A committee of ministers yesterday approved the expansion of Heathrow airport to include a third runway, 13 years after plans were first published by the UK government. The decision faces a laborious process before it becomes final, notes the BBC. After a period of public consultation, the government will make a final decision as part of its National Policy Statement on Aviation and MPs will vote on the decision in the winter of 2017-18. While transport secretary, Chris Grayling, described a third runway as “truly momentous” and “a central part of the government’s plan to build a global Britain and an economy that works for everyone”, the decision has been roundly criticised as inconsistent with the UK’s climate change commitments. The Independent quotes Prof Joanna Haigh, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, as saying expanding Heathrow will create “a serious obstacle to the UK meeting its greenhouse gas and air quality targets” while Press Association carries warnings from Greenpeace’s chief scientist Doug Parr that aviation’s already “sky high” emissions from aviation will “go stratospheric” if we build new runways. Both articles feature Carbon Brief’s analysis showing aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions could consume around half the carbon budget for 1.5C available to the UK in 2050 even if emissions growth is constrained, as did The Guardian’s live blog yesterday. Green party MEP for the south east, Keith Taylor, pointed out Theresa May’s views on Heathrow have “flip-flopped”, having previously spoken out against expansion at least partly on environmental grounds. In a cached version of a statement on May’s website back in December 2008, which Carbon Brief published when she first took office in July, the prime minister said: “I will continue to put pressure on the Government over the third runway at Heathrow as an extra 222,000 flights a year would undermine our national targets and seriously damage the health of the local community.” BusinessGreen collects reaction from leading green commentators on the Heathrow decision. For more on aviation and climate change, read Carbon Brief’s in depth explainer on the industry’s battle to limit rising emissions.

The amount of new renewables capacity installed in 2015 surpassed coal for the first time, according to widely-reported figures from the International Energy Agency. Last year saw 153 GigaWatts of renewable capacity added globally, marking a 15% increase on 2014. With 66 GW and 49 GW, respectively, solar and wind together accounted for 75% of the new capacity, equating to half a million solar panels installed each day and two wind turbines every hour in countries such as China. The group has sharply upgraded its forecast of how fast renewable energy sources will keep growing, says the FT, estimating that falling costs and growing policy support will add up to 800GW over the coming five years, generating enough electricity by 2021 to handle all of the demand in the US and Europe. While Asia will be the “engine of growth”, IEA analysts said the outlook in the UK has deteriorated since the Conservative government took power last year and cut support for solar and wind, reports The Guardian. ClimateHome reports comments by Paolo Frankl, head of the IEA’s renewable energy division, that while last year was a “turning point” for renewables, grid infrastructure, policy stability and availability of finance will be needed to maintain momentum. Frankl also warned that while onshore wind and solar growth was in line with countries’ commitments set out under the Paris climate agreement, renewables for heat and transport need to be scaled up if the accord’s aim of capping warming below 2C are to be met, reports BusinessGreen. TIME, Grist and Ars Technica have more on the new report.

Warming ocean waters are eating away at the undersides of the ice shelves that fringe Antarctica, according to new research. While most attention has been paid to the increasingly fragile Amundsen ice shelf, radar surveys conducted by NASA’s airborne Operation IceBridge show retreat has been happening faster at the Dotson and Crosson ice shelves, fed by the Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers. Until now, the exact magnitude of this ice loss poorly understood but scientists still more information about the shape of the seafloor beneath the ice, as well as more data on ocean circulation and temperatures, to better project how much ice these glaciers will contribute to rising sea levels. Climate Central covers the new research.

The Prince of Wales is joining an Anglo-French government initiative to improve the condition of global soils and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming. Ministers from both governments are meeting to discuss how to restore degraded soils, enhance fertility and increase food security. The initiative is, in part, a response to the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee recommendation in May for the government to set out specific actions aimed at increasing soil carbon levels by 0.4% per year. Peter Melchett from the Soil Association told BBC News, “[The initiative] has put greenhouse gas emissions from farming on the global climate change agenda for the first time since Kyoto (the first climate agreement in 1997).”

Emails to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman have revealed a well-funded international campaign to counter the influence of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire on climate change, reports the Guardian. The proposal aimed to “bring the scientific facts on climate change to his audiences directly in print and on television” through through targeted adverts in his and other publications as well as “guerilla tactics” and civil disobedience. The Australian ran with the story on its front page. DeSmog has more on the background.

The government’s decision yesterday to back the expansion of Heathrow airport is “a disaster for those of us who care about Britain’s role in combating climate change”, writes Green party leader Caroline Lucas in The Independent. Make no mistake, she says, yesterday’s decision puts a wrecking ball through the UK’s climate change commitments: “If we’re serious about climate change, we would need to make even deeper carbon cuts in other parts of the economy (and we’re already failing to do that).” Airport expansion will “leave our climate change commitments in tatters”, a battle that climate campaigners and local residents have absolutely no plans to give up on, says Lucas.

Despite “tremendous progress in the last decade”, the current state of knowledge around solar geoengineering still isn’t sufficient to assess its intended and unintended impacts on the climate, a new commentary paper argues. This conclusion even applies to stratospheric aerosol geoengineering (SAG), the authors say, “arguably the best understood geoengineering method.” The researchers lay out the key unknowns associated with SAG as “an essential step towards developing a future strategic research program that could address outstanding uncertainties”.

In a sign of the British political world’s current priorities, the “short-sighted” decision to opt for a third runway at Heathrow puts old-fashioned economics firmly ahead of tackling climate change, says The Guardian. Today’s editorial reads, “This is the decision of a government that is not prepared to think boldly about the implications of its commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% over the next 35 years…This is a short-sighted investment that may provide a boost to the economy – a mere £60bn over 60 years – at the cost of long-term harm to globally critical climate change objectives.” Separately, a letter in the Guardian signed by a number of environmental campaigners and residents groups against Heathrow expansion says, “Any further runway expansion would break [targets to limit emissions from the sector], put an unfair and potentially unachievable burden on the rest of the economy to decarbonise, and undermine the UK’s international credibility on climate change.

The influx of warm ocean water caused the melting of hundreds of metres of ice from glaciers in West Antarctic in the early 21st century, a new study finds. Using radar data, the researchers estimate the loss of ice from the underside of the Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers, which flow out onto the Amundsen Sea to form the Dotson and Crosson ice shelves. The findings show “intense” melting from all three glaciers – particularly the Smith glacier, which thinned by as much as 300-490 metres over 2002-09.

Whether trees can benefit from more humid conditions in a warmer climate will depend on competitive advantage, a new study suggests. In an open-air experiment site in Estonia, researchers grew silver birch and aspen trees in conditions with a 6-7% elevated humidity. They found that more humid air had a positive impact on the growth of competitively advantaged birch trees (after the first year of growth), while disadvantaged trees of both species were never significantly affected.