A collapse in the use of coal has driven UK carbon emissions down to levels not seen since 1894, according to analysis by Carbon Brief, that was picked up by the BBC. Consumption of coal fell by a record 52% as the result of cheaper gas, higher domestic carbon prices, the spread of renewables, and other environmental policies. Coal’s share in the electricity mix has dived from 23% two years ago to just 9% last year, helped by the closure of three coal-fired power stations last year. The government aims to phase out coal power by 2025. The UK cut CO2 emissions faster than Germany, Italy, France and Spain between 1990 and 2014, the Times notes. Inside Climate News questions whether future progress in this area will be hampered by Brexit, although a leaked European Parliament document “suggests the EU will seek to hold the UK to previously agreed environmental targets”. Carbon Brief’s analysis of government figures was also covered in the Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, the Independent, Gizmodo, BusinessGreen, New Scientist and Edie.

A global glut of oil could run out in three years unless new investments worth billions of dollars are spent on the industry, the International Energy Agency said yesterday, in its latest five-year oil market forecast. It predicts a rapid fall in new supply growth after 2020, the consequence of a sharp drop in investment since crude prices plunged in 2014, the Times reports. “We don’t see a peak in oil demand any time soon. And unless investments globally rebound sharply, a new period of price volatility looms”, said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director. The Guardian also has the story.

Sentinel-2B, a key spacecraft in Europe’s new earth observation has been launched from French Guiana, the BBC reports. The satellite carries a large camera to image all land surfaces and coastal waters in visible and infrared light. Together with Sentinel-2A, which is already in orbit, it will provide a complete map of Earth – clouds permitting – every five days, helping scientists to track issues like deforestation and glacier retreat.

The ancient city of Venice will be submerged within a century if climate change isn’t mitigated and flood defences aren’t installed, a new report published in Quarternary International warns. This is because the Mediterranean Sea is forecast to rise by up to 140cm before 2100. The study looked at how flooding had affected millstone quarries to predict the possible rise in sea levels: “We integrated historical sources, aerial photography, field surveys and palaeo sea-level modelling”, said lead author Fabrizio Antonioli. Around 75% of the Italian population are estimated to live within 10km of the coast.

Dr Peter Gleick has warned that US democracy is under attack from the “uninhibited use of lies, false statements and bad science” in an article for the website Wired, where he urges people to take part in protests in support of science. The leading climatologist, who co-founded the Pacific Institute in California, said that key members of the new administration rejected the “undeniable reality of climate change”. He says that it is time for scientists to speak up: although they may fear that their science will be tainted by involvement in politics, “when the time comes to speak, to stand up, those of us who can must do so. That time has come”, he concludes.

Arctic sea ice may vanish in summers this century even if governments achieve a core target to limit global temperature rise to below 2C, agreed in Paris in 2015. “The 2 degrees Celsius target may be insufficient to prevent an ice-free Arctic,” James Screen and Daniel Williamson wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change after a statistical review of ice projections, as it would still mean a 39% risk that ice will disappear in the Arctic Ocean in summers, they said. However ice was virtually certain to survive with just 1.5C of warming.

The impact of climate change on the Australian environment and its ecosystems is increasing and some aspects may be irreversible, the Sydney Morning Herald writes. The latest State of the Environment report released today by Australia’s environment minister Josh Frydenberg warns that Australia lacks overarching national policies that establish “a clear vision” for protecting and managing the environment, including climate change, between now and 2050. It found that climate change “is an increasingly important and pervasive pressure on all aspects of the Australian environment”, and warned that poorer citizens would bear the brunt of the damage. However Frydenberg stressed that Australia was on track to meet its emissions reduction targets by 2030.

Jean Chemnick takes a look at whether the US is likely to meet or miss its pledge cut emissions between 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025 under the new administration. Early indications suggest that the US markets, for things like clean power and electric cars, won’t deliver the US’ climate commitments on their own: “the bigger goals included in Paris could be out of reach without the help of a dedicated president”. With the probable demise of the Clean Power Plan and regulations on methane, John Larsen, a director at the Rhodium Group, predicts that “markets and nonfederal policies could deliver a 16 percent cut, maximum, to 2005 levels of emissions by 2030.” David Bookbinder, of the consulting group Element VI, puts it at 8% by 2025, when you take into account that natural carbon sequestration “sinks” have been recently shown to be about half of what was previously estimated.

The Trump administration is reportedly divided over whether the US should leave the Paris climate agreement. But this is “not a hard call”, argues an editorial in the Washington Post: “staying in the agreement is costless, while leaving would rightly provoke sharp and sustained international outrage”. It notes the the Paris agreement “does not formally obligate” the US to make particular emissions cuts, “it has no major implications for US sovereignty and demands no particular policy balance between environmental and industrial concerns.” Trump’s plan to end the Clean Power Plan “would ill-prepare the country for the significant emissions cuts…but it would not keep the nation from reducing its emissions by more modest levels in the near term.” “If the country is going to be achieving emissions cuts anyway, why not take some international credit for them?” the Washington Post asks. Considering this, “leaving Paris would be nothing more than a gratuitous thumb in the eye of practically every important nation on the planet”.

It is virtually certain that sea ice-free summers in the Arctic can be avoided if temperature is limited to 1.5C, the lower target set out in the Paris Agreement, according to a new commentary. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Dr James Screen and Dr Daniel Williamson, both from the University of Exeter, say that even meeting the higher target of 2C instead may be insufficient to prevent an ice-free Arctic, leaving a one in three chance. Should countries stick to their Paris pledges to reduce their emissions, this gives a 73% chance of the Arctic becoming ice-free, making it a “likely” outcome in the parlance of the United Nations, say the authors.

An editorial in the Times mulls over the significance of Carbon Brief’s finding that the UK has reduced its emissions to the lowest level since 1894. “Britain has achieved an ambitious policy goal that should have significant public health benefits and serve as a case study for other large economies”, it says, continuing: “If bigger polluters can follow suit, policymakers will be able to start thinking about reversing the build-up of atmospheric carbon not just as an idea but as a realistic possibility”. While the Times says that there is “some truth” to claims that the drive to shrink the national carbon footprint has been at the expense of heavy industries, it counters that “this country’s long-term economic health depends on knowledge-intensive rather than energy-intensive industries, and its public health depends on cleaner air.” It concludes that “science alone has failed to galvanise a comparable global effort to limit carbon emissions, but air left unbreathable by coal-fired power stations just might do the trick.”

The agricultural economy of the US is becoming increasingly sensitive to the climate, a new study suggests. Researchers analysed fluctuations of total factor productivity (TFP) – a measure of agricultural efficiency – between 1948 and 2011. They find that temperature and rainfall fluctuations explain almost 50% of TFP variations during 1951-1980 and around 70% during 1981-2010. Should these relationships continue, projected climate changes could cause TFP to fall to pre-1980 levels by 2050, the study says, even when accounting for innovations in farming techniques.

Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere won’t translate into more tree growth where soils have limited phosphorus, a new study suggests. Researchers increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations in a mature broadleaved evergreen eucalypt forest with low phosphorus levels in the soil. The three-year experiment shows that despite a 19% rise in photosynthesis, the rate of tree growth didn’t increase. A large portion of tropical soils is limited by phosphorus, the researchers note.

Approximately 27% of maize yield increases in the US Corn Belt between 1984 and 2013 can be explained by more sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface (“solar brightening”) a new study says. These yield increases have previously been attributed to improvements in agricultural technology. Solar brightening is caused by several factors, the researchers note, such as changes in cloud cover and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere. This makes predicting solar brightening and its future contribution to crop yields uncertain, they add.