The Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania unplugged from Russia’s electric grid on Sunday and will now get their power from the European Union’s network.
The move was viewed as vital for Europe’s security and had been in progress since 2007, reported the BBC. It had become more of a priority following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
“Today, history is made,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen at a ceremony in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. “This is freedom, freedom from threats, freedom from blackmail.”
The Brell power grid — named for Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — is almost completely controlled by Moscow.
"Long before the Russian tanks crossed into #Ukraine, you were warning us that the cheap gas bought from Russia has a hidden cost. A cost of dependence." – Ursula von der Leyen told the Baltic states on the occasion of them disconnecting from Russian power grid.
President of Poland Andrzej Duda said the transition was “truly symbolic” and would bring more security and resiliency to the region.
“It is the final step towards emancipation from the post-Soviet sphere of dependence,” Duda added, as the BBC reported.
Now members of NATO, the three Baltic countries had not purchased Russian electricity since 2022, but had continued to depend on Moscow for the flow of electricity because of their Brell grid connection.
Von der Leyen warned that NATO needed to remain vigilant of potential retaliation from Russia.
“We’ve reached the goal we strived for, for so long. We are now in control,” said Lithuanian energy minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas during a press conference, reported The Guardian.
As soon as they were disconnected from Russia’s grid, workers from Latvia cut the electric wires in Vilaka, near the border. The workers handed out pieces of severed wire to members of the cheering crowd.
“We will never use it again. We are moving on,” said Kaspars Melnis, Latvia’s energy minister.
Infographic created in Ankara, Turkiye on Feb. 11, 2025. Mehmet Yaren Bozgun / Anadolu via Getty Images
The countries share a 1,015-mile border with Belarus and Russia. They told Minsk and Moscow about the plan to disconnect in 2024 in order to head off any potentially hostile response, The Associated Press reported.
“We have a protocol with the Russians on how everything should be disconnected,” Litgrid CEO Rokas Masiulis told reporters on Saturday.
The trio of Baltic nations became independent in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, joining NATO and the EU in 2004. The grid was their only remaining connection to Russia.
“By ending the energy dependence of the Baltic states on Russia, we are leaving the aggressor without the option of using energy as a weapon against us,” said Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, as reported by The Guardian.
The United Kingdom has announced new reduced subsidies for its controversial Drax power station, which had been previously converted to burning wood biomass from coal.
The North Yorkshire plant is an important source of energy for the country, but has received criticism because of sustainability concerns, in addition to Drax Group plc’s enormous profits, reported Bloomberg.
“Biomass currently plays an important role in our energy system, but we are conscious of concerns about sustainability and the level of subsidy biomass plants have received in the past,” said Michael Shanks, UK energy minister, in a statement. “We believe that [the subsidies] simply did not deliver a good enough deal for bill payers and enabled Drax to make unacceptably large profits.”
Drax has received criticism for burning wood pellets that were sourced from Canadian and United States forests, The Guardian reported.
Subsidies for Drax have been cut in half, and the UK government has ordered the power station to use only sustainable wood, rather than the 70 percent of woody biomass it is currently getting from sustainable sources.
🚨The DIRTIEST power station is about to get a bit LESS dirty! 😮💨
The UK government has announced LIMITS on Drax power station's ability to BURN TREES and POLLUTE our air.
They will ALSO start FINING Drax if the wood burnt doesn't come from WASTE products. 🔥
The government has threatened Drax with “substantial penalties” for noncompliance, The Guardian reported.
The new deal halves subsidies from 2027 to 2031, saying the plant will provide power only at times when it is “really” necessary. It is estimated the strategy will save customers $210.5 million each year.
Drax is the largest renewable power generator in Britain by output, with its plants making up roughly six percent of the UK’s supply of electricity. The company’s last coal-fired power plant was shut down near Selby in 2023 after 50 years.
The revised arrangement includes a “clawback mechanism” to keep the company from making excessive profits should there be a steep rise in electricity costs, reported the BBC.
“Under this proposed agreement, Drax can step in to increase generation when there is not enough electricity, helping to avoid the need to burn more gas or import power from Europe, and when there is too much electricity on the UK grid, Drax can turn down and help to balance the system,” said Chief Executive Will Gardiner, as the BBC reported.
Green activists had been afraid UK ministers would give Drax, which has received billions in past subsidies, unrestricted support despite concerns over the impact burning biomass has on the environment.
“Continuing to subsidise huge biomass imports is not a step on the road to a cleaner future, but a dirty compromise with past failures. Trees should be left to grow and not be burnt in a major subsidy-fuelled bonfire,” said Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK policy director, as reported by The Guardian. “The new criteria should, hopefully, limit the damage done both by restricting its operations and reforming its supply chain, but the government is still far too trusting of big polluters asking for big subsidies to decarbonise. We have cheap, clean power sources available, and we shouldn’t be left to gamble on schemes like this any more.”
Scientists at The Ohio State University have developed a new device known as Underwater Zooplankton Enhancement Light Array (UZELA), which will help promote more feeding sources for coral restoration.
UZELA is a submersible, programmable light that can be deployed at a site for up to six months on one battery. If the devices need any maintenance, trained divers can easily handle this. UZELA turns on for about one hour per night, and the emitted light helps increase concentrations of zooplankton while minimizing artificial light disruption to other marine species. This allows corals more feeding opportunities, according to the scientists.
The team tested the device near two native corals in Hawaii, Montipora capitata and Porites compressa. After running the UZELA, the amount of locally concentrated zooplankton increased seven-fold, while the coral feeding rates increased between 10- and 50-fold. The scientists published their findings in the journal Limnology and Oceanography: Methods.
“Coral reefs house one-third of all marine species, yet occupy less than 1% of the ocean,” Andrea Grottoli, lead author of the study and earth sciences professor at The Ohio State University, said in a statement. “They are disproportionately responsible for ocean health and we’re at risk of losing them.”
Coral reefs are threatened by extreme heat stress. Last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that the world was experiencing its fourth mass coral bleaching event, which is when the corals lose symbiotic algae that provide nutrients to the corals because of extreme heat. From February 2023 to April 2024, NOAA found that about 60.5% of global corals had experienced bleaching.
Bleaching can make coral more vulnerable to disease and die-off, and water temperature and conditions must return to normal for algae to return to coral. However, by concentrating zooplankton near coral, they can feed and obtain nutrients to help their road to recovery.
With such great threats facing coral reefs, the study authors noted that UZELA is only one temporary solution to the plight of reef systems. For now, it could work in some of the most vulnerable and important reef systems to boost restoration efforts until more substantial actions are taken to minimize stressors that trigger bleaching.
Labeled (a) top view of lens cap (7cm diameter) and (b) and (c) side view (20cm tall) photographs of UZELA (Underwater Zooplankton Enhancement Light Array) (Grottoli, Jackson, and Steck 2023, PCT/US2023/078357). Photos by AM Hulver
“Think of it as a band-aid for about a couple decades,” Grottoli said. “It can protect some corals in some places, sometimes.”
Currently the UZELA devices are made by hand, but the scientists are collaborating with a local engineering company to redesign UZELA for scalability. The updated device could be ready within one to three years, according to Grottoli.
“We are not mitigating climate change fast enough to save coral, and UZELA is not going to instantly save coral reefs,” Grottoli said. “But it is an exciting solution that will buy us time as we work toward a more sustainable environment.”
First paper ever alert! We found that locally increasing zooplankton using the Underwater Zooplankton Enhancement Light Array (UZELA) can increase feeding in two Hawaiian coral species up to tenfold. aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/…
The enormous wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles in January were both more likely to form and more devastating due to climate change, a rapid study from the World Weather Attribution has found.
The scorching and dry conditions that led to the fires were made about 35% more likely due to human-caused climate change, the researchers concluded. Combined with low rainfall — the conditions for which were found the be 2.4 times more likely due to climate change — and dry vegetation to fuel the fires, the risk of fire compounded.
“Using several methods and lines of evidence, this study confirms that climate change made the catastrophic LA wildfires more likely,” Theo Keeping, wildfire researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires at Imperial College London said, according to a press release.
“With every fraction of a degree of warming, the chance of extremely dry, easier-to-burn conditions around the city of LA gets higher and higher.”
A report by World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the conditions leading to the Palisades and Eaton fire in L.A. County 35% more likely.
https://eos.org/articles/how-much-did-climate-change-affect-the-los-angeles-wild…
The researchers used combined weather data with computer models to analyze how how much of a factor climate change played in the blazes, comparing the pre-industrial climate to a more modern climate at about 1.3°C above that baseline.
They also used the Fire Weather Index, which “considers the hot, dry and windy conditions that drive wildfires,” and further analyzed the total rainfall from October to December, which normally marks the tail-end of the fire season, and used the drought code to determine how the duration of the fire season is changing in the region.
They found that the conditions that fueled the fires are expected to happen about once every 17 years, which is an increase of 35% compared to a pre-industrial climate. The Fire Weather Index was also found to be 6% more intense compared to an environment without climate change, which has increased somewhat exponentially in recent years.
“Fall rains usually dampen fuel, hindering the spread of fire, but in contrast to the two years prior, 2024 didn’t see any fall rains,” John Abatzoglou, professor of climatology at the University of California Merced, told reporters at an online press conference. “We actually finally got the first real rainfall this past weekend… but if you look at the calendar, we’re in the middle of the wet season.”
While the fiercest fires usually occur during the dry summer months, the Santa Ana winds coming from the desert to the northeast, which are dry and warm, can help fuel destructive fires during other times of year. This year’s Santa Ana winds were especially fierce, the report found, fanning the fires by pushing sparks of fire to new areas, igniting more fires.
“It’s vital that we point out who is to blame for the fossil fuel pollution that is turbo-charging unnatural disasters like these,” Nadia Hasan, a communications advisor for nonprofit Global Witness, said in a statement. “Oil bosses have worked hand-in-glove with their friends in politics to bake dirty fossil fuels into our energy systems, block climate action, and spread lies about climate change to divide and distract us.”
“Instead of keeping communities safe, mega-rich oil firms are knowingly driving and profiting from the climate crisis. It’s high time we put them on the line for the costs of repair,” she added.
The fires have destroyed an estimated 16,000 structures and killed at least 28 people, with thousands being dropped from their home insurance mere months before the fires hit.
“Communities can’t build back the same because it will only be a matter of years before these burned areas are vegetated again and a high potential for fast-moving fire returns to these landscapes,” said Park Williams, professor of geography at the University of California.
The elderly, along with people with disabilities, low-income groups without access to personal vehicles, and groups who received late warnings were disproportionately impacted, the authors say. They also warned that fires exposed “critical weaknesses” in LA’s water infrastructure, which was designed for more routine fires than especially devastating ones.
The report warns that if global warming reaches an average of 2.6° C, which is the “lowest warming expected under current policies by 2100,” we can expect the Fire Weather Index to be 3% more intense, with similar fires 35% more probable.
Under the law, signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the United States from 2000 to 2024 are required to pay the state a total of $3 billion per year for 25 years, reported The New York Times. New York lawmakers say the law’s reach extends to companies all over the world.
The 22 red states suing New York, led by West Virginia, say the law exceeds the state’s constitutional authority.
Twenty-two states, led by West Virginia, are suing to block a recently approved New York law that requires fossil fuel companies to pay billions of dollars a year for contributing to climate change.
“This law is unconstitutional, and I am proud to lead this coalition of attorneys general and brave private energy companies and industry groups in our fight to protect against this overreach. If we allow New York to get away with this, it will only be a matter of time before other states follow suit – wrecking our nation’s power grid,” said West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey in a written statement, as The Hill reported.
Hochul said fossil fuel companies’ actions harm New York residents.
“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Hochul said upon signing the law.
Funds from the measure will help repair and upgrade infrastructure that is threatened or has been damaged by extreme weather, reported The New York Times. Some projects could include stormwater drainage system improvements, restoration of coastal wetlands and energy-efficient cooling system installations in buildings.
The law is set to start collecting funds from fossil fuel companies in 2028.
The lawsuit says the Clean Air Act gives the federal government “the chief role in determining interstate emissions standards,” rather than individual states.
However, the Superfund Act is seeking compensation for past emissions, not trying to determine pollution standards, said Columbia University Environmental Law Professor Michael B. Gerrard.
The Climate Change Superfund Act was modeled after the 1980 federal Superfund law, which required that companies pay for toxic waste cleanup caused by incidents such as chemical spills.
Gerrard pointed out that the original law “withstood many challenges in the courts.”
Lead sponsor of the Superfund Act, New York State Senator Liz Krueger, said the purpose of the law is to hold polluters accountable for their part in the state’s extreme weather disasters — predicted to cost more than 500 billion dollars by mid-century.
Lee Zeldin, who now heads the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is an ally of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA is funded by big players in the energy industry such as the Conford Fund.
McCuskey said Zeldin “looks at energy policy in a way that says that fossil generation of electricity is the current and future of this country.”
In addition to West Virginia, plaintiffs in the lawsuit include 21 other states, the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, the West Virginia Coal Association, Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. and America’s coal associations.
“Pretending that coal and gas are the only way to meet growing energy demands is like insisting landlines are the future of communication,” said Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of Environmental Advocates NY, as The New York Times reported.
At United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington on Thursday, Democratic Senator Edward J. Markey, U.S. Representative for Arizona Yassamin Ansari and New York Representative Paul Tonko requested a meeting with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to discuss why funding for environmental programs was being “unconstitutionally cut off,” a press release from the Office of Ed Markey said.
The Trump administration has disregarded multiple court orders requiring that the funds be restarted.
The three Democratic members of Congress had also planned “to demand that the funding that has already been authorized and appropriated by Congress be rightfully unfrozen,” the press release said.
“Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their unqualified, unelected, unwanted henchmen want to dismantle the government services that keep our communities thriving, healthy, and safe from polluters,” Markey said in the press release. “I went to the headquarters of the EPA to demand answers from Administrator Zeldin and the DOGE representatives who are illegally withholding funding that would keep air and water clean and help families save money.”
Here’s what happened when Congressman Tonko, Congresswoman Ansari, and I showed up at EPA today to ask to meet with DOGE. First, we were denied entry. Then we were promised a representative was coming to speak with us—twice. No one ever came. We are demanding answers. youtu.be/fvP1xlt46w0
Trump administration officials have not released billions of EPA dollars authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), including those allotted for clean school bus programs. This has left communities without the resources to combat the impacts of hazardous pollution.
In the lobby of the EPA, the legislators faced a cold reception.
Wearing a scarf that said “Climate Can’t Wait,” Senator Markey spoke to security personnel.
“I’m Senator Markey, and we’re here to request a meeting with EPA officials,” the senator from Massachusetts said, as Inside Climate News reported.
A security officer blocks Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), from entering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC on Feb. 6, 2025. Al Drago / Getty Images
The three legislators were escorted outside and stood in the building’s entryway. A security officer told them they were waiting for a representative to come and speak with them.
“We are here to request a meeting with any and all EPA officials inside,” Tonko said, as reported by Inside Climate News. “The American people deserve to know whether their clean air, clean water and clean land are in jeopardy.”
Following the attempted meeting, other members of Congress, as well as advocates and leaders of several unions and environmental groups, including Green New Deal Network, Hip Hop Caucus, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Climate Action Campaign, Union of Concerned Scientists, National Council of Churches and Natural Resources Defense Council, joined the lawmakers outside EPA headquarters for a press conference.
They accused the newly appointed leaders of the EPA of defying court orders issued by the federal government to enforce legally mandated environmental protections.
“In a place like Phoenix, Arizona, where we have extreme heat, where hundreds of people die each year from heat exposure, and where air pollution is among the worst in the country, gutting the EPA is unacceptable,” Ansari said, as Inside Climate News reported. “People’s lives literally depend on it.”
Multiple judges have issued orders blocking the federal funding freeze, but state leaders have reported that they continue to be locked out of the government’s payment system.
Jillian Blanchard, Lawyers for Good Government’s vice president for climate change and environmental justice, said IRA payouts for grant recipients at the Energy and Agriculture departments had also reported being unable to access funds.
“People cannot get into their accounts. They can’t access funding. They’re waiting on invoices to be paid. No one will call them back,” Blanchard said, as reported by Scientific American.
Markey said the public should know if the EPA was violating court orders and federal statutes.
“Fifty-five years ago, the American people demanded action against polluters — that is the heart and soul of the EPA,” Markey said, as Inside Climate News reported. “We need to make sure their mission remains intact and that they are following the law.”
Outside EPA headquarters, the legislators addressed the group that had gathered, including members of the press, calling Musk an “unelected billionaire” who was intent on orchestrating a hostile restructuring of federal agencies, including the EPA.
“Musk has made it clear — he’s putting the United States in a wood chipper, and now he’s coming for the EPA,” Markey stated. “They’re bragging about taking money from Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and the Green New Deal to fund tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires.”
Markey and fellow legislators referred to reports of EPA employees being warned about possible removal from their jobs. On Thursday, 168 employees who had been working on the agency’s environmental justice initiatives were put on administrative leave.
“After being denied access and a meeting, I left with more questions than answers. I will not stop fighting on behalf of the American people — their clean air, clean water, lower energy bills, and livable future — until I get those answers and funding gets restored. No business as usual. No votes for nominees. No illegal funding freeze. And no workers left behind,” Markey said in the press release.
EPA staff asked what they could do if the agency continued to defy oversight.
“Congress is a stimulus-response institution,” Markey said, as reported by Inside Climate News. “There is nothing more stimulating than millions of Americans waking up to find out their health care and environment are being gutted for tax breaks. Our job is to sound the alarm so the public can push back.”
The legislators promised to keep on with their oversight efforts, which include congressional investigations and possible legal action, while acknowledging the difficulties of holding the EPA accountable under the Trump administration.
“The whole system is fundamentally not working,” Ansari said. “Right now, they are ignoring the courts, ignoring federal oversight, and rewriting the Constitution to serve their billionaire backers.”
Ansari warned the EPA fight was only one part of a bigger effort by Republicans to dismantle government services.
“It is easy to cut what you do not care about,” Ansari said. “Elon Musk and Donald Trump do not care about the American people. They care about their billionaire agenda, which exploits workers and fuels environmental injustice.”
The members of Congress reaffirmed their commitment to blocking the administration’s policies and nominees they felt posed a threat to the country’s environmental protections.
“We have to fight for our future,” Markey said. “From the halls of Congress to the streets of America, from courtrooms to factory floors, we must stand up for clean air, clean water, and a livable planet. That is why we are here.”
According to a new report from BloombergNEF, global clean power costs could fall between 2% and 11% this year, despite tariffs.
Even with potential trade barriers, the “Levelized Cost of Electricity” report estimated that clean energy costs for technologies such as wind, solar and battery storage will decrease 22% to 49% by 2035. Much of these cost savings are made possible through China’s rapid clean energy technology manufacturing capacity. According to the report, China can produce a megawatt-hour of clean energy at 11% to 64% lower costs than other markets.
A 2024 Global Energy Monitor report found that just the renewable energy capacity under construction in China last year was double the total of the same capacity under construction of all other countries combined. Last year, China also set records for installing the most wind and solar energy capacities, with an 45% increase in wind and 18% increase in solar.
Renewables are expected to become cheaper in 2025 and beyond.
BNEF analysis shows new wind and solar farms are already undercutting new coal and gas plants on production cost in almost every market globally.
The high clean energy technology capacity in China has lead some countries in Europe as well as the U.S. to enact or consider tariffs on products like solar panel components and electric vehicles. In May 2024, the Biden administration proposed tariff raises on solar cells, batteries, EVs and other products, and the first of those tariff increases went into effect last fall, Utility Dive reported. This week, the Trump administration further enacted a 10% tariff on China, NPR reported.
“China is exporting green energy tech so cheaply that the rest of the world is thinking about erecting barriers to protect their own industries,” Matthias Kimmel, head of Energy Economics at BNEF, said in a statement. “But the overall trend in cost reductions is so strong that nobody, not even President Trump, will be able to halt it.”
The current U.S. administration may soon move forward with tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which could also impact electricity prices and nuclear energy production in the U.S.
But despite these trade barriers, the report had a positive outlook for clean energy prices globally. Already, battery storage costs globally fell by one-third in 2024, and fixed-axis solar farm rates decreased 21%. Battery storage is expected to fall further from a benchmark of $104 per megawatt-hour to below $100 per megawatt-hour, and solar and wind energy generation is expected to decreased by 2% to 4%.
“New solar plants, even without subsidies, are within touching distance of new U.S. gas plants. This is remarkable because U.S. gas prices are only a quarter of prevailing gas prices in Europe and Asia. It really raises the bar on what is possible even in the current market,” said Amar Vasdev, lead author of the report. “This opens up the likelihood that solar will become even more compelling in the coming years, especially if the U.S. starts exporting liquified natural gas and exposes its protected gas market to global price competition.”
Pets at Home, a pet supplies retailer in the United Kingdom, has launched what it says are the first-ever dog treats made with lab-grown meat.
Chick Bites, a combination of cultivated chicken and plant-based ingredients, were produced by growing cells without the raising or slaughtering of animals.
“We’re incredibly excited to introduce cultivated meat to the pet world,” said Owen Ensor, Meatly’s founding chief executive, in a press release from Meatly. “Just two years ago this felt like a moon shot. Today we take off. It’s a giant leap forward, toward a significant market for meat which is healthy, sustainable and kind to our planet and other animals.”
The lab-produced meat originated from one sample of cells taken from a single chicken egg. According to Meatly, the process can produce enough cultivated meat “to feed pets forever.”
The meat alternative is said to have all the vitamins, minerals, essential amino and fatty acids necessary for healthy pets.
The company says the meat is “just as tasty and nutritious as traditional chicken breast,” The Guardian reported.
Dog treat made from lab-grown meat on sale in UK as retailer claims a ‘world first’
The United Kingdom became the first European country to approve cultivated meat in pet food last July when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, along with the Animal and Plant Health Agency, approved chicken produced by Meatly.
Meatly has plans to fundraise for expanded production to make its treats more widely available within the coming three to five years. It also plans to continue its collaborations with Pets at Home and The Pack, the company that provided the plant-based ingredients for the dog treats.
“The launch of our Chick Bites treats is a watershed moment for the pet food industry. Cultivated meat offers a tasty, low-carbon, and healthy protein source, which has the potential to eliminate farmed animals from the pet food industry,” said Chief Executive of The Pack Damien Clarkson in the press release. “Our mission at THE PACK is to develop highly nutritious products that dogs love, and we are delighted to partner with Meatly and Pets at Home on this world’s first. For us this is a continuation of our work in developing high-quality alternative protein products for all dog lovers.”
A limited number of Chick Bites have been offered for sale at the Pets at Home store in Brentford, West London.
“At Pets at Home, we’re guided by our purpose to create a better world for pets and the people who love them, and that includes looking after our planet,” said Pets at Home CEO Anja Madsen in the press release. “This innovation has the potential to significantly reduce the environmental impact of pet food and will be a gamechanger for the industry.”
Short-term exposure to air pollution makes people less able to focus on routine tasks or interpret emotions, a new study by researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Birmingham has found.
The scientists discovered that people who were even briefly exposed to high levels of particulate matter (PM) could find it harder to avoid distractions and act in a manner that was socially acceptable, a press release from the University of Birmingham said.
“Our study provides compelling evidence that even short-term exposure to particulate matter can have immediate negative effects on brain functions essential for daily activities, such as doing the weekly supermarket shop,” said co-author of the study Dr. Thomas Faherty, a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Birmingham’s School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, in the press release.
The research team exposed participants to either clean air or high air pollution levels caused by candle smoke, testing their cognitive abilities both before exposure and four hours later.
The test measured selective attention, working memory, psychomotor speed, sustained attention and emotion recognition.
The findings revealed that air pollution negatively affected emotion recognition and selective attention, regardless of whether the subjects breathed normally or just through their mouths.
“They were worse at perceiving whether a face was fearful or happy, and that might have implications for how we behave with other people,” Faherty said, as The Guardian reported. “There are associative studies looking at short-term air pollution and incidents of things like violent crime, especially in U.S. cities.”
The study, “Acute particulate matter exposure diminishes executive cognitive functioning after four hours regardless of inhalation pathway,” was published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Recent evidence suggests that short-term exposure to particulate PM air pollution can temporarily impair several key cognitive functions, including selective attention, switch costs (which are relevant to multitasking), decision-making, processing speed, functional connectivity, and even global cognitive functioning,” the authors of the study wrote.
The findings suggested that inflammation triggered by pollution could be to blame for the deficits, but noted that working memory was not affected. This indicated that some human brain functions were more resilient to short-term PM exposure.
“Poor air quality undermines intellectual development and worker productivity, with significant societal and economic implications in a high-tech world reliant on cognitive excellence,” said study co-author Francis Pope, an environmental scientist and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Birmingham, in the press release. “Reduced productivity impacts economic growth, further highlighting the urgent need for stricter air quality regulations and public health measures to combat the harmful effects of pollution on brain health, particularly in highly polluted urban areas.”
Cognitive functioning involves a variety of mental processes used to complete everyday tasks. For example, selective attention assists with goal-directed behavior and decision-making, such as prioritizing shopping list items at the supermarket, while ignoring items not on the list and resisting impulse buys.
“Participants exposed to air pollution were not as good at avoiding the distracting information,” Faherty said, as reported by The Guardian. “So that means in daily life, you could get more distracted by things. Supermarket shopping is a good example… it might mean that you get more distracted by impulse buys when you’re walking along supermarket aisles because you’re not able to focus on your task goals.”
Working memory is a place to hold and manipulate information, which is essential for tasks that need simultaneous storage and processing — those that require multitasking, like juggling multiple conversations or planning a schedule.
Socio-emotional cognition involves the detection and interpretation of emotions both in oneself and other people, helping to guide socially acceptable behavior.
Though these are distinct cognitive skills, they work in tandem to allow us to successfully complete tasks at work and in other areas of life.
The study highlights the necessity of additional research to understand how air pollution impacts cognitive function, as well as to explore its long-term effects, particularly on vulnerable populations like older adults and children.
“This study shows the importance of understanding the impacts of air pollution on cognitive function and the need to study the influences of different sources of pollution on brain health in vulnerable older members of society,” said co-author Professor Gordon McFiggans, a professor of atmospheric science at University of Manchester, in the press release.
Air pollution is the biggest environmental risk factor for human health worldwide. The detrimental effects on respiratory and cardiovascular systems from exposure to poor air quality are well-known, with links to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative conditions.
“The study was done on a clinically healthy adult population, which means that they were of good health and had no clinical respiratory or neurological problems… certain other groups might be more vulnerable to effects,” Faherty said, as The Guardian reported.
The air pollutant PM2.5 is the most responsible for negative impacts on human health, having caused approximately 4.2 million deaths in 2015.
The new study was part of a broader project that will test impacts of different pollution sources, which researchers hope will inform public health and policy measures in the future.
“The larger project… looks at different sources of pollutants, which are more common. So like cooking emissions and wood burning and car exhaust and cleaning products, to kind of tease out whether we can kind of push policy in a certain direction,” Faherty said, as reported by The Guardian. “If we know that cleaning products are causing most of these issues that I’m describing, then we can kind of push on policy to fix the things that are wrong based on the source rather than what we can just measure in the air after the fact.”
January 2025 was the warmest January on record, according to data from the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service. The data has surprised scientists, who predicted that this January would be at least slightly cooler on average than January 2024 now that the El Niño weather pattern has ended and the cooling La Niña weather pattern is emerging.
But Copernicus Climate Change Service data revealed that last month reached an average air surface temperature of 13.23 degrees Celsius (approximately 55.8 degrees Fahrenheit). This is about 0.09 degrees Celsius warmer than January 2024, the previous hottest January on record, NBC San Diego reported. Further, the data showed that January 2025 was about 1.75 degrees Celsius warmer than average January temperatures from pre-industrial times.
An El Niño event that lasted from summer 2023 well into spring 2024 exacerbated higher temperatures in 2024, leading scientists to believe that January 2025 would bring cooler air and sea surface temperatures. With a cooling La Niña starting up in early 2025, scientists have been left surprised by the record-high air temperature for January.
January 2025 was the warmest January ever recorded. Last month was 1.75°C above the pre-industrial level and 0.79°C above the 1991-2020 average. The persistence of high temperatures underscores significant climate trends.
Read the full #C3S Climate Bulletins: bit.ly/3EBUTD1
“If you’d asked me a few months ago what January 2025 would look like relative to January 2024, my best shot would have been it would be cooler,” said Adam Scaife, head of Monthly to Decadal Prediction at the UK Met Office, as reported by the BBC. “We now know it isn’t, and we don’t really know why that is.”
Sea surface temperatures were also higher than expected, although they just barely missed the record for highest January sea surface temperatures. The average sea surface temperature for 60°S–60°N latitudes was 20.78 degrees Celsius, which was only 0.19 degrees Celsius below the record set in January 2024.
“January 2025 is another surprising month, continuing the record temperatures observed throughout the last two years, despite the development of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific and their temporary cooling effect on global temperatures” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
With the rising temperatures, Arctic sea ice also hit a monthly low for January, reaching about 6% below the average sea ice levels, Copernicus Climate Change Service data revealed. In the Antarctic, sea ice was 5% below average but did not reach the record or near-record lows of sea ice found in 2023 and 2024.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, La Niña is still in development. But even if it peaks this year, the phenomenon won’t be enough to lower global average temperatures.
“By far and away the largest contributing factor to our warming climate is the burning of fossil fuels,” Burgess said, as reported by NBC News.
In January, the Copernicus Climate Change Service estimated that 2024 would be the warmest year on record, and last year was the first calendar year to breach an average global temperature that was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times.
“Copernicus will continue to closely monitor ocean temperatures and their influence on our evolving climate throughout 2025,” Burgess said in a statement.
