For 1st time, fires are biggest threat to forests’ climate-fighting superpower
Forests play a major role pulling planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. As the world heats up, some forests are becoming emitters in their own right.
In 2023 and 2024 the world’s forests absorbed only a quarter of the carbon dioxide they did in the beginning of the 21st century, according to data from the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch.
Those back-to-back years of record-breaking wildfires hampered forests’ ability to tuck away billions of tons of carbon dioxide, curbing some of the global warming caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Keep reading on The New York Times.
Woodwell Climate Conversations: Turning the Tide
Climate Progress, Peril, and the Path Ahead
Join Gina McCarthy and Max Holmes for a timely conversation on how bold, science-based action drove historic progress—and what’s at stake as that progress faces new political threats.
Notes from an ecologist: Factoring in rivers and streams when studying bay health
On the morning of July 7, more than a hundred volunteers from Buzzards Bay Coalition Baywatchers fanned out to the more than 30 small embayments that surround Buzzards Bay to collect the first round of this summer’s four sets of water quality samples.
By mid-afternoon we had large and small bottles from more than 200 different stations lined up on the tables at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, where the samples enter an assembly line of different laboratory analyses that include different forms of nitrogen and the concentration of chlorophyll—the main pigment in algae and an excellent metric of the amount of algae in the water.
Read more on The Falmouth Enterprise.
Thirty-two thousand years ago this spring, in the eastern interior of Alaska, during an ice age so severe that the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of the continent of North America a mile thick, a Gwich’in man, dressed in neatly tailored, tanned, caribou skin pants and a shirt, walked around the forested edge of a lake, dragging a stick through the tall grass. At the end of the stick flickered a flame that leapt to the grass. The snow in the shadows of the trees blocked the fire’s path, so the flames could travel only into the dead grass that had accumulated, thinning some of the dead willows out in its maw.
Read more on Wildfire Magazine
As climate threats escalate, Rep. Leger Fernández leads charge to weather-proof America’s energy grid
Bill would create a first-of-its-kind federal weather data platform to help utilities prevent blackouts and protect families from extreme climate events.
As wildfires rage, floods surge, and power grids strain under record-breaking heat, U.S. Representatives Leger Fernández (NM-03), Casten (IL-06), Castor (FL-11), and Ross (NC-02) introduced the Weather-Safe Energy Act of 2025. This landmark bill will equip utilities with the cutting-edge weather data, modeling, and support they need to withstand the growing threat of extreme weather. The bill addresses a critical need at a time when the nation’s energy infrastructure faces unprecedented threats from increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, including hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, and droughts. Utilities and grid operators currently lack the sophisticated weather data and modeling tools necessary to prepare for these cascading risks.
Read more on Rep. Leger Fernández’s website.
Despite a warming climate, disruptive winter cold spells still invade the U.S., and a new study helps explain why. Researchers found that two specific patterns in the stratospheric polar vortex, a swirling mass of cold air high above the Arctic, can steer extreme cold to varying regions of the country. One pattern drives Arctic air into the northwestern U.S., and the other into central and eastern areas. Since 2015, the Northwest has experienced more of these cold spells owing to a shift in stratospheric behavior tied to a warming climate – more proof that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.
As winters in the United States continue to warm on average, extreme cold snaps still manage to grip large swaths of the country with surprising ferocity. A new study offers a powerful clue: the answer may lie more than 10 miles above our heads, in the shifting patterns of the stratosphere.
The research reveals how two specific patterns in the stratospheric polar vortex—a high-altitude pool of frigid air over the Arctic encircled by a band of strong west winds—can contribute to bone-chilling weather events across regions of North America. The patterns are described as “stretched” because the vortex is elongated relative to its typical, more circular shape. One such pattern reinforces intense cold in the northwestern US, while the other variation takes aim at central and eastern states. Both patterns are associated with changes in how atmospheric waves, in both the stratosphere and lower atmosphere, can alter the jet stream and allow Arctic air to penetrate far southward.
“Understanding the stratosphere’s fingerprints on changing weather patterns–particularly the counterintuitive connections between a warming globe and extreme cold weather events–could improve long-range forecasting, allowing cities, power grids, and agriculture to better prepare for winter extremes,” said Dr. Jennifer Francis.
Life-threatening heat domes confounding forecasters
Record-breaking temperatures seared the eastern US last month, leading to power emergencies across the region. The cause: an enormous ridge of high pressure that settled on the region, known as a heat dome.
This phenomenon has also already struck Europe and China this summer, leading to the temporary closure of the Eiffel Tower and worries about wilting rice crops, respectively. But while heat domes are easy to identify once they strike, they remain difficult to forecast — a problematic prospect in a warming world.