After much speculation and expectation, president-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that Exxon Mobil boss Rex Tillerson will take the role of Secretary of state in his new government. The nomination still needs Senate approval, and there have been concerns over Tillerson’s relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. There are also the obvious environmental concerns associated with his appointment. The Telegraph says that Exxon “only recently publicly recognised the threat to the planet from fossil fuel emissions” but notes that Tillerson’s position on climate change “may actually be to the Left of Donald Trump”. The Financial Times looks at Tillerson’s friendship with Putin in light of Exxon’s business in Russia. The Guardian also notes some of the tensions in Tillerson’s attitude to climate change, noting that his company has been accused of denying the risks while also backing a carbon tax. In the Washington Post, Chris Mooney suggests that Tillerson may be “too rosy-eyed” about the magnitude of the climate change problem.

Donald Trump has also announced that the new energy secretary will be Rick Perry — a former governor of Texas who ran to be the Republican nominee in the 2012 presidential race, and also briefly against Trump in the most recent election. In his 2012 campaign, Perry vowed to abolish the Department of Energy should he be president (despite forgetting this in a famous TV gaffe). The Trump team sought to downplay this, with a spokesman saying that it is Trump’s “agenda that is being implemented, not somebody else’s”. The Washington Post says Perry is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and towards fossil fuels, “whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years”. InsideClimateNews points out that Texas also became a leading producer of wind energy during his tenure, although he denies the science of climate change. The Hill and Politico also cover the news.

US government scientists have released a report showing how the Arctic has shattered heat records over the past year with unusually warm air triggering massive melting of ice and snow. The Arctic Report Card 2016, which covers October 2015 to September 2016, is a peer-reviewed document by 61 scientists around the globe issued by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The report card this year clearly shows a stronger and more pronounced signal of persistent warming than any previous year in our observational record” going back to 1900, NOAA Arctic Research Program director Jeremy Mathis told the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, where the report was released. The news is widely covered by other publications, including the Washington Post, MailOnline, InsideClimateNews and Independent. Time magazine runs with the headline: “It’s hard to describe just how badly the Arctic Is doing.”

Following reports last week that Trump’s transition team had requested lists of anyone at the US Department of Energy who had worked on climate change, a spokesperson for the department has told the Washington Post that no individuals will be named. “We will be forthcoming with all publically-available information with the transition team,” said a spokesman. “We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.” Unions have also said they will fight such requests. The Hill also covers the story. Separately, the Washington Post runs another article under headline, “Scientists are frantically copying US climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump”.

James Painter of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism explains the findings of his new report looking at how “digital-born” players, such as Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Vice, have been covering climate change compared to legacy players: “We concluded that the three digital players were beneficial for public debate about climate change, as they had found new ways of covering the “old”, sometimes boring, often remote, theme of climate change. By thinking hard about what gets shared and liked on social media, they are helping to counter the “climate silence” and ensure that the issue remains interesting and relevant, particularly to younger audiences – something the legacy media would do well to take note of.”

At noon today, the Financial Stability Board will released a report on climate-related financial disclosures. The former mayor of New York and current governor of the Bank of England use the occasion to write in the Guardian that, if given the right information, investors will deliver the best climate solutions: “With better disclosure, a market in the transition to [a world below 2C] can be built. That market will expose the likely future cost of doing business, of paying for emissions, and of changing processes to avoid both those charges and tighter regulation. And it will help smooth price adjustments as opinions change, rather than concentrating them in a short, dangerous space of time. Of course, given the uncertainties around climate, not everyone will agree on the timing or scale of adjustments required to achieve this goal. But the right information will allow optimists and pessimists, sceptics and evangelists, to back their convictions with their capital.”

Lord Deben, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change, writes on the Green Alliance website, arguing that “when the revolution has actually occurred we can’t go on as if the ancien regime hasn’t fallen”. He adds: “We’ve just had two terrible examples of what happens when the obviously sensible is taken for granted and small groups of well-funded individuals are allowed to seize the agenda and destroy the consensus. Brexit and Trump only happened because the moderate, sane, and considered had fallen asleep on the job, ignoring the constant undermining by press and populist politicians of the standards and values of a liberal democracy…We must use non-expert language that makes sense to people Above all, it is finding the language to talk of these things in a way that appeals to the majority who aren’t expert and don’t want to become expert.”

Stores of carbon held deep in peatlands may be more stable under rising temperatures than previously thought, a new study suggests. Peatlands – rich, damp soils found mostly in the mid-to-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere – contain around a third of all the carbon stored in the world’s soils. Researchers tested how much carbon was released from peat soils when exposed to higher temperatures. While the top 20-30cm of peat did emit more carbon when warmed, the study also found that deep peat did not break down and start releasing carbon.