By Corey S. Lesk & Justin S. Mankin , Science.  Summary: ...When scientists analyzed global precipitation records from 1980 to 2022, they found that annual rainfall in much of the world has become more concentrated , leading to more intense storms interspersed with longer dry spells. ...soil can only soak up so much water at once. What’s left collects on the surface, where it more readily evaporates, leaving less water available for ecosystems even if overall precipitation increases. “ Rainfall concentration is essentially asking the land to drink from a firehose ,” senior study author Justin Mankin said.... Using an economic tool typically used to measure wealth inequality, the researchers determined that the United States west of the Mississippi and South America’s Amazon River basin experienced particularly high levels of rain consolidation over the past 4 decades. In contrast, precipitation has become more distributed in the Arctic, Northern Europe, and Canada—changes that...

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: As the midpoint of the year approaches, several climate records have already been broken. Arctic winter sea ice extent reached a record low . Several countries saw record-breaking winter heat waves. And more than 150 million hectares have already burned globally in wildfires. The increasingly likely emergence of an El Niño this summer will likely continue the year’s record-breaking weather trends and could lead to “an unprecedented year of global fire,” according to a statement from World Weather Attribution , a climate research collaboration. ...El Niño typically temporarily boosts global temperatures. ...At a press briefing on 11 May hosted by World Weather Attribution, climate scientists outlined the potential risks of this emerging El Niño against the backdrop of human-caused climate change, including intensifying wildfire seasons, extreme heat waves, and worsening droughts....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-develop...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Between 2000 and 2020, 42% of tree lines around the world crept upward, largely because of climate change. But 25% moved downhill, seemingly because of factors such as land use changes and wildfires. ...As the climate warms, tree lines are generally understood to move up, because regions that were previously too cold for trees to survive now have higher, more tree friendly temperatures. ...But new research , published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation , paints a more complicated picture: Between 2000 and 2020, 42% of tree lines shifted up, true. But 25% of them actually moved downhill....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/tree-lines-are-migrating-some-up-some-down .

By Sydney Cromwell , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Maine’s farms contribute almost the entirety of the United States’ commercially sold wild blueberries. The industry harvested nearly 88 million pounds of fruit in 2023, bringing $361 million in revenue to the state, according to the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine. ...Maine’s wild blueberry populations are caught in a climate hotspot, driven partially by rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine.... According to 2021 research , the state’s blueberry barrens are warming faster than the rest of the state, especially in locations closer to the coast. In response, the berries are ripening sooner, and farmers can miss part of their harvest if they’re caught unaware. [Lily] Calderwood [a wild blueberry specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension] said the crop was traditionally harvested in early or mid-August, but now most fruits are ready by late July. High heat also makes the harvest window shorter, she said, meaning farm...

By Brandon Mulder, The Texas Tribune .  Excerpt: A decade ago, wind power was surging in popularity and attracting huge investments that made Texas a national leader in renewable energy. But today, gas generation is making a big comeback, driven by a wave of data centers flooding into the state. For the last six months, the volume of gas generation in the Texas grid’s interconnection queue — the yearslong waiting list for electric generators wanting to connect to the grid — has surpassed wind. It’s the first time since January 2016 that gas has overtaken wind in the queue, a shift that reflects the policy and economic headwinds facing the wind industry and data centers favoring gas power as they seek to cash in on the artificial intelligence boom. ...Still, the queue gives an early indication of how the grid is projected to evolve in the future. Solar and battery projects dominate, accounting for 75% of the 458,000 megawatts in the queue, with gas and wind projects making up the re...

By Elise Cutts , Science.  Excerpt: VIENNA— Scientists have drilled a record-setting ice core stretching back 1.2 million years. The ancient air it contains reveals sharp swings in carbon dioxide that could help explain a mysterious shift in the rhythm of Earth’s ice ages. The core...is the culmination of 10 years of work and 2.8 kilometers of drilling in Antarctica by the European project Beyond EPICA. It provides the first direct, detailed look at how greenhouse gases varied during a critical climatic window between 800,000 and 1.25 million years ago, when Earth’s ice ages shifted from 40,000-year-long cycles to longer, more intense sequences of 100,000 years. ...The extended window has brought the mysterious Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) into focus. Beginning about 2.6 million years ago, the climate swung in and out of relatively mild ice ages every 40,000 years, driven by wobbles in Earth’s orbit. But then, about 1.25 million years ago, something began to slide Earth to...

By Rosa A. Scherson  and  Federico Luebert , Science.  Excerpt: Climate change is reshaping the environmental conditions that plants must face and accelerating their extinction. Estimating how endangered plants are is important to inform conservation decisions. However, only 18% of plants are included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, which provides global assessments of the risk of extinction for 76,864 plant species ( 2 ). ...Although Forest  et al . and Wang  et al . used different scales of time and space and studied different (but largely overlapping) groups of plants, both studies revealed that plant extinctions do not occur randomly across geographical areas. For example, Forest  et al . reported that angiosperm [flowering] species at high extinction risk are concentrated in tropical regions and islands, such as Madagascar, Borneo, and Ecuador. Furthermore, Wang  et al. ...

By ia Weise and Ben Munster , Politico.  Excerpt: BRUSSELS — The European Union is bowing to demands from the United States and the fossil fuel industry that it scale back its efforts to fight a planet-warming superpollutant. The EU in 2021 vowed to curb emissions of methane and drew up legislation that forces the oil and gas sector to limit emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas, which is responsible for around a third of the global rise in temperatures since the industrial era.  Now, however, Brussels is poised to significantly weaken enforcement of its flagship methane regulation, granting fossil fuel companies the freedom to pollute with a focus on protecting the continent’s energy security, according to a draft document seen by POLITICO ....  Full article at https://www.politico.eu/article/under-us-pressure-eu-softens-climate-superpollutant-methane-rules/ .

By Vivian La , Grist.  Excerpt: Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier — a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country....  Full article at https://grist.org/extreme-weather/close-calls-at-michigans-dams-are-a-climate-warning-to-america/ . 

By Frederik Strabo , Calvin Bryan , and Matthew N. Reimer , Science.  Abstract: Wildfires are among the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century, intensified by the accumulation of forest fuels after a century of fire suppression policies. Although fuel-reduction treatments (“fuel treatments”) are a primary tool for reducing wildfire risk, they remain underutilized, partly owing to limited evidence of their economic value. In this study, we integrated high-resolution data on wildfires, fuel treatments, suppression effort, and damages across the Western United States to assess their cost-effectiveness. ...we found that fuel treatments reduced wildfire spread and severity, avoiding an estimated $2.8 billion in damages by limiting structure loss, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and lowering fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) exposure. Each dollar invested yielded $3.73 in expected benefits....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6463...

By Dan H. Shugar , et al, Science.  Abstract: Early in the morning of 10 August 2025, a >64 × 10 6  m 3  landslide struck Tracy Arm fjord in Alaska. The landslide was preconditioned by glacial retreat caused by climate change. The resulting 481 m runup megatsunami followed an initial 100-m-high breaking wave traveling >70 m s −1 . The landslide was preceded by several days of microseismicity, which increased in rate and magnitude until ~1 hour before failure. The landslide produced globally observed long-period seismic waves equivalent in size to a M5.4 earthquake. A long-period (~66 s) global seismic signal, produced by a landslide-induced seiche trapped within the fjord, persisted for up to 36 hours, the second time a days-long seiche has been thus observed. With fjord regions increasingly visited by cruise ships, and climate change making similar events more likely, this unanticipated, near-miss event highlights the growing risk from landslides and tsun...

By Claire Barber , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: SAN FRANCISCO ...in late March ...For the first time, California discharged just over 12,000 megawatts, equivalent to 12 large nuclear plants, of energy from its battery arrays. That’s enough to meet over  40 percent  of the state’s energy demand.  ...While more than more than 60 percent of the state’s electricity generation came from carbon-free sources last year, momentum toward bridging the last gap is fraught, as President Trump takes aim at  offshore wind , orders  oil pipelines to reopen  and retires renewable energy tax credits.  ...[Ed] SMELOFF:  Interestingly, the Trump administration has been supportive of batteries and the [One Big Beautiful Bill] ....continued the investment tax credit for batteries through 2032. ...the war on Iran...reinforces the understanding that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, vulnerable to these international disruptions, so it makes sense to continue to deve...

By Jeffrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: Shirley Meng grew up in China and earned her degrees in Singapore, but the United States is where she built her career trying to make better and cheaper batteries for a power-hungry world. After 2 decades here, the University of Chicago (UChicago) materials scientist, who also heads a Department of Energy (DOE) research hub, is now heading back to Asia.On 1 July, Meng will become vice president for innovation and global affairs at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), her undergraduate alma mater and a growing rese arch powerhouse. Only 35 years old, NTU was ranked 12th this year in  one global assessment of research universities —one rung above UChicago. Meng took the job because she thinks the U.S. has turned away from a commitment to decarbonize its economy. She’s leaving with mixed emotions—and the hope that the political environment for more sustainable energy sources will improve once President Donald Trump leaves offi...

By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: While some major fossil fuel producers keep pushing for expanded oil and gas use, which is  linked  to warfare, economic shocks and ecological damage, more than 50 countries at the first  Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels  began developing plans to shift toward renewable energy systems designed for stability and abundance rather than scarcity and conflict. ...Participants and observers  described  the meeting as a space where fossil fuels themselves, and not just their emissions, were discussed as the root cause of overlapping crises, from conflict and displacement to economic instability. At past UNFCCC climate talks, those connections were often downplayed, especially in official documents....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01052026/colombia-climate-summit-charts-path-beyond-fossil-fuels . 

By TAMMY WEBBER  and  JOSHUA A. BICKEL , Associated Press.  Excerpt: CHRISTIANA, Tenn. (AP) — From a distance, the small solar farm in central Tennessee looks like others that now dot rural America, with row upon row of black panels absorbing the sun’s rays to generate electricity. But beneath these panels is lush pasture instead of gravel, enjoyed by a small herd of cattle that spends its days munching grass and resting in the shade. Silicon Ranch, which owns the 40-acre farm in Christiana, outside of Nashville, believes cattle-grazing is the next frontier in so-called agrivoltaics, which mostly has involved growing crops or grazing sheep beneath the panels. The solar company debuted the project this week and will spend the next year working to demonstrate to farmers that much larger cattle also can thrive at solar sites. If successful, advocates say, that could jump-start new projects to meet the soaring electricity demand driven by rapidly expanding data centers — with...

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey  and  Harry Stevens , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In 2025, the world razed less forest than any other year in the last decade. The bad news: global warming is making wildfires more frequent and intense....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/climate/wri-report-forest-loss.html . 

By Julia Simon, NPR.  Excerpt: ...Colombia is a major global coal producer, as well as an oil and gas producer. But in recent years, Colombia's government has been diversifying its economy and  transitioning away from fossil fuels , the single biggest driver of human-caused climate change. The country isn't alone. This week, Colombia and the Netherlands—the birthplace of oil giant Shell—co-hosted the "Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference" in Santa Marta, just north of the coal port. At a hotel by the sea, representatives of more than 50 countries participated in a two-day high-level conference to discuss concrete ways to phase out oil, gas, and coal. ...These high-level talks happened amidst the backdrop of a warming planet and an energy crisis spurred by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. High oil and gas prices and energy shortages triggered by the recent war have created what the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, has called ...

By Jeffrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence. ...Keivan Stassun, one of the dismissed board members, says the mass firing is the latest indication the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF, which has been without a permanent director since  Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned  exactly 1 year ago. Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, thinks the board’s public criticism in May 2025 of Trump’s proposed 55% cut to NSF’s current budget—which Congress ultimately ignored—antagonized the administration. “Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes.”...  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-fires-nsf-s-oversight-board . For

By Damien Gayle , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100. According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) ...over the next 10 years. That latest figure replaces a previous estimate ...that claimed emissions would reach a maximum of 0.142m tonnes of CO₂ in a single year. There is  increasing alarm  at the carbon impact of AI and with calls to reduce global emissions to mitigate the climate emergency becoming increasingly urgent. ... The latest estimates were revealed in a  revision  to the UK “compute roadmap”, which sets out the government’s plan “to build a world-class compute ecosystem” for delivering artificial intelligence in the UK.... However, AI datacentres require ...

By Jelle Soons and Henk A. Dijkstra , Science.  Abstract: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the present-day climate and could potentially collapse under sufficient freshwater or CO 2 forcing [from melting glaciers]. While the effect of the Bering Strait on AMOC stability has been well studied, it is unknown whether a constructed closure of this Strait can prevent an AMOC collapse under climate change. Here, we show in an Earth system Model of Intermediate Complexity that an artificial closure of the Strait can extend the safe carbon budget of the AMOC, provided that the AMOC is strong enough at the closure time. ...constructing this closure could be a feasible climate intervention strategy to prevent an AMOC collapse....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb7887 . 

By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: ...more than 50 nations are  gathering in Santa Marta , Colombia, today to start mapping out specific plans to phase out fossil fuels, going beyond the conditional global consensus on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” reached at COP28 in Dubai. A lack of progress toward that goal spurred Colombia and the Netherlands to build a coalition of countries willing to move faster and farther. Attending countries span a spectrum from influential fossil fuel producers like Australia, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico to climate-vulnerable island nations including Fiji, Tuvalu and the Maldives, as well as Denmark, Spain and France and the European Union. Notably absent are the United States, Russia, China and major Gulf petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Offering a perspective from  The Elders , a group of former independent world leaders that acts as a moral and ethical voice on issue...

By Gunnar Myhre , Science.  Excerpt: The Amazon rainforest may be flipping from being a massive carbon sink to a net carbon emitter. Deforestation through intentional fires releases ~1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) per year into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate warming ( 1 ). Changes in the region’s vegetation from land-clearing practices modify atmospheric composition, the fraction of solar radiation reflected from Earth’s surface (albedo), and cloud properties. These factors can intensify or stall the warming effect of deforestation, but their contributions are unclear. In particular, clouds regulate Earth’s temperature by reflecting incoming sunlight and trapping outgoing heat. On page 429 of this issue, Dror and Feingold ( 2 ) report that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest increases cloud cover at low altitudes (<2000 m above sea level), partially offsetting the warming influence of released CO 2 . The cooling effect is surprising, with poss...

By Farah Nayeri , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Olafur Eliasson s hook up the contemporary art scene in 2003 when he installed a glowing replica of the sun inside London’s Tate Modern and watched visitors flock to it as if to the nearest beach. Recently, another of Eliasson’s outsized spheres drew large crowds, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah: a  towering, globe-shaped screen  which, night after night, beamed sounds and images illustrating the ecological threats faced by the Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem. To make the installation (titled “ A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake” ), the Danish Icelandic artist teamed up with the music producer Koreless to create a soundtrack using sounds (collected by archivists) made by more than 150 local animal species — including bison, coyotes, frogs, pelicans and rattlesnakes — which he has paired with abstract images inspired by crystalline shapes and motifs in nature.  The Great Salt Lake is in peril :...

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say  have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects  across the country. Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts  granted a preliminary injunction  in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/climate/solar-wind-trump-judge.html .  See also article from The Guardian .

By Valerie Volcovici , Reuters.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - The Department of Energy will retain funding for major carbon direct air capture awarded under the Biden administration after targeting them for ​fund cancellation last year, according to a list of projects identified ‌by the agency that it sent to Congress this week seen by Reuters. Last October, the DOE considered cancelling billions of dollars in funding for clean energy programs, including awards for auto ​manufacturing, hydrogen and carbon capture. Projects slated for cancellation included two major direct ​air capture hubs that received $1.2 billion awards from former President Joe ⁠Biden's administration, including one that involves oil company Occidental (OXY.N) in Texas and another ​in Louisiana. ...The DOE confirmed that the South Texas DAC Hub and Louisiana's Project Cypress were on the list of nearly 2,000 projects that would ​retain their funding....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: A simple idea underpins an audacious intervention to augment Arctic sea ice and slow the climate feedback loop accelerating its disappearance. Drill holes through a floe, pump seawater onto its surface, and let the cold do the rest. The first results from two field tests show the technique can thicken the ice. But they also show those gains don’t last. The added ice—about 30 centimeters—is equivalent to decades of thinning from global warming. But ocean heat and surface slush erased the buffers soon after they formed. The tests, which were reported  last week in the  Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans  and  in a recent preprint , show how difficult it would be to meaningfully expand the strategy across the Arctic, says Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the studies. The “effort to do these tests over a really small area was pretty enormous,” she says. “The thought ...

By Jasper Jolly , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The price of new battery electric cars has fallen below petrol cars in the UK for the first time, according to the car sales website Autotrader, in a significant milestone in Britain’s transition away from fossil fuels. The average price of a new electric car listed on the website was £42,620, compared with £43,405 for a new petrol model – making the former £785 cheaper based on advertised prices after discounts. The higher upfront cost of electric vehicles has long been one of the big sticking points preventing some drivers from switching away from cars with polluting petrol and diesel engines towards those with battery motors, which  do not emit carbon dioxide directly . Total running costs for electric cars have been  lower for some time . UK battery electric car sales accounted for 22% of new car sales in the first three months of the year....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/17/new-uk-ele...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: Each summer in California’s Central Valley, the land bakes as temperatures climb past an oppressive 35°C. And then, a wall of fog rolls in from the ocean, cooling the air and moistening the ground with tiny water droplets. For millions living in the most populous U.S. state, the fog spawned where a cold ocean meets a Sun-warmed coast is like “natural air conditioning,” says Peter Weiss-Penzias, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. It also delivers critical water for agriculture and ecosystems. Yet scientists don’t know what makes some years foggier than others, how fog might change in a warming world, or what pollutants it carries. ...This month, Weiss-Penzias, [Sara] Baguskas, and their colleagues will begin fieldwork on the $3.65 million  Pacific Coastal Fog Research project , funded over 5 years by the Heising-Simons Foundation. Using fog collectors and climate models, the project will for the first ...

By Adrian Cho , Science.  Excerpt: In keeping with President Donald Trump’s priority of developing fusion energy, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) tech development wing will significantly boost its investment in fusion research. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will provide  $135 million in funding for cutting-edge fusion research over the next 18 months , the agency announced on 8 April. That equals the amount ARPA-E spent on fusion over the past 12 years....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/department-energy-s-tech-incubator-doubles-down-fusion-power . 

By Anna Griffin , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For decades, the fierce desert wind has been the only thing moving with any speed at the former Minidoka, Idaho, internment camp, other than an occasional car passing the site where more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were held behind barbed wire from 1942 through 1945. ...winds were supposed to propel turbines — some twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty — at Lava Ridge, a wind energy project that would have stretched across tens of thousands of acres of federal land. Instead, an unlikely coalition of internees’ descendants, ranchers, tribal leaders, environmentalists, Republican elected officials and conservative renewable energy opponents slowed the project long enough for President Trump to win election in 2024 — then kill it. The death of Lava Ridge last August points to the complexity of meeting America’s growing hunger for energy in the artificial intelligence era, amid the conflicting demands of climate scientists and land co...

By Johnny Sturgeon , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Consumers in the U.K. are being warned to “completely avoid” all home-caught cod by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). The nation’s cod stocks have declined over the last decade, driven by overfishing and sea temperature changes, warns the environmental charity.  ...In September, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) issued scientific  findings  to the U.K. and European Union calling for a zero catch of North Sea cod in 2026... any commercial fishing could threaten reproduction rates. The Denmark-based fishery board warned fishermen to avoid catching off the west coast of Scotland, in the North Sea and in the English Channel. ...With  97 percent  of UK households eating fish, the MCS has recommended consumers choose more sustainable alternatives such as Icelandic cod or European hake. ...However, this is not the first reckoning for British fisheries in recent months....

By Elena Giordano , Politico.  Excerpt: Public enthusiasm for clean energy comes as the Iran war exposes Europe’s vulnerability to global oil and gas markets....  Full article at https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-europeans-back-renewables-despite-higher-energy-costs/ . 

By Leonard O. Ohenhen et al, Science.  Abstract: Rising sea levels and land subsidence combine to determine relative sea level (RSL) rise, which is intensifying coastal hazards. However, many densely populated regions lack the observational infrastructure to identify and quantify land subsidence contribution to RSL, hindering effective planning of responses. Here, we used satellite radar observations to generate a high-resolution assessment of land subsidence across Java Island, Indonesia, and evaluate its contribution to 21st-century RSL change. We identify widespread and temporally evolving subsidence with rates ranging from 1 to 15 cm/year in multiple coastal cities. ...we attribute the dominant subsidence mechanisms to resource extraction across various geographic and geological settings. ...contemporary subsidence will dominate RSL budgets over the next 25 years along >75% of the coast. These findings underscore the urgent need to integrate subsidence into sea le...

By Dharna Noor , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Lee Zeldin opens conference for Heartland Institute, which once compared climate advocates to the Unabomber. ...He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet”....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/08/epa-chief-zeldin-climate-denying-group-event .

By Rachel Nuwer , Science.  Excerpt: Last week in the  International Journal of Biometeorology , researchers reported that cherry trees are not only blooming earlier in the year, but in some parts of Japan, they are  failing to reach full bloom at all . Although the problem is currently confined to southern Japan, the authors warn that in a matter of decades, milder winters may start to take a toll on major cherry blossom–viewing hot spots in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Osaka, as well as around the world....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/japan-warms-cherry-blossom-displays-are-fading .  See also New York Times article, Japan’s Cherry Blossom Database, 1,200 Years Old, Has a New Keeper.

By Deema Zein , PBS.  Excerpt: Cocoa prices have swung sharply in recent years, driven by climate change and production issues in West Africa, where most cocoa is grown. Prices hit a record high at the end of 2024. And although they have fallen since, candymakers, who buy months ahead, are still feeling the impact....  Full article at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/candy-makers-quietly-change-recipes-as-climate-change-hits-cocoa-industry . 

By Christopher Helman , Forbes.  Excerpt: Liz Muller convinced her dad Richard to forego retirement and become an entrepreneur...a revolutionary approach to making atomic energy cheaper and safer. F or  more than a decade, Elizabeth Muller and her father have taken a three-mile hike...through the hills of Berkeley, California.... ...Richard A. Muller, who devised the modern carbon dating method used to determine the age of ancient plant and animal remains before he was 33 and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award at 38..., after 40 years of teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, the 82-year-old physicist is on the verge of having his greatest commercial impact,.... ...says Liz, 47... “As a kid growing up in Berkeley, all my teachers and friends were anti-nuclear....” She too leaned anti-nuke, .... ...she moved to Paris in 1999 to earn a master’s at ESCP Business School.... In France, she explains, everyone supported nuclear power as a “clean, reliable global...

By Arcelia Martin , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Texas state officials have led a successful and concerted effort to prevent offshore wind developments in the Gulf. ...even as five offshore wind projects resume construction this month after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s stop-work order for the developments, Texas has none in the mix. The U.S. has a small number of projects operating off the East Coast, totalling some 40 gigawatts. Texas leads the nation in wind energy, producing more than a fifth of the country’s wind-sourced electricity. Studies show the region could have similar success offshore, especially given the state’s experience building oil and gas rigs in the Gulf. Yet an auction of federal seabed leases nearly three years ago saw no bids. ...chief among [the reasons] is the political hostility from state leaders, and, more recently, the federal government, toward this type of renewable energy....  Full article at https://insideclima...

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Thomas Jorling, adviser to Republicans who cosponsored the 1970 law, disputes the Trump administration’s claim that it shouldn’t apply to planet-warming greenhouse gases. ...When the Trump administration took the extraordinary step this year of killing the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it made a simple argument: The Clean Air Act doesn’t allow it. Thomas Jorling, who helped write the Clean Air Act, disagrees. The 1970 Clean Air Act became law ...when climate change wasn’t as widely recognized a threat. But Mr. Jorling said in a recent interview that he and the other authors of the legislation had known that scientists would continue learning about new pollutants, and so the bill was meant to be flexible enough to encompass them. Regulating planet-warming emissions is “perfectly consistent with the Clean Air Act,” he said. ...In February, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked what is known as the “endangerm...

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen , Scientific American.  Excerpt: A Wisconsin-sized region of frozen soil is thawing fast, releasing three trillion more gallons of water per year than it did just four decades ago. Thawing permafrost  is among climate science’s worst “positive feedback loops”: As the world warms, permafrost—essentially frozen soil—thaws, releasing fresh water and carbon  into the environment . That release further fuels climate change, driving more warming. (Thawing permafrost has also  raised concerns  about unleashing new pathogens on humanity.) ...And in Alaska, the loop seems to be speeding up....  Full article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-alaskan-permafrost-is-thawing-heres-why-thats-so-worrying/ . 

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A chapter on climate science has been removed from a manual designed to be an independent, neutral source of scientific information for judges. Judges aren’t always scientific experts, but they are responsible for determining whether scientific evidence is admissible and for making rulings in scientific cases. That’s why the  Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence , jointly produced by the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), was introduced more than 30 years ago: to inform judges about fundamental truths of various areas of science. ...In December 2025, the manual was updated for the first time in 15 years to include new chapters on computer science, artificial intelligence, and climate science. The chapter on climate science  met   with   backlash  almost immediately. In late January, 27 Republican state attorneys general  wrote a letter  t...

By Hatty Willmoth , BBC Science Focus.  Excerpt: Compared to every other country in the world, the US is bearing the biggest brunt of the economic losses inflicted by climate breakdown – and will likely continue to do so. That’s according to a  recent study  from Stanford University, in which scientists calculated the economic loss and damages caused by major fossil fuel emitters. Lead author  Marshall Burke , professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford, told  BBC Science Focus  that the study aimed to find a way to link specific emissions to their economic consequences. ...Notably, the scientists estimated the US to be the largest emitter of greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2020, responsible for $10.2 trillion (£7.6 trillion) of global harm. But they also concluded that the US had suffered the most substantial losses of any country, valued at $16.2 trillion (£12.2 trillion), due to climate collapse. “The US has experienced more [financial] dama...

By Dennis Pillion , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Despite a sunny climate, Alabama ranks 49th among U.S. states in residential solar installations—lower than Alaska. Advocates say the steep solar fee is part of the reason why. ...A federal judge ruled last week that Alabama Power can continue charging its small solar customers one of the highest standby charges in the nation, dismissing a lawsuit that argued the fee was illegal under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31032026/alabama-power-solar-fee-ruling/ . 

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A warming climate could expose a Pennsylvania-sized chunk of ice-free land in Antarctica by 2300, which could drastically reshape Antarctic geopolitics as well as the continent’s geography. A study published in  Nature Climate Change  is the first to incorporate glacial isostatic adjustment—how land beneath heavy ice sheets uplifts after the ice retreats—into projections of ice-free land emergence in Antarctica. ...Within the area that Lucas and the research team projected would be ice-free by 2300 lie known or suspected deposits of copper, gold, silver, iron, and platinum— critical minerals  used in manufacturing and valuable metals in and of themselves. In particular, the study found the largest land emergence in Antarctica is likely to occur over territories claimed by Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom and contains a range of mineral deposits, including copper, gold, silver, and iron. ...Currently, commercial mineral...

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Clean energy isn’t dead in the Trump era. But it does look different these days. Since returning to office, President Trump  has dismantled federal efforts  to fight climate change and vowed to stop new wind turbines from going up. His administration  has canceled billions of dollars in funding  for technologies that might one day help reduce planet-warming emissions, and it has instead pushed to expand domestic oil and gas drilling. Those moves have taken a brutal toll on America’s budding clean energy industry, including  canceled offshore wind farms ,  shuttered electric-car factories  and  layoffs  at climate technology start-ups. Yet many clean energy executives say they are finding ways to adapt, and some promising technologies that might help slow global warming are moving forward. Some industries, such as geothermal energy or nuclear power, still receive support from the Trump admini...

202By Oliver Milman , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating  emissions , with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found. By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has  caused greater harm  to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper. About 25% of this GDP dampening has occurred in the US itself, although other countries have borne a heavy toll, with economic losses disproportionately felt in the poorest countries. Since 1990, US emissions have caused an estimated $500bn of economic damage to India and $330bn in damage to Brazil, the research finds. ...The  new study , published in Nature on Wednesday, attempts to attach dollar amounts to “loss and dam...

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Maryland Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a major blow to cities and other local governments looking to sue oil companies over climate change. The court ruled against reviving climate lawsuits brought by Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County that were struck down by lower courts. Those governments had sued 26 multinational oil and gas companies to recover damages caused by the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, accusing them of deceiving the public about the dangers of using their products. Some three dozen similar lawsuits have been filed nationwide in the past decade....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/climate/baltimore-climate-lawsuit.html . 

By Maxine Joselow  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston. ...In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas-trump-total.html . 

By Alan Blinder  and  Sonia A. Rao , The New York Times.  Excerpt: San Francisco hit 90 degrees on Friday, the first day of spring. ...As these kind of spikes have become more common, there has been a rush to add air conditioning in the region. More than half of the San Francisco area’s homes now have air-conditioning, a first for the famously cool region.... It is not just the Bay Area: The United States has become a lot more air-conditioned in recent years, both fueling climate change and taming its day-to-day consequences. About 93 percent of occupied American housing units had primary air-conditioning in 2023, according to the most recently published federal data. Eight years earlier, about 89 percent did. ...Compared to other countries...the United States was “oddly obsessed with air-conditioning.” ...one issue is that relatively few American buildings, especially in places historically unaccustomed to intense heat, were designed to embrace alternate cooling me...

By Eric Niiler , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Earth is out of balance. That’s the message from a United Nations report released late Sunday that looked at how much energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth or reflected back into space. Researchers found the gap between the two is the biggest since measurements began in 1960, meaning more of the sun’s heat energy is now staying on Earth. And that energy imbalance is heating up the oceans, atmosphere, and frozen regions of the world, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s  State of the Global Climate report . ...said Dr. Deoras, who was not associated with the report... “...all these greenhouse gases, they are just trapping more and more heat. The planet is just not getting a chance to cool down.”...  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/climate/energy-imbalance-un-report.html .  See also Inside Climate News article Report Shows Earth’s Climate is Out of Balance, as Indicators Hit Ne...

By Ajit Niranjan , The Guardian.  Excerpt: In one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite. That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in  Denmark , the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!” ...in Denmark, which generates 90% of its electricity from renewables and aims to  cut planet-heating pollution  faster than any other wealthy country, the spread of solar power has alarmed some regions in which construction is concentrated. Solar tripled from 4% of Danish power production in 2021 to 13% in 2025. And a handful of villages h...

By Emily Gardner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In 2019, researchers collected a 9.5-meter ice core from Austria’s Weißseespitze ice cap, which covers the top sections of Gepatschferner Glacier in the eastern Alps, near the Austrian-Italian border. They analyzed 18 trace elements and organic acids in the core to paint a picture of Earth’s climate and atmosphere over more than a thousand years. But Weißseespitze Glacier is melting quickly: As of 2025, the ice was only 5.5 meters thick in the area where scientists collected the core. “When this glacier disappears, we don’t lose only the ice: We’ll lose irreplaceable knowledge about the Earth’s climate history and how it has evolved and how human activity has influenced it,” said  Azzurra Spagnesi , a paleoclimatologist at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia and lead author of the new research  published  in  Frontiers in Earth Science ....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/earths-climate-records-are-melting . 

By UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. Excerpt: BERKELEY, Calif.  A new study, “ An Analysis of Japan’s Carbon Neutral Port Initiative and Yokohama Port and Harbor Decarbonization Plan ,” ( download the Japanese version here ) from the University of California, Berkeley examines Japan's innovative approach to decarbonizing maritime ports. Japan’s Carbon Neutral Port (CNP) certification framework and the City of Yokohama’s port decarbonization initiatives represent serious and forward-looking efforts to address the complex challenge of maritime emissions reduction. The study comes as momentum builds for decarbonization of the international shipping industry,....  Full article at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/recent-news/new-analysis-by-uc-berkeley-highlights-japans-port-decarbonization-leadership . 

By Saugat Bolakhe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Zoom out from Earth and take a satellite view of the planet in time-lapse: One of the most obvious and notable changes would be the surge of greenness sweeping seasonally across the globe. Scientists call this [the “green wave”, a] seasonal pulse of vegetation growth, which intensifies in the Northern Hemisphere during boreal summer and in the Southern Hemisphere during austral summer, Now, in a  study published in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , researchers analyzed 40 years of this green wave data and tracked the center of mass of global greenness [that] has been shifting northward and eastward and that this movement has accelerated over the past decade....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/earths-green-wave-is-on-the-move . 

By Nicholas Kusnetz ,  Georgina Gustin , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: As countries scramble to secure oil, gas and fertilizer, China’s bets on clean energy and coal are cushioning its dependence on oil and gas imports. ...In an  essay in Foreign Policy  written with Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, Downs argued that while the war has exposed China’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil, “it also underscores how deliberately Beijing has sought to prepare for a world in which energy security is inseparable from geopolitics—by electrifying its economy, securing domestic sources of energy, amassing stockpiles, and dominating clean technology supply chains.” Last year more than half of new cars sold in China were electric,  according to the energy think tank Ember , while the country is a leader in electrifying heavy-duty vehicles and high-speed rail, too. Meanwhile, a rapidly growing portion of its electricity is being genera...

By Maxine Joselow  and  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Trump administration on Thursday filed  a new lawsuit  against California over its strict limits on planet-warming pollution from cars, arguing that the restrictions would unlawfully force a rapid transition to electric vehicles in the state. ...Across the country, 17 states representing more than a third of the American automobile market follow California’s lead on clean car standards. “Gavin Newsom is determined to continue pushing Democrats’ radical E.V. fantasy — even if doing so is illegal,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.... Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Governor Newsom, called the lawsuit “meritless.” “While the Trump administration surrenders the future of the auto industry to China, California will continue competing globally to win the clean vehicle market,” Mr. Martinez said, adding, “This lawsuit is meritless, and we’re not backing down from this fi...

By Nature's Voice Spring 2026 (Natural Resources Defense Council—NRDC).  Excerpt: It’s been one legal blow after another against the Trump administration’s war on wind energy. In December, a federal court ruled that the administration’s blanket ban on new wind projects is illegal. That was followed in quick succession by five separate court rulings preliminarily halting the administration’s attempt to stop construction on five multibillion-dollar wind projects off the East Coast. Says Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at NRDC: “The administration should use this string of court losses as a wake-up call and get out of the way of the expansion of renewable energy.”...  Source at https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_spring_2026 (page 2).

By Erik Stokstad , Science.  Excerpt: Insects living in the lowland tropics have evolved to deal with brutal heat. But many of them are close to their limit, according to a massive study that assessed the heat tolerance of hundreds of species. The findings, published today in  Nature , provide  an unprecedented view of what temperatures tropical insects can deal with —and reinforce concerns about the risk that climate change poses for insect biodiversity....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/many-heat-stressed-tropical-insects-are-reaching-their-limits . 

By Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A new study of  Antarctica  has found that since 1996, its ice sheet has lost 12,820 square kilometers (nearly 5,000 square miles) of ice—nearly enough to cover the state of Connecticut, or 10 cities the size of Greater Los Angeles. The study, published today in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ,  evaluated the retreat of the ice sheet’s grounding line over the past 30 years. A grounding line is the point at which continental ice (grounded on bedrock) meets a floating ice shelf, and as such serves as a good measure of the advance and retreat of ocean-terminating glaciers....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/antarctic-ice-sheet-has-lost-a-connecticut-sized-amount-of-ice-over-the-past-30-years .

By Dan Charles , NPR.  Excerpt: A  mammoth solar farm  is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most. Farmers are among the project's backers. They don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it. "We're farmers, and we would rather farm the ground," says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family's business. "If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don't. You have to deal with the cards you're dealt."...  Full article at https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5726411/farmers-california-san-joaquin-valley-solar-farm-westlands-water-district-golden-state-clean-energy . 

By Science Advisor.  Excerpt: About 2.7 million years ago, Earth’s climate had a personality crisis. Before then, ice ages waxed and waned in long, predictable cycles tied to Earth’s orbit, tens of thousands of years at a time. But new research in  Science  suggests that  as Northern Hemisphere ice sheets grew larger, the planet’s climate system began behaving very differently . And ice ages started “flickering,” swinging abruptly every couple thousand years. To understand when and why this shift occurred, researchers analyzed sediment cores drilled from the seafloor off the Iberian margin, near Portugal. ...For most of the Pliocene, from about 5.3 to 2.7 million years ago, the record shows only slow orbital cycles, with little to no sign of any rapid swings. But after 2.7million years ago, during the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, the first isolated cold events begin to appear. Within 200,000 years, rapid oscillations became freque...

By John Timmer  , arstechnica.  Excerpt: On Tuesday, the US Energy Information Administration released full-year data on how the country generated electricity in 2025. It’s a bit of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that overall demand rose appreciably, and a fair chunk of that was met by additional coal use. On the good side, solar continued its run of astonishing growth, generating 35 percent more power than a year earlier and surpassing hydroelectric power for the first time. Overall, electrical consumption in the US rose by 2.8 percent, or about 121 terawatt-hours. Consumption had been largely flat for several decades, with efficiency and the decline of industry offsetting the effects of population and economic growth. There were plenty of year-to-year changes, however, driven by factors ranging from heating and cooling demand to a global pandemic. Given that history, the growth in demand in 2025 is a bit concerning, but it’s not yet a clear signal that ...

By Rachel Nuwer , Science.  Excerpt: A new study finds that as climate changes, dewdrops are forming on plants’ leaves earlier in the spring, triggering a chemical cascade that hastens flowering. ...According to findings published last week in the  Proceedings of the   National Academy of Sciences , tiny water droplets that come into contact with the surface of leaves set off a cascade of chemical signals that  tell a plant it’s time to bloom ....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/could-dewdrops-explain-why-plants-are-flowering-earlier .