The highly ambitious aim of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels remains in reach, a new paper suggests. The analysis using the latest data shows the global carbon emissions budget to meet the 1.5C goal is equivalent to 20 years of current annual emissions – bigger than previous estimates in the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2013-14. The scale of the challenge remains huge but “it is looking more hopeful that we can really achieve the Paris goals,” said co-author Prof Michael Grubb, a climate economist at University College London. “Keeping to 1.5C just went from impossible to very difficult,” fellow co-author, Dr Joeri Rogelj, told the New Scientist. The findings have “delivered a rare bit of good news”, says Nature News. However, other researchers raised questions about the work, says the Washington Post, “leaving it unclear whether the new analysis – which, if correct, would have very large implications – will stick”. Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the Post: ““It is very hard to see how we could still have a substantial CO2 emissions budget left for 1.5C, given we’re already at 1C, thermal inertia means we’ll catch up with some more warming even without increased radiative forcing”. The Press Association, MailOnline, the Sun, Independent, and Buzzfeed all cover the research as well. The new finding of a larger carbon budget “does not mean that the IPCC got it wrong. Having predated the Paris Agreement, the IPCC report included very little analysis of the 1.5℃ target,” explain two of the study’s authors in an article for The Conversation: “Having predated the Paris Agreement, the IPCC report included very little analysis of the 1.5C target, which only became a political option during the Paris negotiations themselves. The IPCC did not develop a thorough estimate of carbon budgets consistent with 1.5C, for the simple reason that nobody had asked them to”. Nevertheless, the Telegraph has the story on their frontpage with the headline “Climate models ‘are wrong'”, and the Daily Mail has a page two headline of “Fear of global warming is exaggerated, say scientists”. The Times also puts it on the frontpage, under the headline “Climate change disaster can be averted, say scientists”. The lead author explains his research in a guest post for Carbon Brief.

President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said at a United Nations meeting yesterday that the US stood by its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate pact unless there is a more favourable renegotiation. “We made the president’s position unambiguous, to where the president stands, where the administration stands on Paris,” Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters. Cohn added: “We reaffirmed the president’s statement that he made in the Rose Garden, and we continue to reinforce what the president is saying,” reports the New York Times. Any effort towards remaining in Paris under “more favourable terms” would involve the US lowering its “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC)” targets, explains the Financial Times, but there has been no serious talk about such a move. The Hilland the Wall Street Journal also have the story. Meanwhile, US state governors met with European, Brazilian and small-island leaders in a side meeting, reports the New York Times. “You have allies in the United States. You shouldn’t put your foot on the brake or even tap it just because we have a climate denier in the White House. You’re not alone,” Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington said he would tell world leaders this week.

After slightly slowing in recent years, global average surface temperature is once again rising more quickly due to a decade-long weather pattern that warms and cools the Pacific, according to the UK Met Office. The the rate of global warming has picked up due to a “flip” in the Pacific weather pattern, says Adam Scaife, head of climate predictions at the Met Office. “This was due to a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which entered its positive phase, warming the tropics, the west coast of North America and the globe overall.” The rate of surface warming has now returned to the level seen in the second half of the 20th century, notes the Mail Online. Meanwhile, the latest data from NASA shows that August 2017 was the second hottest on record, reports another Mail Onlinearticle. Last month was 0.85C warmer than the 1951-1980 August average, the data shows, putting it second only to August 2016, which was 0.99C warmer. A similar data update from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests August 2017 was the third warmest on record, says the Associated Press. And in Australia, the 2017 winter saw record average maximum temperatures of nearly 2C above the long-tern average and 0.3C above the previous records, reports the Guardian. The BBC also has the Australia story.

Australia’s biggest miner BHP has confirmed it is reconsidering its membership of the country’s main mining lobby group, the Minerals Council. BHP has been under pressure from activists to quit lobby groups that do not support clean energy targets. The activist group is backed by large investors including ANZ, AMP, Australian Super and Blackrock. It is also calling for BHP to terminate its membership of the World Coal Association which, along with the Minerals Council, is also calling for a rejection of a clean energy target. The Guardian says the mining giant “will clarify how [its] position on climate and energy policy differs from those bodies”. The Sydney Morning Herald also covers the story.

Hurricane Maria made landfall on the Caribbean island of Dominica last night as a Category 5 storm. Maria’s maximum sustained winds reached 160 miles per hour, with even stronger gusts. The storm, described by the US National Hurricane Centre as “potentially catastrophic,” passed almost directly over Dominica – a former British colony home to 72,000 people that lies in the eastern Caribbean. There was no immediate word on the fate of Dominica. Maria’s track puts it on course with the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico tonight and tomorrow, respectively, says another Reuters piece. The New York Timesand Time also have the story. Maria had already intensified to a category 3, and then category 4 hurricane during Monday.

The presenter of Radio 4’s leading science programme has been reprimanded for tweeting criticism of a prominent climate sceptic MP. Adam Rutherford used his personal Twitter account to challenge the reappointment of Graham Stringer, a Labour MP, to the Commons science and technology committee. Mr Stringer is on the board of trustees of the climate sceptic thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation. After receiving a complaint from Mr Stringer, the BBC launched an investigation and yesterday announced that the presenter had been warned about his social media conduct. “On this occasion, in my view, Dr Rutherford’s comments on Twitter potentially compromised the BBC’s impartiality on this issue,” said Paul Smith, head of editorial standards at BBC Radio. The Guardian and the Mail Online also have the story.

The impacts of climate change are “American issues, not partisan ones”, which don’t blur party lines, but erase them, writes former Democratic nominee for US President, John Kerry, in a piece for the Boston Globe. “Extreme weather events don’t come with a (D) or (R) after names like Harvey and Irma, and there’s nothing political about the havoc increasingly injurious storms have wreaked in places like Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and the Caribbean,” he says. “Hurricane Katrina created environmentalists out of business people and civic leaders as never before, because they know that coastal economies cannot endure if we don’t protect and restore wetlands and meet the climate threat.” “I do remember a time in the [US] Senate when the environment was a bipartisan issue,” Kerry concludes: “I believe it will be again, not out of nostalgia but out of necessity — because Americans from every state and every sector of our economy are demanding it.”

“The Trump administration is unflinching in its misbegotten campaign to protect the coal industry from what has become an obvious and inevitable decline,” opens an editorial from the New York Times. The latest move from Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is a two-year postponement of the Obama administration’s tighter controls on lead, mercury, arsenic and other coal plant wastes that threaten human health. Yet “while environmental rules have played some role in the closing of coal-fired plants, the main driver is cheaper and abundant natural gas,” says the Times. “It is shocking that an administration led and staffed by supposedly shrewd business executives deliberately overlooks the blossoming of profitable and cleaner energy products simply because of Mr. Trump’s hollow showmanship before his campaign base.”

“Here is a message to investors in the oil industry, whether pension and insurance funds, university endowments, hedge funds or other asset managers: Your investments are going to sour,” warns Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writing for CNN. “Not only will the companies you own suffer as society begins to abandon fossil fuels in earnest, they will also be dragged through the courts here and abroad for their long-standing malfeasance and denial of what they have done to the world.” Using the science of extreme event attribution, the courts are ready to “hold companies liable for damages when the likelihood of causation is high enough”, he says. “When climate justice comes – and it will – those who have been in denial will pay a heavy price. And those who have invested in companies that behaved recklessly and irresponsibly will share the heavy losses on that day of reckoning.”

Up to 35% of US roads could fall into disrepair because of climate change, new research finds. More than a third of America’s asphalt roadways have been constructed with “incorrect materials” that will not be able to withstand the heat caused by future global warming, the study claims, which could cost the country between $19 and $26bn by 2040. “Failing to update engineering standards of practice in light of climate change therefore significantly threatens pavement infrastructure in the United States,” the researchers conclude.

A type of algae that frequently grows on top of glaciers could be increasing the rate of ice melt, a new study suggests. The red hue of Chlamydomonas nivalis algae, which is also called ‘red snow’ and ‘watermelon snow’, soaks up more sunlight than fresh white snow, and so increases the rate of melting, the research finds. In an experiment conducted in an Alaskan ice field, the researchers found that presence of C. nivalis could explain 17% of glacier ice melt.