Fervo Energy press release.  Excerpt: Fervo Energy (Nasdaq: FRVO), a global pioneer of next-generation geothermal energy, today announced that Cape Station , its flagship geothermal development in Beaver County, Utah, has achieved First Power, marking the first time a utility-scale enhanced geothermal development has reached this milestone anywhere in the world....Fervo uses horizontal drilling techniques adapted from the oil and gas industry, allowing multiple wells to be drilled from a single pad and unlocking geothermal resources that were previously inaccessible with traditional technology.  “Cape Station works because we treated the subsurface like an engineering challenge,” said Jack Norbeck, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Fervo Energy. “Years of drilling, completion design, subsurface modeling, and flow testing led to this moment, and this is the validation that matters most. First Power is proof the science works.” ...Enhanced geothermal draws continu...

By  Maxine Joselow , The New York Times. The New York Times. Excerpt: “Nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel,” [Energy Secretary Chris] Wright said. ...Asked why he did not see a brighter future for solar energy in the United States, Mr. Wright said, “Every day, actually, the sun goes down, it doesn’t produce power at all.” While it is true that solar panels can only produce power when the sun is shining, enormous batteries can store excess electricity generated during the day for use around the clock. Mr. Wright also defended the Energy Department’s cancellation of more than $7.5 billion in grants for clean energy projects in states that had voted for Democrats. He told Congress in June that politics had nothing to do with the decision. Federal officials later acknowledged in court documents that they had rescinded the funding “based solely” on political considerations....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/climate/chris-wright-trump-ener...

By Leonardo S. Miranda   et al, Science.  Editor's Summary: Restoring degraded ecosystems is increasingly recognized as necessary for maintaining biodiversity but may be less effective than avoiding degradation in the first place. Miranda et al . used counterfactual scenarios to compare the cost-effectiveness of different protection strategies in the Brazilian Amazon tropical forest, a globally important area for biodiversity and carbon storage that is threatened by deforestation and forest disturbances. Avoiding deforestation was most effective (and cost-effective) for carbon storage, whereas avoiding disturbances (fire and logging) had the most benefits for biodiversity. Restoration was least effective for both outcomes. Combining all three types of interventions was necessary to create net-positive outcomes, showing that restoration still has an important role to play. —Bianca Lopez.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx9928 . 

By Cynthia Silva , The New York Times.  For the first time ever, scientists recorded a sea turtle laying eggs on a beach on the U.S. West Coast. A fence was erected around the eggs of the olive ridley turtle.  Video at https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/earth/100000011167855/endangered-sea-turtle-california-beach.html .  See also CNN article Tropical sea turtles discovered nesting in California for the first time in recorded history , by Laura Paddison, Sept 25. 

By Dennis Clark , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Do forests cool the planet or warm it? It’s a deceptively simple question with no clear answer. The catch is that the same forest can push climate in opposite directions at once. Forests are widely viewed as climate change mitigators—and planting trees as a partial climate solution —because they absorb carbon dioxide. Yet that framing is incomplete . Trees also release reactive gases called biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that can influence cloud formation, contribute to air pollution, and extend the atmospheric lifetime of methane, a greenhouse gas that can trap about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Although largely invisible to the public, BVOC emissions are significant. They account for roughly 90% of the global mass of nonmethane volatile organic compounds entering the atmosphere [ Khan et al. , 2025]. In natural habitats, forest trees are the dominant sources of BVOCs. They’re responsible for the familiar scent of pin...

By Christian Schwägerl , YaleEnvironment360.  Excerpt: As researchers around the world begin work on the next U.N. climate assessment, fears are growing that the Trump administration could meddle with critical U.S. climate data. In response, scientists are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in Germany. ...  Full article at https://e360.yale.edu/features/germany-us-climate-data . 

By Anna Conkling , Grist, and co-published with The Kyiv Independent .  Excerpt: On a spring day earlier this year, 10 men stood on the rooftop of a door manufacturing facility in the central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva, surveying the rows of solar panels that surrounded them. Since Russia invaded in 2022, the town has endured repeated attacks, triggering mass power outages. For the factory, which supplies doors to homes and businesses, ...outages were particularly brutal in the winter, when limited power supplies led to rolling blackouts across the country. Some days, the employees burned discarded wood in a fireplace to keep the warehouse warm. ...Tired of relying on a grid that was being routinely bombarded by Russian missiles, Yaroslav, the facility’s owner, decided to switch to solar earlier this year. ...Volodymyr Hershtun, a service maintenance manager ...who led the project in Bila Tserkva, said ...“The enemy is trying to destroy energy infrastructure, and we are buildin...

By Laura Chung , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Australian sales of electric vehicles overtook gas-powered cars for the first time in August, official data shows, with experts saying that higher oil prices resulting from the U.S. war with Iran was one of the main reasons for the shift. ...slowly, electric cars have become more popular as costs have come down thanks to Chinese imports and improvements in charging infrastructure. The fuel shortages that resulted from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year added another reason for people to make the switch: energy security. “What began as a climate and technology story is increasingly becoming an energy security story,” said Hussein Dia, a professor of transport technology at Swinburne University in Melbourne....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/world/australia/electric-cars-iran-war-gas-australia.html . 

By Dan Gearino , Keerti Gopal , Marianne Lavelle , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The D.C. appeals court decision is the first blow to a series of Trump administration orders to maintain coal power in spite of high costs and harm to health....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11092026/court-rules-against-trump-order-to-keep-costly-michigan-coal-plant-running/ .

By NRDC Nature's Voice Fall 2026 issue.  Excerpt: This past April marked the first time ever that wind and solar power accounted for more electricity generation than gas worldwide, with the two renewable sources responsible for 22 percent of global electricity generation versus 20 percent from gas. …just five years ago, in aApril 2021, gas accounted for nearly twice the electricity generation as wind and solar. As for the United States, May was the first month that solar provided more power than coal.  From https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_fall_2026 . 

By Ian James , Los Angeles Times.  Excerpt: A newly passed California bill would let farmers in water-stressed regions convert fallowed fields to solar arrays without paying steep exit fees on long-standing farmland protection contracts. The measure targets Central Valley and Central Coast lands facing strict groundwater pumping limits, offering a lifeline for growers as climate change deepens droughts. Supporters say shifting unproductive cropland to clean energy will help California meet its 100% renewable power goal, while farm groups warn of losing valuable agricultural land....  Full article at https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-09-02/farmland-solar-bill . 

By Johannes Wessely et al, Science.  Summary by Bianca Lopez: Mountain-dwelling plant species are shifting upward with climate change, leading to concerns that species already at the highest elevations will go extinct due to warming or competition with species that encroach from below. Wessely et al . identified local extinctions across 16 European mountain regions using vegetation plots that were resampled multiple times across two decades. Species losses occurred more often at the lower-elevation portions of their ranges and were more frequent in years preceded by faster warming. Upward range shifts increased species richness but at the expense of higher-elevation species, with potential for extinction debts stretching into the future. Abundance declines predicted species losses, indicating that declines in species cover could be a useful indicator for future extinction....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aed2974 . 

By Sead Fadilpasic, BGR.  Excerpt: When you hear the word Romania, what first springs to mind is probably medieval castles or the legendary Count Dracula. Now, you can add renewable energy to the list. According to Balkan Green Energy News, Romania will finally become home to the largest solar power project in the entire EU. Rezolv Energy, the company behind the project, got the green light from the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority to move forward with constructing a massive solar site in Romania's Arad province: the Dama Solar. Spain's Iberian Peninsula solar panels already produced a surplus of energy in 2026, and England is investing heavily in solar farms. Now Europe has a new green energy haven, it seems. Valued at approximately 520 million euros, this single facility will take up over 2,400 acres of land in the northwest and will be powerful enough to deliver peak capacity of as many as 1.3 gigawatts. For reference, Germany's Witznitz, currently the biggest facili...

By James Nanzo, The Cool Down.  Excerpt: Clean energy's rise in the United States may be proving harder to slow than critics expected. One explainer by creator bonusmoles (@bonusmoles) is celebrating a milestone that would have seemed ambitious not long ago. Renewables make up more than 30% of the grid while coal continues to slide. In a TikTok video, the content creator used grid data to argue that renewable electricity continues to advance even amid political opposition."Despite Trump's best efforts to stifle renewable energy, it's still going to surpass natural gas by 2027," bonusmoles declared in the video. Among the figures cited in the video was a rise in renewables from less than 28% of the grid to more than 30%. The creator also said renewable energy grew 11% in the first half of 2026, while coal fell 11.3%....  Full article at https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/renewable-energy-growth-united-states-grid/ . 

https://eos.org/themes/climate-and-personal-health .  Individual Consequences of a Global Crisis (2026-09-01) Antimicrobial Resistance Is Killing Millions. Climate Change Is Making It Worse. (2026-09-01) Climate Change Will Reshape Malaria Prevalence Across Africa (2026-08-27) Many Americans Underestimate Health Risks of Extreme Weather, New Study Finds (2026-08-10) Distant Oceans May Help Predict Malaria Risk in Malawi (2026-07-30) Lessons from Linking Great Salt Lake Desiccation and Depression (2026-04-10) Wildfire Smoke Linked to 17,000 Strokes Annually in the United States (2026-01-27)

By Alejandra Borunda , NPR.  Excerpt: The primary keeper of cause-of-death records in the U.S. is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It keeps an annual tally of heat-related deaths in the U.S., which is compiled from state reports based on whether heat is noted on individual death records. From 2004 to 2018, the national number of heat-related deaths compiled by the CDC was low: on average, around 700 a year . The number has crept up in recent years, averaging around 1,700 but sometimes topping 2,000, as heat risks grow and counting strategies evolve. But even that number is an underestimate, according to NPR and BU's analysis. On average between 2018 and 2025, we estimate that some 9,000 deaths each year in the country are impacted by heat — a factor of five higher than the official average over that same period. Some years, heat-related deaths can top 10,000. The true figure could be even higher, says Adams, because of some limitations in the data and the conse...

By Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen   et al, Science.  Excerpt: To resolve temperature and salinity changes in remote East Greenland coastal waters, including deep glacier-front basins, we equipped narwhals ( Monodon monoceros ) with conductivity-temperature-depth archival instruments. These data, combined with the World Ocean Database, reveal long-term warming of Atlantic Intermediate Water (AIW) penetrating East Greenland’s coastal system. ...Elevated summer iceberg discharge coincides with higher temperatures and salinities below 200 meters, indicating an intensified AIW influence. These observations show that warming AIW delivers heat directly to glacier fronts, promoting submarine melt and accelerating glacier mass loss....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr1424 . 

By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Leaping flames, searing heat, copious sweat and scorchingly inventive swearing – restaurant kitchens are never a place for the faint-hearted, but this summer they have been sweltering in successive heatwaves to a dangerous degree. Some restaurants, cafes and bakeries in the UK grew so hot that they were forced to close , or reduce their hours , for the safety of their staff. ...tens of thousands of kitchen staff are thought to have carried on working in “furnace-like” conditions . Now a number of chefs are calling for one route to cooling kitchens.... Swapping gas hobs for electric induction cooking can reduce temperatures by as much as 10C, as induction cookers only heat the food in the pans . They are more efficient, ...are safer as they avoid the harmful pollutants emitted by gas cookers, and make it easier for air conditioning to work in crowded kitchen environments. ...A report from the Global Cooksafe Coalition found that restaurant...

By Preeti Jha , Semafor.  Excerpt: Africa is set for a record year of solar installations, according to new analysis. The continent is on track to install 17 gigawatts of solar in 2026 , up 45% year-on-year, according to the global energy think tank Ember and the African Tech Futures Lab. ...International Renewable Energy Agency...IRENA said solutions such as solar mini-grids were “ crucial for expanding access to dispersed and underserved populations ” in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Senegal, where rural electrification rates can range from 2% to 10% in certain areas. Inadequate energy and infrastructure investment has meant nearly 600 million people in Africa still lack access to electricity. Many countries are turning to the potential of solar power: Last year, Nigeria struck a $200 million deal with a renewable energy company to connect rural areas with solar mini-grids....  Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/08/28/2026/africa...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: Global cooperation revealed a landslide, not a glacial collapse, likely initiated the cascade of events. ...hundreds of scientists around the globe...working tirelessly to piece together the sequence of events that led to the massive flood, which has killed nearly 600 people, left nearly 2000 missing, and destroyed numerous towns and hydropower plants along the Nepal-Tibet border. ...imagery soon led to reports that the explanation was a glacial collapse. ...The mystery could only be fully resolved with cloud-free satellite imagery. And by Wednesday evening, it arrived, both from a satellite operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation and Landsat-9, a joint NASA-USGS satellite. Now, the underlying mountain was visible—and it revealed a huge rock landslide had indeed occurred. “The glacier just came along for the ride,”....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/how-scientists-unraveled-cause-devastating-flood-tibe...

By Quinn Glabicki , The New York Times.  Excerpt: More than 3,000 miles of railways crisscross the Swiss countryside, linking Alpine villages to big cities like Zurich and Geneva. It’s the most dense rail network in Europe. Now, a start-up company and a local rail operator have found a way to use that land to generate clean electricity: Lay solar panels between the rails. Starting last April, in the shadow of a craggy mountaintop in the village of Buttes, the company, Sun-Ways, began running a test project on a short stretch of track that proved the idea can work. Similar projects are now expanding to France, Italy and South Korea....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/28/climate/solar-power-railway-train-tracks.html . 

By Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: California lawmakers passed a bill late Wednesday that would allow residents to install solar panels that can be plugged into standard electrical outlets in a bid to lower their electricity costs and reduce their contribution to climate change. The bill passed with broad bipartisan support in both chambers of the Legislature despite opposition from the state’s investor-owned utilities, highlighting the growing political salience of energy affordability . California has the highest residential electricity rates in the 48 contiguous states, and those prices have climbed sharply in recent years. If Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signs the measure, California will become one of nearly a dozen states that have legalized plug-in solar systems, often referred to as balcony solar. These systems, typically made up of a handful of panels, first became popular in Germany , where the panels are sold online and in stores. Last year, Utah became the...

By Maxine Joselow and Leo Sands , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Climate change is heating up the Himalayas and supercharging the risk of disasters like the deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet, though scientists are still determining the exact cause of this week’s catastrophe. A group of glaciologists and geologists said on Thursday that the flooding was probably unleashed after an enormous chunk of bedrock collapsed underneath a glacier, triggering a landslide high in the mountains. At the same time, a chunk of ice snapped off the glacier itself and cascaded thousands of feet to the valley below, the scientists said. As humans warm the planet by burning fossil fuels, the Himalayas are losing their permafrost, a mixture of soil, rocks and organic matter that has remained frozen for thousands of years. The thawing permafrost is destabilizing the foundation underneath glaciers, raising the risks of precisely these kinds of landslides and glacial collapses....  Full article...

By Lucas Smolcic Larson , MLive.  Excerpt: Michigan law allowing renewable energy developers to bypass local opposition by seeking approval for sprawling solar and wind farms at the state level has passed its first test. State regulators approved a settlement agreement between an energy company and three Ingham County townships Thursday, Aug. 27, giving the green light to more than 600-acre solar farm. The Acceleration Solar project was the first to seek review by the Michigan Public Service Commission, under a divisive 2023 law passed by Democrats to speed renewable energy development that had been bogged down by a patchwork of local zoning rules....  Full article at https://www.mlive.com/news/2026/08/first-michigan-solar-farm-to-seek-state-approval-gets-green-light.html . 

2026-08-27. Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest . By Julia Vaz , Science. Excerpt: ...corals growing around the [Galápagos Islands] archipelago in the tropical Pacific Ocean are providing clues to another enduring puzzle: whether global warming is changing El Niño, the recurring Pacific climate cycle that drives extreme weather around the world. Climate models have offered conflicting answers so far. ...a 1000-year archive preserved in fossil corals from the Galápagos offers some of the strongest evidence yet that global warming is already making El Niño stronger. Reporting today online in Science , researchers found that temperature swings recorded in Galápagos corals—a place where the El Niño signal is strong—have intensified by 36% over the past 4 decades, far beyond anything seen in previous centuries.... Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-strengthening-el-ni%C3%B1o-coral-records-suggest . 

By Rachel Santarsiero , Mother Jones.  Excerpt: ...In terms of the sheer scope of heat and extreme weather, 2026 has been a year of climate disasters. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry—by far the greatest contributor to global climate change...is holding firm. ...oil and gas groups and their networks have accelerated their defenses, fighting with their all-too-familiar playbook of discrediting the science linking emissions to extreme weather events.... ...A new peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in Earth’s Future suggests that it is possible to demonstrate that “emissions from company X cause injury Y.” ...the study’s author, Christopher Callahan —an Earth systems scientist and assistant professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs—built a statistical model to figure out the relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the odds of extreme heat or rain. ...The study’s results are clear: “There i...

By The Economic Times.  Excerpt: Sheep grazing beneath solar panels not only boosts farmer profits but also leads to purer wool. This innovative approach creates shaded environments that retain moisture, thereby enhancing pasture conditions during droughts. Research highlights an increase in nitrogen levels in grasses found under panels, which contributes to improved digestion for the sheep. Nevertheless, successful integration of grazing with solar farms demands careful site planning, influenced by regional and seasonal factors....  Full article at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/us/news/an-australian-farmer-put-sheep-beneath-solar-panels-he-reported-15-more-wool-and-green-grass-surviving-through-drought/articleshow/133296849.cms . 

By Stephanie Pappas , Scientific American. Excerpt: Forty-seven years ago U.S. President Jimmy Carter stood grinning in front of a set of 32 bulky solar panels. It was 1979, and the oil crisis had sent fuel costs skyrocketing. Carter, in response, was making the White House an example of conservation and alternative energy. “Solar energy will not pollute our air or water,” he said. “We will not run short of it. No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us.” ...Even before the U.S.-Iran conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz for months, causing fossil-fuel prices to spike, solar was soaring. Last year the world added 600 terawatt-hours of solar photovoltaic generation, enough to power Canada for a year. It was the first time that a renewable source took the top slot in global supply growth. It was also the largest single-year increase for any electricity-generation technology, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). ...Solar Is Now the Cheapest Way to Produc...

By Mira Rojanasakul and Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Electric car sales are on track to hit record highs this year, with 29 percent of all new cars purchased around the world expected to be either purely battery-powered models or plug-in hybrids, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency. That’s a sharp increase from just 4 percent in 2020. The boom in sales was somewhat unexpected. Some analysts had predicted a slower market for electric vehicles this year — until the U.S. war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz caused oil and gasoline prices to spike. That has led to a frenzy of electric car sales in many unexpected corners of the globe. In South Africa, sales of electric cars more than quintupled in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. In Laos, imports of battery-powered vehicles from China are soaring. And in countries as different as Australia, Colombia and South Korea, the E.V. share of total...

By Inside Climate podcast.  Excerpt: In this episode, co-host Jake Bolster sits down with reporters Georgina Gustin and Lisa Sorg to talk about the wide-ranging impacts of how America fattens animals to become the meat that people eat....  Full article/video at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16082026/inside-climate-podcast-cash-cow-cafos/ .

By Grace van Deelen .Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Antarctica is 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) from any major city, almost entirely uninhabited, and surrounded by a cold and inhospitable ocean. It might seem like the last place to expect anthropogenic pollution. But the continent’s freezing temperatures trap airborne and marine pollutants, a situation that has historically made it a sink for contaminants such as mercury, a heavy metal that can harm human and wildlife health. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , mercury is accumulating in Antarctica much faster thanks to increasing anthropogenic mercury emissions. Additionally, the study found the continent’s ice cap is releasing mercury faster than ever before as Antarctic ice melts in a warming climate and frees up long-stored mercury that then flows into the surrounding ocean. Together, these processes are turning Antarctica into an active source of...

By Dan Gearino , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much. ...368 utility-scale plants that began operation from January to June, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration . The group is dominated by utility-scale solar. This is a top-heavy list, led by SunZia Wind South and SunZia Wind North in New Mexico , which went online this spring and are the largest wind farms in the country, with a combined generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts. ...the story of power plant completions in the first half of 2026 was mainly about utility-scale solar and batteries. Utility-scale solar led in the number of projects coming online, with 207, followed by batteries, with 95. ...If we look at projects in terms of generating capacity, utility-scale solar led with 11,458 megawatts, followed by batteries, 8,207 megawatts, and then onshore wind, mostly because of the SunZia projects, with 5,473 megawatts...

By Raymond Zhong and Chico Harlan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: El Niño is the planet’s naturally recurring chaos agent, scrambling weather patterns, spiking global temperatures and typically reaching full strength by December. But this year’s El Niño, which is expected to be record-breaking, is already strong and having big effects, nudging up global temperatures and causing dry spells and crop failures on multiple continents. Parts of Panama, normally one of the wettest countries on Earth, haven’t had a major storm since early May. Ethiopia’s fertile highlands are enduring one of their driest summer stretches in four decades. And India had its fifth-driest June since the country’s modern rain records began in 1901. “This is a good sign that the El Niño response has really kicked in,” said Chris Funk, director of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Funk termed it an “early onset El Niño.” ...Scientists are debating whether human-caused...

By Ryley Ober , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The first half of summer in Europe has featured a grueling series of heat waves and widespread wildfires, which have burned more than 1.3 million acres across the European Union. The Danube and Rhine rivers hit record lows caused by drought from the prolonged heat waves, upending river cruises and forcing operators to cancel or change itineraries with alternative bus transfers and hotel stays. ...Dozens of travelers told The New York Times that the sweltering season in Europe led them to reschedule travel dates, cancel tours of outdoor sites like the Roman Colosseum, leave trips early or plan future summer vacations to more temperate locations like Scandinavia or mountainous regions....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/travel/europe-travel-tourism-wildfires-heat-waves.html . 

By Pieter Johnson and Tara Stewart Merrill , Trends in Ecology and Evolution.  Excerpt: Drought is becoming a defining ecological force, yet its consequences for infectious diseases remain difficult to predict across systems. Emerging evidence shows that water limitation can intensify many water-associated diseases, challenging assumptions that drying suppresses transmission. Rather than acting solely as a climatic stressor, drought restructures transmission by altering host aggregation, parasite persistence, community composition, and contact networks across space and time. Divergent disease responses to drought can be explained through three recurring mechanisms: the concentration of interactions, the ecological filtering of communities, and spatial heterogeneity in transmission. Viewing drought as a multiscale ecological restructuring process provides a general framework for predicting disease outcomes in an increasingly water-limited world....  Full article at https://www...

By Chris Clements , KNAU News - Arizona Public Radio.  Excerpt: Western rivers like the San Juan and the Colorado are mostly fed by burbling mountain streams, which are themselves fed by groundwater and snowmelt. But a study published on June 5 says those tiny streams are in trouble. The study in the journal Earth's Future says the base amount of water in streams and rivers that doesn’t come from rain, also known as “base flow,” has been steadily declining since 1950, though that trend varies depending on the specific time period. ...The study...predicts that if climate warming continues, by the end of the century, headwater streams could have anywhere from 45% to 65% less base flow to sustain them. ...water levels in Lake Mead reach their lowest point ever . The Colorado River Basin has faced aridification for the last 26 years. Tiny, ephemeral streams like Flagstaff’s Rio de Flag give mighty rivers the juice to flow freely. But they depend on base flow to do that. ...[The Rio de...

By Erik Stokstad , Science.  Excerpt: In 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) opened outlets at the base of the Colorado River’s mighty Glen Canyon Dam, unleashing gushers of water in an experiment meant to cool waters downstream. The strategy, called a “cool mix” release, aimed to thwart breeding of invasive smallmouth bass and protect native species. “It was very effective,” says Kevin Bestgen, a fish biologist at Colorado State University. So much so that the release was repeated in 2025. But with the Colorado’s reservoirs at historically low levels, there may be little political will to release water to protect ecosystems. On 6 August, USBR, which operates dams on the river, canceled this year’s cool mix release. In April, the agency had also nixed one of the periodic “controlled floods,” a much larger cascade intended to redistribute sediment and build sandbars that provide habitat for fish. ...The developments are the latest sign of trouble on the river system, which s...

By Ailie McWhinnie , Science.  Excerpt: Last month, France experienced one of the worst wildfires in its history. Just outside of Bordeaux, towering flames bulldozed through forest and shrubland, the intense heat and smoke forming a fire-fueled thundercloud called a pyrocumulonimbus that had never previously been recorded in the country. France is not alone. ...wildfires across Southern Europe has so far this year burned more than half a million hectares...far exceeding the area burned by August 2025, the worst year on record. ...wildfire experts say a greater emphasis on preventative measures is needed to stop this year’s disaster from becoming a regular occurrence. ...climate change has greatly increased the risk. Since the 1980s, the number of “fire weather” days —scorching, dry, breezy days—has more than doubled across much of the region, according to a paper published last month in Scientific Reports . ...it is vital to modify the land to cut back on the accumulation of fuel....

By Emily Gardner and Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The Trump administration is pulling funding from NOAA’s Arctic Report Card , an annual, peer-reviewed report about the state of the region, which is warming more quickly than anywhere else on Earth. ... Politico was first to report the news. The absence of federal support means that NOAA will no longer provide the report with coordinating editors nor will the agency fund the report’s web presence, summary video, graphics, publicity, or the coordination of its external peer review, Thoman said. “Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA,” Kim Doster , director of NOAA Communications, wrote in an email statement. “All data historically contributed by NOAA to the product will continue to be collected and will remain publicly available.”...  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/government-pulls-funding-for-the-arctic-report-card . 

By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A changing climate increases the health risks posed by extreme weather. However, according to the 2024 Yale Climate Opinion Maps , only 47% of U.S. survey participants believed that global warming would harm them personally. Poor risk communication can leave affected populations underprepared to face the health dangers that can accompany extreme heat and cold, flooding, wildfire smoke , and severe drought . Manware et al. compared mortality risk estimates with public perception of climate risk to establish “risk perception gaps.” ...The results can be viewed in a publicly available dashboard . ...The percentage of adults who believed that climate change would personally harm them ranged by county from 28.5% to 60.5%, with an average of 37.7%. The gap between perceived and actual risk varied across the country and by hazard, but it was generally smaller in counties where more residents agreed that “global warming is happening.”...  Full a...

By Paul Voosen , Science. Excerpt: The countryside has always been seen as a refuge from the swelter of summer, its leafy shade and lack of concrete often keeping the air at least several degrees cooler than in the city. But now a pioneering study suggests that as global warming continues in much of the world, the countryside’s appeal as a climate buffer may dwindle. Most cities get hotter than their surroundings as their dark asphalt and concrete absorb the Sun’s rays. This urban heat island effect...is the foundational idea for studying warming in cities, and ...it has gotten stronger over the past few decades. Whether the effect will continue has been uncertain because global climate models subdivide the globe into boxes 100 kilometers on a side, too coarse to simulate climate on the scale of cities. The new study, however, relies on a high-resolution model that can resolve cities—and finds they will soon stop warming faster than their surroundings. ...As part of the European Union’...

By J. Elliott Campbell and Roland Geyer , Science.  Abstract: Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles represent the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions for most US households. Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) considerably reduce use-phase emissions, the transition poses a fundamental life cycle optimization challenge: Is there a net climate benefit to retiring a functional ICE vehicle before its end of life? Retiring a functioning ICE vehicle incurs a fundamental trade-off between BEV manufacturing emissions and decreased vehicle operation emissions. In this study, we evaluated this trade-off across a comprehensive range of retirement scenarios and found that scrappage-and-replacement yields consistent emissions reductions across most contexts, including the retirement of new ICE vehicles. Although scrapping a functional asset remains economically prohibitive under current market conditions, these results demonstrate a major mitigation potential for policy...

By Arcelia Martin , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, reported last week that 70 percent of generation in the 460-gigawatt interconnection queue is from solar and battery storage. Natural gas facilities make up less than 17 percent of that line. ...State Sen. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, asked the leaders of ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) at a public hearing last week whether there should be a rule that puts a quota on what share of new generation connecting to the grid comes from fossil fuels....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082026/texas-republicans-consider-natural-gas-minimums/ . 

By Dylan Baddour , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Romanian Navy is blasting out the Danube River bed to maintain the flow of cooling water to a nuclear power plant as a continent-wide drought dries up rivers across Europe. ...The plant’s operator, Nuclearelectrica, shut down Unit 1 due to low water last week, warning in a press release last Wednesday that, without intervention, “Unit 2 will be shut down in a controlled manner due to the extremely low, unprecedented level of the Danube, caused by severe drought.” One thousand miles away, officials in the Netherlands last week announced the lowest levels ever measured on Europe’s third largest river, the Rhine. In a press release Thursday , the Dutch national government said drought was disrupting commercial traffic on the river system and causing intrusion of salty seawater into water supplies meant for crop irrigation. ...In Italy, the Po River Basin Authority reported on Thursday that 101 municipalities faced medium-to-high ...

By Leia Larsen , The Salt Lake Tribune.  Excerpt: Utah’s solar generation eclipsed all other electricity sources for the first time ever in May.... Photovoltaic panels in Utah produced nearly 1 terawatt hour in May 2026. That represented nearly a third of all electricity generated in the state that month, according to data from Ember , a global energy think tank. Natural gas generated 32%, coal generated 28% and wind generated 2%. ...Schroeder attributes the trend to several large solar farms coming online in recent years. The 2,500-acre Green River Energy Center in Emery County became operational this spring and includes 400 megawatts of solar generation and 400 megawatts of battery storage. Excelsior Energy Capital’s Faraday Solar project in Utah County started providing up to 685 megawatts for the Meta data center there last fall . ...Solar also supports nearly 8,000 jobs in Utah, according to the latest information from the Solar Energy Industries Association . The state is ...

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Over the past 2 weeks, large wildfires in southwestern France and central Spain have burned 255,000 hectares, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and created extremely poor air quality even hundreds of kilometers away. ...Climate change played a role in creating the conditions for these fires to burn and spread, a new analysis has found. The analysis, from World Weather Attribution, indicates that climate change made France and Spain’s fire-prone conditions much more likely: at least twice as likely in southwestern France and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain. Extreme heat and a widespread drought in Western Europe, both linked to climate change, created “tinderbox conditions,” the authors write....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/climate-change-made-spain-wildfires-at-least-20-times-more-likely . 

By R. Mark Leckie , Science.  Excerpt: Foraminifera inhabit coastal and deep-sea marine environments. These microscopic, single-celled organisms are widely used as proxies for relative age determination and reconstructing past climates. The ratio of calcium isotopes ( 44 Ca/ 40 Ca) in their calcium carbonate shells depends on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and carbonate saturation in seawater at the time of the shells’ formation. ...Chen et al. ( 1 ) report geochemical evidence that a rise in atmospheric CO 2 concentration and ocean acidification at the end of the Aptian Stage [~113 million years ago (Ma)] may have caused the largest extinction of planktic foraminifera of the Cretaceous Period (146 to 66 Ma)..., which is second only to the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period (66 Ma).... The findings could be important for understanding potential effects of present-day increases in atmospheric CO 2 levels on marine organisms....  Full article at https:...

By Daniel Acosta-Reyes , Joseph Wartman , Jessica Kaminsky , AGU pubs.  Excerpt: [Abstract - Landslide exposure in the United States has not been systematically quantified at the national scale.... To address this gap, we developed the Landslide Exposure Database (LED), the first building-level national assessment integrating landslide susceptibility, building inventories, and socioeconomic data for 128 million structures across the United States. Although high-susceptibility terrain covers 19% of United States land area, the 6.5 million people residing in these areas represent just 2% of the national population, indicating that exposure reflects human geography as much as physical geography. Geographically, exposure concentrates in the Appalachian Highlands and Pacific Mountain System....] ...Most landslides are triggered by intense precipitation or seismic activity..., though anthropogenic slope modifications can compound these drivers in urbanized areas.... Climate change is int...

By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Countries around the globe are proving that cutting greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t have to come at the expense of vulnerable communities, workers, Indigenous peoples or ecosystems. A new United Nations Environment Programme report released Tuesday highlights a range of international laws and policies that are putting the once-aspirational idea of a “just transition” into practice. In climate and energy policy, a just transition aims to shift economies away from fossil fuels while ensuring that the costs and benefits are shared fairly. That means creating alternative livelihoods for workers and communities dependent on fossil fuels, involving affected people in decision-making and creating new economic opportunities. ...In Poland, where coal has long been central to the economy, the government negotiated a long-term agreement with mining unions before closing mines. ...a gradual phaseout with retraining, economic assistance for towns...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A few months ago, the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab released a report that found that, by 2050, about 10 times as many heat-related deaths would occur in poor countries as in richer ones. Today, the same lab released a new report . This one found that the regions most affected by extreme heat are also the regions least likely to have increased levels of electricity to power the air conditioning that might provide relief. Use of cooling-related electricity is projected to grow seven times more in middle-income countries than in low-income countries in response to climate change....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/a-changing-climate-will-lead-to-more-ac-in-wealthier-countries-and-more-deaths-in-poor-ones-new-report-suggests . 

By Claire Barber , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: SEATTLE—In December 2025, torrential rains and catastrophic flooding hit western Washington. High precipitation levels, combined with the warmest December on record for the state, meant that many mountainous areas received rain rather than snow, leading to a deluge that broke through two levees and caused an estimated $182 million in damages to public infrastructure. The lack of snowpack also led to drought later in the summer of 2026. A draft legislative report and forecast , released this month by the Washington State Department of Ecology, reveals that changing precipitation patterns, like those seen in December 2025, are primed to leave their mark across the state as more snow falls as rain, particularly impacting eastern Washington—a reality that is far too familiar for agricultural communities in the region....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22072026/washington-state-winter-rains-leads-to-increased-dr...

By Laura Paddison, CNN.  Excerpt: The combined water level in two of the United States’ biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, has fallen to a historic low, in what experts are calling a significant moment in the Colorado River crisis — threatening a water system that supplies tens of millions. On July 12, Lake Powell was at 3,524 feet and Lake Mead was just under 1,043 feet, breaking a record set in March 2023, according to an analysis published by five Colorado River experts last week. Together, the two reservoirs haven’t been this low since 1957, during the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, before Lake Powell even existed. ...The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest. It irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland, generates enough electricity to power around 700,000 homes and provides water for 40 million people. ...The Colorado River has shrunk rapidly over the past 25 years as water demand has boomed and climate change has delivered hotter, drier...

By Arcelia Martin , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Amid triple-digit temperatures, solar and storage have created far more breathing room than in the last stretch of record energy demand.... Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22072026/texas-grid-operator-ercot-prepares-for-heat-demand/ . 

By Benjamin S. Weiss , Courthouse News Service.  Excerpt: The president said the government-backed compendium of scientific and technological information, used to help judges ruling on complex cases, has been “totally discredited” and accused its authors of misleading the courts on climate change. ...Writing in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday evening, Trump said he had ordered “federal suspension and debarment officials” to review the National Academy of Sciences’ “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence,” [RMSE] a decades-old publication produced in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center and aimed at assisting federal judges on issues of science and technology. ...The latest edition of the judicial reference manual, published late last year, included a chapter on climate science and climate change. ...But in February, the Federal Judicial Center, the government’s education and research agency serving federal courts, said it had removed the climate ...

By Taylor Mitchell Brown , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane on Earth. Though the waterlogged lands offer benefits that include hosting thriving ecosystems and protecting our shorelines from flooding, researchers are eager to better understand their contribution to the warming climate. In a paper published in Nature Climate Change , researchers report that typical global wetlands surveys overlook an astronomical number of small wetlands : about 160 million of them. These small wetlands, which range in size from a large swimming pool to 100 hectares (250 acres), are responsible for 25% of the present global methane emissions, the research found. ...“Methane emission rates are positively related to the temperature,” said Li. As the global temperature increases, these methane-emitting microbes become more productive. “It’s like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger,” he said. Rising global temperatures likely triggered the increased emissions and w...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The equatorial glaciers atop Puncak Jaya, Oceania’s tallest peak, have shrunk by about 95% since 2002, according to a new photogrammetry mapping effort. ... Past research has suggested that in 1850, about 18.8 square kilometers of Puncak Jaya were covered by glaciers. By 2002, that area had shrunk by 88.6%, to 2.14 square kilometers....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/the-eternity-glaciers-are-almost-gone . 

By Julia Vaz , Science.  Excerpt: June’s European heat wave, in which temperatures above 40°C led to the deaths of more than 10,000 people, made headlines not just for its severity, but for what it said about climate change. Last week, a group called World Weather Attribution (WWA) linked it firmly to global warming, saying such a heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” 50 years ago. It was a high-profile claim from a field called extreme event attribution, which seeks to gauge how global warming impacted a particular heat wave, flood, or storm. The field is still evolving, according to a report released today by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). ...In the past decade, attribution science has advanced rapidly , with the annual number of studies more than doubling since 2012, according to the report. Better climate models, longer observational records, and more sophisticated statistical techniques have all improved researchers’ abiliti...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Methane is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases on Earth, and, when compared with carbon dioxide, it is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere. ...New research examined several hundred liters of air gathered from compacted snow in Greenland... published today in Science Advances . As the climate warms, it’s increasingly urgent to understand where methane comes from. Researchers can analyze the ratios of different carbon isotopes within methane to learn whether that sample came from fossil fuels or from other sources, such as wetlands or agriculture. ...Higher anthropogenic emissions result in lower clumped methane concentrations. However, clumped methane molecules take many years to reach equilibrium, so an increase in methane emissions might not show up in the clumped isotope signal for decades. ... NOAA data show that atmospheric methane levels have risen since the 1980s, with a plateau from 1999 to 2006. The new st...

By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: Whale CRC-2293 was once part of a celebrated revival, a member of a burgeoning population of gray whales ( Eschrichtius robustus ) in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The population, once depleted by commercial hunting to just a few thousand animals, had flourished following the 1980 moratorium on most whale hunts, to the point that it was deemed to no longer need protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. ...Since 2019, gray whales have been washing ashore in unusually high numbers as they migrate from Mexico, where they overwinter and give birth, some 8000 kilometers to their Arctic feeding grounds. The death toll slowed for several years. But in the past 2 years it has surged again toward record levels up and down the North American coast while overall populations have fallen to less than half their peak. Scientists are now predicting a sustained decline. The likely cause: ...“a fundamental regime shift in their feeding grounds in the Arc...

By Phred Dvorak , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The little nation of Gambia is on the front lines of a global struggle with salt, as a combination of climate change and human activities push ocean waters further inland, threatening ecosystems, aquifers and agriculture.  Most of the salt intrusion is taking place along coastlines and deltas, where rising sea levels send saline water flooding ashore, seeping underground and changing the chemistry of nearby land. Droughts increase salinity too, since there is less rainfall to dilute the salt or flush it out. Both phenomena are expected to worsen with global warming. ...In farming areas, the overuse of fertilizer can increase salt levels in soil as well....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12072026/gambia-sea-level-rise-agricultural-crisis/ . 

By Dharna Noor , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The Trump administration has tapped a former geochemist who has railed against “climate alarmism” and calls himself an “Earth science professor-in-exile” to oversee the federal government’s flagship report about climate impacts on the US. Matthew Wielicki, who lacks formal training in climate science, will now lead the nation’s Global Change Research Program, which federal officials have gutted during Trump’s second term. In his new position, Wielicki will lead the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report detailing how Americans are affected by the climate crisis. ...The assessments are required to be produced every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990 , but last year, the Trump administration shut down the online portal to access the five editions published since 2000. Wielicki is a climate science denier who frequently criticizes established climate science online , including in videos by right...

By EurekAlert!  Excerpt: An ongoing research project exploring the effects of rising levels of oceanic CO 2 on squid neurology reveals that exposure to future levels of ocean acidification could shrink their brain volume by around 50%. This severe brain shrinkage appears to be most pronounced in the areas that interpret visual information, correlating with significant reductions in normal feeding behaviours and suggesting serious consequences for the future of squid and other cephalopods. ...To investigate the effects of future ocean acidification on the squid neurology, ...Dr Allen and project lead Dr Yung-Che Tseng ...at Academia Sinica’s Marine Research Station reared the squid in one of two parallel water tanks: one representing the modern oceans (pH 8.2) and one representing the oceans in the year 2100 under a predicted climate change scenario (pH 7.8). After 90 days, the squid were removed and their heads were preserved for visual analysis with diffusion magnetic resonance i...

By Arden Dier , Newser.AI .  Excerpt: The massive marine heat wave, formed as a North Pacific hot spot merged with warming tied to a developing super El Niño along the equator, covers about 13.5% of Earth's surface, stretching from the Philippines to Peru and toward Hawaii and California...the Washington Post reports. Forecasters say the heat is already helping fuel Super Typhoon Bavi in the western Pacific and could help set up a strong heat dome over the western US in mid-July, heightening fire risks from Arizona to Colorado. As the ocean absorbs heat, the water expands, with implications for global sea levels. ...sea levels this winter could run 6 inches to 2 feet above normal—with storms pushing that surge to 2 to 3 feet higher, raising the odds of disruptive coastal flooding, the Post reports. ...Globally, marine heat waves now cover more than 37% of the ocean, triple the share seen in the late 1980s....  Full article at https://www.newser.com/story/392288/pacific-ocean...

By Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The snowfall from last winter disappeared a month sooner than usual, after two early hot spells. Huge volumes of exposed ice are now starting to vanish....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/climate/europe-heat-waves-melting-glaciers.html .