President-elect Donald Trump could use a legal short-cut to extricate the US from the commitments under the Paris Agreement within a year, according to lawyers. Quitting the agreement itself would take four years but he may choose to pull out of the parent treaty, the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, with just a year’s notice. Such an approach would strain relations domestically and abroad. Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists tells Reuters, “It would be going nuclear. It would signal that the United States has no interest in cooperating with other nations on climate change.” Trump’s election is likely to halt US action on tackling emissions and may open the door for China to take a leadership role, says a separate Reuters report. If Trump reneges on the US’s emissions pledge, it makes it much less likely that the world will meet its climate goals and essentially “ensures we will head into the danger zone”, Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, told The New York Times. Former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told Climate Wire that pulling out of the Paris Agreement would be “hugely damaging for our longer-range credibility” but warned against jumping to conclusions about what Trump might mean for Paris. Meanwhile, delegates at the COP22 climate talks in Marrakech are continuing unperturbed with the job in hand, says Climate Home. Despite the election casting a shadow over proceedings, the feeling is that the international community remains strongly committed to fighting climate change with or without Trump’s cooperation, says Scientific American. UN climate chief and former Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, is expected to speak to press today.

Speculation is rife about what Donald Trump’s victory means for the US’s climate and energy policy, and the ripple effects further afield. If Donald Trump makes good on his campaign promises, Obama’s legacy of establishing the United States as a global leader in climate policy would unravel quickly, say the New York Times. Trump’s election “muddies the outlook” for efforts to cut greenhouse gases and could mean U.S. emissions stay flat until 2030, says Reuters. The Telegraph says Trump’s presidency is likely to herald a seismic shift in US domestic energy policy, pushing the shale gas revolution further and putting the Keystone XL oil pipeline back on the table. Harold Hamm, the president-elect’s top adviser on energy, told the Financial Times rolling back the Obama administration’s regulations on the oil and gas industry will be a priority. Trump’s election has thrown an apparent lifeline to beleaguered coal producers but he may not be able to do much to revive the fortunes of the industry, says Reuters. The Hill is reporting that former vice president and longtime environmental activist Al Gore is keen to do “everything I can” to work with Trump to combat climate change. Good luck with that, says The Washington Post. Energydesk runs through the “fossil fuel superfans” tipped to take key climate and energy roles in the new Trump administration.

The Pacific weather phenomenon known as La Niña has officially arrived, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday. But unlike the El Niño that preceded it, this climate event is expected to be weak and short-lived, with a 55% chance of persisting through the winter. La Niña will likely raise temperatures and reduce rainfall in the southern United States and do the opposite across the northern part of the country, reports Reuters. just days after it was revealed that August tied July as the hottest month ever recorded, keeping up an alarming trend that has seen eleven consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures.

Oil prices fell yesterday after the International Energy Agency warned that the market will remain heavily oversupplied next year if Opec fails to agree on a co-ordinated output cut this month. The protracted oil slump is beginning to expose Saudi Arabia’s economic fragility, says The Financial Times, while Iran is reaping the rewards of the lifting of sanctions against its oil industry. Saudi Arabia has admiited it owes billions of dollars to private firms and foreign workers after oil revenues collapsed, reports The Guardian. Reuters and The Financial Times have more on the story.

The Scottish Government expects to make a decision on whether to allow fracking in 2017, according to Scottish Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse. He has told MSPs the government will launch a consultation on the extraction of shale gas in January, before any decision is made. The government has also published the result of six independent research projects covering issues related to the technique such as public health, economic and climate change impacts, seismic activity, decommissioning, site restoration and aftercare. Wheelhouse said the research will “ensure the public has access to a comprehensive evidence base on the potential health, economic and environment impacts” ahead of public consultation in the early New Year.

Anyone who voted for Trump shares the responsibility for the climate damages resulting from his presidency, writes Prof John Abraham: “The one thing that isn’t transient is the impact this will have on climate change. It is now virtually certain the world will not meet any of its climate targets. If Trump (and the Republican-controlled Congress) stand by their pledges, we will see a major rollback of the tremendous progress that has been made on reducing emissions. A Trump presidency will likely set us back at least a decade, perhaps longer. And that is a decade we can’t afford.”

Of all the potential actions in Donald Trump’s forthcoming presidency, none will have more long-lasting effects than those on climate change, write leading climate scientist Prof Michael Mann in an article co-authored with Susan Joy Hassol: “First, climate change is not like other issues that can be postponed from one year to the next. The U.S. and world are already behind; speed is of the essence…Second, because emissions anywhere result in climate change everywhere, we are part of a community of nations that must work together to tackle this global problem.” Thirdly, they write, the clean energy revolution is well underway and leading the world in clean energy research would bring the economic growth, job creation, improved infrastructure and international respect that Trump says he wants for the nation.

Of 94 processes underpinning a healthy functioning ecosystem, 82% are negatively impacted by climate change, according to a new review paper. The study examines the full range of climate change effects of global biodiversity that have been observed, from the gene right up to the whole ecosystem. Impacts include altered tolerance to high temperatures, shifts in sex ratios, increased metabolic costs and changes in the phenology, abundance, and distribution of species. The many impacts point toward an increasingly unpredictable future for humans, say the authors.