Man-made greenhouse gases started to warm the planet almost 200 years ago as the industrial revolution gathered pace says Reuters, covering a widely reported new study published in the journal Nature. The first traces of warming can be detected in records of the tropical oceans and Arctic around 1830. The new study is based on paleoclimate records from the past 500 years, says the Washington Post. The study “redefines our understanding of when human activity began to influence our climate”, say the study’s authors, writing in the Conversation. The new work will help build an accurate baseline of global temperatures before the influence of human activity, says theGuardian. The earth had already warmed by around 0.2C between 1850 and 1880, says theAssociated Press. The “pre-industrial” baseline is often taken from the 1880s or even later, notesClimate Central. It hears from one scientist that the new research means we are even closer to 2C of warming above pre-industrial times than we thought. The study is also covered by Mail Online,Climate Home, Time and DeSmog UK.

China and the US are expected to make a 2 September joint announcement on ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to the South China Morning Post, citing unnamed “sources familiar with the issue”. The two countries account for about 38% of global emissions, it adds. White House adviser Brian Deese is in Beijing this week laying the groundwork for president Obama’s visit next month, reports ClimateWire.

The number of hayfever sufferers could soar from one to six million by 2060, reports the Mirror, as a result of climate change increasing the spread of ragweed. The study is also covered by the Timesand the Sun. Similar research published last year was covered by Carbon Brief. The Mail and i news also have the story.

The next UK auction for low-carbon electricity contracts has been delayed until early next year, the Financial Times reports. Amber Rudd, former energy and climate change secretary, had said the auction would be held before the end of 2016. It is due to offer contracts worth around £290m per year to offshore wind schemes. Trade body RenewableUK tells the paper “nobody is panicking…a bit of a delay is not terrible”.

Grid-scale electricity storage will move closer to commercial reality on Friday, reports Bloomberg, with the National Grid offering contracts for as much as 200 megawatts (MW) of storage capacity. The deals are likely to be the storage industry’s largest of the year, Bloomberg says. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects around 700MW of storage to be commissioned globally in 2016, up from less than 500MW in 2015.

A recent uptick in global coal prices has seen financial media suggesting coal is the hottest commodity of 2016, but traders should be wary of the hype, write Lauri Myllyvirta and Marina Lou for Greenpeace EnergyDesk. Previous coal bubbles, also based on short-term trends in China, have inspired billions of dollars of export scheme investments that have failed to progress. The price spike has been caused by a government-imposed coal mining holiday in China, they write, but Chinese coal demand is falling for the third year in a row.

A cyclone in the Arctic in December 2015 caused Arctic sea ice to thin by about 10cm, a new study says. Using satellite infrared data, the researchers studied the warm and humid air that the cyclone pulled over the Barents-Kara seas region, bringing temperatures of up to 10C warmer than the 2003-15 average. Usually in winter, the Arctic would be giving off heat to the atmosphere as water freezes to form sea ice, the study says, but the warm air instead heated the ice pack, causing it to melt and thin.

In a warmer world, scientists expect to see an increase in snowfall over the Antarctic because there is more moisture in the air. But this effect hasn’t yet been observed, and a new study explains why. The researchers find that the reason lies in the climate change signal during the second half of the twentieth century being small compared to the “noise” of natural climate variability. However, the impact of climate change on Antarctic snowfall is very likely to become distinct from natural variability by the middle of the 21st century, the study finds, adding snow to Antarctica and helping to slow future increases in global sea level.