A rapid shift under way in the Barents Sea could spread to other Arctic regions, scientists attending a conference in Norway have warned. The Barents Sea is said to be at a “tipping point”, BBC News explains, changing from an Arctic climate to an Atlantic climate as the water warms. The Arctic Ocean has a surface layer of freshwater “which acts as a cap” on a layer of warmer, saltier water below. “But now in the Barents Sea there’s not enough freshwater-rich sea ice flowing from the high Arctic to maintain the freshwater cap,” BBC News reports.

A new study warns that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, Earth’s vegetation may not be able to keep up. “Once plants and soil hit the maximum carbon uptake they can handle, warming could rapidly accelerate”, MailOnline writes. The study from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science investigates how changes in soil moisture affect its capability to act as a “carbon sink”. Currently, “plants and soil around the world absorb roughly a quarter of the greenhouse gases that humans release”, the New York Times explains. But “when the soil is dry, plants are stressed and can’t absorb as much CO2 to perform photosynthesis”. And with warmer conditions microorganisms in the soil become more productive and “release more CO2”. The researchers found that although “plants and soil could absorb more CO2 during the wetter years, it did not make up for their reduced ability to absorb CO2 in the years when soil was dry”. Carbon Brief has also covered the study.

Scientists have succeeded in cutting a 2km hole through the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to its base using a hot-water drill, BBC News reports. The team then collected sediment from the bottom of the hole and “deployed a series of instruments”. The researchers from the British Antarctic Survey hope that the data collected can help them determine how fast Antarctica might lose its ice in a warming world. Dr Andy Smith, who led the team, commented: “There are gaps in our knowledge of what’s happening in West Antarctica and by studying the area where the ice sits on soft sediment, we can understand better how this region may change in the future and contribute to global sea-level rise.”

2019 will see the retirement of nearly 6GW of coal power in the US, while 49GW of new power generation capacity will be added to the grid, according to the latest figures from S&P Global Market Intelligence, which is highlighted by CleanTechnica. In a related story, E&E News reports that a group of US utilities and other power producers say they may have to shut down their coal-fired power plants if a court rolls back a Trump administration extension to the deadline for closing some coal ash dumps. Their filing to the US Court of Appeals follows a legal challenge brought by environmental groups to the administration’s changes last July to the Obama-era regulations governing coal ash disposal, the article explains.

In other coal news, the Australian Financial Review reports that Jeremy Grantham, the “legendary British hedge fund manager” who founded GMO, has said that thermal coal is “dead meat”. Bloomberg investigates how a “loophole” lets Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund boost its coal exposure. Meanwhile, Forbes says that China’s “coal reliance is not falling nearly as fast as some like to claim”. Chinese coal demand “hasn’t been falling in the absolute sense”, the piece argues, continuing: “China approved nearly $6.7bn worth of new coal mining projects in 2018, and production increased 5.2% to 3.55bn tonnes”.

Companies that perform well on a range of climate change measures also outperform on the stock market, finds new research by CDP, formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project, which is picked up in the Independent. CDP ranked around 6,800 companies on measures they have taken across three categories: climate change, water security and forests. Microsoft and Danone were among the top-scoring firms for climate change. Dexter Galvin, global director at CDP, says that the research “demonstrates that the leadership on environmental issues…goes hand in hand with being a successful and profitable business”.

“The struggle for environmental sustainability and social justice go hand in hand” says Brune Poirson, France’s secretary of state to the minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, in an op-ed for the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. The “gilet jaunes” (yellow vest) protests “are symptomatic of this fundamental connection”, she writes. So this is why “France has taken on a great ambition: to view the Paris Agreement on climate change as the foundation for a new social contract – a social project that can provide people with a decent standard of living through the ‘ecological transition’ towards sustainable development.”

Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, have written a join op-ed in the Washington Post criticising this year’s World Economic Forum for not prioritising climate change. They write: “it is just one issue among many on the agenda at this year’s World Economic Forum. It should be the number one priority and should sit at the centre of every conversation in Davos.” The commentary continues: “Climate change action has never been so urgent, as we are quickly approaching tipping points of no return.” They go on to discuss why “global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise” and the dangers of air pollution.

“Instead of calling for humans to stop eating meat, we need to focus on what they have done to unbalance the methane cycle” argues Tony Lovell, who “manages land and livestock to regenerate ecosystems”, in an opinion piece for the Guardian. “Bacteria that ‘eat’ methane live in healthy, properly managed soils beneath the feet of healthy, properly managed livestock”, Lovell writes. The piece continues: “These methane-eating bacteria (methanotrophs) act as a balance to the methane produced by the methane generating bacteria (methanogens) in the rumens of the livestock above ground. This is the missing part of the natural methane cycle that we need to restore.”

A recent heatwave in New Zealand “provides a good analogue for possible mean conditions in the late 21st century”, a new study says. The 2017-18 austral summer heatwave in New Zealand covered an area of 4m square kilometres, with average land surface temperatures of 2.2C above the long-term mean, and sea surface temperatures as much as 3.7C warmer. The heatwave caused the loss of almost four cubic kilometres of glacier ice in the Southern Alps, the study says, as well as very early wine-grape maturation in Marlborough and major species disruption in marine ecosystems. With rising global temperatures, this extreme summer “may be typical of average New Zealand summer climate for 2081-2100, under the RCP4.5 or RCP6.0 scenario”, the researchers conclude.

A new study assesses storm perceptions of members of the public evacuated during Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in Florida in September 2017. The researchers asked 155 evacuees to rank their concern about potential damage to their homes by six different hurricane hazards. The results show a significantly greater concern for wind and storm size, compared to tornadoes, flooding, storm surges and falling trees. The evacuees also tended to overestimate the maximum wind speed of the hurricane once it made landfall. The authors conclude: “Communication of wind speed risk in forecasts should possibly be modified by placing greater emphasis on post-landfall impacts, wind speed decay after landfall, and wind speeds that cause damage to different types of residences.”

While warmer conditions may allow “double cropping” to expand in northern China, less than 20% of the region is likely to receive enough rainfall to support it, new research suggests. The authors assess whether rainfall would be sufficient to meet crop water demand in potential new areas for double-cropping – where two crops are grown on the same piece of land during the same growing season. Irrigation could help make double-cropping feasible, the study finds, with the annual output per unit of arable land potentially increasing by 12–86% under different irrigation scenarios. “In the future, it will be necessary to develop multiple cropping practices that include innovative water-saving techniques and breeding technologies,” the authors conclude.