Atmospheric CO2 is usually at its minimum this time of the year, but the monthly value failed to drop below 400 parts per million.

Climate change is typically occurring 5,000 times faster than the estimated speed at which grasses could adapt, find new research published in Biology Letters. Looking ahead to 2070, the study found that grasses including staple foods such as wheat and rice – that provide half of all the calories consumed by humans – could be rapidly threatened. Moving to more favourable locations was not an option for many species because of limits to their seed dispersal and obstacles such as mountains or human settlements. “Grasses are an important food source for humans (especially rice, wheat and corn). Evolutionary adaptation seems particularly unlikely for domesticated species … and even local declines may be devastating for some human populations”, said lead author Dr John Wiens, from the University of Arizona. New Scientist also covers the story.

The carefully choreographed arrival of Ineos’ first shipment of shale gas from the US to the UK, with a welcome party including a Scottish bagpiper, was scuppered after it was too windy to dock in Grangemouth. The planned arrival was the culmination of a $2bn (£1.5bn) investment designed to make the Grangemouth plant profitable again, as well as a platform to lobby for Britain to launch its own fracking revolution, the Guardian reports. The weather is unlikely to be a major setback, however, and the cargo could arrives as soon as Wednesday, according to the Telegraph.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence are on different pages about whether climate change is human-caused, CNN reports. Only an hour after Trump’s campaign manager said that Trump does not believe that climate change is caused by humans Mike Pence took the opposite view during a CNN interview: “Well, look, there’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate”.

Flatulent cattle are helping drive climate change by producing ever larger quantities of methane, finds a study from Royal Holloway University. Levels of the greenhouse gas have been growing since 2007 and in 2014 were almost double that of previous years. This growth is being accelerated by natural sources such as cattle, swamp gas and paddy fields, the study found. “Our results go against conventional thinking that the recent increase in atmospheric methane must be caused by increased emissions from natural gas, oil and coal. Our analysis of methane’s isotopic composition clearly points to increased emissions from microbial sources, like wetlands or agriculture”, said lead author Professor Euan Nisbet.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the “centrepiece” of his climate change strategy, faced a key test in court yesterday as judges questioned whether his administration overstepped its legal authority under an air pollution law to make sweeping changes to US energy. 27 states and industry groups are challenging the EPA’s plan before ten judges in the US Court of Appeals. Six of the judges are Democratic appointees, so “the challengers could face an uphill battle”, Reuters notes.

An editorial in the Times laments the “impossibly bureaucratic” planning process for fracking in the UK. It looks to the US shale gas revolution that “has transformed the US energy market” as an example of what Britain could achieve, concluding that: “The government should clear up this parochial mess and give every support to exploiting British shale gas”.

The notion that we can open any new fossil fuel reserves “without scuppering the Paris commitments is simply untenable”, writes George Monbiot in the Guardian, citing a new report from Oil Change International. The only means of reconciling the two is by carbon capture and storage but, he notes, “it has not been proved at scale, and appears to be going nowhere”. And beliefs that we can overshoot thew climate targets and then later suck CO2 out of the air “would be no less realistic if they involved sorcery”. Monbiot continues: “There is only one form of carbon capture and storage that is scientifically proven, and which can be deployed immediately: leaving fossil fuels in the ground.”

Human-caused climate change is likely to outpace the adaptation capacity of important grass species such as wheat, corn and rice, a new study suggests. Researchers compared how 236 grass species have been able to keep up with past changes in climate with projections of climate change out to 2070. The results show that climate change is consistently faster than rates of change in grasses – typically more than 5,000 times faster. “Although these results do not show directly what will happen under global warming, they have troubling implications for a major biome and for human food resources,” the researchers conclude.

A new review paper analyses recent changes in the climate of Antarctica and its surroundings. The impact of human-caused emissions on the region is currently outweighed by the interannual and decadal fluctuations of natural variability, the authors find. Statistically significant linear trends – such as overall cooling of sea surface temperatures, increasing sea ice extent and strong surface air warming over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Antarctic Peninsula – during the 36-year long satellite record are “not unusual” when compared to palaeoclimate data for the last two centuries, the researchers conclude.