The world invested more in solar power than coal, gas and nuclear combined last year, a UN report finds. China was by far the world’s largest investor in renewable energy in 2017, accounting for nearly half of the new infrastructure commissioned, according to the report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The report also shows that solar power accounted for more than a third of all electricity generated from energy sources that came online in 2017, a larger share than any other new source, the New York Times reports. On top of this, solar power is becoming more affordable, the report shows, with the cost of electricity from large-scale solar projects dropping 72% in the last nine years. However, fossil fuels still dominate existing capacity, Reuters reports. Solar, wind, biomass and other renewables generated 12.1% of world electricity in 2017, up from 5.2% a decade earlier, the report shows. The findings were also covered by New Scientist, The Conversation and Carbon Brief.

The global shipping industry should aim to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Norway’s government has said ahead of talks to be held by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London next week. The IMO, which claims international shipping accounts for 2.2% of global CO2 emissions, will meet from April 9-13 to develop a plan for tackling climate change. Norway’s fleet is worth around $45bn, the fifth most valuable globally behind Japan, Greece, China and the United States.

Representatives from the Trump administration and the State of California, who have been taking part in behind-the-scenes talks on car emissions standards, are expected to reopen talks, the New York Times reports. The renewed dialogue could preserve rules targeted by the Environmental Protection Agency for elimination, sources have said. The EPA administrator Scott Pruitt this week announced plans to start rolling back federal standards, which are aimed at cutting tailpipe CO2 emissions. The news comes as Pruitt faces calls to resign following news that he rented a condo at a below-market rate from a lobbyist whose husband’s lobbying firm represents energy industry clients. The New York Times has published a detailed account of EPA officials that have allegedly been reassigned or demoted after questioning Pruitt’s management and spending habits. On Thursday, a White House spokesperson told Fox News that he could not “speak to the future of Scott Pruitt”.

BP’s plan to drill in the Great Australian Bight would have left 750km of coastline at risk of contamination from an oil spill, newly released documents show. Government documents released under freedom of information laws show that, according to BP’s own modelling, drilling could have also disrupted the migration of the endangered southern right whale. BP withdrew its plans to drill in October 2016, citing better options for investment. The story also appears in the Guardian.

The impact of human activity on the north and south pole is a clear concern, but the retreat of Antarctic ice proves particularly worrisome, reads an editorial in the Guardian, citing new research published in Nature Geoscience on Monday. “Ice of the Arctic floats: if it melted nothing much would happen to aggregate sea levels,” the article reads. “The ice of Antarctica, like that of Greenland, rests on land. If it all were to melt, as it has done in the far distant past, sea levels could rise by as much as 60 metres.” Carbon Brief published a guest post from the lead author of the study this week.

“Only 35% of Republicans and 62% of independents realise humans are causing global warming,” writes environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli in the Guardian, citing an annual survey of public perception of climate change released last week by analytics company Gallup. “The Trump administration’s polarising stance on climate change is probably the main contributor to this decline in conservative acceptance of climate change realities,” he writes. “Nevertheless, public awareness about climate change realities has improved over the long-term.”

Using a collection of nine El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) reconstructed proxies and volcano eruption proxies for the past 1500 years, this study shows that a significant La Niña state emerges in the second year after large tropical volcanic eruptions. The reasons for the development of La Niña are investigated using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) climate model. They find that the eastward positioning of the western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone (WNPAC) in plays a critical role in the the strong intensification of cooling in the equatorial eastern Pacific. The volcanic effect cools the maritime continent more than its adjacent oceans, pushing convective anomalies eastward. This suppresses the development of warm Sea Surface Temperature over the central-western Pacific and causes the eastward positioning of the WNPAC.

This study analyzes extreme temperature and precipitation responses over the global land to five explosive tropical volcanic eruptions that have occurred since the 1880s, using the the CMIP5 climate models. A robust global decrease in extreme temperature is found, which is stronger than the range of natural variability. The cooling responses exhibit strong correlation with a decrease in surface humidity. Extreme and mean precipitation reductions are also observed during post-eruption years, especially in Northern and Southern Hemisphere summer monsoon regions. These model-based results are largely supported by an observational analysis for the three most recent volcanic eruptions. Their results show that temperature and precipitation extremes respond to volcanic eruptions, which provides an important implication for geoengineering based on solar radiation management.