New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.

By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, April 11, 2025

Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.

An accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.

The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. Some of it could also go to developing countries most vulnerable to climate hazards. The accord would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives at the agency’s next meeting in October.

Given the widespread support for Friday’s terms, the head of the organization expressed hope it would be adopted in October with few or no changes.

The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.

“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed to clean up the maritime industry. The agreement is the “first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”

The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.

A State Department official said only that the U.S. didn’t participate in the negotiations.

Ships mostly run on heavy fuel oil, sometimes called bunker fuel and more than 80 percent of global goods move by ships. The industry accounts for around 3 percent of global greenhouse emissions, comparable to the emissions from aviation.

The agreement reached Friday is far less ambitious than one initially proposed by a group of island nations that had suggested a universal assessment on emissions.

After two years of negotiations, the proposal sets out a complicated two-tiered system of fees. It sets carbon intensity targets, which are like clean-fuel standards for cars and trucks. Ships using conventional shipping oil would have to pay a higher fee ($380 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent produced) while ships that use a less carbon-intensive fuel mix would have to pay a lower fee ($100 for every metric ton that exceeds the fuel standard threshold).

It is expected to raise $11 billion to $13 billion a year, according to the Organization’s estimates.

“It is a positive outcome,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the organization’s secretary-general. “This is a long journey. This is not going to happen overnight. There are many concerns, particularly from developing countries.”

The threshold would get stricter over time. It could allow the industry to switch to biofuels to meet the standards. That is a contentious approach, since biofuels are made from crops, and growing more crops to make fuel could contribute to deforestation.

The new shipping-fuel standards are meant to spur the development of alternative fuels, including hydrogen.

There were objections from many quarters. Developing countries with maritime fleets said they would be unfairly punished because they have older fleets. Countries like Saudi Arabia, which ship huge quantities of oil, and China, which exports everything from plastic toys to electric cars worldwide, balked at proposals to set a higher price, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

“They turned away a proposal for a reliable source of revenue for those of us in dire need of finance to help with climate impacts,” said Ralph Regenvanu, the climate minister for Vanuatu, in a statement after the vote.

In the end, countries that voted in favor of the compromise agreement included China and the European Union. Saudi Arabia and Russia voted against it.

The United States pulled out of the talks entirely.

The global shipping industry agreed in 2023 to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050. Last year, it followed up on that commitment with a more concrete plan, taking the first steps toward establishing an industrywide carbon price.

Projections by the International Chamber of Shipping, an industry body, found that it would have a negligible effect on prices. “We recognize that this may not be the agreement which all sections of the industry would have preferred, and we are concerned that this may not yet go far enough in providing the necessary certainty,” said Guy Platten, the council’s secretary general. “But it is a framework which we can build upon.”

Claire Brown contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/climate/cargo-shipping-emissions.html?campaign_id=54&emc=edit_clim_20250413&instance_id=152483&nl=climate-forward&regi_id=66704053&segment_id=195923&user_id=97eb24ff9121d1a70f01fac05f86ea1b

Trump’s EPA Plans to Stop Collecting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data From Most Polluters

Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move. “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” one said.

By Sharon Lerner, ProPublica, April 10, 2025

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to eliminate long-standing requirements for polluters to collect and report their emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change. The move, ordered by a Trump appointee, would affect thousands of industrial facilities across the country, including oil refineries, power plants and coal mines as well as those that make petrochemicals, cement, glass, iron and steel, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica.

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program documents the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-warming gases emitted by individual facilities. The data, which is publicly available, guides policy decisions and constitutes a significant portion of the information the government submits to the international body that tallies global greenhouse gas pollution. Losing the data will make it harder to know how much climate-warming gas an economic sector or factory is emitting and to track those emissions over time. This granularity allows for accountability, experts say; the government can’t curb the country’s emissions without knowing where they are coming from.

“This would reduce the detail and accuracy of U.S. reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, when most countries are trying to improve their reporting,” said Michael Gillenwater, executive director of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute. “This would also make it harder for climate policy to happen down the road.”

The program has been collecting emissions data since at least 2010. Roughly 8,000 facilities a year now report their emissions to the program. EPA officials have asked program staff to draft a rule that will drastically reduce data collection. Under the new rule, its reporting requirements would only apply to about 2,300 facilities in certain sectors of the oil and gas industry.

Climate experts expressed shock and dismay about the apparent decision to stop collecting most information on our country’s greenhouse gas emissions. “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” said Edward Maibach, a professor at George Mason University. “How in the world can we possibly manage this incredible threat to America’s well-being and humanity’s well-being if we’re not actually monitoring what we’re doing to exacerbate the problem?”

The EPA did not address questions from ProPublica about the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Instead, the agency provided an emailed statement affirming the Trump administration’s commitment to “clean air, land, and water for EVERY American.”

The agency announced last month that it was “reconsidering” the greenhouse gas reporting program. In a little-noticed press release issued on March 12, when the EPA sent out 24 bulletins as it celebrated the “most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described the reporting program as “burdensome.” Zeldin also claimed that the program “costs American businesses and manufacturing millions of dollars, hurting small businesses and the ability to achieve the American Dream.”

Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for Trump’s presidency, suggested severely scaling back the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program and also described it as imposing burdens on small businesses.

In contrast, climate experts say the EPA reporting program, which tallies between 85% and 90% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., is in many ways a boon to businesses. “A lot of companies rely on the data and use it in their annual sustainability reports,” said Edwin LaMair, an attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. Companies also use the data to demonstrate environmental progress to shareholders and to meet international reporting requirements. “If the program stops, all that valuable data will stop being generated,” LaMair said.

The loss of that data could have a devastating effect on the world’s ability to rein in the disastrous effects of the warming climate, according to Andrew Light, who served as assistant secretary of energy for international affairs in the Biden administration. Light noted that addressing the dangerous and costly extreme weather events requires international collaboration — and that our failure to collect data could give other countries an excuse to abandon their own reporting.

“We will not get to the kinds of temperature stabilization needed to protect Americans against the worst climate impacts unless we get the cooperation of developing countries,” Light said. “If the United States won’t even measure and report our own emissions, how in the world can we expect China, India, Indonesia and other major growing developing countries to do the same?”

In its first months, the Trump administration has shown waning support for the reporting program. The EPA left the portal through which companies share data closed for several weeks and, in March, pushed back the emissions reporting deadline. Then last Friday, a meeting held with several program staff members raised further questions about the fate of future data collection, according to sources who were briefed on the meeting and asked not to be named for fear of retribution.

At the meeting, political appointee Abigale Tardif, who is principal deputy assistant administrator of the EPA’s office of air and radiation, instructed staff to draft a rule that would eliminate reporting requirements for 40 of the 41 sectors that are now required to submit data to the program. Tardif did not respond to inquiries from ProPublica about this story. Political appointee Aaron Szabo, who was present at the meeting and is awaiting confirmation as assistant administrator to the office, declined to answer questions, directing a reporter to EPA communications staff.

Before joining the EPA, Tardif and Szabo worked as lobbyists. Szabo represented the American Chemistry Council and Duke Energy among other companies and trade groups and Tardif worked for Marathon Petroleum and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association.

Some climate advocates noted that industry stands to benefit from the elimination of greenhouse gas reporting requirements. “T​he bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Cleetus derided the choice to stop documenting emissions as ostrich-like. “Not tracking the data doesn’t make the climate crisis any less real,” she said. “This is just putting our heads in the sand.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-epa-greenhouse-gas-reporting-climate-crisis?campaign_id=54&emc=edit_clim_20250410&instance_id=152318&nl=climate-forward&regi_id=66704053&segment_id=195752&user_id=97eb24ff9121d1a70f01fac05f86ea1b

Climate policy should involve building stuff

The Trump administration’s crusade against lowering emissions shows a frustrating lack of imagination.

Editorial, The Washington Post, March 29, 2025

President Donald Trump is coming at climate policy with the ferocity of a wildfire. He has ridiculed regulations on carbon emissions and gutted agencies designed to carry them out. His Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, has vowed to eliminate rules wholesale, starting with his agency’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases pose a public health threat, which undergirds most federal climate actions.

The EPA said in a statement that these moves will “Power the Great American comeback,” casting regulations as a drag on the economy. But this view exposes a basic misunderstanding of the fight against climate change. It is not only about restricting economic activity. Far more important to the effort — and what should excite this administration — is building stuff.

Fighting climate change should involve energizing the economy, including by expanding solar and wind power, which are already the fastest-growing sources of electricity in history and are proliferating in many Republican-led states. The country also needs added transmission lines to make the electrical grid more resilient and to move energy around the country as needed. And it needs advanced nuclear reactors, still in development, which have the potential to spark an energy renaissance. Other technologies, including batteries with expanded storage and more efficient electric vehicles, are important, too.

All such building projects could create jobs and boost gross domestic product growth while sharpening the United States’ competitive edge against its adversaries. Trump should view this not as some left-wing agenda, but as an opportunity.

Unfortunately, Trump — whose campaign was heavily funded by fossil fuel interests — has adopted a posture of “no.” He has halted new leases for wind and solar projects on federal lands or waters, and is seeking to terminate $14 billion in grants already awarded for climate-friendly developments. He paused about $3 billion in funding for the creation of electric vehicle chargers, while Republicans in Congress are considering scrapping tax credits for EV owners. And his tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico threaten to drastically limit developers’ access to equipment needed to build transmission lines.

This is a mistake, both politically and on policy grounds. Seventy-eight percent of Americans want more solar energy, a Pew Research Center survey found last year. Seventy-two percent want more wind energy. And two-thirds of Americans, including 46 percent of Republicans, say that limiting their “carbon footprint” is either very or somewhat important to them.

Moreover, demand for electricity is projected to explode in the years ahead, largely due to the dizzying growth of energy-guzzling data centers. The Trump administration no doubt wants to meet this need by expanding the production of fossil fuels, which has been at historic heights for years. But shutting out wind and solar makes no sense, and not only because doing so would worsen carbon emissions; it would also restrict energy supplies that the country needs.

The administration’s crusade to eliminate existing climate regulations is self-defeating as well. Undoing the EPA’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases, which Zeldin describes as “the holy grail of the climate change religion,” would take years and almost certainly lose in court since the science supporting it has strengthened so much over the years. Trump’s efforts to do away with regulations on methane similarly will smash into reality: Many natural gas companies have already invested millions of dollars in reducing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas and are unlikely to change course, especially since the European Union’s regulations on methane remain in place.

The Trump administration’s embrace of the tired climate denialism that Republicans have toyed with for years shows a frustrating lack of imagination. The president has positioned himself as an ally of the nuclear industry, which has a historic opportunity to innovate with safer and more effective reactors, due to reforms to the approval process that Congress passed last year. Yet when Trump speaks about his energy policies, it’s almost always “drill, baby, drill.” Why not make advanced nuclear technology a signature goal of his presidency?

And why not push for permitting reforms for all energy projects, as last year’s bipartisan bill from then-Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) sought to do? Trump might be unlikely to suddenly start supporting solar and wind projects. But if Republicans whose states benefit from these industries press him, perhaps he’ll ease up, as he has started to do with electric vehicles thanks to his relationship with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

This won’t happen so long as Trump and his advisers wrongly view promoting cleaner energy as a mere progressive ideal. Such cramped thinking can only lead to lost opportunities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/29/trump-climate-policy-zeldin-economy/

The electric-vehicle revolution may be on shakier ground than you think

Republican plans to end federal EV tax credits, weaken tailpipe pollution rules and slash funding for charging stations would boost emissions and shut down factories, experts say.

By Nicolas Rivero, The Washington Post, March 20, 2025

Republican plans to scrap nearly all federal support for electric vehicles could kneecap the nascent industry, auto industry experts say, just when more Americans are considering buying an EV and car companies are planning big investments.

“Everything that’s happening politically couldn’t have happened at a worse time from the point of view of EV adoption,” Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at the car market research firm AutoPacific, said in an interview.

Ending federal EV tax credits, weakening tailpipe pollution rules and slashing funding for charging stations — as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have proposed — would slow EV sales and trigger a wave of factory shutdowns and canceled investments, according to energy policy and auto industry researchers. It would also lead to higher planet-warming emissions, they added.

The biggest source of greenhouse pollution in the United States is transportation — mostly from cars and light-duty trucks, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Experts say switching from gas and diesel engines to electric vehicles is the best way to limit the damage from climate change, which is expected to make people sicker, farms less productive and countries poorer if left unchecked.

These moves would delay, but not prevent, the gradual shift from gas-powered cars and trucks to EVs in the United States. Even without government support, analysts say, electric vehicles will continue to eat away at sales of gas-powered cars. But the tipping point when EVs break into the mainstream U.S. car market is moving further away, experts say, and could have far-reaching effects on the economy and environment.

Emissions up, jobs down

The Trump administration has already signaled that it will scrap carbon regulations on car and truck pollution, and Republicans in Congress are considering axing federal tax credits for Americans who buy or lease electric vehicles.

Those policies alone could shrink U.S. EV sales 40 percent in 2030 and eliminate the need for all planned EV assembly factories and put up to half of existing EV factories at risk of shutting down, according to a recent analysis from Princeton University. Between one-third and two-thirds of battery factories running by the end of this year would be at risk of closure. Most of those plants are concentrated in Republican-led districts in the South and Midwest.

“If you pull the rug out from under the industry, things are going to collapse, and a lot of those investments are going to be canceled,” said Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of engineering at Princeton University and the author of the report.

Automakers were already pulling back on EV investments in response to slower-than-expected sales last year.

Tesla killed its plans for a new, cheap EV model after sales slumped in 2024. And as Tesla CEO Elon Musk leads the Trump administration’s mass firing of federal workers, protesters are picketing and sometimes violently attacking Tesla dealerships.

General Motors — the second-biggest U.S. electric automaker, which has vowed to sell only electric light-duty vehicles by 2035 — delayed plans for a new EV factory, sold its stake in one of three battery factories it built with LG and delayed the release of a new electric Buick last year. Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen have also cut spending and delayed or canceled EV releases, and Volvo and Mercedes-Benz abandoned plans to sell only electric cars and trucks by 2030.

Meanwhile, Trump has frozen funding for building charging stations through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program and other electric-vehicle funding through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

If Trump and Congress permanently abolish that funding — in addition to ending tax credits for EV sales, charging and battery manufacturing and blocking California’s ability to set its own vehicle emissions rules — cars and trucks would emit 49 million extra tons of carbon pollution in 2030, according to a recent analysis from Harvard University. That’s about as much pollution as 115 gas power plants emit in a year, according to the EPA.

“Slowing EV adoption increases emissions,” said Elaine Buckberg, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and former chief economist at GM, adding that it makes it harder “to forestall climate change and its effects.”

Although the two reports consider slightly different scenarios, they reach similar conclusions: Jenkins predicts that by 2030, there could be 8.3 million fewer EVs and plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads than there would be if federal EV policies were left in place, while Buckberg predicts 9.9 million fewer EVs would be in use.

Neither analysis factored in the impact of tariffs, which are expected to raise the price of buying a car by thousands of dollars. It’s hard to predict the effect on the EV industry, Jenkins said, in part because Trump’s tariff threats keep changing. Higher prices would probably make Americans think twice about buying any type of new car — but since EVs are more likely to be assembled in the U.S. than gas-powered cars, they might not be hurt as badly by trade barriers, Jenkins said.

Existing trade barriers with China — set by Trump and raised by former president Joe Biden — are already keeping cheaper Chinese EVs off American roads and raising the price of going electric.

Falling off the ‘S-curve’

Countries where EVs catch on — such as Norway, China and Iceland — usually follow a pattern called the “S-curve.” Sales start slow, but eventually they hit a tipping point and take off after the industry switches from reaching a small group of early adopters to breaking into the mass market.

Auto industry experts have been looking for signs that the U.S. market is reaching that tipping point. Last year, EVs made up 8.7 percent of new car sales, according to Kelley Blue Book. It’s hard to say whether the market was set to take off: Although EV sales have risen steadily, their momentum slowed in 2024.

Either way, experts say that tipping point will be further away in the U.S. if the federal government pulls its support for the industry. EV leaders such as Norway and China helped their electric-car industries get off the ground with subsidies and incentives.

“It is clear based on the evidence that there is no inflection point, no significant market growth, without strong policy support,” said Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California at Davis. He added that U.S. EV sales will probably continue to grow “because of the huge investment done in the last couple of years, but it’s not going to be an S-curve in any way.”

Killing the federal tax credit for buying or leasing EVs would be the single biggest blow to the industry, according to the Harvard analysis. The credit is especially important as EV sellers try to break into the mass market, where car buyers are more price sensitive.

“That’s the time when you need stronger incentives,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds, a car shopping and review website. Early adopters buying luxury EVs might be willing to pay higher prices, she said, “but the second wave of buyers needs more convincing.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/20/trump-ev-tesla-tax-credits/

Yes, New England really was colder when you were a kid. Climate change makes snowy winters feel like a treat.

Baby Boomers grew up with two more weeks of frozen lakes than Gen Z is living with now.

By Erin Douglas and Ken Mahan, Boston Globe, March 4, 2025

This is the first in a series of Globe stories examining New England’s changing winters.

Finally. We watched snowflakes glimmer in the light of street lamps. Kids played pick-up hockey on frozen ponds. And skiers relished in the abundant snow cover — a booming ski season was back.

After years of warm winters that limited snow sports and often left the ground muddy instead of blanketed by white, New Englanders this year welcomed back a winter season that felt, well, cold.

This more classic New England winter is thanks to a weak La Niña weather pattern that tends to draw in more cold air and help whip up storms. Even so, this winter doesn’t come close to the hallmark bitter cold winters of Boston: Temperatures trended below average but were generally well within what’s considered normal. And the snowfall in Boston was actually below average between December and late February.

New England winters are now 3 degrees warmer, on average, than they were during the Baby Boom of the late 1940s through the early 1960s, a Boston Globe analysis of weather data found. Winters here are warming twice as fast as summers. Those few degrees of warming caused by climate change have already sparked a big shift in New England’s winter climate. In just three generations, picturesque winter wonderlands and reliably freezing cold temperatures have become the exception. Instead, we’ve seen weather more associated with spring or fall: rainy days, mushy ground, and some chilly weather.

Compared with Gen Z, those born in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Baby Boomers grew up with two extra weeks of temperatures low enough to freeze ponds and lakes, according to the analysis.

“We’re having winters where snow comes and goes, or maybe it’s a very wet snow — not that big, fluffy snow,” said Gillian Galford, an ecologist and earth system scientist at the University of Vermont. “It’s just a very different winter experience.”

The last time Boston had a February with an average temperature below 30 degrees was 10 years ago. Last year — which was New England’s warmest on record since data collection began in the late 1800s — the average winter temperature in Boston never even reached below freezing (it was 36.4 degrees).

Warmer winters have slowly upended local economies, disrupted ecosystems, and introduced new flooding concerns. With less snowpack and thinner ice, we’re not sledding or snowshoeing as often. Pond hockey games are getting canceled. And ski resorts rely more heavily on artificial snow-making to keep their operations functioning.

We still get snow — occasionally dumping in huge snowstorms — but the gentle and consistent snow days have become irregular and infrequent.

Climate scientists say the long-term trend for winters in the region is toward rain. And as the emissions from fossil fuels continue to heat the planet, winters like the one we just had are only expected to become more sporadic: Boston’s winters are now, climate scientists say, more characteristic of a normal winter in New Jersey, more than 300 miles south.

By the 2080s, only two generations from now, Boston’s winter climate is expected to feel more like Baltimore with temperatures well above freezing, assuming mankind makes an effort to reduce emissions. It could feel like Memphis by then, researchers have found, if fossil fuel emissions are not drastically reduced.

The vanishing winter climate has consequences: In New Hampshire, during the particularly warm winter of 2015-16, skier visits plummeted 25 percent. In Maine, invasive pests are now capable of surviving the winters without harsh freezes, and they’re sickening native animals and plants. In Massachusetts, cranberry and maple syrup production has been disrupted: Cranberry bogs rely on consistent freezes and maple trees require below-freezing temperatures at night to be tapped for syrup.

There just aren’t that many “freezing days” anymore, leading to shrinking snowpack. Hard freezes tend to set in at 20 degrees and below, but New England has lost an average of 16 hard freeze days per year since 1953, with most of that loss occurring in the last 15 years, data from weather stations show.

“Boston’s winter climate is becoming more like a city in the Mid-Atlantic region with warmer winters,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center. She grew up ice skating on frozen ponds and cranberry bogs, but now, “the ice is rarely thick enough anymore,” she said.

On Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire, the ice melts 11 days earlier than it did in 1973. (New Hampshire has lost almost an entire month of subfreezing nights.) Maine’s lakes, too, are “icing out” one or two weeks earlier and the ice that does form is thinner.

This decline in ice thickness jeopardizes ice skating, pond hockey, ice fishing, and more. Some winter recreation events and activities have already been axed. Last year, the Pond Hockey Classic in Vermont was canceled due to rising temperatures.

At Lake Morey in Vermont, the ice skating resort can only count on about two weeks per year of good ice skating weather, an owner told the Globe last year. In the past, they could bank on more than six weeks.

Less snowpack is also affecting skiing: In Maine, for example, a dairy farm recently said it will no longer offer cross-country skiing on its property.

Portland, Maine has lost an average 7 inches of snowpack since 1940. Vermont, on average, has lost 10 since the 1960s. In New Hampshire, the state typically gets more than three months of deep snow cover; now, scientists estimate that there will only be — at most — two months of deep snow by the end of the century.

The loss of snowpack is not just a symptom of warming winters; it’s also making the problem worse. When the ground is covered in a layer of white, the sun’s energy is reflected from the ground and keeps the surface cooler. Exposed brown dirt absorbs that energy and generally warms the surface — accelerating the warming.

Snowpack also provides cover and camouflage for wildlife, including American martens and snowshoe hares, respectively. Now, the martens don’t have as many safe spaces to hide and the hares turn white while the ground is still brown.

“They are like the picture book story of climate change,” said Alexej Siren, a wildlife researcher at the University of New Hampshire, of the snowshoe hare.

‘Heavier dumps of snow’

Climate scientists say it’s no surprise that New England still gets huge snowstorms in a warming climate. There’s another factor at play aside from temperature: increasing precipitation.

“Even though warming means more rainstorms versus snowstorms, when there is enough cold air, we get heavier dumps of snow because storms now have more moisture to tap into,” Francis said. (For every 1-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold about 4 percent more water vapor.)

The snowfall trend is far from uniform, however. Since 1949, Boston’s annual average snowfall has slightly ticked up, mainly due to blockbuster winter storms in 1993, 1996, and 2015 that unleashed enough snow to buck the trend.

But while most Southern New England cities have experienced a decline in snowfall, parts of New Hampshire and Vermont have seen a jump. Portland, Maine, however, has seen a decline of about 7 inches.

‘Dangerous’ rain-on-snow events

With more rain comes more frequent flooding in the winter. When rain falls on snow, the results can be hazardous for nearby communities.

“Rain-on-snow events are really dangerous because you get really rapid melting,” said Galford, of the University of Vermont. “Then, you have not just the precipitation that came down in that storm, but all the snow melt that goes with it.”

This results in “catastrophic” floods, she added.

In New Hampshire last year, an exceptionally warm winter led to a massive “rain-on-snow” storm in December. Six inches of rain fell in under 24 hours — about as much rain as the state would expect from a hurricane.

Instead of powdery snow piling up on the peaks, rain dumped on the mountains and flushed the melting snow and racing water downhill. The National Guard was called in to perform water rescues, and several ski resorts were forced to shut down just before their busiest time of the season due to flooding.

“It was devastating to see the state go through that,” said Elizabeth Burakowski, an earth and environmental research scientist at the University of New Hampshire.

Adapting to a warmer climate

The winter recreation industry has diversified in a warmer climate: some attempt to attract tourists in the summers instead, and ski resorts have spent more money on expensive snow-making equipment.

Loon Mountain Resort in New Hampshire now relies on snowmaking for 97 percent of the resort’s trail acreage. Snowmaking can be very labor and energy intensive, but climate change makes it essential to the business.

Brian Norton, the resort’s president and general manager, said that the ski season now starts later than it did when he first started working at Loon Mountain 25 years ago. Snowmakers frequently battle rain and higher temperatures.

“The drastic swings in temperature were not as common 15 or 20 years ago,” Norton said.

The resort has spent more than $10 million over the last decade on new snowmaking guns that can be turned on with just a push of the button, Norton said. The newer technology allows the staff to get trails ready faster, and take advantage of every little window of time when temperatures are cold enough to make snow.

The lack of deep, consistent snow is slowly, but surely, shifting the experience of growing up in New England. That’s something Burakowski, of the University of New Hampshire, has seen first hand with her family.

She remembers learning to ski in New Hampshire in the second grade. Now, there are fewer places where she can find deep snow packs to ski, and powder days are a rare treat. Most of her ski days are on artificial snow — and her 10-year-old son takes notice.

“[Sometimes], when he looks down from the lift, it’s just bare ground,” Burakowski said. “We’re kind of sliding down this ribbon of white.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/03/science/new-england-boston-warming-winters-snow-rain-climate-change/?et_rid=1745350245&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter

Farmers Sue Over Deletion of Climate Data From Government Websites

The data, which disappeared from Agriculture Department sites in recent weeks, was useful to farmers for business planning, the lawsuit said.

By Karen Zraick, Feb. 24, 2025

Organic farmers and environmental groups sued the Agriculture Department on Monday over its scrubbing of references to climate change from its website.

The department had ordered staff to take down pages focused on climate change on Jan. 30, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within hours, it said, information started disappearing.

That included websites containing data sets, interactive tools and funding information that farmers and researchers relied on for planning and adaptation projects, according to the lawsuit.

At the same time, the department also froze funding that had been promised to businesses and nonprofits through conservation and climate programs. The purge then “removed critical information about these programs from the public record, denying farmers access to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed,” it said.

The Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed by lawyers from Earthjustice, based in San Francisco, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, based in Binghamton; the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in New York; and the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington. The latter two groups relied on the department website for their research and advocacy, the lawsuit said.

Peter Lehner, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.

“You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said.

The sites under the department’s umbrella include those of the Forest Service, which is responsible for stewardship of forests and grasslands; the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps landowners implement conservation practices; and those of other divisions focused on farms and ranches, disaster recovery and rural development.

The directive to delete the pages came by email from Peter Rhee, the department’s director of digital communications, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs allege the actions violated three federal laws and were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” They asked the court to compel the agency to restore the pages and to block it from deleting any others.

Wes Gillingham, president of the board of Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, said that farmers were just heading into planning for the summer growing season. He said taking information down because of a “political agenda about climate change” was senseless.

He has been farming in Livingston Manor, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains, for 30 years, and now raises Icelandic sheep there. He had previously grown vegetables for a community-supported agriculture program, but stopped about 20 years ago when his operation was wiped out by three massive floods in a five-year period.

Mr. Gillingham said his organization is the largest organic certifier in New York State, which is a major hub for small farms. They often send farmers to the Agriculture Department website for information on things like conservation programs and which agricultural practices qualify for grants and loans. They also direct people to resources like equipment lending.

“Right now, because of climate change and because of what farmers are facing in terms of extreme weather events, we need every piece of available information we can get,” he said. “We don’t have access to that, we’re not going to make it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/climate/agriculture-farmer-website-data-lawsuit.html