Vegetation plays a key role in the Earth's climate by influencing the energy and water cycles and sequestering a significant portion of carbon emissions. Aware of its importance, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Climate Change Initiative has unveiled a comprehensive set of satellite data aimed at improving climate models. This dataset focuses on leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR), which are essential for a global understanding of vegetation growth and health.

The release covers observations from 2000 to 2020, integrating data from multiple sensors, including those from the SPOT satellites and ESA's Proba-V mission. Offering 1 km grid resolution over five-day intervals, it provides climate and carbon modelers with detailed, consistent time series with full uncertainty estimates and global validations of in-situ measurements. (by Erica Marchand, more at spacedaily.com)

Cities play a key role in achieving climate neutrality by 2050, the goal of the European Green Deal. They occupy only 4 % of EU area, but 75 % of EU citizens live in them. In addition, cities consume more than 65 % of the world's energy and account for more than 70 % of global CO2 emissions.

As mitigating climate change largely depends on urban action, we must support cities to accelerate their green and digital transformation. In particular, European cities can significantly contribute to the Green Deal's goal of reducing emissions by 55 % by 2030 and, from a more practical point of view, offer their citizens cleaner air, safer transport and less traffic congestion and noise. (More on research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu)

A major European Union plan to better protect nature in the 27-nation bloc and fight climate change was shelved indefinitely on Monday, underscoring how the farmer protests that have swept the continent have had a profound impact on politics. Less than three months before the European Parliament elections in June, there has been a stalemate over the draft law, which could undermine the EU's global position on the issue.

Member states were supposed to give final approval to the draft law on biodiversity on Monday after months of working their way through the EU's institutional maze. But what should have been a simple rubber stamp has now turned into a possible eternal postponement. (ASSOCIATED PRESS, more at fastcompany.com)

What would a world be like without spring? During this time of year, nature awakens with an unstoppable rhythm of love, birth and flowers. But let's try to think for a moment if we find ourselves in a world without spring: a hypothesis that is obviously unrealistic, but which highlights the importance of this time of year in our ecosystem.

And no, it's not just a fantasy, but a reality that emerges from scientific research on climate change. But before we can understand what the consequences of the absence of intermediate seasons could be, a prerequisite is needed: spring only exists in mid-latitudes. While from an astronomical point of view it is determined by the position of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, from a meteorological point of view it is an annual cycle of temperatures that marks the transition from cold to increasingly warmer temperatures. (Marco Caccianiga, professor of botany at the University of Milan, more at www.lasvolta.it)

The European Observatory on Climate and Health has a new look, but our goal remains the same: to provide easy access to information and resources on climate and health, and to foster collaboration to make Europe more resilient to the health impacts of climate change. With the new look and advanced features, we hope to improve the usability of the portal and the user experience for you and all our stakeholders. (More on climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu)

Households on every continent wasted more than 1 billion meals a day in 2022, with 783 million people going hungry and a third of humanity facing food insecurity. Food waste continues to damage the global economy and fuels climate change, nature loss and pollution. These are the key findings of a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released today, ahead of the International Zero Waste Day .

A message UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 , in partnership with WRAP, provides the most accurate global estimate of food waste at retail and consumer levels. It provides guidance to countries on how to improve data collection and suggests best practices in moving from measuring to reducing food waste. (More on unep.org)

Tree cover restoration is now firmly established as a strategy for removing carbon from the atmosphere to help tackle climate change. But there is an elephant in the room when it comes to estimating how promising a climate solution is in different locations. This is the "albedo" - the fraction of solar radiation that is reflected from the Earth's surface. In general, brighter surfaces—such as a large expanse of snow or grass—generally reflect a high proportion of sunlight back into space. Trees, meanwhile, tend to be darker and absorb more sunlight, keeping it on Earth—usually in the form of excess heat. (More on Carboncredits.com)

Using Climate Action Tracker you can track government climate action around the world. The tool is an independent scientific project that measures government action against the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Based on the project's data, a report was published State of the Climate Report 2023 , which offers a blueprint the world can follow to avoid irreversible climate impacts.

Climate change is no longer a distant threat, but an urgent reality. Floods, fires, droughts and loss of biodiversity affect people around the world. In response to these climatic, ecological and related socio-economic challenges, the European Commission launched Communities for Climate (C4C) , a challenge that aims to support action by local citizens in response to climate change.

The Climate Communities call for proposals aims to select 50 local community-based climate-related projects that will become beacons for others by providing replicable examples and good practices at the local level that will drive wider change across Europe. (More on interreg.eu)

Climate change is affecting grape yields, wine composition, and quality. As a result, the geography of wine production is changing. In this review, we discuss the implications of changing temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, and CO ₂ on global wine production and explore adaptation strategies. Current wine-growing regions are primarily located in mid-latitudes (California, USA; southern France; northern Spain and Italy; Barossa, Australia; Stellenbosch, South Africa; and Mendoza, Argentina, among others), where the climate is warm enough to allow grapes to ripen, but not too hot and relatively dry to prevent severe disease pressure.  (Cornelis van Leeuwen, Giovanni Sgubin, Gregory A. Gambetta, more at nature.com)

The Council today formally adopted a directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law. The law will improve the investigation and prosecution of environmental crime. The directive sets minimum rules for the whole of the EU on the definition of criminal offences and sanctions. It replaces a previous law from 2008.

The law will only apply to crimes committed within the EU. However, member states can decide to extend their jurisdiction to crimes committed outside their territory. (More on consilium.europa.eu)

Based on studies by leading scientific organizations such as the IPCC and Copernicus, the report should allow different countries to prepare for the consequencesclimate changes in our societies, in our agriculture, in our economy, in our infrastructure, in our access to water and even in our health. Europe is in fact the region of the world that is warming the fastest after the poles, and this phenomenon is " risk multiplier  ". To simply summarize the changes. European Commission has produced a map divided into four major regions: Northern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Europe, as well as “Southern Europe”. For each of these zones, the evolution of the main risks is indicated by an up or down arrow: average temperature, number of heat wave days, precipitation totals, intense precipitation anddrought These projections take into account two climate scenarios: an optimistic scenario with limited warming and a pessimistic scenario with strong warming (according to various estimates).IPCC ). (FROM KARINE DURAND, more at futura-sciences.com)

The sun is shining, there is not a cloud in the sky and children are happily playing outside in the garden. In the future, this idyllic scene will be impossible – because of climate change. A United Nations (UN) campaign wants to wake people up with a vivid view of what our future is likely to look like. It is presented in the form of a weather report for the year 2050, narrated by a young girl. (Sandra Sporer, more at www.fr.de)

Climate change can have detrimental effects on children’s health and well-being. Despite the imperative to better understand how climate change affects children’s health and well-being, a systematic approach and focus exclusively on children (aged <18 years) is lacking. In this scoping review, we conducted a literature search on the impacts of climate change on children’s health from January 2000 to June 2019. The included studies explicitly linked changes in exposure to a risk factor for children’s health to climate change or climate variability. A total of 2970 original articles, reviews and other documents were identified, of which 371 were analysed. Our analysis, using an expanded framework, showed that the effects of climate change on children’s health operate through direct and indirect pathways with implications for the determinants of children’s health, as well as morbidity and mortality from a range of diseases. This understanding can be further strengthened by using a broader range of research methods, studying overlooked populations and geographic regions, examining the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation on child health, and considering the positioning of climate change and child health within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Current and future generations of children are bearing and will continue to bear an unacceptably high burden of disease caused by climate change. ( Daniel Helldén, MD, Camilla Andersson, MSc, Prof. Maria Nilsson, PhD, Kristie L Ebi, PhD, Prof. Peter Friberg, PhD, Tobias Alfvén, PhD, more at www.thelancet.com)

Advanced computer modeling suggests that summer rainfall in southern Europe could fall by as much as 48 % by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise rapidly, but much of this projected decline could be avoided by achieving net-zero emissions as soon as possible.

A study led by scientists from the University of Reading, published in Geophysical Research Letters , provides further evidence to motivate accelerated climate action and prevent drastic decreases in rainfall, more drought and more wildfires. (University of Reading, more at phys.org)

The team led by Dr. Moritz Mathis from the Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research CLICCS at the Universität Hamburg and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon proved that the intensity of CO absorption ₂ it is higher in coastal seas than in the open ocean. It proves it study published in the magazine Nature Climate Change .

To combat ongoing climate change, it is important to understand how CO emissions are distributed _{2 .} And which exchange processes between the atmosphere, ocean and land regulate the distribution. Methodological developments in recent years have made it possible to more flexibly incorporate physical and biogeochemical processes into climate models and capture individual regions with higher resolution. (by Torsten Fischer, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, more at phys.org)

JRC research made a significant contribution to the first European climate risk assessment report. A message , prepared by the European Environment Agency (EEA) at the request of the European Commission, identifies a number of different economic and social risks that Europe will have to cope with in the coming decade as a result of the climate crisis.

In response to these warnings and the latest climate science, the European Commission today published a Communication setting out how the EU, each EU country and European regions can work together to better anticipate, understand and address growing climate risks. It also sets out how they can prepare and implement policies that save lives, reduce costs and protect prosperity across the EU. (More on joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu)