🏜️ Global Soil Moisture Sees Steady Decrease and Changes Earth's Spin

🏜️ Global Soil Moisture Sees Steady Decrease

Earth’s land masses have lost enough soil moisture in the last 40 years to change the planet’s spin and shift the location of the North Pole. Every continent has seen a persistent loss of water from land and according to new research, that may be irreversible. In some regions of the world, there would have to be well above average rainfall for 10 consecutive years to recover from the loss in moisture. Between 2000 and 2002, soils lost about 1,614 gigatons of water. Between 2003 and 2016, soils lost an additional 1,009 gigatons of water. The study suggests that the decline in moisture is primarily driven by shifts in precipitation patterns and increasing evaporative demand due to rising temperatures. Scientists say that every 360 gigatons of water lost from land correlates to roughly a 1mm global mean sea level rise.

Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News

⚡️ 16th Petersberg Climate Dialogue Highlights

This past Wednesday, ministers from 40 countries met at the 16th Petersberg Climate Dialogue, the first official gathering on climate in 2025. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a strong call for decisive climate action. Despite global tensions, he highlighted that 2024 was officially a record year for global renewable energy production. More than 92% of all new electricity capacity installed last year was from renewables. Since 2010, wind power has dropped in cost by 60%, and solar is now 90% cheaper. The Secretary General stressed that it is still possible to meet the long-term goal of 1.5C of warming, but in order to do so, countries must collectively cut emissions by 60% by 2035.

United Nations

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Read the blogs from March:

• AccuWeather to Create Advanced Global Lightning Detection Network

• NOAA’s Warn-on-Forecast Project Could Increase Lead Time for Severe Weather

• The Weather Company Implements JEDI System to Improve Forecasts

🤖 Machine Learning Techniques Enhance Climate Predictions

Siberia, a province in Russia, plays a significant role in the world’s carbon cycle. It’s vast forests, wetlands, and permafrost regions store considerable amounts of carbon on a global scale. However, climate change is rapidly altering its landscape, shifting its vegetative distribution and accelerating the permafrost thaw. A recent study from the Center for Environmental Remote Sensing and Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Chiba University in Japan is using machine learning to refine land cover maps of Siberia, where they found major differences in widely used datasets versus actual, current land cover. The new, more accurate maps will provide more accurate assessments of carbon flux and ecosystem changes, as well as enhanced climate models and predictions. Ultimately, the datasets could offer valuable guidance for policymakers and conservation efforts, contribute to disaster risk management, and help mitigate the impacts of permafrost thaw, wildfires, and habitat loss in the coming years.

Chiba University, Phys.org