The Financial Times is among many publications reporting a new study published in Science which finds that leaks of methane from the US oil and gas industry are about 60% higher than government estimates. This, says the FT, leads to “heightening concerns about their contribution to global warming”. The newspaper adds that the study, which was “co-ordinated by the Environmental Defense Fund, pulled together a series of previous studies and concluded that other research had underestimated the scale of methane leakage by missing large escapes when equipment malfunctions…The scale of methane leakage from wells, processing plants and pipelines is central to the debate over switching from coal to gas for power generation.” The New York Times says the study is “bad news for climate change”, adding that the study “puts the rate of methane emissions from domestic oil and gas operations at 2.3% of total production per year, which is 60% higher than the current estimate from the Environmental Protection Agency. That might seem like a small fraction of the total, but it represents an estimated 13m metric tons lost each year, or enough natural gas to fuel 10m homes.” The paper also notes that “if there is good news in the report, it is that much of the leakage is fixable at relatively low cost. The lost methane is worth an estimated $2 billion a year.” Reuters says the “study relied on both top-down measurements, such as aircraft observations, and bottom-down measurements made directly at, or downwind of energy facilities”. It adds that Seth Whitehead, a spokesman for the drilling industry group Energy in Depth, has called EDF’s emissions estimate “exaggerated” because it relied on previous studies that did not involve industry consultation. InsideClimate News, Bloomberg and Buzzfeed have covered the study, too. Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s US analyst, has also been tweeting about the study.

Reuters reports that more than 20 nations, ranging from Germany, France and the UK to Pacific island states, said yesterday at a meeting of climate ministers in Brussels that they planned to “lead from the front” in setting new, tougher goals by 2020 to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate agreement. “We commit to exploring the possibilities for stepping up our own ambition,” the 23 nations said in a statement, issued by the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, about goals for stepping up action by 2020. Reuters says the governments also signed a “Declaration for Ambition” which states that they will “encourage long-term strategies for low emissions and new funds and investment in projects to help goals of the Paris Agreement”. Climate Home News says the declaration also calls on the UN secretary general António Guterres to “focus his climate summit in September 2019 on the possibilities for delivering enhanced [nationally determined contributions] by 2020”. Bloomberg reports that Catherine McKenna, Canada’s climate minister, offered a blunt message to Donald Trump: “I hate to say this, but I don’t want to overestimate the importance of the US…The world is moving forward because we need to do that for our kids and there’s a huge economic opportunity.”

Antarctica’s bedrock is rising surprisingly fast as a vast mass of ice melts into the oceans, reports Reuters, adding that it is a trend that might slow an ascent in sea levels caused by global warming. An international team of scientists published the findings yesterday in Science, as covered in detail by Carbon Brief. The Earth’s crust in West Antarctica is rising by up to 4.1 centimetres a year, the scientists have found. It is likely to accelerate, reports Reuters, which could help to “stabilise the ice and brake a rise in sea levels that threatens coasts from Bangladesh to Florida”. The Washington Post also covers the story under the headline: “For once, scientists found good news about West Antarctica.” The Independent quotes Prof Terry Wilson, one of the lead authors, who is based at Ohio State University: “The rate of uplift we found is unusual and very surprising. It’s a game changer.”

InsideClimate News reports on the news that “four Republican senators closely allied with the fossil fuel industry” are calling for an investigation into the National Science Foundation has helped to fund a programme to help educate weather forecasters present the complexities of climate science. InsideClimate News explains: “Climate Matters, a programme developed through a partnership of George Mason University, Yale University and the science and news nonprofit Climate Central, has built a network of 350 weather forecasters in 119 media markets nationwide. Climate Central’s team of data analysts, meteorologists, climate experts and graphic artists provide graphics, videos and research for TV weathercasters…Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) don’t find that acceptable. On Monday, they called for an NSF inspector general’s investigation into $4m in grants to the weathercaster programme.” NBC News, which broke the story, says that the four senators, who all have a history of variously denying climate science, claim the educational programme is “is not science — it is propagandising”. Separately, the Hill reports that “the Trump administration is directing federal scientists in the US Geological Survey to get approval from the Department of the Interior, its parent agency, before speaking to reporters”. it adds: “The employees said that they believe the new policies were established to control the voices of Interior employees. They believe the move is a part of larger efforts to quell discourse about climate change, which the agency has produced research on.”

Claire Perry, the UK’s climate minister, has “doubled down” on her support for fracking yesterday, reports BusinessGreen. Speaking at an event in London to mark the upcoming 10th anniversary of the UK’s Climate Change Act, BusinessGreen says that Perry “covered a range of topics, including praise for the UK’s international leadership on phasing out coal power, the ‘huge’ potential of hydrogen as a low carbon fuel, and the need to bring forward policy support as soon as possible to back technologies that can bring about deep emissions cuts by 2050. However, in comments that are likely to anger environmental campaigners she also doubled down on the government’s support for developing a shale gas industry in the UK.” Ahead on next week’s annual progress report by the Committee on Climate Change, Perry also said she was confident the UK would meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets: “I’ve put a bet on – and this is also open to anyone in the room – we are at 97% and 95% towards meeting our fourth and fifth carbon budgets which end in 2028 and 2032 respectively,” she said, according to BusinessGreen. But she hit out at anti-fracking campaigners, saying: “We are not going to have energy policy in this country – it’s too precious – set by ideology. Cost, carbon, security and competitive advantage is what we’re going to do, and if people don’t like it then don’t vote for us.” Carbon Brief reported in 2016 on the CCC’s analysis showing that fracking would breach the UK climate goals without tougher conditions.

Reuters claims in an “exclusive” to have seen internal company documents showing that Tesla “will sharply downsize the [US] residential solar business it bought two years ago in a controversial $2.6 billion (£1.96 billion) deal”. Reuters adds: “The latest cuts to the division that was once SolarCity – a sales and installation company founded by two cousins of Tesla CEO Elon Musk – include closing about a dozen installation facilities, according to internal company documents, and ending a retail partnership with Home Depot Inc that the current and former employees said generated about half of its sales. About 60 installation facilities remain open, according to an internal company list reviewed by Reuters.”

McKibben, the veteran environmental campaigner and writer, says that “from Wall Street to the Pope, many increasingly see fossil fuels as anything but a sure bet”. That “gives us reason to hope”, he says, citing a new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. The report, he notes, argues that the financial world is “just beginning to understand the fundamental weakness” of the fossil fuel sector. McKibben concludes: “If a few years of campaigning is enough to convince the pope we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, a few more quarters might finally persuade the suits that there’s more money to be made elsewhere.”

This paper uses Antarctic ice core data to estimate the frequency of Southern Hemisphere fires during the past 6000 years. They find a record that is characterized by a long-term increase in fires, starting at 4000 BP and peaking between 2500 and 1500 BP. They find a greater contribution from southern South American fires than from Australian biomass burning. Their ice core record does not provide clear evidence that the fire record may be strongly affected by anthropogenic activities during the mid- to late Holocene, although they cannot exclude at least a partial influence.

Methane emissions from U.S. oil and natural gas are estimated using ground-based facility-scale measurements and validated with aircraft observations in areas accounting for ~30% of U.S. gas production. When scaled up nationally, their estimate of 2015 leakage is 2.3% of U.S. gas production. This value is ~60% higher than the U.S. EPA inventory estimate, likely because existing inventory methods miss emissions released during abnormal operating conditions. Methane emissions of this magnitude produce radiative forcing over a 20-year time horizon comparable to the CO2 from natural gas combustion. The authors find that significant, cost-effective emission reductions are possible.