Day: October 30, 2026

Despite Warming, Parts of Tibetan Plateau Permafrost Are Gaining Ice

Parts of the Tibetan Plateau’s near-surface permafrost (frozen ground) have been gaining ground ice since around 2000, despite regional warming, due to increased precipitation driven by stronger westerly winds.

The Karakoram anomaly (also called the Karakoram glacier anomaly) refers to the unusual behavior of glaciers in the Karakoram Range, where they have remained roughly stable or shown slight mass gains (and sometimes advances or increased surge activity) over recent decades, while most mountain glaciers worldwide, including those elsewhere in High Mountain Asia (the Himalayas, etc.), have been losing mass and retreating due to climate warming.

A diagram illustrating soil layers in a tundra landscape, showing the active layer, ground ice accumulation, and permafrost layer, with mountainous background and a climate warming signal annotation.
AI generated by Grok

Parts of the Tibetan Plateau’s near- surface permafrost (frozen ground) have been gaining ground ice since around 2000, despite regional warming, due to increased precipitation driven by stronger westerly winds.

This comes from a July 2026 study in Science Advances titled “Westerly induced precipitation increases drives near- surface ground ice gain on the Tibetan Plateau despite warming,” led by Yi Zhao and Dongfeng Li (Peking University) with co- authors including Jan Nitzbon (Alfred Wegener Institute) and others.

Key findings

  • Across roughly 35% of the plateau’s permafrost area (mainly the interior, westerly- influenced regions), near- surface ground ice (frozen water content or FWC in the soil pores) has increased at the base of the active layer (the seasonally thawing top layer, typically ~1.4– 3.2 m depth). The southeastern monsoon- dominated areas show the expected ice loss.⁠
  • Evidence includes:
    • Borehole data from 369 sites (194 pre- 2000, 175 post- 2000): older holes averaged ~16% ice by volume; newer ones ~25%. Paired nearby boreholes drilled years apart consistently showed higher ice in the later samples, concentrated at the active- layer base.
    • A physics- based permafrost model (SHAW) driven by climate data (1979–2018), validated against the boreholes and supported by satellite InSAR ground- deformation data.
    • Model estimates: westerly- fed regions gained ~144 km³ (~35 cubic miles) of ice in the top ~3.2 m between 1979 and 2018; monsoon areas lost less; net plateau- wide gain ~98 km³.

Why this happens despite warming

The Tibetan Plateau is warming roughly twice as fast as the global average, which would normally promote thaw and ice loss. However, strengthened westerlies have increased annual precipitation in the interior by about 60% after 2000 (from ~227.5 mm to ~364.8 mm), bringing extra moisture from the Mediterranean/Iran region.

Extra rain and snowmelt infiltrate the thawed active layer in summer, reach the cold base (near or below 0 °C year- round), and refreeze there. Near- surface ice still melts seasonally. Model experiments isolating variables confirmed precipitation increase as the dominant driver: holding precipitation at pre-2000 levels produced ice loss under observed warming, while holding temperature steady and allowing precipitation to rise produced even faster ice gain.⁠

This is analogous to the “Karakoram anomaly”, where some nearby glaciers have held or gained mass due to increased snowfall from similar circulation changes.

Implications

  • Accumulated ice amplifies seasonal freeze- thaw heave and settlement (InSAR shows higher deformation rates, ~18 mm/year vs. ~14 mm/year elsewhere), which can destabilize landscapes, infrastructure (roads, buildings), and increase erosion or sediment delivery to rivers.⁠
  • The ice gain may be temporary; in some modeled areas it slowed or reversed as thaw deepened. Long- term projections still indicate substantial permafrost degradation later this century.
  • The study highlights that rapid precipitation changes can locally outweigh temperature effects on cryosphere evolution.

Note: The provided attribution (Ahsan Tanveer, Akaash Babar, Peking University) does not match the paper’s authors; Tanveer is a robotics researcher at PKU, so this may refer to a news summary or secondary piece. The primary research is the Science Advances paper by Zhao, Li et al.

Map of the Tibetan region showing monsoon and westerly influence, with labeled pairs indicating study sites, and arrows indicating monsoon wind directions.
Where the plateau’s frozen ground is gaining ice. Green areas on this model-based map show ice increasing between 1979 and 2018; brown areas show it decreasing. The gains cluster in the west, along the path of the westerly winds. Credit: Peking University

The Karakoram anomaly (also called the Karakoram glacier anomaly) refers to the unusual behavior of glaciers in the Karakoram Range, where they have remained roughly stable or shown slight mass gains (and sometimes advances or increased surge activity) over recent decades, while most mountain glaciers worldwide, including those elsewhere in High Mountain Asia (the Himalayas, etc.), have been losing mass and retreating due to climate warming.

Key details

  • Location: The Karakoram is a high mountain range straddling parts of Pakistan, India, China, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. It contains some of the world’s tallest peaks (including K2) and one of the largest concentrations of glaciers outside the polar regions (thousands of glaciers covering more than 20,000 km²).⁠
  • Observations: Noted from the 1990s onward (formally named by glaciologist Kenneth Hewitt around 2005), remote sensing, geodetic measurements, and field data showed balanced to slightly positive mass budgets, stable or advancing termini in places, increased ice- flow speeds in some cases, and widespread surging. Similar (though weaker or shifting) behavior has been observed in nearby areas such as the Western Kunlun and parts of the Pamir (sometimes called the broader Pamir- Karakoram anomaly).⁠
  • Contrast: Globally, glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica lost substantial mass (on the order of hundreds of kg m⁻² per year on average in recent decades). Most of High Mountain Asia followed this pattern of retreat and mass loss.

Main explanations

The leading drivers involve regional meteorology rather than (or in addition to) local factors like heavy debris cover on glaciers or steep topography and avalanche feeding:

  • Strengthened or shifted westerly winds (mid-latitude circulation) delivering more winter snowfall and moisture from the Mediterranean, Caspian, or North Atlantic regions.
  • Related changes such as increased precipitation intensity, possible summer cooling or reduced melt energy (via cloud cover, albedo, or other factors), and interactions with the region’s extreme topography.

A 2020 review in Nature Geoscience summarized complementary meteorological and process explanations but noted that understanding remains incomplete.

Recent status and outlook

More recent studies (into the 2020s) indicate the anomaly has weakened or shifted. Some analyses show near- equilibrium overall for Karakoram glaciers over ~2000– 2023 but with emerging mass deficits in parts (e.g., recent years or eastern sectors), a westward migration of the stable and gain core, and clearer losses in adjacent ranges like the Pamir. Temperature rise is increasingly dominant, and long- term persistence is considered unlikely under projected continued warming.⁠

This phenomenon was referenced in the recent Tibetan Plateau permafrost study as a parallel example of localized cryospheric ice gain (or stability) driven by precipitation changes outweighing warming effects in specific High Mountain Asia settings.

Graph illustrating ice content variations, showing stages of cold and dry conditions, wetting and warming, and further warming effects on the active layer and permafrost.
How the ice builds up and fades. As rain increases, ice collects at the bottom of the layer that melts each summer (middle); with further warming, that ice melts again (right). Credit: Peking University

Westerly induced precipitation increase drives near-surface ground ice gain on the Tibetan Plateau despite warming

Abstract (key points)

Near- surface ground ice loss is typically a key sign of permafrost degradation under global warming, affecting ground stability and carbon feedback. However, field evidence shows ground ice can locally accumulate.

Using borehole ground- ice observations, a physics- based permafrost model (SHAW), and satellite- based ground deformation (InSAR) data, the authors identify an anomalous increase in ice at the bottom of the active layer across the interior Tibetan Plateau. This affects about 35% of the plateau’s permafrost area, despite ongoing climate warming.

Mechanism: Strengthened mid- latitude westerlies have increased precipitation (by ~60% after 2000 in the affected regions), supplying extra soil moisture that infiltrates the seasonally thawed active layer and refreezes at its cold base.

The freeze- thaw cycles linked to this accumulated ice amplify ground deformation, which can destabilize landscapes and infrastructure.

The authors note this as a divergent cryospheric response (local ice gain) against the global trend of ice loss, paralleling the Karakoram glacier anomaly, and highlight that rapid precipitation increases can locally outweigh temperature effects in driving cryosphere changes on the Tibetan Plateau.

Additional highlights from the paper and coverage

  • Borehole data (369 sites): higher ice content post-2000, especially at 1.4–3.2 m depth.
  • Model results (1979– 2018): net ground- ice gain of ~+98 km³ across the plateau’s permafrost (gains of ~+144 km³ in westerly regions offsetting losses of ~–46.5 km³ in monsoon regions).
  • Scenario experiments confirmed precipitation (wetting) as the dominant driver over warming.
  • Implications for infrastructure stability and regional hydrology.

The full paper (including figures, methods, and supplementary materials) is available at the link you provided.

Journal: Science Advances, (Vol. 12, Issue 30), open- access paper

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aed1105

Provided: Peking University

Published: 23 Jul 2026

Authors: Yi Zhao, Dongfeng Li, Jan Nitzbon, Zhuotong Nan, Yuqi Song, Xie Hu, Youhua Ran, Shang Tian, Rui Deng, Yingzhong Luo, and Yiyi Li

Same Hospital, New Label. Our World in Data Finds a Third of Bilateral Project Aid Is Now “Climate-Related”

On October 26, Our World in Data published a piece by Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Arriagada asking how much development aid is spent on climate change. Ritchie opens by saying she cares a lot about climate and a lot about bed nets, and that the two could collide.

Count only the projects where climate is the main objective and the share falls from 34% to 13%. Then they open up individual projects.

A cartoon depicting a hospital's sign being changed from 'Development Aid Hospital' to 'Climate-Related Hospital - Now With Energy Efficiency!' Two workers are at the scene, one on a ladder removing the old sign, while a man in a suit observes. The surrounding environment includes bicycles and greenery, and various signs emphasizing energy efficiency.
AI generated by Meta

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

On October 26, Our World in Data published a piece by Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Arriagada asking how much development aid is spent on climate change. Ritchie opens by saying she cares a lot about climate and a lot about bed nets, and that the two could collide.

With a fixed aid budget, every dollar spent on climate programs is one less dollar for everything else. And with large cuts to foreign aid in the last few years, that budget is shrinking.

How much development aid is spent on climate change? | Our World in Data

The data come from the OECD’s RioMarkers database, which tags bilateral aid projects by whether they target climate mitigation or adaptation. The answer:

Around one-third of this funding — $50 billion — was committed to climate-related projects in 2024.

How much development aid is spent on climate change? | Our World in Data

That is a third of project-specific bilateral aid, almost a quarter of all bilateral aid, and by their estimate about a fifth of all development aid. In 2010 the project share was around 18%. By 2024 it was 34%.

Bjorn Lomborg put the same number on X the same day:

Across the rich world, nearly a quarter of all development aid now goes to climate projects.

The core problem is opportunity cost. Every dollar subsidizing solar panels or carbon accounting is a dollar not spent on schools, maternal health or clean water.

That second paragraph is lifted from a Financial Post op-ed he wrote with Indermit Gill, the former chief economist of the World Bank, which puts the rich-world figure at US$49 billion.

Here is where it gets interesting. Ritchie and Arriagada went looking at what the label covers.

As you can see in the chart, more than half of climate-related funding goes to projects where it’s only a secondary objective. All funding for these projects is counted in its full value, not just the share we might attribute to climate.

How much development aid is spent on climate change? | Our World in Data

Line graph showing foreign aid committed for climate change by DAC members from 2010 to 2024, differentiating between climate as a main objective, climate as a secondary objective, and non-climate related aid.
Chart from Our World in Data.

Count only the projects where climate is the main objective and the share falls from 34% to 13%. Then they open up individual projects. Japan’s $310 million water supply project in drought-prone Samawah, Iraq, is tagged as adaptation with climate as the main objective. France’s $122 million Kakono hydro plant in Tanzania, climate as a primary objective. And this one:

Finally, South Korea provided $163 million for a hospital and training center in Tanzania. Building a hospital and healthcare facilities is a fairly standard development aid project. But because it’s built with energy efficiency and low-carbon design in mind, it’s counted as mitigation as a secondary objective. It doesn’t exist to tackle climate change, but all of this $163 million counts as climate-related aid.

How much development aid is spent on climate change? | Our World in Data

All $163 million of a hospital.

Water for a desert town and power for Tanzania were aid projects long before anyone attached a climate tag. Ritchie says as much: rich countries were funding energy infrastructure in poor ones “long before aid statistics had a climate tag attached.”

So which is it, money diverted or money relabelled? The authors say probably both, and that the data can’t tell them how much of each. The donors have a reason to prefer the second. Climate finance pledges are supposed to be new money. A hospital that counts toward the pledge and the aid budget at the same time lets a government tick both boxes with one cheque.

The OWID data hold a hint. In constant 2024 dollars, bilateral project aid from DAC members that carried no climate tag at all was $97.6 billion in 2010 and $95.8 billion in 2024. Total project aid grew. Everything that grew wore the climate label.

The donors aren’t uniform either.

Line graph showing the share of foreign aid that is climate-related from 2010 to 2024 for various countries, including South Korea, United Kingdom, France, Germany, DAC members, United States, Japan, Netherlands, and Canada.
Chart from Our World in Data.

South Korea tags more than 60% of its bilateral aid as climate-related, Japan between about 50% and 80%, France above 40%. The United States and Canada sit below a fifth. Ritchie asks whether that is a real difference in what they fund or just a difference in how keen they are to tick the box. Given the Tanzanian hospital, I’d bet on the box.

And the money isn’t going mostly to the poorest. OWID notes that climate-related projects dominate aid spending in Brazil and India, both middle-income countries.

Meanwhile, what do the recipients want? Gill and Lomborg:

Tellingly, Africans ranked climate change 31st among 34 priorities in a recent Afrobarometer survey.

We need to focus on the best ways to help the poor | Financial Post

They also cite Copenhagen Consensus estimates that US$2.50 of micronutrient supplements for an expectant mother returns nearly US$100 in long-term benefits, and that tuberculosis and malaria treatment returns more than $45 per dollar. Their suggestion comes from Norway, where an expert group has recommended separating climate finance from the development budget.

Ritchie ends by inviting someone to go through historical aid projects and find out how much of the climate column is new. That would be worth reading.

How many other hospitals are in the $50 billion?

And how much of the pledged climate finance turns out to be the old aid budget with a green sticker on it?

=====

Charts and quotes from Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0.

Faraway Tectonic Forces May Have Accelerated the Gulf of California Rifting

New research from the University of Texas at Austin (Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Institute for Geophysics) and international collaborators indicates that distant tectonic forces in the western Pacific, specifically the formation of a double subduction zone near Japan, likely accelerated the rifting that opened the Gulf of California about 12 million years ago.

Double subduction occurs when two subduction zones operate at the same time and interact with each other, rather than acting independently.

A normal (single) subduction zone forms where two tectonic plates converge and the denser plate dives (subducts) beneath the other into the mantle.

Illustration depicting ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean, with arrows indicating the direction of flow.
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New research from the University of Texas at Austin (Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Institute for Geophysics) and international collaborators indicates that distant tectonic forces in the western Pacific, specifically the formation of a double subduction zone near Japan, likely accelerated the rifting that opened the Gulf of California about 12 million years ago.

When the Baja California peninsula separated from mainland Mexico, it created the Gulf of California through continental rifting. The region already had lithospheric weaknesses that promoted opening, but computer models suggest extra extensional stress from far-away plate interactions sped the process by roughly 30- 80 million years.

Key findings

  • Researchers propose that a single subduction zone in the western Pacific was joined by a second one, creating a double subduction system. Most effects were local (near Japan), but simulations showed a clear increase in extensional stress specifically near Baja California, over 9,000 km away, while other regions showed no comparable change.⁠
  • Extra stress can thin the lithosphere and promote faulting, accelerating rifting.
  • Modeling (using the open- source ASPECT software) incorporated current slab geometries, mantle anomalies, and lithospheric structures to compute mantle flow, plate velocities, and stresses. Comparing single- versus double-subduction setups highlighted the distant effect.⁠
  • With two subducting slabs, the trailing plate does not move twice as fast but roughly 1.7 times as fast, according to co- author Thorsten Becker.

The study was published in Science and involved researchers from UT Austin, the Czech Academy of Sciences, Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, and Roma Tre University. Lead numerical modeling was done by Xiang He (UT graduate research assistant). Funding came from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Italian Science Fund.

The team notes that improved global plate- interaction models could help interpret other complex settings (e.g., the East African Rift) and longer- term tectonic forcing relevant to earthquake hazards.

The work does not claim the Pacific forces were the sole cause of Gulf formation; regional factors were already at work but indicates they provided significant additional “pull.”

Primary sources: University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences and UT Institute for Geophysics press releases (October 29, 2026).

A global view of the Earth highlighting the Pacific Ocean with topographical features, featuring two inset maps of Japan and the West Coast of North America.
This illustration shows the location of the double subduction zone off the coast of Japan (left inset) and the Gulf of California (right inset) separated by over 9,000 kilometers. Credit: He et al.

Double subduction occurs when two subduction zones operate at the same time and interact with each other, rather than acting independently.

Basic plate- tectonics background

A normal (single) subduction zone forms where two tectonic plates converge and the denser plate dives (subducts) beneath the other into the mantle. This process is driven mainly by the weight of the sinking slab (slab pull). It creates deep ocean trenches, volcanic arcs, and strong forces that move the surrounding plates.

What makes it “double”

In a double- subduction system, two such zones exist close enough that their effects couple:

  • Two slabs sink into the mantle simultaneously.
  • The slabs can dip in the same direction (“same- dip”) or toward each other (“inward- dipping”), or in more complex geometries.
  • The combined gravitational pull of the two slabs exerts a stronger or differently directed force on the intervening or trailing plates than a single slab would.
  • This interaction can change mantle flow, plate velocities, and the stress field over large distances, sometimes thousands of kilometers away.

Computer models (including the ASPECT simulations used in the recent Gulf of California study) show that two slabs do not simply double the speed of the trailing plate; the acceleration is typically less than additive (in the study, roughly 1.7 times as fast rather than twice as fast).

The specific system linked to the Gulf of California

In the western Pacific near Japan, geological evidence and modeling indicate that a single subduction zone was later joined by a second one, creating a double- subduction configuration.

Most of the local effects (trench motion, earthquakes, volcanism) remained concentrated around Japan. However, the extra slab pulls transmitted stress across the Pacific plate. Near Baja California, more than 9,000 km away, this produced additional extensional (pull- apart) stress.

That distant extra stress is thought to have thinned the lithosphere and helped localize faulting, accelerating the rifting that separated the Baja California peninsula from mainland Mexico and opened the Gulf of California about 12 million years ago. Regional weaknesses already favored rifting; the far- field double- subduction force is estimated to have sped the process by tens of millions of years.

Why it matters

Double subduction demonstrates that plate- boundary forces are not purely local. Forces generated on one side of an ocean basin can influence continental breakup, mountain building, or rift evolution on the opposite side. Similar interactions are being studied in other regions (for example, parts of the western Pacific today and possible ancient systems that affected the South China Sea or other basins). Advanced 3- D geodynamic models are now able to capture these long- range effects more realistically than earlier 2- D approaches.

Western Pacific double subduction drives Gulf of California rifting

The link points to a Science research article (DOI: 10.1126/science.aef5187) published around late October 2026. The full text is behind a paywall (or institutional access), so I could not retrieve the complete paper, figures, or supplementary materials directly.

It is the peer- reviewed study corresponding to the University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geosciences press release discussed previously: faraway (western Pacific) tectonic forces from a double subduction zone accelerated rifting of the Gulf of California.

Summary of the research (from institutional releases and secondary reports)

  • Core claim: Formation of a double subduction system in the western Pacific (near Japan) generated extra extensional stress that propagated across the Pacific plate and accelerated continental rifting near Baja California ~12 million years ago.⁠
  • The Gulf was already opening due to regional lithospheric weaknesses, but the distant double subduction is estimated to have sped the process by roughly 30-80 million years.
  • Methods: 3D physics- based numerical modeling with the open- source code ASPECT. Researchers compared single- vs. double- subduction configurations using data on slab geometries, mantle anomalies, and lithospheric structure to calculate mantle flow, plate velocities, and lithospheric stresses. Stress increases appeared clearly near Baja California (over 9,000 km away) but not in most other regions.⁠
  • With two subducting slabs, the trailing plate moves ~1.7 times as fast (not twice as fast) as with a single slab.
  • Authors, affiliations include researchers from the University of Texas at Austin (including Xiang He and Thorsten Becker), Czech Academy of Sciences, Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, and Roma Tre University. Some secondary reports list Guido M. Gianni et al. as associated authors.⁠

The work highlights how global- scale plate interactions can influence distant continental margins and may have applications to understanding other rifts (e.g., East Africa) and long- term tectonic forcing relevant to hazards.

For the full paper (abstract, methods, results, figures), institutional subscription, access to Science is required, or you can check for any open preprint or author- posted version. The UT Jackson School and UTIG press releases provide the most detailed public summaries currently available.

Journal: Science, Vol 394, Issue 6823, pp. 515-519

DOI: 10.1126/science.aef5187

Provided: University of Texas at Austin

Published: 29 Oct 2026

Authors: Guido M. Gianni, Xiang He, Thorsten W. Becker, and Claudio Faccenna

Corresponding author: Email: gianni@ig.cas.cz

Abstract

Continental rifting reflects the balance between tectonic forces and lithospheric strength, yet the mechanisms of breakup remain debated. Rapid rifting of the Gulf of California oblique rift (GOCOR) ~6 million to 8 million years ago is a key example; it may have resulted from the lithosphere responding to external kinematics or acceleration of long-lived extension. The dynamics of either scenario remain incompletely understood. In this study, we highlight that the rapid rifting of the GOCOR coincides with the initiation of Western Pacific double subduction. Using three-dimensional geodynamic models, we show that such subduction reorganization can transmit extensional stresses of ~5 to 15 megapascals across the Pacific plate, loading the GOCOR and the southern San Andreas fault. Subduction reorganization may represent the missing driver for the initiation of rapid GOCOR rifting within a preconditioned lithosphere and may be an overlooked tectonic force behind other rifting events.

HotAir is Right, the Labour Decision to Open The Jackdaw Gas Field is a WIN For British Energy Security

A recent post by HotAir editor Beege Welborn, “Labour’s Case of Gas Under Attack,” describes the UK government’s decision to open an offshore natural gas field as a “win-win” for both the government and ratepayers. This is true, suppression of the development of their own energy resources has been a serious problem for the UK at large, which has suffered some of the highest electricity costs in the world.

Offshore gas platform in the North Sea with British flag, promoting the Jackdaw Gas Field as beneficial for UK energy security.
AI generated by Meta

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

Silhouette of oil rigs against a vibrant sunset sky.

A recent post by HotAir editor Beege Welborn, “Labour’s Case of Gas Under Attack,” describes the UK government’s decision to open an offshore natural gas field as a “win-win” for both the government and ratepayers. This is true, suppression of the development of their own energy resources has been a serious problem for the UK at large, which has suffered some of the highest electricity costs in the world.

Welborn writes that it’s “insane” that government officials took this long in the first place to make the decision to open the Jackdaw North Sea gas field, because “Jackdaw won’t take years to provide relief from both high prices and shortages of natural gas on demand during high usage periods,” gas is predicted to start being produced from Jackdaw “possibly within weeks.”

Tory leadership points out that, had the decision been made sooner, gas would have been available during this coming winter, when they are now facing shortages.

Any shortages mean that ratepayers will be suffering from even higher electricity prices, in a nation which ranks in the top ten with the highest electricity costs in the world.

Long gone are the days where residents can easily use their home fireplace if heating bills become too high. London makes it illegal to heat your home with wood burning stoves or fireplaces unless you have a particular kind of appliance, or are not in a smoke-control area (which most of London is).

This is especially egregious and dangerous given the fact that deaths due to cold weather outnumber those due to heat by a large margin. In the UK alone, between 2000 and 2019, 44,000 citizens died from cold weather, according to a study in The Lancet.

How many died of heat? Just 8000. Five times more people died of cold than heat in the UK.

But, as Welborn points out, these realities do not “matter one whit to the hard-core Labour climate cultists, the Greens, or any of the radical environmental whacko groups in the UK who have held sway over energy policy for so long.”

Indeed the complaint from other Labour members and the Green Party leadership is that opening Jackdaw is “climate vandalism.” Alleged human-caused global warming is their only concern, to the exclusion of all other issues.

The UK needs natural gas, however, and they will get it any way that they can, and up until now that was largely by importing it from other countries, which certainly could not be “greener” than using nearby resources anyway.

This way, they save in both emissions related to shipping (if you are worried about that at all) and reduce their reliance on sources of energy from foreign countries. As Welborn said, “win-win,” it should be a no-brainer.

Climate Realism has explained in a multitude of posts how and why renewables like wind and solar simply cannot be the majority energy source for a country, and in practice are more expensive than traditional energy. This is true for the United Kingdom as much as it is any other country that has suffered from rising electricity costs as they adopt more non-dispatchable wind and solar. The only reason they are so heavily installed at all is because of generous subsidies and mandates for installation provided to no other electricity generators.

In the UK, for instance, the Renewables Obligations (RO), Feed-in-Tariffs (FiT), and Contract for Difference subsidy schemes support wind and solar by awarding special certificates and payments for power generation, which end up costing the public almost £12 billion per year. As with every grid that ends up being over reliant on intermittent resources, extra gas plants are required to balance the unstable power generation from wind and solar, which further adds to the cost.

On top of all that, gas-fired electricity production is slapped with a carbon tax. Who pays for that? The ratepayer, ultimately.

Welborn, and by extension, HotAir where the post was published, are right to gloat about this victory, even if the UK has a long way to go to reduce energy costs. The climate of the planet is not going to be impacted at all by the UK using more of their own gas instead of getting it from foreign sources, hopefully Labour is finally waking up (at least a little bit) to energy reality.

Permitting reform is the ultimate test of American mineral security

The U.S. has launched a long-overdue effort to reclaim control of the mineral supply chains that underpin our economy and national security. Years of working around the edges of the problem have been replaced by forceful action. The Trump administration has fundamentally changed Washington’s approach to American mining. But whether the promise of this effort becomes a new era of domestic production and mineral security will depend on follow-through. Passing permitting reform is the ultimate test.

A yellow hard hat placed on a weathered surface next to a wrinkled American flag.
Happy Labor Day USA patriotic, yellow hard hat construction helmet USA flag over wooden deck table background.

From CFACT

BY RICH NOLAN:

The U.S. has launched a long-overdue effort to reclaim control of the mineral supply chains that underpin our economy and national security. Years of working around the edges of the problem have been replaced by forceful action. The Trump administration has fundamentally changed Washington’s approach to American mining. But whether the promise of this effort becomes a new era of domestic production and mineral security will depend on follow-through. Passing permitting reform is the ultimate test.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act gives Congress the opportunity to deliver. We are undeniably in the minerals age. From semiconductors and batteries to cutting-edge defense systems, minerals — and an increasingly wide array of them — have never been more important to our economic and national security. As demand surges for these irreplaceable materials, our ability to supply them must catch up to their mounting importance.

China understands the stakes. It has spent decades investing in mines and processing facilities, using state support to dominate markets and export controls to squeeze industries essential to our defense and manufacturing base. Breaking that grip requires a sustained commitment to rebuilding American productive capacity. The resources are here. The political will to transform them into secure supply chains has been glaringly missing. That, thanks to the Trump administration, is changing.

The administration has greatly expanded the tools available to counter China’s mineral dominance. Financing, stockpiling and measures to counter predatory market practices are helping level a deeply uneven playing field. Better coordination through the FAST-41 permitting program is also encouraging. But these efforts need durable congressional permitting reforms to deliver the sweeping change American mining requires. Clear rules must endure beyond any single administration or election.

Consider the obstacles we face. A recent study found that bringing a U.S. mine from discovery to production takes an average of 29 years, the second longest timeline in the world. Permitting delays, obstructive litigation and the uncertainty they have created are the tallest barriers along that unnecessarily long road. We cannot rebuild supply chains and counter China’s supply chain weaponization on a timetable that consumes a generation.

This bipartisan permitting deal reflects the urgency of the moment. Notably, it removes duplication and unnecessary delays and tightens review deadlines, improving transparency and clarifying access to lands needed for activities that support mining operations. The agreement also offers much-needed litigation reform. Too often, litigation becomes a tool to delay production for years, even when a challenge has little prospect of succeeding. Clearer limits on legal challenges and greater certainty around issued permits would help ensure that completing the review process actually means something. This is the transparency and certainty mining needs.

Americans understand why action matters. In national polling conducted by The Harris Poll this September, 85% of Americans said increasing domestic mining is important to economic and national security given China’s mineral export restrictions. I can’t recall the last policy issue on which nine in 10 American voters agreed.

Now is the time to recognize the status quo cannot continue. The stakes, of course, reach well beyond mining. It is hard to find a key challenge in America — housing and energy affordability or the eroding state of our infrastructure — that isn’t in some way shaped by the urgent need for reform.

This is the moment to rebuild American mining and break China’s grip on the supply chains so essential to our economic and national security. Passing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act can turn the promise of America’s vast mineral resources into the productive capacity we so urgently need. This is an opportunity we can’t let slip through our fingers.

This article originally appeared at RealClear Energy

Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.

Winds Open Antarctic Ice Holes — Then Waves Shatter Them From the Inside Out

A recent Nature Communications paper by Joey J. Voermans (University of Melbourne) and colleagues shows that locally generated waves in Antarctic coastal polynyas can break up surrounding sea ice from the inside outward.

Katabatic winds are downslope winds driven by gravity acting on denser (usually colder) air.

Cold air near the surface becomes denser than the surrounding air. On elevated terrain, such as a plateau, ice sheet, or mountain slope, this dense air flows downhill under gravity. The term comes from the Greek katabasis (“descent” or “going down”).

Aerial view of cracked ice on a frozen body of water, with dark patches of liquid water, and wisps of mist rising above it under a dramatic sky.
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A recent Nature Communications paper by Joey J. Voermans (University of Melbourne) and colleagues shows that locally generated waves in Antarctic coastal polynyas can break up surrounding sea ice from the inside outward.

Coastal polynyas are recurring open- water areas within sea ice that act as “sea- ice factories”, producing large volumes of new ice. Their formation and persistence have long been attributed mainly to strong offshore (katabatic or synoptic) winds that advect ice away from the coast. The role of waves has been largely unexplored due to the scarcity of in situ observations.

Using rare wave- buoy data from the Vincennes Bay Polynya (East Antarctica, near Casey Station), the researchers found that strong winds generate energetic, short- period wind waves within the open water.

These waves grow across the polynya’s fetch and are steep enough to fracture the surrounding ice cover starting at the polynya edge and propagating outward. This “inside- outward” breakup contrasts with the more familiar “outside- inward” process driven by long- period Southern Ocean swells that approach the ice edge from the open ocean.

The buoy records (from deployments in 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025) showed sharp increases in wave energy with relatively short dominant wavelengths once the instruments entered the polynya, consistent with fetch- limited local wind- wave growth rather than distant swell (which is strongly attenuated by intervening pack ice).

Analysis of satellite sea- ice concentration records (2003- 2022) showed that extreme wave- induced breakup events are associated with substantial, persistent reductions in sea- ice concentration lasting at least one week, along with increased transitions to active frazil ice (the loose crystals that form in turbulent, supercooled water).

This creates feedback: waves enlarge and help sustain the open- water area, promoting further heat loss, supercooling, and new ice production.

The results highlight a previously overlooked mechanism in polynya dynamics. As Antarctic coastal polynyas change under a warming climate, wave activity may become increasingly important in shaping sea- ice conditions, dense-water formation, and related processes in the polar ocean.

Paper: Voermans, J. J., et al. (2026). “Inside-outward breakup of sea ice by locally generated waves in the Vincennes Bay Polynya.” Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-77979-y.

Satellite image comparing sea ice coverage before and after significant thinning on 6 October 2021 and 7 October 2021, respectively.
MODIS satellite images showing sea- ice conditions in the Vincennes Bay Polynya before and after an extreme wind-wave event. Credit: NASA Worldview

Katabatic winds are downslope winds driven by gravity acting on denser (usually colder) air.

Cold air near the surface becomes denser than the surrounding air. On elevated terrain, such as a plateau, ice sheet, or mountain slope, this dense air flows downhill under gravity. The term comes from the Greek katabasis (“descent” or “going down”).

Key characteristics:

  • They are typically cold and dry.
  • Speeds can range from gentle breezes to gale-force or stronger, especially where the terrain funnels or steepens the flow.
  • They often intensify at night or in winter when radiative cooling is strongest.

Katabatic winds are common in polar regions and high mountain areas:

  • Antarctica: Extremely important. Cold air over the high interior ice sheet drains toward the coast, sometimes reaching very high speeds. These winds help create and maintain coastal polynyas by blowing newly formed sea ice offshore.
  • Greenland: Similar drainage flows off the ice sheet.
  • Other locations: Alpine valleys, the Adriatic coast (bora winds have a katabatic component), and various mountainous regions worldwide.

In short, katabatic winds are gravity- driven downslope flows of dense cold air, and they play a major role in polar climate and sea-ice dynamics.

Diagram illustrating wave dynamics in a coastal polynya, showing strong winds generating waves, wave-induced breakup of ice cover, and effects of wind and wave stresses on ice transport and compaction.
Conceptual diagram of wave-driven breakup and redistribution of sea ice around a coastal polynya. Credit: Joey Voermans

Inside-outward breakup of sea ice by locally generated waves in the Vincennes Bay Polynya

Strong offshore winds (including katabatic winds) in the Vincennes Bay Polynya (East Antarctica) generate energetic local wind waves inside the open water. These waves are steep enough to fracture the surrounding sea ice from the inside outward, the opposite of the usual process in which Southern Ocean swells break ice from the outside inward.

Key evidence

  • Rare in- situ measurements from four drifting wave buoys (deployed near Casey Station in 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025) recorded a sharp rise in wave energy with short dominant periods once the buoys entered the polynya, consistent with fetch- limited local wind- wave growth rather than distant swell.
  • Southern Ocean swell was strongly attenuated by the intervening pack ice and contributed little to the measured wave energy.
  • Satellite records (2003- 2022) show that extreme wave- breakup events coincide with substantial, persistent drops in sea- ice concentration lasting at least one week, plus increased production of active frazil ice.

Coastal polynyas are major “sea- ice factories” and sites of dense- water formation. The study shows that locally generated waves are an important, previously overlooked feedback that helps reshape and sustain these polynyas. As Antarctic conditions change, wave activity may become increasingly significant.

The paper directly links the strong katabatic and synoptic winds that keep the polynya open to the generation of the waves that then break the surrounding ice.

Journal: Nature Communications, 17, Article number: 11224 (2026)

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-77979-y

Published: 29 September 2026, Open access

Authors: Joey J. Voermans,
Qingxiang Liu,
Lang Cao,
Josh Kousal,
Petra Heil,
Alexander D. Fraser,
Clarence O. Collins,
Jean Rabault &
Alexander V. Babanin

Abstract

Coastal polynyas are recurring regions of open water within sea ice that serve as sea-ice factories, producing vast amounts of new ice relative to nearby sea-ice-covered regions. Their formation and persistence are commonly attributed to strong offshore winds, while the influence of waves on polynya dynamics remains largely unexplored. Using rare wave-buoy observations from the Vincennes Bay Polynya, we show that strong winds generate energetic waves capable of breaking surrounding sea ice from the inside-outward, contrasting with outside-inward breakup caused by Southern Ocean swells. Satellite records from 2003–2022 reveal that extreme wave-induced breakup events coincide with substantial reductions in sea-ice concentration that persist for at least one week, accompanied by increased transitions to active frazil ice. These findings demonstrate that locally generated waves impact polynya dynamics and reshape surrounding sea-ice conditions. As Antarctic coastal polynyas evolve under a changing climate, wave activity may become increasingly important in shaping their sea-ice conditions and evolution.