Scientists studying pine trees and juniper shrubs in northern Scandinavia are revealing the weather of the past by looking at tree rings — which can tell us far more than just the trees’ age. ‘Blue’ tree rings, which indicate that the cell walls of that year’s growth never lignified properly, show us when a summer was too cold for the plants to grow. The scientists identified blue rings caused by particularly cold summers in 1877 and 1902, which could potentially have been caused by the eruptions of far-off volcanoes Cotopaxi in Ecuador and Mount Pelée in Martinique.  

Following two months of record heat and precipitation in fall 2022, an estimated 7,500 lakes in West Greenland turned brown, began emitting carbon and decreased in water quality in less than a year. The spike in temperatures caused the precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow. The heat also caused permafrost to thaw, releasing an abundance of carbon, iron, magnesium and other elements that the rain washed into the lakes. Researchers found a decrease in phytoplankton that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis within the lakes, and an increase in plankton that break down and release carbon. Instead of sequestering carbon dioxide in the summer, the lakes have become a source of it, with a 350% increase in the flux of this greenhouse gas from them.  

The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency have awarded $326 million to three Colorado State University research projects that aim to improve U.S. oil and gas operations and reduce methane emissions nationwide.

The EPA’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program is providing the funding to the CSU Energy Institute and faculty working across multiple departments in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, with the goal of helping oil and gas operators improve operational efficiency and manage emissions. The efforts will also support activity to build an inventory of methane emissions, improve air quality and offer workforce development.

The U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has announced $5 million in funding to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and partner institutions to develop a new variety of corn called NSave that will reduce nitrogen fertilizer use and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining crop yield.

Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33 000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jetstream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile and provides unique insights into the weather patterns of a distant world.

A synthesis of carbon flux and wildfire emissions data from across the Arctic-boreal zone between 2001-2020 found that 34 percent of the region is now a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.