With Trump and climate change, denial is a hell of a drug
Trump is trying make a climate report go extinct
Facts can be awfully stubborn things. And they’re especially inconvenient for the Trump administration.
So the president and his goons are simply disappearing them, deleting vast tranches of scientific, health, and other data from federal websites.
Why bother with a debate over the facts when you can fix it so they don’t exist in the first place? It’s much easier to deem racial health disparities a myth if there’s no longer a massive reservoir of government data showing otherwise, for example. And it’s easier to suggest vaccines cause autism if you scrub the data suggesting that theory is a massive and deadly crock.
Nowhere has this approach been clearer than on climate and the environment, where, in its efforts at “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry,” the administration has demanded that thousands of datasets be removed from federal websites, including the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, and NASA — or hidden so the public cannot find them.
Read more on The Boston Globe.
A Permafrost Pathways study informed one of the biggest headlines in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2024 Arctic Report Card, sending a clear but alarming message to the world: more than one-third of Arctic-boreal region has shifted to a source of carbon. The sobering results, mentioned in over 700 news stories from 42 countries, shed light on the urgency of Arctic research.
Read more on Permafrost Pathways.
A new study, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Biological Conservation and co-authored by scientists from Woodwell Climate Research Center and Wild Heritage, finds that greater protections of mature and old-growth forests in the United States are critical to meeting global commitments to forestall the climate and biodiversity crisis. The research underscores why safeguarding the nation’s carbon stockpile in older forests needs to be a focus of U.S. policy to reduce emissions from commercial logging and burning of fossil fuels.
Using a new approach combining remote sensing of forest structure with ground data from the federal Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, the research team analyzed younger, mature, and old-growth forests across the contiguous U.S., looking at their size and carbon stocks, as well as ownership (public or private) and protection status, to examine how much additional carbon could be protected if stricter regulations were in place to curb commercial timber harvesting.
According to the study, contiguous U.S. forests currently hold 54.3 billion tonnes of carbon. However, 83% of that carbon stock remains unprotected, revealing the critical role that policy action to prevent increased logging of federal forests can play in promoting ecosystem benefits and enabling U.S. forests to reach their full carbon storage potential. This is especially true for mature and old-growth forests, which provide the greatest climate and biodiversity benefits.
“Mature and old-growth forests are made up of our oldest and typically largest trees, that not only store massive amounts of carbon right now, but can continue to accumulate carbon for centuries if protected. These forests also play an irreplaceable role in maintaining biodiversity, fostering ecosystem resilience, promoting human health, and much more,” said Dr. Rich Birdsey, Senior Scientist at Woodwell Climate and lead author of the study. “As communities everywhere feel the real time consequences of the climate crisis, our policies must reflect the urgent and unparalleled importance of preserving these forests to reduce emissions and bring global temperatures back down.”
With stepped-up protection measures that avoid logging of mature and old-growth forests and large trees, and allow mature forests to develop into old growth over time, researchers found that the total carbon stored in these forests could increase by 10.8 billion tonnes within decades, locking away the equivalent of eight full years of fossil fuel emissions in the United States.
“Our study points to the urgency of protecting the nation’s best natural climate solution, especially as the current administration begins to ramp up logging on public lands under the President’s executive orders,” said Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala, Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage and study co-author. “This is the worst possible time for backpedaling on forest protections and our international commitments for a safe climate.”
The study can be found here.
Thawing grounds, rising stakes: The importance of including permafrost emissions in climate policy
As the world races to limit global warming to 1.5°C, a critical and often overlooked climate threat looms: the rapid thaw of permafrost in Arctic regions. Permafrost1)—continuously frozen ground that covers vast portions of the Arctic—is thawing, releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) previously locked in frozen soils, amplifying warming at a scale that could derail global climate goals. Current international climate plans put the world on track for a warming of around 2.7°C, far exceeding the Paris Agreement’s target.2) Yet emissions from thawing permafrost remain largely absent from Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the cornerstone of international climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. This article explores why permafrost emissions are excluded from NDCs and the consequences of this omission, and proposes concrete steps to ensure that permafrost emissions are fully integrated into future climate strategies. This substantial gap in climate policy threatens Arctic ecosystems and the global effort to stabilize the climate.
Read more on The Arctic Institute website.
Passed in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires U.S. federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their proposed actions prior to implementing them. To facilitate this, and to ensure decisionmaking is uniform across government agencies, the law stipulates regulations around the process for conducting these impact assessments. A March ruling from the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) removes these regulations, opening up the possibility for regulatory confusion and inconsistency between agencies that ultimately lessens the effectiveness of environmental protections.
Woodwell Climate Research Center submitted a public comment on the ruling, criticizing the move for its potential to hinder coherent decisionmaking based on rigorous science. The comment states:
“NEPA reviews are not an impediment to “major federal actions” but provide an essential, science-based safeguard for ensuring that decisionmaking adequately balances a myriad of interests. This balance is especially critical in areas of the United States where increasingly frequent natural disturbances and extreme events threaten to derail the durability of a proposed federal action.”
The comment speaks to the effectiveness of the existing environmental review process, especially for decisionmaking in Alaska, where construction projects were guided to consider the impacts of permafrost thaw and erosion as part of hydrological and ground assessments, and in forest management plans, where the NEPA review process ensures management strategies are scrutinized with empirical data.
The ruling is considered “interim final” which means it can be put into effect before comments have been considered and is not dependent on public input. Despite this, engaging in the rulemaking process is one critical way Woodwell Climate contributes to environmental policy. It ensures that technical expertise is part of the public record, and provides evidence that can be used in court cases should the ruling or any action based on it be challenged in the future.
The full comment can be read here.
Guest commentary: We must stand together
Falmouth is more than just a picturesque coastal town; it is a vibrant village of discovery built over decades around the pillars of science, education and environmental stewardship. In the same way, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Woodwell Climate Research Center and Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) are not just esteemed institutions, but integral parts of our community.
Continue reading on The Falmouth Enterprise.
In the Arctic, permafrost plays a crucial role in building infrastructure. However, as the region warms and permafrost thaws, infrastructure is threatened as the ground shifts beneath the built environment. Unfortunately, the full extent of the risks associated with this process is not yet realized, but researchers are working to address this knowledge gap.
Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist, Dr. Anna Liljedahl, along with UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment researchers Elias Manos and Assistant Professor Dr. Chandi Witharana developed a method that uses high-resolution satellite imagery and deep machine learning to map Alaskan infrastructure and more accurately project economic risks associated with permafrost thaw. Their findings published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment estimated that the costs of permafrost damage to infrastructure will double under low and medium emissions scenarios by 2050.
“Damages to infrastructure caused by permafrost thaw is on par with the average yearly cost of all natural disasters in the country, yet permafrost thaw is not recognized by the federal government as a natural hazard making it harder for people in Alaska to obtain disaster relief funding,” says Liljedahl.
This study is the latest from Witharana’s research group, which examines the ways satellites can help monitor changes in the Arctic landscape over time. According to Manos, in order to understand the hazards of a changing climate, we need a clear understanding of what’s at risk—in this case, vital structures like buildings and roads.
Permafrost serves as a structural foundation; piles are secured through it and buildings are often designed specifically to help the thermal integrity of this anchor layer. But the structural integrity of the layer, and consequently the structures above, is compromised as the permafrost thaws.
“When the temperature of permafrost starts to increase, piles start to shift out of place, and that’s what we call bearing capacity loss, or decrease in bearing capacity. That was the main hazard that we looked at which impacts buildings,” says Manos. “Then there’s also transportation infrastructure that’s primarily impacted by ground subsidence. When ice-rich permafrost thaws, the ground will cave in and that was the hazard we used to assess the disaster risk for roads.”
Previous studies have made risk estimates based on data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), which is one of the most widely used geospatial data sets available, says Manos. OSM is available for every nation across the globe, and information is updated by volunteers who manually input local data, like buildings, trails, roads, or other kinds of infrastructure, from high-resolution imagery on a global scale. For some regions, like Europe and parts of the United States, the data is accurate, says Manos, but that is not true for all locations. Unfortunately for the Arctic, OSM data is lacking.
“There are several previous risk studies that relied on this incomplete infrastructure data. It all goes back to the fact that infrastructure across the Arctic is not completely mapped, and that’s problematic if you want to understand disasters because you must have the full picture to understand the scale of what is or could potentially be exposed,” says Manos.
To fill in that picture, Witharana’s group developed a method to accurately map infrastructure and permafrost thaw risk called High-resolution Arctic Built Infrastructure and Terrain Analysis Tool (HABITAT). The model uses machine learning and AI to extract road and building information from high-resolution satellite images from the years 2018-2023. They compared the HABITAT data with OSM data to evaluate the new model’s quality and to look for potential misclassifications. Then they added the new information to OSM, nearly doubling the amount of information available for Alaska.
“The sheer amount of infrastructure and buildings that were missing from Open Street Map was, really shocking to me, 47% missing,” says Manos. “Though OpenStreetMap is a powerful volunteer-based resource, it has limitations and that is not a surprise.”
Witharana adds that by combining OSM data with the thousands of sub-meter resolution satellite images provided by the National Science Foundation, along with access to NSF supercomputing infrastructure, it was possible for the researchers to enhance the completeness of these datasets.
“We can see that impact and do better assessments of economic disturbances and risk so we can prepare for whatever policy actions or downstream efforts that are needed,” says Witharana “That’s a major outcome. Overall, the integration of AI and big data sets within our application has helped make useful, actionable products that researchers and communities can use right now.”
Witharana, Liljedahl, and Manos have plans to expand this analysis to account for the entire Arctic region to assess economic losses using a comprehensive infrastructure map.
“Alaska is decades behind the rest of the country in terms of geospatial data readiness. Maps are key for assessments and planning and I think the research community can help with some of that,” says Liljedahl.
Arctic sea ice hits record low for its usual peak growth period
Arctic sea ice had its weakest winter buildup since record-keeping began 47 years ago, a symptom of climate change that will have repercussions globally, scientists said Thursday.
The Arctic reaches its maximum sea ice in March each year and then starts a six-month melt season. The National Snow and Ice Data Center said the peak measurement taken Saturday was 5.53 million square miles (14.33 million square kilometers) — about 30,000 square miles (80,000 square kilometers) smaller than the lowest previous peak in 2017.
That’s a difference about the size of California.