Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of state, hinted yesterday that he would support keeping the US in the Paris climate agreement. Asked during his Senate confirmation hearing whether the US should maintain its commitments in the deal, the former Exxon Mobil chief executive said the deal allows the country to influence the necessary “global response” to climate change. “It’s important that the United States maintain its seat at the table with the conversations around how to deal with the threats of climate change,” he said. Protesters interrupted the proceedings at least three times by holding up signs with the words “Reject Rexx” written in the same font as Exxon Mobil’s logo and shouting “oil is dead”. Later in the hearing, Tillerson vowed to have a “fulsome review” of all climate policies around the world, including US payments to the UN’s Green Climate Fund. The Washington Post notes that Tillerson said while he thinks the risk of climate change “does exist”, he added that “our ability to predict [hom much human-caused greenhouse gases are effecting the climate] is very limited”. InsideClimateNews’s liveblog of the hearing has picked out all the references to climate change. Climate Central has also published a summary of the climate remarks. Science has started a tracker which aims to monitor any time that science, especially related to climate change, gets mentioned during any of the Senate confirmation hearings.

Scientists have discovered the world’s largest tropical peatland in the remote Congo swamps, estimated to store the equivalent of three year’s worth of the world’s total fossil fuel emissions. Researchers mapped the Cuvette Centrale peatlands in the central Congo basin and found they cover 145,500 sq km – an area larger than England. The swamps could lock in 30bn tonnes of carbon that was previously not known to exist, making the region one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth. ReutersReuters says the British and Congolese teams made the discovery in 2014 but writing up the findings for Nature they say development in the peatland would the stored gas. “Peatlands are only a resource in the fight against climate change when left intact, and so maintaining large stores of carbon in undisturbed peatlands should be a priority,” says Prof Simon Lewis from Leeds University, who is one of the authors. The New York Times says that fieldwork revealed that the peat was up to 20 feet deep, which combined with satellite data, allowed the research to calculate the amount of stored carbon. The Washington Post also covers the study. Meanwhile, in the Conversation, two of the authors explain how they gathered the data on the ground in the Congo Basin.

Plans for a £1.3bn tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay will be backed in a government-funded review on Thursday, reports the BBC. Charles Hendry, the former energy minister, will publish his report into the viability of the renewable energy technology later. The UK government still needs to agree on a deal and a marine licence would also need to be approved. Hendry has been gathering evidence for nearly a year for his independent inquiry. “If you look at the cost spread out over the entire lifetime – 120 years for the project – it comes out at about 30p per household for the next 30 years,” he told BBC News. Roger Harrabin, the BBC environment analyst, says there are two big questions over lagoons: “will they harm wildlife and can they be built cheaply enough?”

The Green Investment Bank sell-off should be paused to ensure its environmental credentials are not damaged by the privatisation, MPs have urged. The Telegraph reports that politicians from both sides of the House urged Theresa May’s government to rethink the sale of the GIB, which has invested £2.7bn in projects including street lights and windfarms since its creation as a public sector body in 2012. Reports have said that Australian bank Macquarie, the preferred bidder, was considering selling on some of the GIB’s assets. Alex Brummer, the Daily Mail’s City commentator, also use his column to say the GIB sale to Macquarie should “be stopped”.

Ahead of next week’s annual meeting in Davos, the World Economic Forum has published its annual “global risks” report, which it puts together after interviewing 700 experts across a range of sectors. After “rising income and wealth disparity”, climate change was considered the second most important underlying trend. “Urgent action is needed…to overcome political or ideological differences and work together to solve critical challenges,” said Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, head of global competitiveness and risks at the WEF. “The momentum of 2016 towards addressing climate change shows this is possible and offers hope that collective action at the international level aimed at resetting other risks could also be achieved.” The Times is among the other publications covering the report.

Almost three-quarters of Japan’s biggest coral reef has died, according to a report that blames its demise on rising sea temperatures caused by global warming. The Japanese environment ministry said that 70% of the Sekisei lagoon in Okinawa had been killed by a phenomenon known as bleaching. The plight of the reef, located in Japan’s southernmost reaches, has become “extremely serious” in recent years, according to the ministry, whose survey of 35 locations in the lagoon found that 70.1% percent of the coral had died.

Revkin looks at the issue known as the “social cost of carbon”. He says: “There’s probably no more consequential and contentious a target for the incoming administration than [this] arcane metric. This value is the government’s best estimate of how much society gains over the long haul by cutting each ton of the heat-trapping carbon-dioxide emissions scientists have linked to global warming.” Revkin examines the subject just as the US National Academy of Sciences publishes an assessment of the way the SCC is calculated by scientists.

Peatlands are carbon-rich ecosystems that cover just three percent of Earth’s land surface, but store one-third of soil carbon. From field measurements in one of the world’s most extensive regions of swamp forest – the Cuvette Centrale depression in the central Congo Basin – researchers have identified a tropical peatland store of around 30bn tonnes. This amount of carbon is similar to the above-ground carbon stocks of the tropical forests of the entire Congo Basin, the researchers say. The result for the Cuvette Centrale increases the best estimate of global tropical peatland carbon stocks by 36%.

All regions of mainland US are expected to reach 2C above pre-industrial levels about 10-20 years before the global average, a new study suggests. Using a collection of climate models, researchers estimate the timing and magnitude of regional temperature and rainfall changes across the contiguous US for global warming of 1.5C and 2C. The fastest warming region in the US is the Northeast, the researchers find, which is projected to warm by 3C when global average warming reaches 2C.

The Amazon was substantially drier during the last glacial period, although the rainforest persisted survived this time, a new study says. Analysing “speleothems” – cave formations such as stalagmites and stalactites – from Paraíso Cave in eastern Amazonia, researchers constructed a rainfall record for the Amazon for the past 45,000 years. Relative to modern levels, rainfall in the region was about 58% during the Last Glacial Maximum (around 21,000 years ago), the study finds, and 142% during a warmer period known as the mid-Holocene epoch (about 6,000 years ago). There is also a News & Views article that accompanies the paper.