I. Ocean Sciences

1. Trump Administration Scrutinizing Protected Ocean Areas

A U.S. federal agency is taking a close look at 11 U.S. national marine sanctuaries and national marine monuments that were designated or expanded within the past decade.

The review, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began on 26 June, follows a 28 April White House executive order entitled “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.”

https://eos.org/articles/trump-administration-scrutinizing-protected-ocean-areas

2. Challenges and Opportunities for Coastal Altimetry

The 10th edition of the Coastal Altimetry Workshop series was organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) with additional support from 10 other institutions. This workshop brought together nearly 120 scientists from 28 countries. A SAR altimetry training course for students and young researchers (also organized by ESA) took place in parallel in Florence.

https://eos.org/meeting-reports/challenges-and-opportunities-for-coastal-altimetry

IV.CLIMATE CHANGE

1. Contrary Temperature Trend Stalls Upgraded Climate Model’s Debut

Many researchers around the world use a digital representation of Earth’s land, water, and air known as the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to mimic and predict the evolution of our planet’s climate. To enable those climate modelers to simulate global climatic behavior with ever greater precision and fidelity, scientists who work to improve CESM expected to unveil the results of the model’s next big version, CESM2, at a workshop in Boulder, Colo., last month.

https://eos.org/articles/contrary-temperature-trend-stalls-upgraded-climate-models-debut

2. Assessing a New Clue to How Much Carbon Plants Take Up

Climate change projections include an Achilles heel: We don’t know enough about feedbacks from the terrestrial biosphere. Plants and other organisms take in carbon dioxide (CO2), which they use to manufacture their own food, using photosynthesis. This process lets ecosystems sequester atmospheric CO2, creating one of the largest known feedbacks in the climate system. But models of the global climate system differ greatly in their estimates of carbon uptake, leading to critical uncertainties in global climate projections.

https://eos.org/features/assessing-a-new-clue-to-how-much-carbon-plants-take-up

<span color:#333333;" style="font-size:9.0pt">V.HYDROLOGY, CRYOSPHERE & EARTH SURFACE

1. Aquatic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate

Extreme climate events (ECEs) such as tropical storms and hurricanes, thunderstorms, heat waves, droughts, ice storms, and snow storms have increased and are projected to further increase in intensity and frequency across the world. These events are expected to have significant consequences for aquatic ecosystems with the potential for large changes in ecosystem processes, responses, and functions.

https://eos.org/meeting-reports/aquatic-ecosystems-in-a-changing-climate

VI. AGU Blogs

1. U.S. About to Fall Further Behind in Long Range Weather Forecasting

The Europeans are now testing a new version of their ECMWF model with a resolution of around 9 km, and so far it looks very good. Not that the present model isn’t since we forecasters now depend on it heavily for long range forecasts beyond 2-3 days. The NOAA GFS model is almost always the least accurate and that is not my subjective opinion.

http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2017/06/29/u-s-fall-farther-behind-long-range-weather-forecasting/