with East and Southeast Asia particularly affected. Degraded peatlands contribute to around 4% of all global anthropogenic carbon emissions.

The post Peatland and Mangrove Preservation Could Reduce Land-Use Emissions in Southeast Asia by Half, Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

The reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish Highlands could help expand native woodlands, which could in turn absorb and sequester one million additional tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to a new study.

The research, led by scientists at the University of Leeds, modeled wolves’ potential impact in four areas of Scottish Wild Land, where increasing populations of red deer feeding on tree saplings is suppressing the natural regeneration of woodland trees, a press release from the University of Leeds said.

“There is an increasing acknowledgement that the climate and biodiversity crises cannot be managed in isolation,” said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, in the press release. “We need to look at the potential role of natural processes such as the reintroduction of species to recover our degraded ecosystems and these in turn can deliver co-benefits for climate and nature recovery.”

To estimate that the reintroduction effort to areas in the Southwest, Northwest and Central Highlands, as well as in the Cairngorms, would result in a total wolf population of approximately 167 wolves, the team used a predator-prey model. That number of wolves would be sufficient to reduce populations of red deer enough to allow trees to grow back naturally.

Reintroducing wolves to Scottish Highlands could help expand native woodlands, says study – Researchers say the animals could keep red deer numbers under control, leading to storage of 1m tonnes of CO2 www.theguardian.com/environment/…

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— Damian Carrington (@dpcarrington.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 4:19 AM

With wolves keeping the red deer population in check, native woodland could expand to take up 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, or roughly five percent of the United Kingdom’s carbon removal target for woodlands. The UK Climate Change Committee has said that is the amount needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.

The researchers estimate the presence of each wolf would result in an uptake of 6,702 tons of carbon each year, giving each of the predators a carbon valuation “worth” of roughly $194,554.

The findings of the study, “Wolf reintroduction to Scotland could support substantial native woodland expansion and associated carbon sequestration,” were published in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

The research is the first time wolf reintroduction’s potential impacts on woodland expansion and the resulting carbon storage have been assessed in the UK. According to the research team, the results are further evidence that large carnivores play an important role in providing essential nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis.

Scotland eradicated its wolves roughly 250 years ago, which left red deer without natural predators. Red deer numbers in the country have exploded in the past century, despite ongoing management, with the most recent estimates as high as 400,000.

A lack of natural regeneration of trees has led to the decline and loss of Scotland’s native woodlands. Today, the country’s levels are some of the lowest in Europe, with just four percent of it covered in native woodland.

Natural tree regeneration has been largely restricted to fenced areas where deer are excluded. More intensive deer management has been proven to help trees regenerate, with seedling numbers rising when deer numbers are lower than four per square kilometer.

Western Europe’s wolf population is now more than 12,000, with wolves occupying 67 percent of their historical range in Europe, including in Central Europe’s human-dominated landscapes.

The researchers said the financial benefits of carbon uptake and storage that would come from reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands would be added to other proven ecological and economic impacts of wolf reintroduction, such as ecotourism, a reduced number of deer-vehicle accidents, fewer cases of deer-associated Lyme disease and fewer deer culls.

“Our aim is to provide new information to inform ongoing and future discussions about the possibility of wolf reintroductions both in the UK and elsewhere,” said farmer and author Lee Schofield, who co-authored the study. “We recognise that substantial and wide-ranging stakeholder and public engagement would be essential before any wolf reintroduction could be considered. Human-wildlife conflicts involving carnivores are common and must be addressed through public policies that account for people’s attitudes for reintroduction to be successful.”

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With each new federal administration, energy priorities shift. With the election of Donald Trump in 2024, one of his administration’s key promises, enforced by an executive order on January 20 this year and as promised in Project 2025, was to try to ramp up oil and gas drilling in the continental U.S. A key location for increased extraction? Alaska, the remote northern state that always seems to be at the tip of the tongue when the expression “drill, baby, drill” is uttered. 

But despite the fervor from the administration, recent lease auctions for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge failed to find a buyer. Other locations off the shore of Alaska are more likely to see increasing oil production, and some, like the massive Pikka Project on the north slope of Alaska, are already underway. 

One person who knows Alaska as deeply as anyone can who doesn’t live there is writer and explorer Jon Waterman.

“I suppose I’ve taken 50 or 60 different trips and expeditions to Alaska,” he says. 

His new book, Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis, reminds us, in beautifully rendered prose and photos, of the beauty of Alaska, and what’s at stake as the land, wildlife and peoples feel the pressures of climate breakdown and increased oil and gas production. 

Waterman writes: 

The sea ice has melted away as storms erode shorelines and flood villages. Forests are slowly on the move north along with animals new to the Arctic. The permafrost has begun to thaw, and lakes have disappeared as riverbanks and mountainsides droop like frozen spinach left out on the counter. 

The book tracks his most recent visit into Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic National Park, and what he saw that was so drastically different from his first visit 39 years ago. 

How would you describe the climate crisis in Alaska? 

The sea ice is what makes travel safe for the people in the summertime. Sea ice is what allows the polar bears to hunt their seals. And it controls the temperature of the Arctic.

The tree lines have begun to move north. The permafrost is thawing. It’s a whole cascade, like dominoes knocking one another over as the Arctic continues to warm. In fact, Alaska has warmed four times faster than the rest of the Earth.

And in your view, what’s different about this climate change compared with others from the long history of our planet, which you write about in the book?

The difference with the last 150 years is that it’s happened so quickly. And it’s the Anthropocene. Humans have caused this change, and that’s never happened before.

Can you tell me more about the melting permafrost? What are the impacts of that on the far north? 

As that permafrost thaws, the microbes begin to eat all this plant matter and that releases carbon dioxide gases. But it also releases methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas. And this could equal one of the largest triggers of greenhouse gases, because there’s so much methane and carbon stored in the ground that is abruptly thawing in many places.

On hillsides and mountainsides throughout the Arctic, it’s now very common to see what looks like landslides. These are recent thermalkarsts thawing. Downstream of these thermalkarsts, they’re just pumping tons of mud and silt into the river. And that affects the local villagers because they can’t fish. And then even more importantly, it affects all the aquatic life from the fish on down to the microbial life.

And what about the wildlife? 

The lengthening seasons and the lengthening summer have changed the migration patterns of many animals, birds and most notably, caribou. The caribou herds equal food security for many of the people in the far north.

Most of the herds are in a drastic decline. And this is broadly attributed to habitat loss and to climate change, because the warming of the Arctic causes another phenomenon called greening of the Arctic. The last time I went to the Arctic, I was amid the western Arctic caribou herd. And that herd used to be half a million strong. The latest census puts them at 152,000. 

Beavers have come to the Arctic. Beavers were never found in the Arctic prior to 1980. And in just this one portion of northwestern Alaska that I traveled through, through aerial photography, they counted over 11,000 new beaver dams in Arctic Alaska. Red foxes have begun to move north of tree line. There are more moose, and salmon are beginning to spawn in places they’d never spawn before as the waters have warmed.

You visited several Indigenous villages throughout Alaska and in other parts of the far north. What are some of your observations from them? 

The first time I was alerted to the changing north was in 1997. I was in a hunting camp in the Beaufort Sea in Canada, and an elder told me that they were starting to see robins and bluebirds, which they’ve never seen in their village before. And they’d just started to see salmon, and they were having mosquitoes come to their village. And I guess it was a breezy place, and it it stopped being breezy.

They used to have sled dog races on the 4th of July. They could no longer hold sled dog races in the summertime, because there was no longer any snow in the summer. It had gotten so warm. 

As a writer who has written books on the national parks, on Denali Mountain and others, what drew you to nature writing? 

I’ve always been an environmentalist at heart. I read the works of Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey and Peter Matheson and realized that nature is defenseless in that it doesn’t have a voice to speak for itself.

This issue of climate change is just the one grave environmental issue, perhaps the greatest of them all, right up there with overpopulation, that we need to be alert to and that we need to make the public aware of.

Your most recent trip was with your son. Looking to the future, what might people see a hundred years from now in Alaska? What are your hopes? 

Alaska has always been perceived as the last frontier, and I think that’s still true today. And I would hope it’s true a century from now. Thanks to Jimmy Carter and the Alaska National Interest Lands Claims Act that he signed in 1980, we have an enormous amount of protected wilderness and public lands in Alaska.

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to speak up for it and defend it. But I think that I’m optimistic and hopeful about the future of Alaska, because of all its protected wildlands.

The post ‘Into the Thaw’: Jon Waterman on a Changing Alaska appeared first on EcoWatch.

According to a new report by independent research group Climate Central, the climate crisis has driven weeks of hot temperatures in West Africa’s “cocoa belt,” where roughly 70% of the cocoa in the world is produced, impacting harvests and likely causing record chocolate prices.

Between July of 2022 and February of last year, cocoa prices jumped by 136 percent, partially due to climate extremes in the region, a press release from Climate Central said.

“Climate change, due primarily to burning oil, coal, and methane gas, is causing hotter temperatures to become more frequent in the four West African countries responsible for producing approximately 70% of the world’s cacao — the key ingredient in chocolate,” the report, Climate change is heating up West Africa’s cocoa belt, said. “While many factors, such as precipitation and insect-borne infections, can affect cacao trees, excessive heat can contribute to a reduction in the quantity and quality of the harvest — potentially increasing global chocolate prices and impacting local economies in West Africa.”

Climate change is melting our relationship with chocolate In 2024 alone, human-caused climate change added 6 extra weeks of heat stress above the ideal temperature in many cacao-growing regions. More from a new Climate Central attribution science report www.youtube.com/shorts/eyKOk…

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— Climate Central (@handle.invalid) February 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM

The bean pods of the cacao plant are used to produce cocoa, and they thrive under specific ranges of rainfall and temperature. Warm to hot temperatures as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit are best for cacao growth, but any higher and the quantity and quality of the harvest can be affected.

The analysis looked at how human-caused climate change has impacted the frequency of the cocoa belt’s daily maximum temperatures over the past decade (2015 to 2024).

The study focused on 44 of the major cacao-growing regions in the top four cocoa-producing countries: Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Nigeria. Other major producers of cocoa include Brazil, Chile, Peru, Indonesia and Ecuador, but they were not included in the analysis.

Climate change had the largest impact on cacao-growing regions in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire — two countries which produce more than half the world’s cocoa, supporting millions of workers and farmers’ livelihoods. In both these countries, an average of roughly 40 days of daily maximum temperatures higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit were added in the past 10 years due to climate change.

Nigeria and Cameroon saw an average of 14 and 18 more days, respectively, of cacao-limiting heat each year due to global heating.

Most — 28 of 44 — of the areas analyzed in the study experienced a minimum of six extra weeks of heat that limited cacao growth annually.

“Growing cocoa is a vital livelihood for many of the poorest people around the world and human-caused climate change is putting that under serious threat,” said Osai Ojigho, policy and public campaigns director at Christian Aid, as The Guardian reported.

Changing rainfall patterns can put additional strain on cacao growth, Climate Central said. Well-distributed and adequate rainfall is necessary for cacao plants, which do best in areas with yearly rainfall totals from 59 to 79 inches and with dry spells that last three months or less.

Much of the annual variation in cocoa production can be attributed to rainfall fluctuations. Climate change is predicted to increase frequent and/or large transitions between very wet and very dry conditions in many parts of the globe, including in West Africa, which could potentially affect cocoa production. Last year’s worldwide cocoa price increase was caused by inconsistent rainfall patterns.

Since late 2023, failed cacao harvests have contributed to a major jump in cocoa prices on the New York and London markets where cocoa is traded, reported The Guardian.

On Wednesday, cocoa prices on the New York exchange had soared to over $10,000 a tonne after a mid-December peak of more than $12,500. For decades, New York prices have mostly been steady at $2,000 to $3,000 per tonne.

Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli said in January that it would raise prices once again to offset the rising cost of cocoa.

Future threats to cocoa production also include smuggling, illegal mining and cacao swollen shoot virus, which impact the quality and quantity of cacao harvests, creating added challenges for farmers and driving up the price of chocolate.

Heat above 90 degrees Fahrenheit not only limits chocolate production, but is dangerous for the farmworkers who harvest cocoa.

“Extreme heat compounds other dangerous and physically-demanding working conditions, including exposure to chemicals, lifting heavy loads, and long hours. Many cocoa farmers make less than $1 equivalent per day and are older adults or children — both groups that are at higher risk of heat-related illness,” the press release said. “Since about 90% of cocoa is produced by small-scale operations, the changing climate is a significant factor that directly harms the lives and livelihoods of cocoa farmers.”

Adaptations — including breeding more heat- and drought-resistant plants, shading cacao plants with taller trees and shifting production to locations that are likely to have more suitable future conditions — can help farmworkers cope with changing climate conditions, but can’t fully prevent the disruptions and challenges of cocoa production.

According to Narcisa Pricope, a geosciences professor at Mississippi University, cacao is facing an “existential threat” largely due to cacao-producing regions’ increasingly dry conditions.

Pricope said the biggest factor in the aridity was greenhouse gas emissions.

“Collective action against aridity isn’t just about saving chocolate – it’s about preserving the planet’s capacity to sustain life,” Pricope said, as The Guardian reported.

The post Climate Crisis Is Causing a Chocolate Market Meltdown: Study appeared first on EcoWatch.