The first meeting between President Donald Trump and his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, went off Monday with a “conspicuous omission” when the two leaders made no mention of climate change and just a passing reference to energy in their public remarks, reports Inside Climate News. The absence of any mention of climate change in the public statements on Monday spoke volumes, said Manish Bapna, executive vice president of the World Resources Institute. “The omission signifies discord, not apathy, on climate, and lies in stark contrast to the productive U.S.-India talks of recent years,” he said.

The seas are rising, and the rate of sea level rise is increasing as time passes, a new study published in Nature Climate Change confirms. The study found that what was a 2.2 millimeter per year rise in 1993 was a 3.3 millimeter rise in 2014, based on estimates of the mass changes of a number of key components of sea level rise, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Study co-author Christopher Harig said for coastal communities, the significance of the paper is that there’s no way to avoid the reality that sea level rise acceleration is now here. “It’s no longer a projection, it’s now an observation,” he said. “It’s not something that they can continue to put off into the future.” A Reuters article notes that while previously scientists have found it hard to detect whether the rate of sea level rise has picked up, is flat or has fallen since 1990, the study found that early satellite data had masked the recent acceleration by exaggerating the rate of sea level rise in the 1990s. The study was also covered in the MailOnline and YaleEnvironment360, while the authors explain their research in a Conversation article. Meanwhile the Guardian covers a separate article published in the journal Climate Dynamics looking at the distribution of the rapid increase of heat in Earth’s ocean basins.

The French developer of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant has admitted its cost and timetable are subject to a “full review”, the Times reports, following reports that the company expects the project to be years late and billions of pounds over budget. The French energy company has promised to deliver power from the £18 billion project in Somerset by the end of 2025 but an article in Le Monde over the weekend that this was no longer seen as realistic by insiders, who said it would start up in 2027. The delays could increase the cost of the project by up to €3 billion, Le Monde said. Reuters and the Telegraph also cover the news. Seperately, BusinessGreen reports new warnings from the Nuclear Industry Association that the government’s Nuclear Safeguards Bill will not deliver like-for-like replacement of EU-body Euratom. Meanwhile in a blog post for the ECIU, former Conservative MP Tim Yeo, now chair of New Nuclear Watch Europe, yesterday warned that Brexit could have “potentially devastating” implications for the UK’s energy security.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is worth AU$56 billion (£33 billion) and as an ecosystem and economic driver is “too big to fail”, a new report commissioned by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation has found. The assessment, carried out by Deloitte Access Economics and based on six months of analysis, is the first to calculate the economic and social value of the World Heritage-listed reef. The study concluded the reef supports so many jobs that it must not be allowed to die, with 64,000 jobs in tourism alone and about 500,000 people visitors every year, the Times reports. “At $56 billion, the reef is valued at more than 12 Sydney Opera Houses,” Steve Sargent, director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, said. “The Great Barrier Reef, as an ecosystem, as an economic driver, as a global treasure, is too big to fail.” The study may help determine how much government money is committed to protect it, the Times adds. The study comes as the reef suffers an unprecedented second straight year of coral bleaching due to warming sea temperatures linked to climate change, the Daily Mail notes. The Express, TEXT, the Washington Post, CNN and CNBC also cover the study.

Increasingly vulnerable “chokepoints” due to climate change are threatening the security of the global food supply, according to a new report from think tank Chatham House. The report identifies 14 critical locations increasingly at risk from climate change. Almost all of these “chokepoints”, which include the Suez canal, Black Sea ports and Brazil’s road network, are already hit by frequent disruptions, the paper says, despite being places where exceptional amounts of the global food trade pass. “We are talking about a huge share of global supply that could be delayed or stopped for a significant period of time,” said Laura Wellesley, an author of the report. “What is concerning is that, with climate change, we are very likely to see one or more of these chokepoint disruptions coincide with a harvest failure, and that’s when things start to get serious.” Reuters, the Independent` and the Financial Times also covered the new report.

While contractors started pouring concrete for the Hinkley Point C power station three months ago, they could be still at it in ten years’ time, according to a Times editorial. “By then, there is a chance that the economics of energy will have suffered a surprise upheaval making nuclear power genuinely affordable, but that chance is slim to vanishing.” Greg Clark, the energy secretary department set four tests that the deal agreed last year was supposed to meet, the article says: to give investors a fair return, be cost-competitive with other options, reduce the overall cost of the nation’s power system and be affordable for consumers. “Hinkley Point C passes the first test but manifestly fails the last three. The government must adapt faster to an energy environment that has changed beyond recognition since this misbegotten project was first mooted.”

A record number of investors are pressuring fossil-fuel companies to reveal how climate change could hit their bottom lines, according to Axios, which cites a new analysis by nonprofit group Ceres not yet published publicly. The report found efforts by shareholders to push resolutions on the risk related to carbon regulations are reaching a tipping point, with almost half of investors in fossil-fuel and utility companies backing resolutions. Meanwhile a separate comment article in CNBC warns of the importance of getting climate related risk disclosure guidelines for firms “right the first time” – or risk misleading disclosures and confusion.

Perhaps no president in recent times has unified the country, and the globe, as effectively as Donald Trump, writes 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone urging for local politicians to be serious enough to pass the climate test. “In the hours following his rejection of the Paris climate accord, pretty much everyone who didn’t actually work in a coal mine joined in the condemnation….[But] just as physics is unlikely to be intimidated by Trump’s bluster, it won’t pay any heed to meaningless pledges by politicians. Physics cares about how much carbon is in the atmosphere. The time for encouraging messages of support for the climate is over – we need action.” McKibben sets out three “simple criteria” to gauge serious and immediate commitment to action from politicians: a commitment to converting to 100 percent renewable energy; that they will work to keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground; and that they “understand natural gas could be the most dangerous fuel of all”.

In a paper just published in Nature Climate Change, researchers compared bottom-up assessments of the various factors contributing to sea level rise to satellite observations of global sea level. They found acceleration both in the contributions and in the satellite observations during the past 30 years. Back in 1993 about 50% of the increase in sea level was due to melting ice, with the remainder due to thermal expansion as oceans warmed. Today about 70% is coming from melting ice, with the largest portion coming from Greenland, which alone accounts for 25% of total sea level rise. The authors suggest that acceleration of sea level rise will continue as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations increase.

Melting permafrost has long been considered one of the most dangerous potential feedbacks from climate change, with soils potentially releasing large amounts of CH4, a highly potent greenhouse gas, as they melt. New research examining CH4 emissions from melting permafrost has found that the majority of emissions came from recently deposited vegetation rather than deeper frozen layers. They suggest that changes in surface wetness and wetland area rather than thawing of previously frozen soil will drive CH4 releases, and that the magnitude of future CH4 emissions from melting permafrost may be lower than previously feared. Melting permafrost may still provide an important slower feedback in the form of CO2 emissions, however.