Multi-billion project to kickstart carbon capture

 From CNN

The US Department of Energy is announcing a massive investment in direct air carbon removal projects, in hopes of kickstarting an industry that energy experts say is critical to getting the country's planet-warming emissions under control.

Direct air carbon removal projects are like giant vacuum cleaners that suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it away. They use chemicals to remove the gas from the air and store it in rocks deep underground or put it to use in materials like concrete.

Nature can do this on its own -- forests, bogs and oceans all suck carbon out of the atmosphere -- but not nearly fast enough to keep pace with human fossil fuel emissions. Experts tell CNN these giant, carbon-removing machines are the next frontier to bring CO2 levels down.

The Department of Energy on Thursday is releasing a notice of intent for developers for four direct air capture hubs -- each capable of removing over a million tons of CO2 per year -- using $3.5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law. Removing 1 million tons of CO2 per year is equivalent to taking around 200,000 gas-powered cars off the road.

"The UN's latest climate report made clear that removing legacy carbon pollution from the air through direct air capture and safely storing it is an essential weapon in our fight against the climate crisis," Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. Granholm said the infrastructure law funding "will not only make our carbon-free future a reality but will help position the U.S. as a net-zero leader."

Department officials say the notice, which was shared first with CNN, is a crucial step in building this industry in the US.

"For us to get to millions of tons [removed from the air] per year through these demonstrations will be critical," said Jen Wilcox, principal deputy assistant secretary in DOE's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

President Joe Biden is targeting net-zero carbon emissions in the US by 2050, but experts say that isn't achievable by simply transitioning from fossil fuel energy to renewables -- the country must also actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere because of how much it has already emitted.

Direct air removal "is a suite of tech and strategies to get to this multi-gigaton carbon removal scale we need to get to in roughly 25-30 years," said John Larsen, a partner at the nonpartisan firm Rhodium Group.

The US needs to decarbonize and to dramatically scale up direct air removal, Larsen said, to the point that these machines can remove not millions but billions of tons of CO2 per year. A billion tons of CO2 removed in a year would be equivalent to taking over 215 million vehicles off the road.

Climeworks' direct air removal project in Iceland is the largest, according to the company, removing about 10 metric tons of CO2 every day -- about the same amount of carbon that 500 trees could remove in a year.

The US hubs envisioned by DOE will be much larger. Humans have not yet built a megaton-sized direct air removal system, Larsen said, and DOE's hubs are an important first step to both dramatically scale these projects up and to find out what works and what doesn't.

"What you're really building is an entire carbon removal industry," Larsen said. "The chances of getting to gigaton scale go down dramatically if we don't start this decade. It's way, way harder."

The momentum is growing quickly for direct air removal. Before 2018, the amount of money going to these projects in the US was miniscule -- about $11 million per year. The $3.5 billion Congress recently passed for carbon removal, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, is a significant increase in funding.

"There's a huge emphasis around carbon removal as a critical tool that needs to be scaled up today," Wilcox said. "We're definitely going to see the needle move in this space over the next 5-10 years."

DOE said it wants to see applications from different regions in the US that can demonstrate a high potential for carbon sequestration, can be scaled up even further and can create long-lasting jobs. It's also looking for applications from fossil fuel communities or communities with industrial capacity.

DOE officials are also aiming to create hubs that are themselves carbon neutral. For instance, the Iceland project runs on clean geothermal energy.

"Thinking about places where you're going to integrate these with other decarbonization efforts are really important," said Erin Burns, executive director of Carbon180, an organization focused on carbon removal. "We want to see these powered by zero-carbon energy, by renewables. It's essential for climate that this does not slow down or delay mitigation in any way."

Separately, DOE announced nearly $25 million for six new clean hydrogen projects in several states, including a new hydrogen production plant that captures 90 to 99% of its CO2 emissions, and new research on hydrogen fuels.

[I've talked about this before]

The Climeworks carbon dioxide removal site in Iceland.

Over two feet of rain fell in 12 hours

 Hands up those who still think climate change is not a problem.

From CNN

Extreme, climate-fueled rainfall broke records this week in a part of Italy known for its rain and an area in Oman not known for rain at all.

On Monday, a series of storms put on the parking brakes over northwestern Italy, unleashing rainfall rates never before seen in all of Europe after over 29 inches (742 mm) of rain fell in just 12 hours. In Oman, a rare tropical cyclone dumped years' worth of rainfall, bringing deadly floods to the desert landscape that rarely sees much rain in an entire year.

Italy's Genoa province, known for its natural beauty and rugged coastlines, became the epicenter for the most recent extreme rains.

A series of slow-moving storms stalled in the region Sunday into Monday, dumping over 36 inches (925 mm) of rain in the town of Rossiglione, about 60 miles (100 km) southwest of Milan.

For some context, 36 inches is roughly equivalent to the average rainfall one would expect in Seattle in a year. It would take London an average of 15 months to tally such rainfall. Dozens had to be rescued after reports of mudslides and flooding dotted the landscape, leading a bridge to collapse in the town of Quiliano.

Wet weather is not uncommon in this part of Italy, as the region averages over 50 inches (1,200 mm) of rain per year. However, the storm dropped nearly 30 inches (750 mm) in just 12 hours, setting a new European mark for the highest 12-hour rainfall on record, according to climatologist and extreme weather expert Maximiliano Herrera.

In the nearby town of Cairo Montenotte, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Rossiglione, weather records continued to fall by the wayside on Monday. A 6-hour deluge unlike any ever observed in Italy brought nearly 20 inches (500 mm) of rainfall, besting the national 6-hour record for all of Italy.

Just a few miles to the east, the mind-bending rainfall also inundated the nearby town of Vicomorasso, after over 7 inches (180 mm) fell in just one hour, according to FloodList, an organization that documents significant flood events from around the world.

By comparison, remnants of Hurricane Ida swamped Central Park in early September after a record of 3.15 inches fell in just 1-hour, breaking the previous 1-hour record set just 11 days earlier when Tropical Storm Henri soaked the region.

Less than 2 days earlier and a little over 3,000 miles to the southeast, Cyclone Shaheen made landfall in far northern Oman with winds just shy of a Category 1 hurricane.

The storm drenched the normally parched city of Al Khaburah with over 14 inches (300 mm) of rainfall in a matter of hours, according to The Times of Oman.

This is the equivalent of more than 3 years' worth of rainfall in about 24 hours. In the nearby town of Suwaiq, more than a years' worth of rain fell in just 6 hours. The storm produced a remarkable 4.57 inches (116 mm) of rainfall in a 6-hour span, exceeding what it typically sees in an entire year, according to Oman's Meteorological Department.

The significant increase in heavy rainstorms observed around the world is becoming more evident.

As the global temperatures rise, extreme precipitation events will drop more water, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. The report highlighted that for every 1 degree Celsius (1.8°F) increase in air temperatures, the atmosphere can retain roughly 7% more water vapor.

In the US, the summer of 2021 exemplified this as tropical systems such as Ida and Henri rewrote the record books several times over in a span of weeks.

In August, Tennessee shattered its previous state record after 17 inches of rain fell in the town of McEwen in just 24 hours. A little over a week later, remnants of Hurricane Ida brought torrents of rainfall across the northeastern, setting daily and all-time records from New Jersey to New England.

These extreme rainfall rates are becoming more common because of human-caused global warming, scientists say. According to the UN's report on climate change, "the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land area."

Deadly flash floods also made headlines around the world this summer, including deadly floods in July across Western Europe, after several months' worth of rain fell in hours, turning city streets in Belgium and Germany into torrents of water.

Heavy rainfall also caused floods in Central China in July that led to over 300 deaths. Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of 12 million people, was one of the hardest-hit areas, with entire neighborhoods submerged and passengers trapped in flooded subway cars.

A view of a river near Savona in Northern Italy, swallowed after heavy rains in the region, on Oct. 4, 2021. Heavy rain battered the northwest region of Italy bordering France, causing flooding and mudslides on Monday in several places.

Ida checked all the boxes

 

From CNN

Human-caused climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous. They are producing more rainfall, moving slower once they make landfall and generating larger storm surges along the coast. Hurricane Ida was a prime example of those changes, and scientists say storms like this will become more common as the planet warms.

Fueled by warmer-than-normal water in the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Ida destroyed homes, uprooted trees and cut off power to more than 1 million residents. It battered Mississippi and the already storm-ravaged state of Louisiana, and officials there say they expect the death toll to increase in the coming days.

Hurricane Ida was just the latest in back-to-back storms that have slammed Louisiana in recent years. But Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and professor at Texas Tech University, said an important distinction is not the frequency of the storms but their severity.

"We've always had hurricanes, we've always had heat waves, we've always had floods and droughts, but what climate change is doing is loading the weather dice against us," Hayhoe told CNN. "It's sneaking in when we're not looking, changing the numbers as we're rolling and asking what is this, how could this happen?"

"The answer to that is climate change," she said.

Hurricanes are getting stronger 

Hurricanes — also called tropical cyclones or typhoons outside North America — are being made more intense by the warming ocean, which studies have shown has absorbed approximately 90% of the planet's excess heat trapped by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions. And a recent study found that the planet is trapping roughly double the amount of heat than it did nearly 15 years ago.

As the planet heats up, storms get stronger.

The recent state-of-the-science United Nations report on climate change concluded that the global proportion of cyclones ranging from Category 3 to 5 — the most intense storms — has increased over the last four decades due to rapidly warming ocean temperatures. For every additional degree of warmth, scientists say not only will the proportion of intense cyclones continue to climb, but extreme rain events are also forecast to intensify by about 7%.

"We know that, in general, hurricanes are intensifying faster," Hayhoe said. "They are bigger and stronger than they would be otherwise; they have a lot more rainfall associated with them, and rising sea level exacerbates storm surge."

Before making landfall on Sunday, Hurricane Ida went through a remarkable period of strengthening: its maximum sustained winds increased by 65 mph in just 24 hours.

Scientists define rapid intensification — a process that historically has been rare — as an increase of 35 mph in 24 hours or less. Hurricane Ida nearly doubled that definition.

For rapid intensification to occur, warm ocean water must extend well below the surface, going hundreds of feet deep, to provide enough engine for the hurricane to strengthen. This has led scientists to believe that storms are more likely to undergo rapid intensification as a result of warmer oceans.

"If you increase the speed limit, you make more room for the storms to strengthen, so it can intensify more quickly," Jim Kossin, a senior scientist with the Climate Service, an organization that provides climate risk analysis to governments and businesses, told CNN.

Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4, and is now tied in the record books with Laura in 2020 as the strongest hurricane to make landfall there.

Hurricanes are wetter and moving slower

Storms are also generating more rainfall. For every degree of warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water vapor that could fall as rain. After flooding from Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017, scientists found that human-caused climate change supercharged the storm's rainfall by approximately 15%.

Hurricane Ida has dumped more than 15 inches of rain on parts of Louisiana, according to the National Weather Service. As the remnants of the storm arc from the South to New England, another 3 to 7 inches of rain is expected across at least 12 states, including areas already impacted by severe flooding this month such as Tennessee and New Jersey.

Paul Miller, a coastal meteorology scientists at Louisiana State University, said southeast Louisiana, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans, experienced one of its wettest seasons on record. According to Miller, it rained on 91% of the days between June 18 and July 19 at the New Orleans airport, compared to the region's average of 40-50%.

"It's been a historically wet year in southeast Louisiana even before Ida," he told CNN. "This really exacerbated concerns about flooding during Ida because the ground had already absorbed a lot of water this year."

Satellite data also shows that storms are getting slower, particularly after they make landfall, according to Hayhoe. Slower and larger storms means they can cover a greater area, idle and dump more rain during that time period.

And, while experts say the research is still developing, a 2020 study published in the journal Nature found storms are staying stronger farther inland than they did five decades ago. Since hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water, they tend to weaken over land, but in recent years they have been raging longer after landfall. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures are leading to a "slower decay" by increasing the amount of moisture that a hurricane can carry.

Storm surge is getting higher

As the water piles up along the coast, rivers and streams that drain into the ocean can also be blocked, forcing water levels to rise upstream. Storm surge and strong winds from Hurricane Ida reversed the flow of the Mississippi River near New Orleans on Sunday — something the US Geological Survey says is "extremely uncommon."

Scott Perrien, a hydrologist with the USGS, told CNN that the river's level on Sunday rose about 7 feet due to storm surge at the gauge located in Belle Chasse, about 20 miles south of New Orleans. At the same time, the river's flow "slowed from about 2 feet per second down to about half a foot per second in the other direction," Perrien said.

"I remember, off hand, that there was some flow reversal of the Mississippi River during Hurricane Katrina," Perrien said, "but it is extremely uncommon."

Tom Knutson, senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said combined with wind and rain, storm surge is "one of the more dangerous aspects of hurricanes."

Nearly half of all deaths from tropical cyclones come from storm surge.

Louisiana's natural buffer against storm surge — its coastal wetlands — are also disappearing due to sea level rise and persistent severe hurricanes. "Watching each additional hurricane, like Ida, hit the state, is a reminder of the importance of preserving and restoring these environments," Miller said.

As the ocean gets warmer due to fossil fuel emissions, the Gulf Coast will likely experience more hurricanes that are as severe as Ida. Hayhoe said the only choice humans have left is to either rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions or face the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.

"The bottom line is climate change is not only an environmental issue or a coastal issue, climate change is an everything issue — a human issue," Hayhoe said. "To care about climate impacts and to advocate for climate action, we only have to be one thing, and that one thing is a human living on planet Earth."

It's abundantly clear: we are in a climate crisis, and every year emissions remain high means that it will only get worse.  We need to slash emissions now.