Low-oxygen areas of the ocean, know as ‘dead zones’ are increasing, according to a new paper in Science Advances, killing or forcing marine life to flee. The ocean is ‘slowly being suffocated’ at a similar rate to 94 million years ago when there was a mass extinction of marine life, the Independent reports. Humans are responsible for several different factors driving the falling oxygen levels, from sewage and fertilisers running off farmers fields are causing massive algal blooms that consume oxygen when they decompose, to global warming, which is increasing the amount of erosion of the land, albeit very gradually, adding extra nutrients to the sea. ““Increased ocean deoxygenation is already apparent in the modern ocean, because marine dioxygen has decreased by two per cent over roughly the last half century, and recent models predict a continued loss of 0.5 to 3.5 per cent over the next half century, which would result in huge expansions of ocean anoxia within the next few thousand years”, the researchers say the their study.

Coverage continues of satellite imagery that shows wildfires burning close to the Greenland ice sheet, since 31 July. Fires are rare on the island, where 80% of the land is covered in ice up to 3km thick, but experts believe that at least two fires are burning in peat that may have dried out as temperatures have risen. The Arctic has seen an exceptionally warm summer this year. Researchers say that across Greenland there is now less surface water than in the past, which could be making vegetation more susceptible to fire, the BBC writes. “I think that fires have been there before but what’s different is that this fire is big, in Greenlandic terms; that is unusual. It’s the biggest one we have in the satellite record”, said Dr Stef Lhermitte of Delft University. “This peat is less than 70km from the ice sheet. It’s a little difficult to believe that it would be degraded already without increasing melting and higher temperatures…But as a scientist we can’t say it’s definitely climate change until we’ve done the analysis after the fire”, said wildfire expert Prof Jessica McCarty of Miami University. The Independent, New Scientist, Grist and Think Progress also have the story.

The governor of West Virginia Jim Justice has said that US president Donald Trump is “really interested” in his pro-coal proposal to prop-up coal mining in the region, by making payments to local power plants that burn the fossil fuel. Justice, who has recently spent a “goodly amount of time” meeting one-on-one with Trump, suggested a figure of $15 for every ton of Appalachian coal burnt, although he rejects the notion that his plan amounts to a “bailout” or “subsidy”. Instead he calls it a matter of national security ‘because terrorists could easily blow up important gas pipelines or derail freight trains shipping coal to the east’, Bloomberg writes. He believes that Trump’s moves to roll back regulations on the Appalachian coal industry won’t be enough to preserve it alone.

Eon UK has blamed a drop in profits in their supply business on the rising costs of implementing UK government energy efficiency schemes and installing smart meters, the Times reports. Revenues in the division fell by 15% to €3.7 billion over the period as the German energy group lost customers to cheaper rivals. The comments come “amid fierce scrutiny of the impact of government policies on bills”, the Times writes. Last week British Gas blamed increases in such costs when raising its electricity prices.

A new tool, developed by researchers at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing facility, is helping researchers to understand ocean current data with the help of high-resolution global ocean simulations. The currents are displayed on a 10 by 23-foot, 128-screen hyperwall at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. The earth science community will use these simulations to investigate how the circulation, chemistry and biology of the ocean collectively interact with atmospheric carbon, and also how a pollutant plume or debris field might spread from a particular ocean location, the Mail Online writes. Due to the size and complexity of the data, scientists were previously unable to look at full-resolution global views.

Scott Pruitt, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, told a conservative North Dakota talk radio host yesterday that one of the reasons why he is organizing a “red team/blue team” exercise to try to challenge what the EPA chief called “so-called settled science” on climate change, the Hill reports. “The American people deserve an honest, open, transparent discussion about this supposed threat to this country. And we need to advance that”, Pruitt said, casting doubt on the idea that climate change poses a threat to the US.

A pair of “highly anticipated” US government studies could complicate President Donald Trump’s effort to roll back federal climate regulations, Bloomberg reports, “according to people on both sides of the debate over global warming”. One of them is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-backed report reviewing the global effects of climate change in 2016, due to be released today, the other is a broader National Climate Assessment, which is due next year from the administration. According to drafts and those familiar with the reports, both are at odds with Trump’s contention that climate change is a “hoax” and may hinder his moves to undo the previous administration’s efforts to address the issue, analysts say, since revoking Obama’s rules requires agencies to give a legally sound justification for the policy pivot. “If the NCA comes out with an unflattering report on carbon dioxide, the only way EPA can change its endangerment finding is to reexamine all that science, and have a reasonable basis for rejecting”, David Schnare, who worked on Trump’s transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency and then advised EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, told Bloomberg. “It’s yet another document that weighs against whatever claims Trump political appointees attempt to make about the state of the science”, said David Hawkins, director of climate programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The looming publication of the National Climate Assessment special report will “force President Trump to choose between accepting the conclusions of his administration’s scientists and the demands of his conservative supporters”, the New York Times writes.

Australian miners see surging demand for lithium, cobalt and nickel, as the result of a a battery revolution driven by the transition to electric vehicles and energy storage systems, according to the Financial Times. BHP Billiton joined the rush yesterday, revealing plans to become the world’s biggest suppliers of nickel sulphate, a key component in lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars (EVs). The mining giant was apparently inspired by a video of Elon Musk from 2016, where the CEO of Tesla highlights that EV batteries typically contain higher quantities of the nickel than lithium, Bloomberg reports. “We believe there is going to be a very large increase in nickel sulphate demand over the midterm, in order to support this new energy revolution”, Eduard Haegel, BHP Nickel West president, told the FT.

A recent article by the New York Times suggested that the Trump administration has been stifling a damaging draft report with dire warnings about climate change – but a correction added to the article yesterday clarifies that while it was not widely publicised, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January. Erik Wemple, opinion writer at the Washington Post, describes this as “major screw-up”, and suggests that “[the correction] should sit atop the story, surrounded by red flashing lights”. “Any intimation that the Trump administration is blocking or somehow suppressing a dire climate-change study is explosive stuff, in large part because it would align with actual transparency problems”, Wemple writes.

In light of the UK government’s announcement that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned after 2040, an in-depth feature by Ed Wiseman in the Telegraph asks “what will we be left with?”. “All the mainstream car brands currently offer vehicles that comply with the 2040 rule, in addition to some that won’t”, Wiseman notes. “That’s because hybrid cars…will still be on the market after 2040”. In a section on Electric Vehicles (EV’s), Wiseman says that EVs: “have several key benefits when compared to ordinary petrol and diesel cars, as well as increasingly popular hybrid cars. EVs emit no pollution at the tailpipe, which means they have a much smaller local environmental impact. They operate very quietly and are generally extremely easy to drive”. They also have “certain financial advantages, including tax breaks and the lower cost of ‘filling up’ compared to a tank of petrol”. A third option, in addition to EVs and hybrids, is the hydrogen fuel cell car, which “has enormous potential” although the “technology is still in its infancy”. However, it is “exceptionally difficult to predict what will happen in the 23 years between now and 2040”, Wiseman concludes.

The human-driven decline in the number of large fruit eaters, such as the southern brown howler monkey, and seed eaters, including the peccary (a pig-like mammal), could have unintended consequences for climate change, a new study suggests. These animals provide a crucial role in the reproduction of trees by helping with the dispersal and germination of seeds, the researchers say. The loss of large seed dispersers could reduce tree recruitment, or the survival of young trees to maturity, by up to 94.9%. A fall in the number of new trees could have a knock-on impact on how effectively forests can absorb and store carbon dioxide.