climate change

Scientists urge governments to brace for record El Niño

The El Niño building in the Pacific has broken records for sea surface warmth, and some climate scientists now say it could end up as the strongest in a millennium. Federal forecasters expect it to keep getting stronger through the…

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Copernicus finds record share of Europe under heat stress

Just over half of Europe faced "very strong" heat stress at some point this summer. That is the largest share on record, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Friday, Oct. 2. Western Europe had its hottest…

Report warns super El Niño threatens Latin American trade

Latin America faces mounting risks of supply chain disruption, lost commodity output and damaged infrastructure as a "super-strength" El Niño grows stronger into 2027. That is the warning in a report released Sept. 30 by risk data firm Verisk Maplecroft.…

Swiss glaciers lose 5.5% of ice in second-worst year

Switzerland's glaciers lost 5.5% of their ice volume in 2026. It is the second-largest annual drop on record, after a winter with little snow was followed by summer heat waves, according to a report released Thursday by the Glacier Monitoring…

Nearly 40% of world’s population exposed to dangerous ozone in 2026, new report finds

The combination of extreme heat, wildfires and human-caused emissions has exposed nearly two in five people worldwide to dangerous levels of ground-level ozone so far this year, according to the inaugural Atmosphere Watch report published Wednesday by the Copernicus Atmosphere…

Copernicus report delivers ‘starkest warning yet’ on oceans

The world's oceans are warming at an accelerating and unprecedented rate, with far-reaching consequences for marine life, coastal communities and global weather patterns, according to a landmark report published Wednesday by more than 100 international scientists.

Europe faces €500 billion climate adaptation bill through 2035

Europe faces a climate adaptation bill of roughly €500 billion ($571 billion) through 2035 as the continent shifts from treating extreme weather damage as isolated emergencies to planning for a sustained cycle of rebuilding and resilience investment, according to new…

Super El Nino could cause 451,000 excess deaths, researchers warn

This year's powerful El Niño could lead to as many as 451,000 additional heat-related deaths worldwide over the nine months from June 2026 through February 2027, according to a report released Wednesday by the University of Chicago's Climate Impact Lab.…

Study ties post-Paris Agreement emissions to worse European heat waves

A massive heat dome is building across Europe as September draws to a close, delivering unseasonably high temperatures that forecasters expect to persist into early October — arriving just as a new study quantifies how greenhouse gas emissions released since…

Record El Nino threatens Asia’s food supply, global prices

A record-breaking El Niño is bearing down on Southeast Asia, bringing drought, wildfires and failing harvests that threaten to push tens of millions more people into hunger and send global food prices sharply higher, according to the Associated Press and…

2026 ‘super El Nino’ smashes all-time record, still months from peak

The 2026 El Niño has officially become the strongest on record, with sea surface temperatures in a key stretch of the central Pacific surpassing any measurement in more than 170 years of observations — and the event is still months…

Seven of nine planetary boundaries hit worst levels ever recorded, report finds

Seven of the nine Planetary Boundaries that define a safe operating space for human civilization are now transgressed at their highest recorded levels, according to the 2026 Planetary Health Check released Monday by the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the…

NOAA sees over 90% chance of strongest El Niño since 1950

A rapidly intensifying El Niño is reshaping global commodity markets, with forecasters now warning of the strongest event since at least 1950 and economists flagging mounting risks to food prices, energy supplies, and inflation heading into 2027.

Peru cuts growth forecast as El Niño disrupts global food systems

What may become the strongest El Niño on record is now rippling across global food systems, prompting emergency aid programs in Central America, downgraded economic forecasts in South America, and warnings from the UK government about rising prices on supermarket…

Global ocean logged 100 straight days of record heat as El Niño intensifies

The Pacific Ocean is brewing what could become the most powerful El Niño ever recorded, with forecasters now warning of far-reaching consequences for weather patterns, food supplies, and global temperatures stretching well into 2027.

Record El Niño forecasts push European gas prices lower, but analysts warn storage gap looms

European winter gas forward prices have fallen to their lowest levels of the year as forecasts point to what may be one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded, but energy analysts warn that only exceptional warmth would be…

ExxonMobil says world headed for up to 3C warming by 2050

ExxonMobil said Thursday that the world is headed for rapid temperature increases as persistent coal use drives carbon dioxide emissions well beyond what is needed to meet mid-century climate goals, according to the company's annual Global Outlook published September 17.

S&P Global study says 1.5°C climate goal is no longer achievable

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is no longer achievable under any plausible trajectory, and the world is unlikely to reach net-zero emissions before the end of the century, according to a major new energy study released Thursday by S&P Global.

WMO reports 2025 river flows among driest in 35 years

The World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday that rivers worldwide experienced one of their driest years in decades in 2025, with below-normal flows recorded in more than a third of the world's river basins — one of the worst such…

Climate change helped destabilize deadly Nepal slope collapse, scientists find

Decades of human-caused warming thinned glaciers and thawed permafrost deep within the Himalayas, very likely helping to destabilize the mountain slope that collapsed on August 26 and killed more than 1,300 people in Nepal, according to a scientific assessment released…

Google signs record carbon-removal deal with Terradot in Brazil

Google Alphabet Inc. announced on Wednesday its largest carbon removal purchase to date: a partnership with climate developer Terradot to deliver 2 million metric tons of combined climate impact from rice farms across more than 200,000 hectares in southern Brazil.

Polar ice sheets lost 11.3 trillion metric tons since 1979, study finds

About 12.5 trillion tons — or 11.3 trillion metric tons — of ice from Greenland and Antarctica has melted since 1979, enough frozen water to blanket the continental United States five feet deep, according to the most comprehensive satellite assessment…

South Africa, Australia brace for potentially record El Niño summer

As the Southern Hemisphere heads into summer, South Africa and Australia are preparing for what forecasters warn could be the strongest El Niño event since at least 1950. The World Meteorological Organization says El Niño is firmly established and forecasts…

El Niño crosses ‘super’ threshold, now strongest on record for this date

The most powerful El Niño on record is taking shape in the Pacific Ocean, crossing into "super" territory this month as forecasters warn it will reshape weather patterns across the globe through early 2027.

Study warns Himalayas nearing tipping point as glacier melt accelerates

The Himalayas are nearing a tipping point as glaciers melt faster than they did a decade ago, threatening water security for hundreds of millions of people as the region approaches "peak water" by mid-century, according to a study released this…

Western Europe’s summer of 2026 was its hottest ever recorded, Copernicus confirms

Western Europe has endured its warmest summer on record, with the Copernicus Climate Change Service confirming that the June-to-August period in 2026 surpassed the long-standing record set in 2003. The average surface air temperature across the region reached 21.69°C, a…

Scientists trace 200-million-year-old genomes to breed climate-resilient crops

Researchers have reconstructed ancestral plant genomes more than 200 million years old and used them to pinpoint around 100 gene variants that helped wheat and barley adapt to shifting climates across 10,000 years of human cultivation — variants they say…

Climeworks doubles CO2 capture, halves costs at Iceland plant

Climeworks, the Swiss carbon removal company, announced on September 10 that technology upgrades at its Mammoth direct air capture facility in Iceland have more than doubled CO₂ capture performance in upgraded collector containers, while cutting operating costs per ton by…

AI data centers left off UN COP31 climate agenda

The artificial intelligence building boom and its forecasts of surging electricity demand will not be formally debated when nearly every country meets in Antalya, Turkey, this November for the United Nations climate talks. No country has proposed including data centers…

Study finds overlooked climate feedbacks could amplify warming by up to 30%

Rising global temperatures are turning Earth's forests, wetlands, and frozen tundra from carbon sinks into carbon sources — and a study published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters finds that these overlooked feedback loops could amplify warming far more than current…