Environment

US Environment Agency Releases First Climate Adaptation Plan

For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has publicly released a draft plan on how the department's programmes will adapt to global warming, in a move that could lay additional groundwork for important new emissions rulemaking the agency may announce in coming months.

The EPA is tasked with oversight of the health of both human communities and natural systems, mandated with creating and implementing standards relating to air and water quality, among others. As such, the agency has emerged at the frontlines of Washington's attempts to push through stricter climate-related regulations while circumventing the U.S. Congress, which remains fractious and politicised over the reality of human responsibility for global warming.

Oceans

The North Atlantic is currently bursting with color as blooms of microscopic plants erupt on the surface of the chilly sea. These expanses of plankton, which provide the basis for the area's food chain and help to take in enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, wouldn't be possible without swirling whirlpools of water created by wind and ocean currents which actually prompt the growth of these colorful plankton blooms on the surface and keep them afloat.

 

Global Warming

Scientists have identified at least 150 000 sites in the Arctic (Alaska and Greenland) where methane gas is actively bubbling to the surface, mainly along the edges of lakes where the ice margins are retreating due to the melting ice. The Arctic is the fastest warming region on the planet, and the release of this gas which has been trapped for millennia beneath the ice, together with the methane being released across Siberia due to the melting of the permafrost layer may significantly affect the rate of global warming.