Australia’s leading scientists made a significant global-scale declaration about the fight to deal with the climate crisis this week – but you could be forgiven if you missed it.  In what it described as a landmark report, the Australian Academy of Science painted a picture of what could happen to the country under 3C of global heating, including ecosystems made unrecognisable, food production being compromised and people’s ability to exist and survive in hotter and longer heatwaves regularly tested.  The central message? There is no time to wait.  But lying within the report was another substantial claim – that limiting global heating to 1.5° C was now “virtually impossible”. - Guardian

Aircraft stand at a turning point in the race to reduce emissions to mitigate climate change. Although the aircraft sector only accounts for a sliver of transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States—at 9%—it is difficult to decarbonize.  That task just got a burst of energy with the publication of a new paper on carbon-negative sustainable aviation fuel by scientists. - NREL

Louisiana is known for its losing battle against rising seas and increasingly frequent floods. It can sometimes seem like the state has too much water. But the aquifers deep beneath its swampy landscape face a critical shortage.  Groundwater levels in and around Louisiana are falling faster than almost anywhere else in the country, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. An analysis traced the problem to decades of overuse, unregulated pumping by industries and agriculture, and scant oversight or action from legislative committees rife with conflicts of interest. Experts warn that all of these factors threaten the groundwater that nearly two-thirds of Louisianans rely on for drinking and bathing. Combined with the expected effects of climate-fueled heat and drought, it puts Louisiana on the brink of a groundwater crisis more common in Western states. - NPR

Black carbon particles, produced by combustion of gasoline, diesel fuel, coal, and other organics, have been found to be the second-largest driver of climate warming, after carbon dioxide (CO2), since the Industrial Revolution. Much of black carbon’s role in this warming results from the fact that it contributes to the melting of snow and ice and thus to darkening of Earth’s surface, reducing the amount of sunlight the planet reflects and increasing the amount it absorbs.  Today the mass of MP particles in the environment is very likely more than that of BC. Dubaish and Liebezeit [2013] found 5 times more MP particles than visible BC particles in a microscope slide count of particles in water samples from Jade Bay along the northwestern coast of Germany. This is the only study to date that has reported simultaneous measurements of MP and BC particles, and it did not address the coexistence of MPs and BC in snow. - EOS