Climate & Environment

Japan will discharge over one million tonnes of treated water from the Fukushima disaster reactor into the sea. Head of government Yoshihide Suga announced this decision to dispose of the water on Tuesday. The plans have already sparked protests from environmentalists, fishermen and farmers in the region, as well as concern in Beijing and Seoul. Dumping the water is expected to take years.

The volcano La Soufrière has erupted on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. An explosive eruption was registered on the mountain in the north of the island, the disaster control authority Nemo announced on Friday. A column of smoke up to eight kilometers high was building up over the volcano. A shower of ash is to be expected, it said. Subterranean tremors had previously been detected at the volcano, indicating that magma was moving towards the earth's surface.

The government of the island state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines had already begun evacuating the so-called Red Zone around the volcano on Thursday. In 1902, an eruption of La Soufrière killed about 1,500 people. The current volcanic activity began last December, according to Nemo.

Not far from the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, the Fagradalsfjall volcano has erupted. According to the Meteorological Service of the island state, only slight seismological shocks were measured on Saturday night. Nevertheless, the surface of the volcano cracked over a length of 500 metres and small lava fountains sprayed upwards. A glowing stream of liquid rock poured out along the mountain flanks, reportedly reaching a size of about one square kilometre.

Recent summers in Europe have been the driest in the past two millennia, according to a recent international study based on tree ring analysis. Using a specific method, the team led by Ulf Büntgen of the University of Cambridge succeeded in creating a massive dataset that traces hydroclimatic conditions in Central Europe from Roman times to the present.

For the work, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Büntgen and his colleagues from the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland took more than 27,000 measurements on tree rings from 147 oak trees, covering a period of 2,100 years (75 B.C. to 2018). The samples came from historic wells, buildings, and pile dwellings, as well as from archaeological remains and shore sediments, and also from living trees from what is now the Czech Republic and parts of southeastern Bavaria.

The UN Environment Programme's Food Waste Index has published a UN research detailing global annual food waste, estimating that "931 million tonnes of food, or 17% of total food available to consumers in 2019" was thrown away.

"It shows that most of this waste comes from households, which discard 11% of the total food available at the consumption stage of the supply chain. Food services and retail outlets waste 5% and 2% respectively. On a global per capita-level, 121 kilograms of consumer level food is wasted each year, with 74 kilograms of this happening in households," the report reads.

“Reducing food waste would cut greenhouse gas emissions, slow the destruction of nature through land conversion and pollution, enhance the availability of food and thus reduce hunger and save money at a time of global recession,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “If we want to get serious about tackling climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, businesses, governments and citizens around the world have to do their part to reduce food waste. The UN Food Systems Summit this year will provide an opportunity to launch bold new actions to tackle food waste globally.”

A 1270 km² glacier has broken off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) reported. The chunk, which is larger than New York City, broke off on Friday. Glaciologists have been expecting the event for over a decade and had gotten first indications that the iceberg would break off last November.

"The first indication that a calving event was imminent came in November 2020 when a new chasm – called North Rift – headed towards another large chasm near the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue 35 km away. North Rift is the third major crack through the ice shelf to become active in the last decade," the statement of the BSA read. "Our teams at BAS have been prepared for the calving of an iceberg from Brunt Ice Shelf for years. We monitor the ice shelf daily using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station, these measure how the ice shelf is deforming and moving."

The Gulf Stream system is weaker than it has been for at least 1,000 years. This is the result of a study by scientists from Ireland, Great Britain and Germany published in Nature Geoscience. To reconstruct the history of the current, the researchers examined data mainly from the ocean floor and ice going back several 100 to 1,600 years. According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which initiated the study, evidence was found that the weakening of the Gulf Stream system in the 20th century was more severe than at any time in the past 1,000 years. Researchers have long seen the slowdown as a result of human-induced climate change.

Mount Etna erupted for the second time this month Tuesday evening. Etna is one of the most active stratovolcano, located on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania. Due to ash in the air, the Catania international airport was closed.

Stefano Branco, the head of the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology, said that they had "seen worse" and that the activity was "not at all worrying."

France's biggest bank, BNP Paribas on Monday promised to stop financing companies that buy cattle or soya produced on Amazon land deforested or converted after 2008. The bank also said it will encourage clients not to buy or produce beef or soy from the Cerrado, which occupies 20 per cent of Brazil, only financing those who adopt a zero deforestation strategy by 2025.

Population growth and rapidly expanding middle classes in countries like China are stimulating an explosion of demand for soybeans and increasing consumption of meat and dairy products.

Studies published in the Nature journal report that harmful emissions of CFC-11 chemicals to the atmosphere dropped significantly. Unlawful emissions from eastern China factories are no longer found. The ozone layer is expected to be fully recovered by 2060.

Denmark has announced a massive project; building a giant island in the North Sea, providing enough energy for 3 million households.

The project, which has been given the green light by Denmark's politicians, could be up to the size of 18 football pitches (or 120,000sq m), with hopes to be able to make it three times that size (460,000sq m).

The 'energy island' which would be a hub for 200 giant offshore wind turbines would be situated about 80km (50mi) out at sea, with ownership being split with at least half being owned by the state.

This will be the biggest contraction project in Danish history, estimated to cost in the region of 210 billion Danish kroner (€28bn; £24bn: $34bn).

It has been announced that it will not only supply electricity to Denmark, but to other neighbouring countries' electricity grids too. However, which countries these may be have not yet been announced.

The planned start date is earmarked for 2033, although a Danish green group, Dansk Energi, has doubted whether the island would be up and running by this planned date.

For a year now, the road maintenance department in Dingolfing has been using cucumber water instead of liquid salt to make the roads safe in winter. The verdict so far has been very good - the cucumber water works best and is kind to the environment at the same time.

In the future, the use of cucumber water in Dingolfing is expected to replace and thus save up to 1,000 tonnes of road salt. The wastewater from the pickle production of the delicatessen manufacturer Develey now replaces a large part of the liquid brine made from salt for winter road maintenance. For the past year, the water with seven per cent salt content has been converted into 21 per cent brine and then spread on the roads against ice and snow in liquid form by the clearing and gritting vehicles.

According to an analysis by NASA, Earth's global average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. The average temperature in 2020 was 1.02 degrees Celsius (1.84 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer globally, compared to the baseline 1951-1980 mean.

“The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important – the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken.”

The earthquake of magnitude 5.1 on the Richter scale could be felt in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan according to first reports.

The plant substance capsaicin makes chilies hot and it makes solar cells more effective, as scientists from Sweden and China have now discovered: capsaicin is said to minimize power loss and make solar cells more resistant to water. They have processed capsaicin in a perovskite solar cell.

This type of solar cell is seen as the hope for a new generation of photovoltaic systems. They are easy to manufacture with inexpensive materials. Adding the chili ingredient increased the solar cell's efficiency from 19.1 to nearly 22 percent.

With the "Veganuary," more than 500,000 Internet users worldwide give up animal products for a month at the beginning of the year. Data from Harvard University shows that the campaign is very effective: Around 100,000 tons of CO2 and 6 million liters of water can be saved with the initiative.

New electricity from Hamburg's roofs: Hamburg will be the first German state to introduce mandatory photovoltaics from 2023. Starting in two years, corresponding systems must be installed on new buildings or roofs that are being fundamentally renovated. The generated solar power is expected to save over 60,000 tons of CO2 by 2030.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 has hit the central region of Croatia. Media reports spoke of considerable property damage in the Croatian capital as well as in the vicinity of the epicenter, which is located about 45 kilometers southeast of Zagreb. It was the second quake in a row within the past 30 hours. On Monday, earthquakes of magnitude 5.2 and 5.0 were recorded in the same area.

According to a Russian top emergency official the fuel spill at an Artic power station earlier in 2020 has been the largest oil spill in world history.

Near the city of Norilsk around 21,000 tonnes of oil have spilled and contaminated surrounding ground and waterways following the collapse of a diesel oil tank on May 29.

A study conducted by OceansAsia estimates that 1.56 billion of around 52 billion manufactured face masks in 2020 will have entered oceans this year, resulting in an additional 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of marine plastic pollution.

“The 1.56 billion face masks that will likely enter our oceans in 2020 are just the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Director of Research for OceansAsia, and lead author of the report. “The 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of face masks are just a small fraction of the estimated 8 to 12 million metric tonnes of plastic that enter our oceans each year.”

The surface air temperature in this year's November was higher than any year before on record.

The temperature anomaly was the highest in much of Siberia, the Arctic Ocean and bordering coastal seas, extending into western and northern Alaska, the far north-west of Canada, the Tibetan Plateau and East Antarctica. Temperature records were also broken in parts of Europe and heatwaves were experienced in parts of Australia.

The average temperature from December 2019 to November 2020 is almost 1.3°C above the pre-industrial level defined in the IPCC Special Report on “Global Warming of 1.5°C”.

According to experts, renewable energies such as wind and solar power covered almost half of Germany's electricity consumption this year.

This means that the share of green electricity has continued to rise, compared to 42.5 percent in 2019. According to preliminary calculations by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) the share of electricity from wind, photovoltaics, biomass and other renewable energy sources made up around 46 percent of gross electricity consumption.

One of the reasons for this shift, however, is the lower electricity consumption, in particular as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

14 countries worldwide have committed themselves to the sustainable management of their national waters. The "Ocean Panel" is a body for sustainable marine management. A goal is it to place until 2030 a third of the seas under protection.

Involved are countries like Australia, Canada, Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Norway and Portugal. Together they have a marine area that is about the size of Africa.

Employees of a forestry authority in India have built a bridge made of jute ropes and bamboo planks over a road in the jungle. This should make the way to the other side safe for small animals.

Further large green bridges are being planned - the first is to be built over the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway. A total of five such green bridges are to be built by 2024.

The countries most affected by the consequences of climate change only receive a small fraction of the funding available for climate adaptation, according to the World Disasters Report 2020 by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

What makes the failure to protect those most vulnerable, especially alarming, is the steadily increasing number of weather and climate-related disasters. There was an increase of almost 35 per cent per decade in the average number of weather and climate-related disasters since the 1990s.

83 per cent of all disasters were caused by climate and weather-related events such as storms, floods, and heatwaves in the past decade. More than 410,000 people were killed, and 1.7 billion people were affected by these disasters.

The organization Break Free From Plastic has released its annual audit, stating that Coca-Cola is the number one plastic polluter in the world followed by Nestlé and Pepsi. 15,000 volunteers had previously identified littered plastic around the world. In total 346,394 pieces of plastic had been found of which 63% had a clear consumer brand on it.

In total 13,834 pieces had the Coca-Cola brand on them, 8,633 Nestlé and 5,155 Pepsi.

As of January 2021, electronic devices will be marked with a repair index at the time of purchase and thus classified. The index is intended to inform buyers about the repair possibilities of the purchased item and is measured on a scale of 1 to 10 based on parameters such as ease of disassembly, as well as price and availability of spare parts.

A new study by the EU's aviation regulator EASA has found that "aviation emissions are currently warming the climate at approximately three times the rate of that associated with aviation CO2 emissions alone."

This is due to non-CO2 emissions, which are harder to quantify and not well studied. The new study examined the impact of these emissions, including nitrogen oxide, water vapor, oxidized sulfur and soot particles.

About 2 percent of global CO2 emissions are caused by aviation, but that does not include the non-CO2 emissions listed above.

German Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) has stated that "The plastic bag is the epitome of a waste of resources" following the decision to ban plastic shopping bags in supermarkets from 2022 on.

The ban will affect plastic shopping bags with a wall thickness of 15 to 50 micrometers - these are the standard bags usually available at the cash register. The only exceptions are the thin plastic bags that for example are found in the fruit and vegetable department.

A new report has shown that 70% of the world's crop fields, ranches and orchards are operated by one percent of the world's farms, resulting in rising land inequality due to global farmland being increasingly dominated by a few major companies, a new research led by the International Land Coalition, alongside a group of partners including Oxfam and the World Inequality Lab, found.

"In the past, these instruments were only of concern to the markets. They didn’t affect us individually. But now they touch every aspect of our lives because they are linked to the environmental crisis and the pandemic,” so Ward Anseeuw, senior technical specialist at the International Land Coalition.