What will happen when the permafrost thaws?

A river drops off where it intersects with a large thaw slump, which has eroded tons of soil from the landscape

Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by more than 1 degree C (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster – nearly four times faster than the average global rate.

Listen to the podcast on Climate Now.

STEM opportunities for young women

Two young women sit in a field, adjusting scientific equipment attached to a laptop.

Adolescent girls show as much engagement as boys in science, tech, engineering and math, but this changes significantly when they reach college age. We discuss why young women aren’t pursuing these fields and some of the local opportunities to keep girls and young women engaged in STEM.

Listen on CAI.

This year’s 100% water allocation in California does not mean the water crisis is over, experts say

Climate change will make it hard to predict how much water will come each year.

An animal drinks from the Colorado River, showing low water levels

The West may be out of the woods in ensuring its water supply this year, but the water crisis is still very much alive, experts caution.

Last week, the California Department of Natural Resources announced that the state would receive 100% water allocation for the first time since 2006, meaning that communities and farmers under the State Water Project would receive all of its water requests for the year.

Protecting the planet

A large cloud above open water.

Scientists are urging drastic cuts to our fossil fuel use, saying we’re not on pace to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. As a result, some of them now support controversial technologies that could blunt the Earth’s rising temperatures, broadly known as geoengineering.

Watch on CBS Saturday Morning.

The little city that could

For Chelsea, Massachusetts, a new microgrid means energy resilience.

Chelsea, MA

On a recent morning, researcher Dominick Dusseau offers a glimpse into the future of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a small, industrial city just across the Mystic River from Boston. On digital maps he displays over Zoom, great blue splashes cover large swaths of the city—areas where, by his calculations, climate-driven flooding is likely to occur. The maps depict a world where the locals who can least afford it will get hit the hardest.

Continue reading on Mother Jones.

Here’s what will happen if Colorado River system doesn’t recover from ‘historic drought’

The river system provides water to 40 million people.

View of Colorado River from above, showing low water levels

The Colorado River, one of the most important river systems in the country, is drying up at an alarming rate.

The issues surrounding depleting water levels along the Colorado River basin have become as heated as the arid climate contributing to the moisture-sapping megadrought persisting in the region for decades.

Continue reading on ABC News.

Indigenous Amazon forests absorb noxious fumes and prevent diseases from wildfires, study suggests

A researcher wearing a mask stands in a smoky, orange-lit landscape

A new study published in Nature estimates that forests in Indigenous lands in Brazil’s Amazon have the potential to absorb over 7,000 tons of noxious fumes from forest fires every year, preventing about 15 million cases of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases annually, which would otherwise cost $2 billion to Brazil’s public health system.

The effect on the health of populations adds to the environmental impacts of fires in the Amazon forest, which are mainly caused by deforestation and contribute to increased emissions.

What was not yet known was the level of those damages, the costs and the ability of the Amazon forests in Indigenous lands to absorb the pollutants, said the study’s authors.

A Homer scientist is bringing changes in Arctic permafrost into high-resolution

With permafrost thaw in the Arctic rapidly outpacing previous projections, researchers are racing to understand the impacts of an increasingly unstable future.

After growing up in Sweden, Anna Liljedahl moved to Alaska to study hydrology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She now lives in Homer, where she conducts research as an associate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, focusing on how climate change is impacting water in Arctic ecosystems.