Arguments
Solar projects do not inherently reduce biodiversity, and when designed with best practices, they can sustain or even increase local wildlife and plant diversity.A severe winter storm that brought crippling freezing rain, sleet and snow to a large part of the U.S. in late January 2026 left a mess in states from New Mexico to New England. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power across the South as ice pulled down tree branches and power lines, more than a foot of snow fell in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, and many states faced bitter cold that was expected to linger for days.
The sudden blast may have come as a shock to many Americans after a mostly mild start to winter, but that warmth may have partly contributed to the ferocity of the storm.
As atmospheric and climate scientists, we conduct research that aims to improve understanding of extreme weather, including what makes it more or less likely to occur and how climate change might or might not play a role.
To understand what Americans are experiencing with this winter blast, we need to look more than 20 miles above the surface of Earth, to the stratospheric polar vortex.
On the morning of Jan. 26, 2026, the freezing line, shown in white, reached far into Texas. The light band with arrows indicates the jet stream, and the dark band indicates the stratospheric polar vortex. The jet stream is shown at about 3.5 miles above the surface, a typical height for tracking storm systems. The polar vortex is approximately 20 miles above the surface. Mathew Barlow, CC BY
What creates a severe winter storm like this?
Multiple weather factors have to come together to produce such a large and severe storm.
Winter storms typically develop where there are sharp temperature contrasts near the surface and a southward dip in the jet stream, the narrow band of fast-moving air that steers weather systems. If there is a substantial source of moisture, the storms can produce heavy rain or snow.
In late January, a strong Arctic air mass from the north was creating the temperature contrast with warmer air from the south. Multiple disturbances within the jet stream were acting together to create favorable conditions for precipitation, and the storm system was able to pull moisture from the very warm Gulf of Mexico.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05
Posted on 1 February 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (11 articles)
- Thailand’s endangered ‘sea cows’ are washing ashore – pointing to a crisis in our seas "The Andaman Coast has one of the largest concentration of dugong in the world, so why are numbers falling dramatically and what can they tell us about a biodiversity warning cry" The Guardian, Gloria Dickie, Jan 23, 2026.
- How the polar vortex and warm ocean are intensifying a major US winter storm The Conversation US, Mathew Barlow & Judah Cohen, Jan 24, 2026.
- Heat Dome Fuels Extreme Heatwave across Australia as Temperatures Surge Toward a Scorching 50 °C Severe Weather Europe, Marko Korosec, Jan 25, 2026.
- Sea Levels Are Rising—But in Greenland, They Will Fall Columbia Climate School, Staff, Jan 26, 2026.
- Number of people living in extreme heat to double by 2050 if 2C rise occurs, study finds "Scientists expect 41% of the projected global population to face the extremes, with ‘no part of the world’ immune" The Guardian, Jonathan Watts, Jan 26, 2026.
- Scientists Push for More Ambitious Climate Targets "Researchers say a line has been crossed. For systems like coral reefs and ice sheets, the climate is already past safe." Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Jan 27, 2026.
- Doomsday Clock 2026: Scientists set new time CNN, Kristen Rogers, Jan 27, 2026.
- What happens to forests when the planet warms up too fast earth.com, Eric Ralls, Jan 27, 2026.
- The UK government didn’t want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I’m not surprised "It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication" The Guardian, Opinion by George Monbiot, Jan 27, 2026.
- Climate change and La Niña made ‘devastating’ southern African floods more intense Carbon Brief, Ayesha Tandon & Yanine Quiroz, Jan 29, 2026.
- Powerful bomb cyclone to deliver snow and hurricane-force winds to Southeast this weekend CNN, Briana Waxman, Jan 30, 2026.
Climate Policy and Politics (5 articles)
- Why environmental policy struggles to value the future earth.com, Eric Ralls, Jan 25, 2026.
- Democrats are shying away from climate messaging. One of their own is fighting back. "There’s a schism within the Democratic Party about whether talking about climate change is the right message to win back control of Washington." Politico, Amelia Davidson & Kelsey Brugger, Jan 25, 2026.
- Arctic scientists 'feel pretty uncomfortable' on Greenland "Science in the Arctic — and Greenland — is on the frontline of pressing challenges facing humanity, like climate change and genetics. Some researchers worry international collaboration is at risk." DW (Deutsche Welle), Matthew Ward Agius, Jan 28, 2026.
- US leads record global surge in gas-fired power driven by AI demands, with big costs for the climate "Projects in development expected to grow global capacity by nearly 50% amid growing concern over impact on planet" The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Jan 29, 2026.
- How Trump’s EPA rollbacks could harm our air and water – and worsen global heating "Experts say administration has launched ‘war on all fronts’ to undo environmental rules – here are the key areas at risk" The Guardian, Dharna Noor, Jan 30, 2026.
Help needed to get translations prepared for our website relaunch!
Posted on 30 January 2026 by BaerbelW
This blog post is a call for help to get our translations ready for the planned website relaunch. If you are a native speaker of any of the listed languages and if the tasks described below are up your alley, please let us know by filling out this Google form. Here is the list of languages we'll need help with: Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Thai.
Translations have made Skeptical Science rebuttals accessible to people all over the world. All told, we have published almost 1,100 rebuttal translations in 25 languages, created by generous volunteers since 2009. The number of translations for each language varies greatly from 1 to 213 depending on language but most languages feature between 10 and 60 translations at the moment. As we mentioned in our annual review article for 2025, we've been working on a complete relaunch of our website. While the actual launch is still a few months away, we recently realized that some preparatory work will be needed to update and add information to the existing translations.
Why we need your help
On the current website, the setup for translations was created when there was only one rebuttal version in English. Later we introduced advanced, intermediate and basic rebuttal treatments, but translations were never adapted to that. The new website will however offer the option to create all levels of translated rebuttals - as long as a counterpart already exists in English. Likewise, "one liners" - short summaries of what the science says - were introduced for translations later but were mostly left empty unless new translations were created. For translations, we also only have one title while the English version has both a myth and a science title, which will be used on different screens and for different purposes on the new website.
With all of this in mind we ask for your help, as we can only do this for a few languages with our own resources and a few currently active volunteer translators. Unfortunately, we have no translators working on translations for most languages at the moment and it's highly unlikely that volunteers who were creating many translations in several languages 15 years ago are still available today. We're counting on fresh recruits to bridge our gap.
The tasks at hand for existing rebuttal translations
For this exercise, we do not intend to update translations across the board in order to for example bring them up to date with the English originals. A comprehensive update will be a mountain of work, better done when the revamped translation admin system is available after re-launch. For the smaller and immediate task of making our current content ready for the new website, I have set up a Google sheet listing all the translations where some information is missing and needs to be filled in. I'll share an editable link once you've signed up for the task, but you can take a look at how all this shakes out in this preview of the spreadsheet. Translations for which the currently missing information cannot be provided will most likely be migrated as unpublished, because the information displayed on the new website would otherwise be at least confusing if not misleading. That's certainly not what we want to start out with, but it's also a conundrum because shrinking our valuable content is also very undesirable!
Screenshot showing a snippet of the spreadsheet - clicking on it opens a preview in a new tab.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5 2026
Posted on 29 January 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Are Hibernators Toast? Global Climate Change and Prolonged Seasonal Hibernation, Dausmann & Cooper, Global Change Biology
This review examines the multifaceted implications of global climate change on mammalian hibernators, emphasizing physiological, ecological and phenological impacts. While high-latitude habitats are experiencing faster overall warming, tropical and southern hemisphere regions face more unpredictable and variable climate alterations. Increasing temperature can directly affect hibernators by elevating hibernacula temperatures, shortening torpor bouts, increasing arousal frequency, and depleting energy reserves crucial for survival and reproductive success. Conversely, cold anomalies due to climate change may cause disruptive late-season cold snaps, affecting post-hibernation recovery and reproduction. The phenological timing of hibernation, emergence and reproduction is becoming increasingly decoupled from environmental cues, creating potential mismatches that threaten fitness and survival. Habitat modifications, including urbanisation, further modify microclimates, introducing new risks and opportunities influencing hibernation behaviour, resource availability and susceptibility to disturbances and diseases. Despite anticipated physiological resilience owing to broad thermal tolerances, many hibernating species already inhabit extreme environments and operate near their physiological limits, thus are even more at risk through ecological disruptions as climate variability intensifies. Ultimately, the capacity for adaptive phenotypic plasticity combined with ecological resilience will determine species' future persistence, with high-latitude species potentially more vulnerable to ecological disruptions like habitat loss, predation and disrupted food webs, while tropical species face greater physiological risk.
Major heat wave in the North Atlantic had widespread and lasting impacts on marine life, Werner et al., Science Advances
Marine heat waves (MHWs) are increasing in frequency and intensity, but wider effects are unexamined in the North Atlantic, and there are uncertainties regarding the spatial scale, magnitude, and persistence of MHWs’ impacts on ecosystems. We show that a sudden and strong increase in the frequency of MHWs in and after 2003 was linked to widespread and abrupt ecological changes. This upheaval spanned multiple trophic levels, from unicellular protists to whales. Every examined region showed a reorganization from species adapted to colder, ice-prone environments to those favoring warmer waters and the event’s impacts altered socioecological dynamics. This review provides evidence for large-scale connectivity across ocean basins. However, it reveals that the magnitude of ecological impacts seems to vary among events highlighting key knowledge gaps for predicting ecosystem responses to MHWs. Understanding the importance of the subpolar gyre and air-sea heat exchange will be crucial for forecasting MHWs and their cascading effects.
Extreme rainfall over land exacerbated by marine heatwaves, Wang et al., Nature Communications
Marine heatwaves (MHWs), characterized by multiple days of exceptionally elevated sea surface temperature (SST), have profound marine ecological impacts, but their effect on precipitation, particularly extreme rainfall over coastal regions, remains unknown. Using multi-platform observational data since 2000, here we show that SST gradients of MHW intensify surface wind speeds and drive downwind surface wind convergence and upward motions by enhancing vertical turbulent flux over the warm water. The induced anomalies lead to substantially increased local precipitation with spatial scale several hundreds of kilometers and temporally peaking one-day after the MHW. Furthermore, in global coastal regions, about 5%-25% of extreme rainfall over land (>99% wet-day) occurs in the downwind direction of nearby MHWs. Averaged land precipitation of the extreme rainfall events in the downwind direction of a strong MHW increases by 20%-30%, or 4-8 mm/day, from the amount without an influence from MHWs, exacerbating flood-related fatalities. Our finding identifies an impact of MHWs on coastal extreme events with important implications for affected communities, particularly given the projected increase in MHW intensity and frequency under greenhouse warming.
Know Your Stripes? An Assessment of Climate Warming Stripes as a Graphical Risk Communication Format, Dawson et al., Risk Analysis
Stripe graphs have emerged as a popular format for the visual communication of environmental risks. The apparent appeal of the format has been attributed to its capacity to summarize complex data in an eye-catching way that can be understood quickly and intuitively by diverse audiences. Despite the growing use of stripe graphs among academics and organizations (e.g., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) to communicate with both lay and expert audiences, there has been no reported empirical assessment of the format. Hence, it is not clear to what extent stripe graphs facilitate data comprehension and influence risk perceptions and the willingness to engage in mitigation actions. To address these knowledge gaps, we conducted two studies in which lay participants saw “climate warming” stripe graphs that varied in color and design. We found no evidence that traditional stripe graphs (i.e., unlabeled axes), irrespective of the stripe colors, improved the accuracy of estimates of past or predicted global temperature changes. Nor did the traditional stripe graph influence risk perceptions, affective reactions, or environmental decision-making. Contrary to expectations, we found that viewing (cf., not viewing) a traditional stripe graph led to a lower willingness to engage in mitigation behaviors. Notably, we found that a stripe graph with date and temperature labels (cf., without labels): (i) helped participants develop more accurate estimates of past and predicted temperature changes and (ii) was rated more likable and helpful. We discuss how these and other findings can be utilized to help improve the effectiveness of stripe graphs as a risk communication format.
The Rise of (Affective) Obstruction: Conceptualizing the Evolution of Far-Right Climate Change Communication (1986–2018), Forchtner, Environmental Communication
Research has illustrated that today’s far right in the Global North takes largely climate obstructionist stances, commonly featuring ageist/misogynistic/racist tropes. However, little is known about how this present became to be, how climate change was articulated in the 2000s and earlier. I therefore ask: how has far-right climate communication evolved between 1986 and 2018? Have there been notable changes at the level of both specific claims and their emotiveness – and if so, what might explain them? In response, I analyze 733 articles printed across four exemplary, continuously published (non-)party sources covering the Austrian and German far-right spectrum, in order to offer a novel conceptualization of three periods: benevolent silence (1986-1996), concerned acceptance (1997-2006), and antagonistic obstruction (2007-2018). Thus, I show that the far right became today’s (affective-)obstructionist force and link this shift to: the US climate countermovement; dynamics in the political field; and, interrelated, increasingly melodramatic (affective) climate communication, turning climate change into another site for the making of far-right subjectivity. By conceptualizing three periods, by considering the development over time of both specific claims and affect, and by suggesting reasons behind this evolution, I substantively contribute to understanding far-right climate obstruction and the anti-liberal/anti-democratic backlash it facilitates.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Fall 2025, Leiserowitz et al., Yale University and George Mason University
Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not by a ratio of more than 5 to 1 (72% versus 13%). 64% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming. However, 85% of Americans either underestimate how many Americans are worried, or don’t know enough to say. Only 17% of Americans say they hear about global warming in the media “at least once a week,” which is the lowest percentage since the question was added to the survey in 2015.
Americans are more likely to think climate change will be harmful to the world than to them personally, Jamie Ballard, YouGov
A new YouGov survey on climate change and the environment finds that many Americans foresee dire consequences to climate change and experience anxiety or grief when they think about climate change, but few believe they personally will be harmed greatly by climate change. One-quarter of Americans believe it is very or somewhat likely climate change will cause the extinction of the human race. More than twice as many think it is likely to cause cities to be lost to rising sea levels (56%), and similar proportions expect mass displacement of people from some parts of the world to others (57%) and serious damage to the global economy (58%). Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say these catastrophic events are likely. The largest gaps are on serious damage to the global economy (82% of Democrats and 29% of Republicans think this is a likely result of climate change) and mass displacement from some parts of the world to others (81% vs. 32%).
122 articles in 54 journals by 753 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Atmospheric stability sets maximum moist heat and convection in the midlatitudes, Li & Tamarin-Brodsky, Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aea8453
Contrasting Trends in Cold-Season Daily Soil Temperature With Climate Warming in Snow-Affected Settings, Ghosh et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118210
Climate Variability Emerges as Both Risk and Opportunity for the Global Energy Transition
Posted on 28 January 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the WMO
Climate variability and long-term climate change are increasingly shaping the performance and reliability of renewable energy systems worldwide, according to the WMO–IRENA Climate-driven Global Renewable Energy Resources and Energy Demand Review: 2024 Year in Review, released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
- Published in partnership with:
- International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
- WMO–IRENA 2024 Year in Review highlights growing impacts of climate extremes on clean power systems
- Climate variability is already shaping renewable energy supply and electricity demand worldwide
- Extreme heat is driving rapid growth in energy demand, increasing system stress
- Hydropower is particularly exposed to rainfall variability
- Climate-informed planning and forecasting are essential
The report, in its third edition, finds that 2024—the warmest year on record, with global temperatures reaching around 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels—brought pronounced regional shifts in solar, wind and hydropower potential, alongside a 4% increase in climate-driven global energy demand compared with the 1991–2020 average. These climate-driven changes are occurring as global renewable energy capacity surpassed 4,400 gigawatts (GW), amplifying the interaction between climate conditions and energy systems at an unprecedented scale.
The findings underscore the urgency of integrating climate intelligence into energy planning as countries work to deliver on the COP28 UAE Consensus, which calls for tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.
“Climate variability is no longer a background consideration for the energy sector—it is a defining operational factor,” said Prof. Celeste Saulo, WMO Secretary-General. “As renewable energy systems expand, their performance and reliability are increasingly shaped by heat extremes, rainfall variability and shifting atmospheric patterns. Integrating climate information and early warnings into energy planning is essential to build power systems that are both clean and resilient.”
Fact brief - Are solar projects hurting farmers and rural communities?
Posted on 27 January 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Are solar projects hurting farmers and rural communities?
The largest land use scenario for solar development would occupy only 1.15% of the 900 million acres of U.S. farmland. Many would not be sited on farmland at all.
Agrivoltaics is a practice allowing the synergistic installation of solar arrays on farmland. Panels can provide beneficial shade to crops and livestock, reduce evaporation and soil erosion, and create refuges for pollinators. Agrivoltaics, already implemented in other countries, can increase the economic value of farmland by over 30% and annual income by 8%.
Failing to transition away from fossil fuels would worsen climate change’s impacts on farmers and global food supply. The IPCC forecasts up to 80 million additional people at risk of hunger by 2050, lower quality crop yields, and altered distribution of pests and diseases due to climate change.
The harms to farmers and rural communities from unmitigated carbon emissions far outweigh the effects of solar development.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
U.S. Department of Energy Solar Futures Study
U.S. Department of Agriculture Farms and Land in Farms 2021 Summary
Princeton University Net-Zero America
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Agrivoltaics
MDPI Sustainability Compatibility between Crops and Solar Panels: An Overview from Shading Systems
Applied Energy The potential for agrivoltaics to enhance solar farm cooling
University of Georgia Empowering Biodiversity on Solar Farms
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.
Winter 2025-26 (finally) hits the U.S. with a vengeance
Posted on 26 January 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson
A prolonged, dangerous bout of frigid temperatures with snow, sleet, and freezing rain will encompass much of the central and eastern United States this weekend into early next week. To make matters worse, there are fresh model signals that one or more reinforcing rounds of cold and snow may emerge around the end of January and early February, including parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
The intensity, duration, and geographic spread of this U.S. winter blast could have major consequences, from sustained power outages to transportation snarls and widespread business closures.
The National Weather Service office for the Washington, D.C., area warned on Friday: “The combination of heavy snow and ice alongside prolonged very cold temperatures presents a unique and significant risk to life and property across virtually the entire region.”
As of midday Friday, January 23, nearly all of the contiguous U.S. east of the Rockies was plastered with one or more winter-weather watches or warnings issued by the National Weather Service. Frozen precipitation is not expected in Florida and nearby parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coast, but even these areas will be markedly colder than average for late January.
Daryl Herzmann, the lead for the Iowa Environmental Mesonet sites that the weather community relies upon for many archived datasets, posted on BlueSky this morning that the number of counties under a winter storm warning for this event is second highest since 2008, only slightly trailing February 15, 2021.
How far south – or north – will the heaviest ice and snow develop?
As we noted in a post on Jan. 7, some of the longest-range forecast models were already suggesting that a strong upper-level ridge could develop over western Canada and Alaska by late January, setting the stage for cold air to surge into the United States on the east side of the ridge. As that scenario firmed up, models such as the European and GFS (U.S.) coalesced on the wintry assault now unfolding. By early this week, there was noteworthy model agreement on the overall picture for this weekend.
The factors in play are:
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #04
Posted on 25 January 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (7 articles)
- Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change "Ignoring the blue economy has left a multi-trillion-dollar blind spot in climate finance, according to a study from Scripps Oceanography." Inside Climate News, Johnny Sturgeon, Jan 15, 2026.
- ‘Climate change is here’: Experts warn environmental crisis is decades ahead of forecasts "Drought, heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires are arriving sooner than we imagined according to scientists" The Independent, Maria Butt, Jan 17, 2026.
- 2026 will likely be among the hottest on record: Environment Canada "12% chance of exceeding important threshold of 1.5 C this year" CBC, David Thurton, Jan 19, 2026.
- Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide "Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution" The Guardian, By Damien Gayle, Jan 19, 2026.
- Era of ‘global water bankruptcy’ is here, UN report says "Overuse and pollution must end urgently as no one knows when whole system might collapse, says expert" The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Jan 20, 2026.
- Australia’s worst heatwave since black summer made five times more likely by global heating, analysis finds Lede: "Extreme heat ‘is getting worse and whether we like it or not … there’s ultimately a limit to what we can actually physically cope with,’ scientist says" The Guardian, Donna Lu, Jan 22, 2026.
- Trump says the big US winter storm is proof of climate hoax – here’s why he’s wrong "US president asks ‘whatever happened to global warming?’ Well, it could be making our winter storms worse" The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Jan 23, 2026.
Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles)
- Trump Wants to Halt Almost All Coal Plant Shutdowns. It Could Get Messy. "Critics accuse leading firms of sabotaging climate action but say data increasingly being used to hold them to account" The New York Times, Claire Brown & Brad Plumer, Jan 16, 2026.
- How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change "Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance, its efforts have largely collapsed."How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change The New York Times, David Gelles, Jan 17, 2026.
- How Trump’s Withdrawal From Climate Treaties May Ultimately Play Out "In addition to international stakes, states and cities face additionally challenges to acting autonomously this time around." Inside Climate News, Jenni Doering, Jan 18, 2026.
- Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time "Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, a record figure that reveals the scale of the backlash against net-zero in the right-leaning press." Carbon Brief, Josh Gabbatiss & Sylvia Hayes, Jan 19, 2026.
- The consequences of Trump’s war on climate in 7 charts "Seven snapshots reveal how climate rollbacks altered the trajectory of U.S. energy, environmental protection, and economic security." Grist, Staff, Jan 21, 2026.
- Records show DOE climate advisors targeted key EPA finding Lede: "The internal dialogue showed the researchers took a political tack in their discussions, a course critics said could complicate the Trump administration’s quest to kill the 2009 endangerment finding." PoliticalPro, Zack Colman, Jan 22, 2026.
- At Davos, Talk of Climate Change Retreats to the Sidelines "The annual gathering of top business leaders and policymakers used to be a center of the global climate movement. Things are much more complicated now." The New York Times, David Gelles, Jan 22, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #4 2026
Posted on 22 January 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Mapping Europe’s rooftop photovoltaic potential with a building-level database, Kakoulaki et al., Nature Energy
Individual building-level approaches are needed to understand the full potential of rooftop photovoltaics (PV) at national and regional scale. Here we use the European Digital Building Stock Model R2025, an open-access building-level database, to assess rooftop solar potential for each of the 271 million buildings in the European Union. The results show that potential capacity could reach 2.3 TWp (1,822 GWp residential, 519 GWp non-residential), with an annual output of 2,750 TWh based on current PV technology. This corresponds to approximately 40% of electricity demand in a 100% renewable scenario for 2050. Already by 2030, over a half of buildings with floor area larger than 2,000 m2 could generate most of remaining capacity for the 2030 target with 355 GWp. Across member states, non-residential rooftops could cover 50% or more of their PV targets, with several exceeding 95%. The open-access building-level database offers practical tools to support better decisions, accelerate renewable energy adoption and promote a more decentralized energy system. It is also an enabler for planners and researchers to further explore energy scenarios with high renewable shares.
Here we introduce a new class of threshold-exceedance-amount metrics that consistently track changes in event frequency, duration, magnitude, area, and timing aspects like daily exposure and seasonal shift—as separate metrics, partially compound (e.g., average event severity), and as compound total events extremity (TEX). Building on daily temperature datasets over 1961 to 2024, we applied the new metrics to extreme heat events at local- to country-scale (example Austria) and across Europe, demonstrating their utility through this use. Comparing the recent period 2010-2024 to the reference period 1961-1990, we reveal amplification factors of around 10 [5 to 25] in the TEX of extreme heat over Austrian and most central and southern European regions. This degree of amplification is found to strongly exceed the natural variability, providing unequivocal evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Given their fundamental capacity to reliably track any threshold-defined hazard at any location, the new metrics can support a myriad of uses beyond this example application. These range from climate impact analyses for extremes such as heatwaves, floods and droughts to extreme events attribution, quantifying the anthropogenic share of a hazard extremity and of its damage to properties and harm to people.
Climate literacy is essential for empowering societies to respond effectively to the challenges of climate change. However, individuals often struggle to address climate issues because of their abstract nature and perceived psychological distance. This study investigates whether direct personal experiences of extreme weather events are associated with higher scores on the climate literacy measures among Polish citizens. We developed and validated, through an expert-based process, the “Big Three Climate Literacy Questions” - a concise instrument designed to capture key components of climate literacy across knowledge, skills and attitudes - and administered them in a survey of 1001 residents from regions in Poland historically affected by floods and storms. Regression analyses reveal that the mere occurrence of an extreme weather event does not significantly influence scores on the climate literacy measures. However, when such events result in severe financial or psychological consequences, they are associated with higher literacy scores (for all three dimensions of climate literacy), suggesting that the intensity of the experience can act as a catalyst for deeper cognitive and emotional engagement. We also find that individuals employed in high-emission sectors tend to overestimate their climate knowledge; nonetheless, their personal experiences with extreme weather events are still associated with higher scores on the climate literacy measures. These findings support the hypothesis that intense climate-related experiences can serve as “teachable moments", enhancing receptiveness to climate information and fostering the development of more accurate and informed climate-related beliefs—even among groups that might otherwise exhibit resistance to such messages.
From this week's government/NGO section:
WMO confirms 2025 was one of warmest years on record, World Meteorological Organization
The global average surface temperature was 1.44 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the 1850-1900 average, according to WMO’s consolidated analysis of eight datasets. Two of these datasets ranked 2025 as the second warmest year in the 176-year record, and the other six ranked it as the third warmest year. The past 11 years have been 11 warmest on record. Temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse the monotonic trend. International data exchange underpins climate monitoring datasets for a single authoritative source of information.
Global Temperature Report for 2025, Berkeley Earth
2025 was the third warmest year on Earth since 1850. It is exceeded only by 2024 and 2023. This period, since 1850, is the time when sufficient direct measurements from thermometers exist to create a purely instrumental estimate of changes in global mean temperature. The analysis combines 23 million monthly-average thermometer measurements from 57,685 weather stations with ~500 million instantaneous ocean temperature observations collected by ships and buoys. The last 11 years have included all 11 of the warmest years observed in the instrumental record, with the last 3 years including all of the top 3 warmest.
Assessing the Global Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in 2025, National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
2025 ranks as the third-warmest yea Upper ocean heat content was record high in 2025. Annual sea ice extent for both the Arctic and Antarctic regions ranked among the three lowest years on record. The Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was the third lowest on record. There were 101 named tropical storms across the globe in 2025, which was above average.
201 articles in 60 journals by 1151 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Antarctic warming affects northern Equatorial Indian Ocean SST via oceanic tunnels, Sherin et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105321
Climate and Anthropogenic Perturbations Impact Stream Geochemistry, Warix et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025ef006512
WMO confirms 2025 was one of warmest years on record
Posted on 21 January 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the WMO Press Office
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperatures. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, and ocean heating continues unabated.
- Past 11 years have been 11 warmest on record
- Temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse long-term trend
- Ocean warming continues unabated
- WMO consolidates eight datasets for single authoritative source of information
- International data exchange underpins climate monitoring
The past three years, 2023-2025, are the three warmest years in all eight datasets. The consolidated three-year average 2023-2025 temperature is 1.48 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the pre-industrial era. The past eleven years, 2015-2025, are the eleven warmest years in all eight datasets.
“The year 2025 started and ended with a cooling La Niña and yet it was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. High land and ocean temperatures helped fuel extreme weather – heatwaves, heavy rainfall and intense tropical cyclones, underlining the vital need for early warning systems,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
“WMO’s state of the climate monitoring, based on collaborative and scientifically rigorous global data collection, is more important than ever before because we need to ensure that Earth information is authoritative, accessible and actionable for all,” said Celeste Saulo.
WMO’s announcement was timed to coincide with the release of global temperature announcements from the dataset providers.
These include the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5), Japan Meteorological Agency (JRA-3Q), NASA (GISTEMP v4), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAAGlobalTemp v6), the UK’s Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT.5.1.0.0), and Berkeley Earth (USA). This year, for the first time, WMO also factored in two additional datasets - the Dynamically Consistent ENsemble of Temperature (DCENT/UK, USA) and China Merged Surface Temperature Dataset (CMST).
Fact brief - Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels?
Posted on 20 January 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels?
Solar panels produce far less emissions than coal or natural gas.
“Lifecycle emissions” counts all aspects of raw materials, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and disposal. A major National Renewable Energy Laboratory review of thousands of studies found that while some emissions are generated when solar panels are manufactured and shipped, their lifetime emissions are much lower than fossil fuels. Coal’s lifecycle climate pollution is about 23 times higher than solar power, and natural gas about 11 times higher.
Solar panels also “pay back” their upfront emissions within a few years of operation, offsetting emissions from their manufacture. Since modern panels often last 30 years or more, they will continue to provide decades of low-emissions electricity after their payback..
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electricity Generation: Update
IPCC Technology-specific Cost and Performance Parameters
US Department of Energy End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics
International Journal of Advanced Research in Science, Communication and Technology Solar Panel Heat Emission and its Environmental Impact
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles
Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability. Thank you!
Keep it in the ground?
Posted on 19 January 2026 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink
Recently there has been quite a debate online about the extent to which opposing near-term oil and gas infrastructure – pipelines, refineries, new production – is both necessary and politically effective as a strategy to reduce US emissions. These conversations have occurred in the context of a broader pivot toward affordability as a rallying cry of the left in the US, driven by concerns around the rapidly rising cost of housing, energy, and other goods.
Matt Yglesias had a provocative piece in the NYT arguing that liberals should be less opposed to oil and gas, arguing that it might help make energy more affordable and win more conservative states and labor (without which there would be no climate policy at all). He also noted that US oil and gas is generally lower carbon than foreign alternatives in a world that is still using vast amounts of the stuff. Policies, in his view, should focus on making production cleaner by more strictly regulating methane emissions, in-sector electrification, and other best practices rather than restricting supply. Other mitigation advocates like Jesse Jenkins and Ramez Naam chimed in to support the broad thrust of his argument.
This is, it is worth pointing out, not too far from the policies pursued by both the Obama and Biden1 administrations, where both clean energy and domestic oil and gas production boomed (while the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal, saw a dramatic decline).
Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) posted a long rebuttal on BlueSky arguing that we’ve already overshot our climate goals, and the only way to turn things around is to keep fossil fuels in the ground. He noted that what is politically popular is not always what is right, and that sometimes politicians need to do what is necessary to meet the moment. He also notes that leakage from US gas “makes natural gas worse than coal from a global warming perspective.”
These responses broadly reflect two different schools of thought on how to best practically (and politically) achieve decarbonization goals: by reducing fossil fuel supplies, or by reducing fossil fuel demands.
The physical science is absolutely clear that to stop the world from warming we need to get global emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases to (net) zero. Every 220 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 we emit warms the surface by around 0.1C, and the world is already at 1.4C above preindustrial levels today. But the specific path to limit warming – how much we focus on the reducing the supply of fossil fuels vs reducing their demand by accelerating the adoption of cleaner alternatives is very much an active debate. My personal view is that demand side policies are considerably more achievable at the moment – particularly given the new focus on affordability on the left.
I’d also note that this post is about the politics of mitigation rather than the physical science. There is no clear right answer to how to best reduce emissions, and there are many reasonable folks with differing views on the topic. We should generally try and extend grace to those we disagree with, as when it comes to policy there is no real arbiter of truth.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03
Posted on 18 January 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)
- As a climate scientist, I know heatwaves in Australia will only get worse. We need to start preparing now "During black summer, my daughters were too young to know what was happening. Now, amid another Australian heatwave, they deserve answers" Comment is Free, The Guardian, Opinion by Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Jan 8, 2026.
- Ocean Warming Breaks Record for Ninth Straight Year "Scientists warn the ocean’s accumulation of energy is fueling extreme weather patterns and destabilizing marine ecosystems." Science, Inside Climate News, Johnny Sturgeon, Jan 9, 2026.
- The western US is in a snow drought, raising fears for summer water supplies CNN, Andrew Freedman, Jan 9, 2026.
- ‘Profound impacts’: record ocean heat is intensifying climate disasters, data shows "Oceans absorb 90% of global heating, making them a stark indicator of the relentless march of the climate crisis" Environment, The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Jan 9, 2026.
- Himalayas bare and rocky after reduced winter snowfall, scientists warn BBC News, Navin Singh Khadka, Jan 11, 2026.
- New Climate Reports Show ‘Unprecedented Run of Global Heat’ "Data from multiple international agencies shows the reality of a rapidly warming world." Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Jan 13, 2026.
- 2025: The fourth warmest year in U.S. history was full of deadly weather extremes "It was the first year in a decade without a U.S. hurricane landfall – but it still ranked third for billion-dollar disasters." Yale Climate Connections, Bob Henson, Jan 13, 2026.
- WMO confirms 2025 was one of warmest years on record "The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperatures. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, and ocean heating continues unabated." World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Press Release , Jan 14, 2026.
- Copernicus: 2025 was the third-hottest year globally and in Europe - with two main drivers "The past 11 years have been the warmest on record globally. Europe is warming significantly faster than the global average." EuroNews, Servet Yanatma, Jan 14, 2026.
- World warming faster than forecast as pollution cuts remove hidden cooling effect "Experts have sounded the climate alarm after discovering that global temperatures are accelerating faster than predicted." EuroNews, Liam Gilliver, Jan 15, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3 2026
Posted on 15 January 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Death Valley Illusion: Evidence against the 134°F World Record, Spencer et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
The world record hottest near-surface air temperature of 134°F recorded at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California on 10 July 1913 is demonstrated to be approximately 14°F hotter than what likely occurred on that date. Using July data from non–Death Valley stations during 1923–2024, we compute a range of temperature lapse rates diagnosed from the differences between Greenland Ranch station and the average of higher-elevation stations’ maximum temperatures (T MAX) and elevation. The range of lapse rates from those 102 years of July data is then used to estimate Greenland Ranch temperatures during the early years (1911–22). The first 2 weeks of July 1913 are shown to be spuriously hot and other years at Greenland Ranch exhibit anomalous July temperature behavior as well. Despite the establishment of a U.S. Weather Bureau instrumented shelter at Greenland Ranch in 1911, based upon historical accounts, we believe some of the shelter readings in the early years were replaced with hotter values, possibly taken from the veranda of the ranch house using a thermometer of unknown provenance. As a result of these findings, we recommend that the 134°F world record status be rescinded and that many of the Greenland Ranch temperature reports during the early years be more closely evaluated for data quality.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Groundbreaking AccuWeather® Climate Study Reveals Profound Climate Trends with Far-Reaching Impacts, AccuWeather
Temperatures have increased an average of 0.5°F (0.28°C) per decade over the past 70 years. Dew point temperatures have increased an average of 0.3°F (0.17°C) per decade over the same period, though most of this increase occurred before 1995. Relative humidity remained more or less steady until 1995, but then decreased by a significant 5.3%, or an average of 1.7% per decade. Average annual rainfall has declined 2.7% since 1995, or on average 0.9% per decade, yet the frequency of rainfall amounts greater than 4 inches in a 24-hour period have actually increased by 70%. Likewise, heavy rainfall amounts greater than 2 inches within a 24-hour period have increased by 23%.
2025 Global Climate Highlights, Copernicus Climate Change Service
2025 ranks as the third-warmest year on record, following the unprecedented temperatures observed in 2023 and 2024. It was marginally cooler than 2023, while 2024 remains the warmest year on record and the first year with an average temperature clearly exceeding 1.5°C above the pre?industrial level. 2025 saw exceptional near?surface air and sea surface temperatures, extreme events, including floods, heatwaves and wildfires. Preliminary data indicate that greenhouse gas concentrations continued to increase in 2025.
28 articles in 13 journals by 224 contributing authors
[The upstream database we normally rely upon to supply article metadata and links to accessible article copies continues to misbehave, meaning that our queue of unlisted items continues to grow even as what we output here shrinks. We are awaiting reply to a trouble ticket.]
Physical science of climate change, effects
Future Shoaling of the AMOC and Its Impact on Oceanic Heat Transport to the Subpolar North Atlantic, Lee et al., 10.22541/essoar.175883350.02498548/v1
Hot droughts in the Amazon provide a window to a future hypertropical climate, Chambers et al., Nature 10.1038/s41586-025-09728-y
Climate Adam - Will 2026 Be The Hottest Year Ever Recorded?
Posted on 14 January 2026 by Guest Author
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Video description
Global warming continues to ramp up, with 2025 one of the hottest three years we've ever observed, and probably the hottest in over 100,000 years. With these scorching temperatures, we've seen devastation in the form of natural disasters, like heatwaves, wildfires, floods, storms and droughts. So what will this year bring in terms of climate change? And how are climate scientists able to answer this before the year is even fully underway? Ultimately, though, the biggest questions for a our climate have us much to do with the political as the planetary.
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
Fact brief - Does clearing trees for solar panels release more CO2 than the solar panels would prevent?
Posted on 13 January 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Does clearing trees for solar panels release more CO2 than the solar panels would prevent?
Clearing trees to build solar farms does not negate their climate change benefits, because one acre of solar panels prevents far more CO2 emissions than an acre of forest absorbs.
In the U.S., replacing equivalent natural gas power with one acre of solar prevents about 175 to 198 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.
In contrast, an average acre of forest sequesters less than 1 metric ton of CO2 per year. An acre of solar cuts roughly 200 times more CO2 than an acre of trees.
Cutting forest does release stored carbon, but even if all 304 metric tons of CO2 in a forested acre were emitted during construction, a typical solar farm would offset that within two years of operation.
Only about 4% of U.S. solar projects have been built on forested land.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
Alliance for Climate Transition Cutting down forests just to put up solar panels will make climate change worse
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Land Requirements for Utility-Scale PV: An Empirical Update on Power and Energy Density
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electricity Generation: Update
EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator - Calculations and References
EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator - Revision History
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles
Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability. Thank you!
Where things stand on climate change in 2026
Posted on 12 January 2026 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
The year that just ended saw numerous records broken on climate and clean energy.
It was the second-hottest year on record at Earth’s surface, behind only 2024. The high temperatures were shocking for a year with a La Niña event. La Niñas draw cold water up to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and hence are relatively cool years at Earth’s surface, while El Niño events have the opposite effect. 2025 was by far the hottest year with a La Niña event.
For perspective, 1998 was a record-shattering hot year at the time because it experienced the strongest El Niño event on record, but it was more than half a degree Celsius colder than 2025. Global warming has made 1998 look so unremarkable that La Niña years today dwarf the temperature record set during the biggest El Niño event in modern history.
In fact, the past dozen years have been the 12 warmest on record, especially the past three, which were all more than 1.4°C hotter than preindustrial temperatures.
1986-2025 global average surface temperature categorized by years with a significant La Niña cooling influence (blue), El Niño warming influence (red), neutral conditions (black), and those with a cooling influence from a recent large volcanic eruption (orange triangles). (Data: NASA. Graphic: Dana Nuccitelli)
The vast majority of the heat trapped by climate pollution is absorbed by Earth’s oceans, which have warmed even more than the planet’s surface. Nearly every year sets a new record for ocean and global heat content, and 2025 was no exception. A new study estimated that the oceans absorbed energy equivalent to detonating nearly 10 Hiroshima atomic bombs in the oceans every second of every minute in 2025.
Despite learning this year that climate change is accelerating, the U.S. government took numerous regulatory and legislative steps that will increase the country’s climate-warming pollution. And U.S. emissions reversed their long-term downward trend to instead increase in 2025.
But despite the bleak domestic picture, the rest of the world made significant climate and clean energy progress. China continued to emerge as a clean technology leader, positioning itself to overtake the U.S. as the next global economic superpower.
While these trends seem likely to continue in 2026, the U.S. Congress has the opportunity to pass major climate and clean energy legislation in the coming year – unless the Trump administration derails it.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #02
Posted on 11 January 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles)
- Analysis: UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises Carbon Brief, Simon Evans & Ho Woo Nam, Jan 2, 2025.
- The Year in Climate: Attacks on Science, the Start of Trump’s Second Term and Surging Electricity Demand Foreshadow a Future Filled with Uncertainty Global inaction on fossil fuel and plastic treaties, the dismantling of federal agencies and regulations and the rapid rise of data centers were just a few of the consequential stories that Inside Climate News tracked in 2025. Inside Climate News, Dan Gearino, Dec 28, 2025.
- How Trump Derailed a NOAA Pioneer’s Move From Climate Impacts to Solutions "Libby Jewett founded the U.S. ocean acidification program and had begun work on offshore wind energy. But she joined the past year’s historic exodus from the agency, the impacts of which are still not clear." Science, Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle, Jan 6, 2026.
- All the climate info that disappeared under Trump. And how it’s being saved. "Scientists are racing to rescue hundreds of datasets, websites and federal reports that have been deleted by the administration." ClimateWire, E&E News by Politico, Chelsea Harvey, Jan 7, 2026.
- Outrage as Trump withdraws from key UN climate treaty along with dozens of international organisations Experts decry move to leave UNFCCC as ‘embarrassing’ as president orders withdrawal from 66 international groups. The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Jan 07, 2026.
- What Top Climate Scientists Think of Trump’s Treaty Withdrawals "Though the abandonment of international agreements is 'a damn shame,' they say science will prevail." Science, Inside Climate News, Lee Hedgepeth, Jan 8, 2026.
- Q&A: What Trump`s US exit from UNFCCC and IPCC could mean for climate action The Trump administration in the US has announced its intention to withdraw from the UN’s landmark climate treaty, alongside 65 other international bodies that “no longer serve American interests”. Carbon Brief, Carbon Brief Staff, Jan 09, 2026.
- Where things stand on climate change in 2026 "Last year saw the U.S. move backward on climate while China ascended. Here’s what to expect next." Policy & Politics, Yale Climate Connection, Dana Nuccitelli, Jan 9, 2026.
Climate Change Impacts (7 articles)
- Glaciers are melting. It may reawaken the world’s most dangerous volcanoes "As the planet warms, humans could face a much more risky and explosive future." CNN, Laura Paddison & Sam Hart, Dec 30, 2025.
- Is Thwaites Still the ‘Doomsday Glacier’? "Recent research has led scientists to new conclusions about the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica. Some are reassuring, others the opposite."Is Thwaites Still the ‘Doomsday Glacier’? New York Times, Raymond Zhong, Dec 30, 2025.
- ‘These trees may not survive’: Jordan’s ancient olive harvest wilts under record-breaking heat "Extreme heat and drought has destroyed 70% of Jordan’s olive crop, endangering livelihoods of 80,000 families and a centuries-old tradition" The Guardian, Mohamed Ersan in Amman, Jan 1, 2026.
- A ‘visible signal’ of climate extremes: Why unexpected wildflower blooms have sparked concern "Experts warn that the slightest increase in temperatures can trigger early blooming in hundreds of wildflower species." Green, Euronews , Liam Gilliver, Jan 4, 2026.
- Scientists just got some ancient clues about future sea-level rise — and it’s bad news "Rock samples collected from the Greenland ice sheet’s Prudhoe Dome show it completely melted in the past 10,000 years — and could vanish again amid climate change." The Washington Post, Sarah Kaplan, Jan 5, 2026.
- Climate Change Is Quietly Rewriting The World’s Nitrogen Cycle, With High Stakes For Food And The Environment Eurasia Review, Staff, Jan 6, 2026.
- Why scientists are worried that Greenland’s Prudhoe ice dome could melt away – again "An ice dome the size of Luxembourg melted around 7,000 years ago. Is history about to repeat itself?" Green, EuroNews, Liam Gilliver, Jan 7, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2026
Posted on 8 January 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
A Long-Term Shift in Flow Regimes over the Antarctic Peninsula, Guarino et al., Journal of Climate
We present consequences of Antarctic surface warming for the stability of the lower atmosphere since the 1950s. We show that the surface atmosphere over the Antarctic Peninsula has become less stable, and that this reduced stability favors the generation of atmospheric gravity waves from the Peninsula, one of the major sources of atmospheric waves on the planet. We provide a physically based explanation (i.e., a shift in flow regimes) for the increased gravity wave forcing that we find in an unprecedented set of reanalysis products, satellite observations, and model simulations, and that we present here for the first time. Gravity wave forcing changes can have profound ramifications for the global climate, from polar vortex strength to ozone depletion and midlatitude weather.
The Evolving Decline of Landfast Sea Ice in Northern Alaska and Adjacent Waters: Results from an Updated Climatology, (preprint, ESS Open Archive) Mahoney & Einhorn
We present a new 27-year record of landfast sea ice extent in northern Alaska and adjacent waters, which uses ice chart data to extend a previous analysis based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. This new climatology provides updated information on the decline of landfast ice in a region of the Arctic that has seen extensive losses of sea ice in recent summers. By comparing our results with early satellite data analysis from the 1970s, we find that trends in the timing of landfast ice have been ongoing for at least 50 years. Over the period 1996-2023, the landfast season shortened by 19 days/decade in the Chukchi Sea and 13 days/decade in the Beaufort Sea, primarily due to later formation of landfast ice. Also, the time between onset of freezing air temperatures and landfast ice formation is increasing, which is consistent with a coastal ocean that takes longer to freeze. While it was previously reported that the typical annual maximum width of landfast ice in the Chukchi Sea declined by 13 km between periods 1970-76 and 1996-2008, we find this retreat has slowed with a decline of 3.3 km over the course of our dataset as few areas of extensive landfast remain to be lost. Conversely, landfast sea ice extent in the Beaufort Sea had previously been found to have remained constant since the 1970s, but we find an average reduction of 2.5 km. We attribute this emergent phenomenon to a reduction in the number grounded ridges forming offshore.
Engaging the unengaged: Differential effects of AI-driven climate communication across audiences, Plechatá et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology
Despite the urgent need for widespread climate action, current communication approaches have a limited impact, especially on less engaged audiences. To address this issue, we examined the effectiveness of AI-driven climate communication in influencing pro-environmental intentions and intentions to adapt to climate change (Study 1; laboratory setting, N = 178), as well as participants’ likelihood of engaging with the communication material in the first place (Study 2; online setting, N = 295). In Study 1, both AI-driven and textual climate communication formats increased pro-environmental and adaptation intentions from pre- to post-intervention. Importantly, the effectiveness of the different communication formats depended on audience characteristics: the textual communication was more effective for highly climate-curious participants, while the AI-driven communication was more effective for individuals less curious about climate change. Study 2 further showed that AI-driven climate communication was perceived as more engaging than a comprehensive textual scientific climate report. This was particularly pronounced for participants with lower climate change curiosity and threat beliefs. We conclude that more experiential communication formats like AI-driven climate communication may help engage and impact previously unengaged audiences.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Climate Deniers of the 119th Congress and the Second Trump Administration, Kat So, Center for American Progress
The author's analysis finds that the federal government is rife with officials who deny climate change in leadership positions within the executive branch, presidential Cabinet, and Congress. This analysis considers a person a climate denier if they have stated that they believe that climate change is not real or is a hoax, stated that the climate has always been changing as a result of natural factors and that today’s warming is merely a continuation of natural cycles; claimed that the science around climate change is not settled, including attempting to dismiss the science around carbon dioxide, or that they cannot speak to the issue because they are not scientists; claimed that while humans are contributing to a changing climate, they are not the main contributors; stated that increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as wildfires and hurricanes, are not related to climate change, or claimed that climate change impacts are beneficial to humans or positive for planetary health.
Putin, Permafrost, and Propaganda, Tom Ellison, Council on Strategic Risks
Russia’s strategic interests in controlling domestic dissent, undermining NATO countries, and advancing its emissions-intensive economic model drive its information manipulation activities related to climate change and the environment. Russia deploys a variety of influence tools–ranging from state media, to social media manipulation, to domestic censorship, to witting and unwitting proxies–to advance these messages. Kremlin information manipulation intersects with climate issues in a variety of areas: undermining climate science, controlling domestic environmental activism, exploiting disasters in NATO countries, influencing the Arctic and African climate hotspots, slowing and shaping the green transition, and stoking climate polarization in Western democracies. Russian climate-related influence efforts capitalize on pre-existing grievances and divisions, often converging with far-right rhetoric, unhealthy digital ecosystems, and fossil fuel industry interests. Amid worsening climate impacts, rapid AI development, and weakened US pushback, subnational, European, and nongovernmental actors will be key to countering Russian information manipulation on climate change.
41 articles in 17 journals by 265 contributing authors
[Readers please note that as with the previous edition and due to circumstances beyond our control with an upstream publication database, this week's academic section is unusually slender. If experience is any guide, we'll see a reciprocal bulge in an upcoming edition as the database problem is corrected.]
Physical science of climate change, effects
A Long-Term Shift in Flow Regimes over the Antarctic Peninsula, Guarino et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0330.1
Barents Sea atlantification driven by a shift in atmospheric synoptic timescale, Hordoir et al., 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6046335/v1
