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Abstract The majority of the carbon footprint of the cement industry originates from the decomposition of alkaline carbonates during clinker production. Recent studies have demonstrated that calcium oxides and other alkaline oxides in cement materials can sequester CO2 through the carbonation process and partially offset the carbon emissions generated during cement production. This study employs a comprehensive analytical model to estimate the CO2 uptake via hydrated cement carbonation, including concrete, mortar, construction waste, and cement kiln dust (CKD), covering major cement production and consumption regions worldwide from 1930 to 2023. In 2023, the global annual cement CO2 uptake reached 0.93 Gt/yr (95% CI: 0.80–1.13Gt/yr). From 1930 to 2023, the global cumulative cement CO2 absorption reached 23.89 Gt (95% CI: 20.47–28.74 Gt), equivalent to 52.32% of the CO2 process emissions from cement production during the same period. Our system for estimating cement emissions and uptake is updated annually, providing consistent and accurate data for the cement industry and carbon cycle studies. This data supports improved adaptation to future challenges.

Abstract Background Dermal transfer of nicotine during tobacco harvest can cause green tobacco sickness (GTS), characterized by nausea, vomiting, headache and dizziness. Rainfall and high temperatures are etiological factors known to increase the prevalence of GTS. We analyzed recent and projected trends in these factors for major tobacco-growing regions to assess potential exacerbation in GTS occurrence. Methods We analyzed climate parameters, including recent trends (since the 1970s) in temperature and precipitation metrics during the tobacco harvest period for Southern Brazil; Yunnan Province, China; Andhra State, India; and North Carolina, USA. We applied Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) based scenarios for Tier 1 Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6), (SSPs of 1–2.6, 3–7.0 and 5–8.5 from 2020 to 2100). Established protocol for nicotine dermal patches and temperature were used as a proxy to estimate potential nicotine absorption. Results For three locations, cumulative maximum temperatures during harvest and temperature extremes rose significantly since the 1970s as did cumulative rainfall during harvest. Projected maximum temperatures at SSP 3–7.0 and 5–8.5 projections through 2100 did increase for all locations. Estimates of nicotine skin absorption with rising temperature show significant increases for both recent changes in three locations, and for all locations for SSP projections of 3–7.0 and 5–8.5 from 2020 to 2100. Conclusions This study across multiple continents, highlights a potential link between recent and projected anthropogenic change and potential increases in GTS risk. Under SSP 5–8.5, nicotine absorption could increase by ~50% by the end of the century, which may have widespread impacts on the incidence of GTS, especially among younger tobacco workers.

Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. This means climate-driven events like wildfires and power outages will likely co-occur more often, potentially magnifying their health risks. We characterized three types of climate-driven events—anomalously warm temperatures, wildfire burn zone disasters, and long power outages—in 58 California counties during 2018–2019. We defined county-day anomalously warm temperatures when daily average temperatures exceeded 24 °C and the 85th percentile of the long-term county average. We defined county-day wildfire burn zone disasters when an active wildfire burn zone intersected a county, burned 1+ structures, killed a civilian, or received a Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Management Declaration, and overlapped with a community. For a subset of the 38 counties (66%), long power outage county days were identified using PowerOutage.us data when an outage affected >0.5% of county customers for 8+ h. Co-occurring events were when 2+ of these events occurred on the same county day. Using the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), we determined whether co-occurring events disproportionately affected vulnerable populations. Nearly every county (97%) experienced at least one day of anomalously warm temperatures, 57% had at least one wildfire burn zone disaster day, and 63% (24/38 counties with available data) had at least one long power outage day. The most common co-occurring events (anomalously warm temperatures and wildfire burn zone disasters) impacted 24 (41%) counties for 144 total county-days. We did not find a clear connection between co-occurring events and social vulnerability. We observed an inverse correlation between co-occurring wildfire burn zone disasters and long power outage days with SVI, and a positive correlation between co-occurring anomalously warm and long power outage days with SVI. This analysis can inform regional resource allocation and other state-wide planning and policy objectives to reduce the adverse effects of climate-driven events.

Abstract Background Limited evidence exists on how temperature increases are associated with hospital visits from alcohol- and substance-related disorders, despite plausible behavioral and physiological pathways. Methods In the present study, we implemented a case-crossover design, which controls for seasonal patterns, long-term trends, and non- or slowly-varying confounders, with distributed lag non-linear temperature terms (0–6 days) to estimate associations between daily ZIP Code-level temperature and alcohol- and substance-related disorder hospital visit rates in New York State during 1995–2014. We also examined four substance-related disorder sub-causes (cannabis, cocaine, opioid, sedatives). Results Here we show that, for alcohol-related disorders, a daily increase in temperature from the daily minimum (−30.1 °C (−22.2 °F)) to the 75th percentile (18.8 °C (65.8 °F)) across 0–6 lag days is associated with a cumulative 24.6% (95%CI,14.6%–34.6%) increase in hospital visit rates, largely driven by increases on the day of and day before hospital visit, with an association larger outside New York City. For substance-related disorders, we find evidence of a positive association at temperatures from the daily minimum (−30.1 °C (−22.2 °F)) to the 50th percentile (10.4 °C (50.7 °F)) (37.7% (95%CI,27.2%–48.2%), but not at higher temperatures. Findings are consistent across age group, sex, and social vulnerability. Conclusions Our work highlights how hospital visits from alcohol- and substance-related disorders are currently impacted by elevated temperatures and could be further affected by rising temperatures resulting from climate change. Enhanced social infrastructure and health system interventions could mitigate these impacts.

Abstract With the urgent need to implement the EU countries pledges and to monitor the effectiveness of Green Deal plan, Monitoring Reporting and Verification tools are needed to track how emissions are changing for all the sectors. Current official inventories only provide annual estimates of national CO2 emissions with a lag of 1+ year which do not capture the variations of emissions due to recent shocks including COVID lockdowns and economic rebounds, war in Ukraine. Here we present a near-real-time country-level dataset of daily fossil fuel and cement emissions from January 2019 through December 2021 for 27 EU countries and UK, which called Carbon Monitor Europe. The data are calculated separately for six sectors: power, industry, ground transportation, domestic aviation, international aviation and residential. Daily CO2 emissions are estimated from a large set of activity data compiled from different sources. The goal of this dataset is to improve the timeliness and temporal resolution of emissions for European countries, to inform the public and decision makers about current emissions changes in Europe.

Abstract Climate change is escalating the threat of heat stress to global public health, with the majority of humans today facing increasingly severe and prolonged heat waves. Accurate weather data reflecting the complexity of measuring heat stress is crucial for reducing the impact of extreme heat on health worldwide. Previous studies have employed Heat Index (HI) and Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) metrics to understand extreme heat exposure, forming the basis for heat stress guidelines. However, systematic comparisons of meteorological and climate data sets used for these metrics and the related parameters, like air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation crucial for human thermoregulation, are lacking. We compared three heat measures (HImax, WBGTBernard, and WBGTLiljegren) approximated from gridded weather data sets (ERA5‐Land, PRISM, Daymet) with ground‐based data, revealing strong agreement from HI and WBGTBernard (R2 0.76–0.95, RMSE 1.69–6.64°C). Discrepancies varied by Köppen‐Geiger climates (e.g., Adjusted R2 HImax 0.88–0.95, WBGTBernard 0.79–0.97, and WBGTLiljegren 0.80–0.96), and metrological input variables (Adjusted R2 Tmax 0.86–0.94, Tmin 0.91–0.94, Wind 0.33, Solarmax 0.38, Solaravg 0.38, relative humidity 0.51–0.74). Gridded data sets can offer reliable heat exposure assessment, but further research and local networks are vital to reduce measurement errors to fully enhance our understanding of how heat stress measures link to health outcomes.

Abstract Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have made significant contributions to global warming since the pre-industrial period and are therefore targeted in international climate policy. There is substantial interest in tracking and apportioning national contributions to climate change and informing equitable commitments to decarbonisation. Here, we introduce a new dataset of national contributions to global warming caused by historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide during the years 1851–2021, which are consistent with the latest findings of the IPCC. We calculate the global mean surface temperature response to historical emissions of the three gases, including recent refinements which account for the short atmospheric lifetime of CH4. We report national contributions to global warming resulting from emissions of each gas, including a disaggregation to fossil and land use sectors. This dataset will be updated annually as national emissions datasets are updated.

A rapid phase-out of unabated coal use is essential to limit global warming to below 2 °C. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of coal transitions in mitigation scenarios consistent with the Paris Agreement, using data from more than 1500 publicly available scenarios generated by more than 30 integrated assessment models. Our ensemble analysis uses clustering techniques to categorize coal transition pathways in models and bridges evidence on technological learning and innovation with historical data of energy systems. Six key findings emerge: First, we identify three archetypal coal transitions within Paris-consistent mitigation pathways. About 38% of scenarios are ‘coal phase out’ trajectories and rapidly reduce coal consumption to near zero. ‘Coal persistence’ pathways (42%) reduce coal consumption much more gradually and incompletely. The remaining 20% follow ‘coal resurgence’ pathways, characterized by increased coal consumption in the second half of the century. Second, coal persistence and resurgence archetypes rely on the widespread availability and rapid scale-up of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). Third, coal-transition archetypes spread across all levels of climate policy ambition and scenario cycles, reflecting their dependence on model structures and assumptions. Fourth, most baseline scenarios—including the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs)—show much higher coal dependency compared to historical observations over the last 60 years. Fifth, coal-transition scenarios consistently incorporate very optimistic assumptions about the cost and scalability of CCS technologies, while being pessimistic about the cost and scalability of renewable energy technologies. Sixth, evaluation against coal-dependent baseline scenarios suggests that many mitigation scenarios overestimate the technical difficulty and costs of coal phase-outs. To improve future research, we recommend using up-to-date cost data and evidence about innovation and diffusion dynamics of different groups of zero or low-carbon technologies. Revised SSP quantifications need to incorporate projected technology learning and consistent cost structures, while reflecting recent trends in coal consumption.

Abstract The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one’s community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19, conspiracy beliefs, social norms on distancing, tightness of culture, and community punishment predict various containment-related attitudes and behavior. Autoregressive analyses indicate that, at the personal level, personal hygiene behavior was predicted by personal infection risk perception. At social level, social distancing behaviors such as abstaining from face-to-face contact were predicted by perceived social norms. Support for behavioral mandates was predicted by confidence in the government and cultural tightness, whereas support for anti-lockdown protests was predicted by (lower) perceived clarity of communication about the virus. Results are discussed in light of policy implications and creating effective interventions.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by the toxin-producing cyanobacteria Microcystis spp., can increase water column pH. While the effect(s) of these basified conditions on the bloom formers are a high research priority, how these pH shifts affect other biota remains understudied. Recently, it was shown these high pH levels decrease growth and Si deposition rates in the freshwater diatom Fragilaria crotonensis and natural Lake Erie (Canada-US) diatom populations. However, the physiological mechanisms and transcriptional responses of diatoms associated with these observations remain to be documented. Here, we examined F. crotonensis with a set of morphological, physiological, and transcriptomic tools to identify cellular responses to high pH. We suggest 2 potential mechanisms that may contribute to morphological and physiological pH effects observed in F. crotonensis. Moreover, we identified a significant upregulation of mobile genetic elements in the F. crotonensis genome which appear to be an extreme transcriptional response to this abiotic stress to enhance cellular evolution rates–a process we have termed “genomic roulette.” We discuss the ecological and biogeochemical effects high pH conditions impose on fresh waters and suggest a means by which freshwater diatoms such as F. crotonensis may evade high pH stress to survive in a “basified” future.

Abstract This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (2) perceived risk to suffer economic losses due to coronavirus, and (3) their interaction effect. Individual and country-level variables were added as covariates in multilevel regression models. We examined compliance with various preventive health behaviors and support for strict containment policies. Results show that perceived economic risk consistently predicted mitigation behavior and policy support—and its effects were positive. Perceived health risk had mixed effects. Only two significant interactions between health and economic risk were identified—both positive.

Tropical cyclones can cause severe damage and can thus have devastating impacts on societies. Here, the authors use Medicare data to show that tropical cyclone exposure in the United States is associated with increased hospitalization rates for older adults from many different acute causes.

Background: In the United States (US), urinary tract infections (UTI) lead to more than 10 million office visits each year. Temperature and season are potentially important risk factors for UTI, particularly in the context of climate change. Methods: We examined the relationship between ambient temperature and outpatient UTI diagnoses among patients followed from 2015 to 2017 in two California healthcare systems: Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) and Sutter Health in Northern California. We identified UTI diagnoses in adult patients using diagnostic codes and laboratory records from electronic health records. We abstracted patient age, sex, season of diagnosis, and linked community-level Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE-I, a measure of wealth and poverty concentration) based on residential address. Daily county-level average ambient temperature was assembled from the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). We implemented distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNM) to assess the association between UTI and lagged daily temperatures. Main analyses were confined to women. In secondary analyses, we stratified by season, healthcare system, and community-level ICE-I. Results: We observed 787,186 UTI cases (89% among women). We observed a threshold association between ambient temperature and UTI among women: an increase in daily temperature from the 5th percentile (6.0 ˚C) to the mean (16.2 ˚C) was associated with a 3.2% (95% CI: 2.4, 3.9%) increase in same-day UTI diagnosis rate, whereas an increase from the mean to 95th percentile was associated with no change in UTI risk (0.0%, 95% CI: −0.7, 0.6%). In secondary analyses, we observed the clearest monotonic increase in the rate of UTI diagnosis with higher temperatures in the fall. Associations did not differ meaningfully by healthcare system or community-level ICE-I. Results were robust to alternate model specifications. Discussion: Increasing temperature was related to higher rate of outpatient UTI, particularly in the shoulder seasons (spring, autumn).

Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examination of behavioral consequences associated with the pandemic at a global level. Further, few studies operationalized pandemic-related stressors to enable the investigation of the impact of different types of stressors on health outcomes. This study examined the association between perceived risk of COVID-19 infection and economic burden of COVID-19 with health-promoting and health-damaging behaviors using data from the PsyCorona Study: an international, longitudinal online study of psychological and behavioral correlates of COVID-19. Analyses utilized data from 7,402 participants from 86 countries across three waves of assessment between May 16 and June 13, 2020. Participants completed self-report measures of COVID-19 infection risk, COVID-19-related economic burden, physical exercise, diet quality, cigarette smoking, sleep quality, and binge drinking. Multilevel structural equation modeling analyses showed that across three time points, perceived economic burden was associated with reduced diet quality and sleep quality, as well as increased smoking. Diet quality and sleep quality were lowest among respondents who perceived high COVID-19 infection risk combined with high economic burden. Neither binge drinking nor exercise were associated with perceived COVID-19 infection risk, economic burden, or their interaction. Findings point to the value of developing interventions to address COVID-related stressors, which have an impact on health behaviors that, in turn, may influence vulnerability to COVID-19 and other health outcomes.

Measurement(s) carbon dioxide emission • oxygen combustion Technology Type(s) digital curation • computational modeling technique Factor Type(s) annual and monthly fossil carbon dioxide emissions estimates • annual and monthly oxygen combustion estimates Sample Characteristic - Environment climate system Sample Characteristic - Location global Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13333643

The environmental conditions experienced by microbial communities are rarely fully simulated in the laboratory. Researchers use experimental containers (“bottles”), where natural samples can be manipulated and evaluated. However, container-based methods are subject to “bottle effects”: changes that occur when enclosing the plankton community that are often times unexplained by standard measures like pigment and nutrient concentrations. We noted variability in a short-term, nutrient amendment experiment during a 2019 Lake Erie, Microcystis spp. bloom. We observed changes in heterotrophic bacteria activity (transcription) on a time-frame consistent with a response to experimental changes in nutrient availability, demonstrating how the often overlooked microbiome of cyanobacterial blooms can be altered. Samples processed at the time of collection (T0) contained abundant transcripts from Bacteroidetes, which reduced in abundance during incubation in all bottles, including controls. Significant biological variability in the expression of Microcystis-infecting phage was observed between replicates, with phosphate-amended treatments showing a 10-fold variation. The expression patterns of Microcystis-infecting phage were significantly correlated with ∼35% of Microcystis-specific functional genes and ∼45% of the cellular-metabolites measured across the entire microbial community, suggesting phage activity not only influenced Microcystis dynamics, but the biochemistry of the microbiome. Our observations demonstrate how natural heterogeneity among replicates can be harnessed to provide further insight on virus and host ecology.

Background: Industrialised countries had varied responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may lead to different death tolls from COVID-19 and other diseases. Methods: We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian probabilistic models to vital statistics data to estimate the number of weekly deaths if the pandemic had not occurred for 40 industrialised countries and US states from mid-February 2020 through mid-February 2021. We subtracted these estimates from the actual number of deaths to calculate the impacts of the pandemic on all-cause mortality. Results: Over this year, there were 1,410,300 (95% credible interval 1,267,600-1,579,200) excess deaths in these countries, equivalent to a 15% (14-17) increase, and 141 (127-158) additional deaths per 100,000 people. In Iceland, Australia and New Zealand, mortality was lower than would be expected in the absence of the pandemic, while South Korea and Norway experienced no detectable change. The USA, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland experienced >20% higher mortality. Within the USA, Hawaii experienced no detectable change in mortality and Maine a 5% increase, contrasting with New Jersey, Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, California, Louisiana and New York which experienced >25% higher mortality. Mid-February to the end of May 2020 accounted for over half of excess deaths in Scotland, Spain, England and Wales, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Cyprus, whereas mid-September 2020 to mid-February 2021 accounted for >90% of excess deaths in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Latvia, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. In USA, excess deaths in the northeast were driven mainly by the first wave, in southern and southwestern states by the summer wave, and in the northern plains by the post-September period. Conclusions: Prior to widespread vaccine-acquired immunity, minimising the overall death toll of the pandemic requires policies and non-pharmaceutical interventions that delay and reduce infections, effective treatments for infected patients, and mechanisms to continue routine health care.

Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from 41 countries (N = 55,015) collected as part of the PsyCorona project, a cross-national longitudinal study on responses to COVID-19. Our predictions were tested through multilevel and SEM models, treating participants as nested within countries. Results showed that people's concern with COVID-19 threat was related to greater desire for tightness which, in turn, was linked to more negative attitudes towards immigrants. These findings were followed up with a longitudinal model (N = 2,349) which also showed that people's heightened concern with COVID-19 in an earlier stage of the pandemic was associated with an increase in their desire for tightness and negative attitudes towards immigrants later in time. Our findings offer insight into the trade-offs that tightening social norms under collective threat has for human groups.

BackgroundAs the global climate changes in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, weather and temperature are expected to become increasingly variable. Although heat sensitivity is a recognized clinical feature of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic demyelinating disorder of the central nervous system, few studies have examined the implications of climate change for patients with this disease.Methods and findingsWe conducted a retrospective cohort study of individuals with MS ages 18-64 years in a nationwide United States patient-level commercial and Medicare Advantage claims database from 2003 to 2017. We defined anomalously warm weather as any month in which local average temperatures exceeded the long-term average by ≥1.5°C. We estimated the association between anomalously warm weather and MS-related inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department visits using generalized log-linear models. From 75,395,334 individuals, we identified 106,225 with MS. The majority were women (76.6%) aged 36-55 years (59.0%). Anomalously warm weather was associated with increased risk for emergency department visits (risk ratio [RR] = 1.043, 95% CI: 1.025-1.063) and inpatient visits (RR = 1.032, 95% CI: 1.010-1.054). There was limited evidence of an association between anomalously warm weather and MS-related outpatient visits (RR = 1.010, 95% CI: 1.005-1.015). Estimates were similar for men and women, strongest among older individuals, and exhibited substantial variation by season, region, and climate zone. Limitations of the present study include the absence of key individual-level measures of socioeconomic position (i.e., race/ethnicity, occupational status, and housing quality) that may determine where individuals live-and therefore the extent of their exposure to anomalously warm weather-as well as their propensity to seek treatment for neurologic symptoms.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that as global temperatures rise, individuals with MS may represent a particularly susceptible subpopulation, a finding with implications for both healthcare providers and systems.

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms (CyanoHABs) commonly increase water column pH to alkaline levels ≥9.2, and to as high as 11. This elevated pH has been suggested to confer a competitive advantage to cyanobacteria such as Microcystis aeruginosa. Yet, there is limited information regarding the restrictive effects bloom-induced pH levels may impose on this cyanobacterium’s competitors. Due to the pH-dependency of biosilicification processes, diatoms (which seasonally both precede and proceed Microcystis blooms in many fresh waters) may be unable to synthesize frustules at these pH levels. We assessed the effects of pH on the ecologically relevant diatom Fragilaria crotonensis in vitro, and on a Lake Erie diatom community in situ. In vitro assays revealed F. crotonensis monocultures exhibited lower growth rates and abundances when cultivated at a starting pH of 9.2 in comparison to pH 7.7. The suppressed growth trends in F. crotonensis were exacerbated when co-cultured with M. aeruginosa at pH conditions and cell densities that simulated a cyanobacteria bloom. Estimates demonstrated a significant decrease in silica (Si) deposition at alkaline pH in both in vitro F. crotonensis cultures and in situ Lake Erie diatom assemblages, after as little as 48 h of alkaline pH-exposure. These observations indicate elevated pH negatively affected growth rate and diatom silica deposition; in total providing a competitive disadvantage for diatoms. Our observations demonstrate pH likely plays a significant role in bloom succession, creating a potential to prolong summer Microcystis blooms and constrain diatom fall resurgence.

During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors. Health behavior theories suggest perceived vulnerability to a health threat and perceived effectiveness of recommended health-protective behaviors determine motivation to follow recommendations. Accordingly, we predicted that—as a result of politicization of the pandemic—politically conservative Americans would be less likely to enact recommended health-protective behaviors. In two longitudinal studies of U.S. residents, political conservatism was inversely associated with perceived health risk and adoption of health-protective behaviors over time. The effects of political orientation on health-protective behaviors were mediated by perceived risk of infection, perceived severity of infection, and perceived effectiveness of the health-protective behaviors. In a global cross-national analysis, effects were stronger in the U.S. (N = 10,923) than in an international sample (total N = 51,986), highlighting the increased and overt politicization of health behaviors in the U.S.

Microcystins produced during harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a public health concern. Although patterns are emerging, the environmental cues that stimulate production of microcystin remain confusing, hindering our ability to predict fluctuations in bloom toxicity. In earlier work, growth at cool temperatures relative to optimum (18°C vs. 26°C) was confirmed to increase microcystin quota in batch cultures of Microcystis aeruginosa NIES-843. Here, we tested this response in M. aeruginosa PCC 7806 using continuous cultures to examine temporal dynamics and using RNA-sequencing to investigate the physiological nature of the response. A temperature reduction from 26 to 19°C increased microcystin quota ∼2-fold, from an average of ∼464 ag μm–3 cell volume to ∼891 ag μm–3 over a 7–9 d period. Reverting the temperature to 26°C returned the cellular microcystin quota to ∼489 ag μm–3. Long periods (31–42 d) at 19°C did not increase or decrease microcystin quota beyond that observed at 7–9 d. Nitrogen concentration had little effect on the overall response. RNA sequencing indicated that the decrease in temperature to 19°C induced a classic cold-stress response in M. aeruginosa PCC 7806, but this operated on a different timescale than the increased microcystin production. Microcystin quota showed a strong 48- to 72-h time-lag correlation to mcy gene expression, but no correlation to concurrent mcy expression. This work confirms an effect of temperature on microcystin quota and extends our understanding of the physiological nature of the response.

BackgroundExposure to fine particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) is hazardous to health. Our aim was to directly estimate the health and longevity impacts of current PM2.5 concentrations and the benefits of reductions from 1999 to 2015, nationally and at county level, for the entire contemporary population of the contiguous United States.Methods and findingsWe used vital registration and population data with information on sex, age, cause of death, and county of residence. We used four Bayesian spatiotemporal models, with different adjustments for other determinants of mortality, to directly estimate mortality and life expectancy loss due to current PM2.5 pollution and the benefits of reductions since 1999, nationally and by county. The covariates included in the adjusted models were per capita income; percentage of population whose family income is below the poverty threshold, who are of Black or African American race, who have graduated from high school, who live in urban areas, and who are unemployed; cumulative smoking; and mean temperature and relative humidity. In the main model, which adjusted for these covariates and for unobserved county characteristics through the use of county-specific random intercepts, PM2.5 pollution in excess of the lowest observed concentration (2.8 μg/m3) was responsible for an estimated 15,612 deaths (95% credible interval 13,248-17,945) in females and 14,757 deaths (12,617-16,919) in males. These deaths would lower national life expectancy by an estimated 0.15 years (0.13-0.17) for women and 0.13 years (0.11-0.15) for men. The life expectancy loss due to PM2.5 was largest around Los Angeles and in some southern states such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. At any PM2.5 concentration, life expectancy loss was, on average, larger in counties with lower income and higher poverty rate than in wealthier counties. Reductions in PM2.5 since 1999 have lowered mortality in all but 14 counties where PM2.5 increased slightly. The main limitation of our study, similar to other observational studies, is that it is not guaranteed for the observed associations to be causal. We did not have annual county-level data on other important determinants of mortality, such as healthcare access and quality and diet, but these factors were adjusted for with use of county-specific random intercepts.ConclusionsAccording to our estimates, recent reductions in particulate matter pollution in the USA have resulted in public health benefits. Nonetheless, we estimate that current concentrations are associated with mortality impacts and loss of life expectancy, with larger impacts in counties with lower income and higher poverty rate.

In temperate climates, winter deaths exceed summer ones. However, there is limited information on the timing and the relative magnitudes of maximum and minimum mortality, by local climate, age group, sex and medical cause of death. We used geo-coded mortality data and wavelets to analyse the seasonality of mortality by age group and sex from 1980 to 2016 in the USA and its subnational climatic regions. Death rates in men and women ≥ 45 years peaked in December to February and were lowest in June to August, driven by cardiorespiratory diseases and injuries. In these ages, percent difference in death rates between peak and minimum months did not vary across climate regions, nor changed from 1980 to 2016. Under five years, seasonality of all-cause mortality largely disappeared after the 1990s. In adolescents and young adults, especially in males, death rates peaked in June/July and were lowest in December/January, driven by injury deaths.

Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of potentially hazardous heat conditions across the United States, putting the incarcerated population of 2 million at risk for heat-related health conditions. We evaluate the exposure to potentially hazardous heat for 4,078 continental US carceral facilities during 1982–2020. Results show that the number of hot days per year increased during 1982–2020 for 1,739 carceral facilities, primarily located in the southern United States. State-run carceral facilities in Texas and Florida accounted for 52% of total exposure, despite holding 12% of all incarcerated people. This highlights the urgency for enhanced infrastructure, health system interventions and treatment of incarcerated people, especially under climate change.

Microcystins are secondary metabolites produced by several freshwater, bloom-forming cyanobacterial species. Microcystin-producing cyanobacteria co-occur with a complex community of heterotrophic bacteria. Though conflicting, studies suggest that microcystins affect the physiology of heterotrophic bacteria by inducing oxidative stress and increasing cell envelope permeability. Based on these observations, we hypothesized that exposure to microcystin should induce differential expression in genes responding to oxidative and envelope stress and trigger shifts in metabolite pools. We tested this hypothesis by exposing Escherichia coli MG1655 to 1 and 10 mg/L microcystin-LR and monitored global changes to gene expression, cellular metabolite pools, and lipid composition using RNA-sequencing and UPLC-MS. Contrary to reported studies, we observed no evidence that microcystin-LR induced oxidative or cell envelope stress in E. coli under the tested conditions. Our results suggest a potential difference in mechanism by which microcystin-LR interacts with heterotrophic bacteria vs. cyanobacteria.

Butterfield Lake is a mesotrophic lake in New York State where residents and pets have experienced unexplained health issues. Microseira wollei (basionym Lyngbya wollei) was found at two of 15 sites in Butterfield Lake and analyzed for microcystins, anatoxins, cylindrospermopsins, and paralytic shellfish poisoning toxins (PSTs). Only PSTs and trace levels of anatoxin-a were detected in these samples. This is the first published report of PSTs within a New York State lake. To evaluate the environmental and temporal drivers leading to the observed toxicity, PST content at the two sites was examined in detail. There were distinct differences in the total PST content, filament nutrient, filament chlorophyll, and relationship to environmental drivers between the sites, as well as distinct differences in the total PST content measured using different analytical techniques. A multivariate model containing site, temperature, and filament chlorophyll explained 85% of the variation in PSTs observed over the growing season. This work emphasizes the importance of proper site selection and choice of analytical technique in the development of monitoring programs to protect lake users from the occurrence of benthic cyanobacteria toxins.

With the urgent need to implement the EU countries pledges and to monitor the effectiveness of Green Deal plan, Monitoring Reporting and Verification tools are needed to track how emissions are changing for all the sectors. Current official inventories only provide annual estimates of national CO2 emissions with a lag of 1+ year which do not capture the variations of emissions due to recent shocks including COVID lockdowns and economic rebounds, war in Ukraine. Here we present a near-real-time country-level dataset of daily fossil fuel and cement emissions from January 2019 through December 2021 for 27 EU countries and UK, which called Carbon Monitor Europe. The data are calculated separately for six sectors: power, industry, ground transportation, domestic aviation, international aviation and residential. Daily CO2 emissions are estimated from a large set of activity data compiled from different sources. The goal of this dataset is to improve the timeliness and temporal resolution of emissions for European countries, to inform the public and decision makers about current emissions changes in Europe.

BACKGROUND: The human ability to envision the future, that is, to take a future perspective (FP), plays a key role in the justice motive and its function in transcending disadvantages and misfortunes. The present research investigated whether individual (Study 1) and situational (Study 2) differences in FP moderated the association of general belief in a just world (GBJW) with psychological resilience. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigated FP, GBJW, and resilience in sample of adolescents (n = 223) and disaster survivors (n = 218) in China. In Study 1, adolescents revealed stronger GBJW than PBJW, and GBJW uniquely predicted resilience in the daily lives of those with high FP (but not those with low FP). In Study 2, natural priming of FP (vs. no FP) facilitated the association of GBJW with resilience after disaster. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Supporting predictions, participants endorsed GBJW more strongly than PBJW. Further, GBJW interacted with FP in both studies, such that there was an association between GBJW and resilience at high but not low levels of FP. The results corroborate recent findings suggesting that GBJW may be more psychologically adaptive than PBJW among some populations. They also confirm that focusing on the future is an important aspect of the adaptive function of just-world beliefs.

BackgroundIn the United States (US), urinary tract infections (UTI) lead to more than 10 million office visits each year. Temperature and season are potentially important risk factors for UTI, particularly in the context of climate change.MethodsWe examined the relationship between ambient temperature and outpatient UTI diagnoses among patients followed from 2015 to 2017 in two California healthcare systems: Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) and Sutter Health in Northern California. We identified UTI diagnoses in adult patients using diagnostic codes and laboratory records from electronic health records. We abstracted patient age, sex, season of diagnosis, and linked community-level Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE-I, a measure of wealth and poverty concentration) based on residential address. Daily county-level average ambient temperature was assembled from the Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM). We implemented distributed lag nonlinear models (DLNM) to assess the association between UTI and lagged daily temperatures. Main analyses were confined to women. In secondary analyses, we stratified by season, healthcare system, and community-level ICE-I.ResultsWe observed 787,186 UTI cases (89% among women). We observed a threshold association between ambient temperature and UTI among women: an increase in daily temperature from the 5th percentile (6.0 ˚C) to the mean (16.2 ˚C) was associated with a 3.2% (95% CI: 2.4, 3.9%) increase in same-day UTI diagnosis rate, whereas an increase from the mean to 95th percentile was associated with no change in UTI risk (0.0%, 95% CI: -0.7, 0.6%). In secondary analyses, we observed the clearest monotonic increase in the rate of UTI diagnosis with higher temperatures in the fall. Associations did not differ meaningfully by healthcare system or community-level ICE-I. Results were robust to alternate model specifications.DiscussionIncreasing temperature was related to higher rate of outpatient UTI, particularly in the shoulder seasons (spring, autumn).

Policy makers have called for a ‘fair and ambitious’ global climate agreement. Scientific constraints, such as the allowable carbon emissions to avoid exceeding a 2 °C global warming limit with 66% probability, can help define ambitious approaches to climate targets. However, fairly sharing the mitigation challenge to meet a global target involves human values rather than just scientific facts. We develop a framework based on cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide to compare the consistency of countries’ current emission pledges to the ambition of keeping global temperatures below 2 °C, and, further, compare two alternative methods of sharing the remaining emission allowance. We focus on the recent pledges and other official statements of the EU, USA, and China. The EU and US pledges are close to a 2 °C level of ambition only if the remaining emission allowance is distributed based on current emission shares, which is unlikely to be viewed as ‘fair and ambitious’ by others who presently emit less. China’s stated emissions target also differs from measures of global fairness, owing to emissions that continue to grow into the 2020s. We find that, combined, the EU, US, and Chinese pledges leave little room for other countries to emit CO _2 if a 2 °C limit is the objective, essentially requiring all other countries to move towards per capita emissions 7 to 14 times lower than the EU, USA, or China by 2030. We argue that a fair and ambitious agreement for a 2 °C limit that would be globally inclusive and effective in the long term will require stronger mitigation than the goals currently proposed. Given such necessary and unprecedented mitigation and the current lack of availability of some key technologies, we suggest a new diplomatic effort directed at ensuring that the necessary technologies become available in the near future.

Efforts to reduce deforestation to mitigate climate change and to conserve biodiversity are taking place on a global scale. While many studies have estimated the emissions occurring from deforestation, few studies have quantified the domestic and international drivers sustaining deforestation rates. In this study we establish the link between Brazilian deforestation and production of cattle and soybeans, and allocate emissions between 1990 and 2010 along the global supply chain to the countries that consume products dependent on Brazilian deforestation. We find that 30% of the carbon emissions associated with deforestation were exported from Brazil in the last decade, of which 29% were due to soybean production and 71% cattle ranching. The share exported is growing, with industrialized nations and emerging markets (especially Russia and China) greatly increasing imports. We find a correlation between exports (and hence global consumption) of Brazilian cattle and soybeans and emissions from deforestation. We conclude that trade is emerging as a key driver of deforestation in Brazil, and this may indirectly contribute to loss of the forests that industrialized countries are seeking to protect through international agreements.

A growing number of countries regulate carbon dioxide (CO _2 ) emissions occurring within their borders, but due to rapid growth in international trade, the products consumed in many of the same countries increasingly rely on coal, oil and gas extracted and burned in other countries where CO _2 is not regulated. As a consequence, existing national and regional climate policies may be growing less effective every year. Furthermore, countries that are dependent on imported products or fossil fuels are more exposed to energy and climate policies in other countries. We show that the combined international trade in carbon (as fossil fuels and also embodied in products) increased from 12.3 GtCO _2 (55% of global emissions) in 1997 to 17.6 GtCO _2 (60%) in 2007 (growing at 3.7% yr ^−1 ). Within this, trade in fossil fuels was larger (10.8 GtCO _2 in 2007) than trade in embodied carbon (6.9 GtCO _2 ), but the latter grew faster (4.6% yr ^−1 compared with 3.1% yr ^−1 for fuels). Most major economies demonstrate increased dependence on traded carbon, either as exports or as imports. Because energy is increasingly embodied in internationally traded products, both as fossil fuels and as products, energy and climate policies in other countries may weaken domestic climate policy via carbon leakage and mask energy security issues.

The majority of the carbon footprint of the cement industry originates from the decomposition of alkaline carbonates during clinker production. Recent studies have demonstrated that calcium oxides and other alkaline oxides in cement materials can sequester CO2 through the carbonation process and partially offset the carbon emissions generated during cement production. This study employs a comprehensive analytical model to estimate the CO2 uptake via hydrated cement carbonation, including concrete, mortar, construction waste, and cement kiln dust (CKD), covering major cement production and consumption regions worldwide from 1930 to 2023. In 2023, the global annual cement CO2 uptake reached 0.93 Gt/yr (95% CI: 0.80–1.13Gt/yr). From 1930 to 2023, the global cumulative cement CO2 absorption reached 23.89 Gt (95% CI: 20.47–28.74 Gt), equivalent to 52.32% of the CO2 process emissions from cement production during the same period. Our system for estimating cement emissions and uptake is updated annually, providing consistent and accurate data for the cement industry and carbon cycle studies. This data supports improved adaptation to future challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydration products of cement materials can absorb atmospheric CO2, and this carbonation process provides an important decarbonization pathway for the cement industry. Global carbon sequestration by cement materials has been reported, but carbon uptake in different countries remains unquantified. Here, we quantify the national cement carbon uptake from 1928 to 2023 based on 58517 activity level data from 163 cement-producing countries and regions worldwide and 6186 carbonation parameters from detailed data records of 42 countries, and project their trend to 2024. The global CO2 uptake by cement materials increases from 7.74 Mt yr-1 (95 % confidence interval, CI: 5.84–9.85 Mt CO2 yr-1) in 1928 to 0.84 Gt yr-1 (95 % CI: 0.71–1.00 Gt yr-1) in 2023, and projected to rise to 0.86 Gt yr-1 (95 % CI: 0.73–1.02 CO2 yr-1) in 2024. The accumulated CO2 uptake from 1928 to 2023 is 21.26 Gt CO2 (95 % CI: 17.93–25.17 Gt CO2), which offsets about 46 % of the cement process emission (46.06 Gt CO2) in past 96 years. Simultaneously, the dominance in cement carbon uptake has shifted from the USA, Japan and some European countries to emerging economies such as China and India, which account for 38.0 % and 9.1 % of total CO2 uptake, respectively, in the last decade (2014–2023). By analyzing the long time-series carbon emission and uptake of the 42 countries with detailed data, we find they contributed 82.1 % of global cement CO2 uptake from 1928 to 2023, including 21 peaked countries and 21 non-peaked countries in cement emissions The annual carbon offset level (the ratio of uptake to process emission in a given year) shows a remarkable decrease due to the temporal lag of cement carbon uptake. This is significant for countries with higher cement imports, for example, the cement industry in Australia and Japan have achieved net-zero when considering the cement carbonation sink. This study provides a precise bottom-up quantification to cement carbonation sinks at national and global levels. All the data described in this study are accessible at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13827861 (Wu et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesise datasets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC) are based on land-use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based f CO2-products. The terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence on land and ocean sinks are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements and Earth System Models. The sum of all sources and sinks results in the carbon budget imbalance (BIM), a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2023, EFOS increased by 1.3 % relative to 2022, with fossil emissions at 10.1 ± 0.5 GtC yr-1 (10.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr-1 when the cement carbonation sink is not included), ELUC was 1.0 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 11.1 ± 0.9 GtC yr-1 (40.6 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr-1). Also, for 2023, GATM was 5.9 ± 0.2 GtC yr-1 (2.79 ± 0.1 ppm yr-1), SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr-1 and SLAND was 2.3 ± 1.0 GtC yr-1, with a near zero BIM (-0.02 GtC yr-1). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2023 reached 419.3 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2024, suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2023 of +0.8 % (-0.3 % to 1.9 %) globally, and atmospheric CO2 concentration increased by 2.8 ppm reaching 422.5 ppm, 52 % above pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2023, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr-1 persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use changes emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the mean ocean sink. This living data update documents changes in methods and datasets applied to this most-recent global carbon budget as well as evolving community understanding of the global carbon cycle. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2024 (Friedlingstein et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring the spatial distribution and trends in surface greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes, as well as flux attribution to natural and anthropogenic processes, is essential to track progress under the Paris Agreement and to inform its global stocktake. This study updates earlier syntheses (Petrescu et al., 2020, 2021, 2023), provides a consolidated synthesis of CH 4 emissions using bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) approaches for the European Union (EU), and is expanded to include seven additional countries with large anthropogenic and/or natural emissions (the USA, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo)). Our aim is to demonstrate the use of different emission estimates to help improve national GHG emission inventories for a diverse geographical range of stakeholders. We use updated national GHG inventories (NGHGIs) reported by Annex I parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2023 and the latest available biennial update reports (BURs) reported by non-Annex I parties. Comparing NGHGIs with other approaches highlights that different system boundaries are a key source of divergence. A key system boundary difference is whether anthropogenic and natural fluxes are included and, if they are, how fluxes belonging to these two sources are partitioned. Over the studied period, the total CH 4 emission estimates in the EU, the USA, and Russia show a steady decreasing trend since 1990, while for the non-Annex I emitters analyzed in this study, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and DR Congo, CH 4 emissions have generally increased. Quantitatively, in the EU the mean of 2015–2020 anthropogenic UNFCCC NGHGIs (15±1.8 Tg CH 4 yr -1) and the mean of the BU CH 4 emissions (17.8 (16–19) Tg CH 4 yr -1) generally agree on the magnitude, while inversions show higher emission estimates (medians of 21 (19–22) Tg CH 4 yr -1 and 24 (22–25) Tg CH 4 yr -1 for the three regional and six global inversions, respectively), as they include natural emissions, which for the EU were quantified at 6.6 Tg CH 4 yr -1 (Petrescu et al., 2023). Similarly, for the other Annex I parties in this study (the USA and Russia), the gap between the BU anthropogenic and total TD emissions is partly explained by the natural emissions. For the non-Annex I parties, anthropogenic CH 4 estimates from UNFCCC BURs show large differences compared to the other global-inventory-based estimates and even more compared to atmospheric ones. This poses an important potential challenge to monitoring the progress of the global CH 4 pledge and the global stocktake. Our analysis provides a useful baseline to prepare for the influx of inventories from non-Annex I parties as regular reporting starts under the enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement. By systematically comparing the BU and TD methods, this study provides recommendations for more robust comparisons of available data sources and hopes to steadily engage more parties in using observational methods to complement their UNFCCC inventories, as well as considering their natural emissions. With anticipated improvements in atmospheric modeling and observations, as well as modeling of natural fluxes, future development needs to resolve knowledge gaps in the BU and TD approaches and to better quantify the remaining uncertainty. TD methods may emerge as a powerful tool to help improve NGHGIs of CH 4 emissions, but further confidence is needed in the comparability and robustness of the estimates. The referenced datasets related to figures are available at 10.5281/zenodo.12818506 (Petrescu et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]