President Trump has imposed tariffs of 30% on imported solar cells and modules in what the Hill describes as a move to protect US industry while signalling a more aggressive stance towards China. However, it adds that the move could be considered by some as a “major blow” to the $28 billion solar industry, which imports around 80% of its solar panel products. The Solar Energy Industries Association told the Hill that the tariffs would increase prices and lead to the loss of 23,000 jobs. “While tariffs in this case will not create adequate cell or module manufacturing to meet U.S. demand, or keep foreign-owned Suniva and SolarWorld afloat, they will create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving, which will ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs,” Abigail Ross Hopper, the group’s president, said in a statement. The tariffs only apply to silicon solar technology and also exempts the first 2.5 gigawatts of imports, notes Bloomberg, which adds that the tariff rate is to fall to 15% over four years. Because solar modules only make up a fraction of the total cost of solar systems, the move will only add around 10% to utility-scale schemes, Bloomberg reports, under a headline calling the decision: “The biggest blow to renewables yet.” Meanwhile, Vox reports that the new tariff could bolster manufacturers while harming installers. The Financial Times reports that the tariffs are the first signed off directly by Mr Trump since becoming president. “The president’s action makes clear again that the Trump administration will always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses,” said Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative. Think Progress also has the story.

Canadian climate science is at “crisis” point after the country’s government failed to renew its only national programme dedicated to climate and atmospheric research, hundreds of scientists have warned. In a letter to prime minister Justin Trudeau, more than 250 scientists from 22 countries highlighted their concern over the imminent end of the C$35m Climate Change and Atmospheric Research programme. The programme was launched in 2012 and has funded research projects looking into issues such as the impact of aerosols, changing sea ice and snow cover and temperature change in the high Arctic. The government’s move came as a surprise to many scientists, said Dan Weaver of Evidence For Democracy, the research advocacy group who published the letter on Monday. “The government has taken great effort to engage with policies around climate and climate education, green energy and a lot of these great things,” he said. “But somehow along the way, the support for the atmospheric science – the underlying science of the issue – has been overlooked.” Meanwhile, a recent poll found that 34% of Canadians think reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be a “guiding principle” in developing natural resources, Toronto Star reports.

Spraying aerosols into the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect more sunlight away from the planet could be one way of tackling climate change, some scientists have said. But if this type of solar geoengineering was introduced – and then suddenly halted – it could pose a large threat to wildlife, a new study finds. This is because the rapid termination of solar geoengineering could cause global temperatures to rapidly rise again, leaving many species unable to cope with sharp change in conditions. “If geoengineering ever stopped abruptly, it would be devastating. So you would have to be sure that it could be stopped gradually, and it is easy to think of scenarios that would prevent that,” said co-author Alan Robock of Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Those scenarios could include war, a terrorist attack on facilities that carry out the spraying or political changes of heart, the study suggests. Wired, MIT Technology Review and Press Association also have the story. Carbon Brief also covers the new research. MailOnline also covers the story, but with some inaccuracies in its headline.

Government policies could threaten the future growth of wind power, the industry has warned. Though a record amount of onshore wind power was built in the UK last year, a government ban on onshore windfarms competing for subsidies could threaten the sector’s future, according to RenewableUK. The trade body expects new capacity installation to fall to 0.94GW this year and 0.37GW next year. Emma Pinchbeck, its executive director, said: “Investment made since 2015 has delivered record new capacity and made onshore wind the cheapest form of power.”

The widespread use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) could create large environmental problems, a study shows. BECCS is a term used to describe a group of early-stage technologies that aim to create energy from burning trees or other plants while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide and storing it below ground. Many scientists hope that, once developed, BECCS could be used on a wide scale to create energy while reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, the new study suggests that deploying BECCS on the scale needed to address climate change would use up large amounts of water, fertiliser and land. “We could achieve substantial amounts of bioenergy potentials, but this would really come at the cost of extensive environmental damage in many other dimensions,” lead author Dr Vera Heck told the Post. Carbon Brief also covers the new research.

In the future, drivers of electric cars should be encouraged to charge up their vehicles at off-peak times to help the UK’s grid cope with the additional power demand, a report says. The report from Aurora Energy Research also finds that the number of electric cars in the UK will grow from around 120,000 today to 10m by 2035 and pass the 17m mark five years later. If millions of drivers return home from work and charge their cars immediately during the peak hours of 4 to 6pm, it could add around 3GW, the equivalent capacity of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, to peak power demand, the report claims. The report said the alternative to that “dumb” scenario is “smart” charging, where car owners are incentivised to use cheaper tariffs at off-peak times.

More must be done to protect Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, argues The Times in its leading editorial. “It was born in the Miocene epoch, some 20 million years ago, but the risks have emerged in, by the standards of geological time, the blink of an eye,” the article reads. “It is threatened by climate change; higher water temperatures kill the algae that live within the vividly coloured coral and cause it to become bleached and sterile.” The call comes after Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister, announced a rescue plan amounting to A$60 million (£34.6 million), including funds for research into how to save the reef. “Research alone will not be enough to save the reef,” the article says. “If the reef is to be rescued it will take decisive and co-ordinated action by Australia’s government, supported by all the ingenuity the global scientific community can muster.”

A switch to electric cars could be key to helping the US reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, argues Dana Nuccitelli in The Guardian. US climate policies were recently labelled “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker, an independent research organisation. “In 2020, the next American president will have to make up the lost ground and come up with a plan to rapidly accelerate the country’s transition away from fossil fuels,” says Nuccitelli. “Currently, transportation and power generation each account for about 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions, so those sectors represent the prime targets for pollution cuts.”

The retreat of mountain glaciers around the world means that many downstream populations have already seen “peak water”, a new study suggests. The researchers projected global glacier runoff changes for 56 large-scale glaciated drainage basins around the world (excluding Greenland and Antarctica) out to 2100. The results show that 45% of the basins – typically those with smaller glaciers – have already passed maximum annual runoff (“peak water”) after which runoff steadily declines.

The American lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases, a new study says, but conservation efforts aimed at protecting larger lobsters “can dampen the negative impacts of warming”. Researchers developed a population dynamics model to study the effects of climate and management strategies on populations of American lobster in two fisheries. In the Gulf of Maine, conservation measures have allowed the fishery to flourish in warmer temperatures, resulting in record landings. In contrast, in the warmer southern New England region, “the absence of similar conservation efforts precipitated warming-induced recruitment failure that led to the collapse of the fishery,” the researchers say.

At current emission rates, the warming limits of 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels could be reached in 17-18 years and 35-41 years, respectively, new research says. The study aims to reduce uncertainty in projections by using an ensemble of 30,000 model runs that closely match observations for nine key climate metrics, such as warming and ocean heat content. From these runs, the researchers make new estimates for the 1.5C and 2C carbon budgets as of the start of 2017. Their results suggest that “there is a limited window to develop a more carbon-efficient future,” the authors conclude.