In the latter half of the twentieth century, a significant climate phenomenon “diurnal asymmetric warming” emerged, wherein global land surface temperatures increased more rapidly during the night than during the day. However, recent episodes of global brightening and regional droughts and heatwaves have brought notable alterations to this asymmetric warming trend. Here, we re-evaluate sub-diurnal temperature patterns, revealing a substantial increase in the warming rates of daily maximum temperatures (T_max), while daily minimum temperatures have remained relatively stable. This shift has resulted in a reversal of the diurnal warming trend, expanding the diurnal temperature range over recent decades. The intensified T_max warming is attributed to a widespread reduction in cloud cover, which has led to increased solar irradiance at the surface. Our findings underscore the urgent need for enhanced scrutiny of recent temperature trends and their implications for the wider earth system.

A SiOSnCoC composite anode is assembled using conductive polymer binder for the application in next generation high energy density lithium ion batteries. A specific capacity of 700 mAh/g is achieved at a 1C (900 mA/g) rate. High active material loading anode with an areal capacity of 3.5 mAh/cm2 is demonstrated by mixing SiOSnCoC with graphite. To compensate for the lithium loss in the 1st cycle, stabilized lithium metal powder (SLMP) is used for prelithiation, when paired with a commercial cathode, a stable full cell cycling performance with a 86% 1st cycle efficiency is realized. By achieving these important metrics toward a practical application, this conductive polymer binder/SiOSnCoC anode system presents great promise to enable the next generation high-energy lithium ion battery.

Battery grade graphite products from major suppliers to the battery industry were evaluated in 2325 coin cells with lithium counter electrodes. First and subsequent cycle efficiency, discharge capacity, and discharge rate performance were measured to compare these anode materials. A formula has been developed to utilize lithium ion battery cycling performance data to estimate the overall battery cost, relative to the cost of a battery using MCMB. This analysis indicates that replacing MCMB with CPG-8 (Conoco Phillips) would reduce battery cost (including consideration of a replacement frequency driven by the anode) by 40% (assuming equal graphite prices), whereas use of each of the other graphites would lead to a more costly battery. Therefore we chose CPG-8 as the new baseline graphite for the BATT Program. Significant or strong correlations were found between graphite particle surface area and first cycle irreversible capacity, particle size and rate capacity, and rhombohedral fraction and discharge capacity.