Summary:

- In early May, extreme wildfires in Manitoba ravaged some 8,667 square kilometers of land, claiming lives and forcing the evacuation of nearly 1,000 residents.

- A new study explains that conditions such as a combination of unseasonably warm temperatures, prolonged drought, and stressed vegetation led to the wildfires.

As climate hazards escalate, communities facing repetitive disasters in high-risk areas must weigh the economic and social trade-offs of rebuilding versus relocating. A Risk Analysis study has found that residents and government officials may have different ideas about how public funds should be spent to adapt to extreme weather events brought on  by climate change.

Tropical cyclones can occur concurrently in the same basins in clusters, potentially resulting in greater damage. A recent study published in Nature Climate Change reveals a significant shift in the spatial distribution of tropical cyclone clusters, identifying the North Atlantic as a rapidly emerging hotspot under global warming.

This study reveals that female Helicoverpa armigera moths utilize plant-emitted CO₂ as a key cue for egg-laying, preferring young leaves with higher CO₂ emissions to enhance offspring survival. However, the increase of CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere disrupts this oviposition strategy. Three gustatory receptors (HarmGR1, HarmGR2, and HarmGR3) were essential for CO₂ detection in H. armigera. Disrupting any of these receptors impaired CO₂ sensing and oviposition behavior. These findings highlight how climate change may alter insect reproduction and crop pest dynamics.

Natural weathering processes are removing CO₂ from the air in a wide range of environments across continents and ocean. Until recently these ‘CO₂ vacuum cleaners’ were often studied separately, without properly examining their complex interactions. Now, an international team of Earth scientists is proposing an integrated vision of the many factors that influence the removal of atmospheric CO₂ from the highest mountain peaks to the deep ocean floor, including their various interactions. The so-called weathering continuum provides a much more complete picture on what controls and regulates the natural removal of CO₂, which could help in the development of enhancing weathering techniques.

As climate change and population growth place mounting pressure on global water resources, communities around the world are seeking sustainable ways to reclaim water from nontraditional sources such as stormwater, agricultural runoff and municipal wastewater. A team of researchers led by Menachem Elimelech and his former postdoctoral researcher Yanghua Duan at Rice University has taken a major step toward solving one of water purification’s biggest puzzles: how to best design catalytic membranes that simultaneously filter and transform contaminants in a single step.