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 . 

By Michelle Lewis , Elektrek.  Excerpt: Renewables accounted for 30.0% of total US electrical generation during the first third of 2026, up 2.2% year over year, according to new data recently released by the US Energy Information Administration ( EIA ), and reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign....  Full article at https://electrek.co/2026/06/26/eia-renewables-30-percent-us-electricity-generation/ . 

By Scott Neuman , NPR.  Excerpt: Scientists, educators, farmers and the broader public now have a new website for climate information in the United States. The site, Climate.us , launched this week and fills a void left when a government-run climate information website was shut down last year by the Trump administration. The new site was created by former employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the government's lead scientific agency for climate, weather and ocean monitoring — who worked on Climate.gov until they were laid off last year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks....  Full article at https://www.npr.org/2026/06/26/nx-s1-5869615/climate-noaa-data-trump-doge . 

By Kate Abnett and Bart H. Meijer , Reuters.  Excerpt: The European Commission ​last year proposed a rollback of the EU's effective ban on new combustion-engine cars from 2035 after ​pressure from Germany, Italy and the auto sector, changing the target to a 90% ⁠emissions reduction instead. ...France and Sweden were ⁠among those ​to defend the combustion-engine ban, warning that weakening it would ​delay urgently needed investments to help European EV manufacturers stay competitive. Weakening the policy after the Iran war's energy fallout would be a "terrible ​signal", French climate minister Monique Barbut said....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com/business/spectacular-electric-car-sales-weaken-pressure-lower-co2-standards-eu-climate-2026-06-25/ . 

By Tudor Tarita , ZME Science.  Excerpt: Europe’s summer has arrived early, and it has arrived hard. Across the continent, a dangerous heatwave has closed schools, strained power grids, slowed trains, and pushed authorities to issue the highest health alerts. France recorded its hottest day ever.... Italy placed major cities under red alert warnings. Spain topped 44° Celsius while Britain, where there’s barely any households with air conditioning, braced for temperatures near 40°. Europe is warming faster than any other continent, and this recent heatwave came as a shocking reminder of the fact. ...The planet is about 1.4° Celsius warmer than it was before the industrial era. Europe is about 2.4° hotter, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service . One reason is the continent’s geography. Land heats faster than ocean, and Europe is mostly land. ...Europe also stretches into the Arctic, which is warming even faster. As snow and ice melt, they expose darker land and ocea...

By Quinn Glabicki , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...researchers, private enterprise and a public utility in the Central Valley are installing solar panels atop the man-made waterways. ...The pilot program, called Project Nexus, is testing solar canopies that researchers say could generate gigawatts of power and save billions of gallons of water by providing shade that slows evaporation. ...The project grew out of a 2021 study by researchers at the University of California, Merced, .... ...Solar-covered canals aren’t an entirely novel idea. Two were completed more than a decade ago in Gujarat, in western India. And along I-10 south of Phoenix, the Gila River Indian Community built a project in 2024....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/climate/california-canals-solar-panels-water-nexus.html .  See also Project Nexus ; news from Governor Newsom ; and UC Newsroom article . 

By Constance Malleret, Christian Science Monitor.  Excerpt: Less than two decades ago, Uruguay was facing a predicament that would feel familiar to people in many countries today. Global oil prices were spiking. The small but growing country’s economy now depended on more imported fossil fuels to meet rising demands for electricity. ...These days, up to 98% of Uruguay’s electricity comes from a combination of wind, solar, hydropower, and biomass. The nation of about 3.4 million people even exports surplus energy to neighboring Argentina and Brazil....  Full article at https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2026/0621/uruguay-green-energy-crisis-hormuz . 

By Hayley Smith , Los Angeles Times.  Excerpt: Nearly two decades in the making, SunZia — an $11-billion New Mexico wind-and-transmission project — is now online, sending new clean power to Arizona and California. Spanning 916 turbines and a 550-mile high-voltage line, the project can power 1 million homes and already has helped drive record wind generation on California’s grid. The project arrives as the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuel investments and works to slow the development of offshore wind. The largest wind energy project in U.S. history is now online...signaling a new era for sending clean electricity across the West....  Full article at https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-06-18/after-nearly-two-decades-this-massive-new-mexico-wind-project-is-now-powering-california . 

By Alexis Abramson , Time Magazine.  Excerpt: Americans are seeking out solar , batteries, and electric vehicles at a pace unlike anything the clean energy movement has seen in fifty years. In the 23 days after the Iran war began and the Strait of Hormuz closed, requests for home solar systems paired with battery storage jumped 21% . Used EV sales reversed course sharply, rising 17% in a single quarter after hitting their lowest point since 2022.  ... Across the U.S. and globally , interest in clean energy is accelerating faster than at any point in history, and not necessarily because of anything the clean energy movement achieved on its own. Understanding why is critical. ...By 2010, after four decades of moral-based advocacy, solar still represented less than 0.1% of U.S. electricity generation. ...over a system's lifetime, today, solar generates electricity at costs comparable to or less than what utilities charge in most parts of the country. ...Gas prices set b...

By Noelle Corbett, BGR.  Excerpt: In addition to supplying clean energy, solar panels have a surprisingly positive impact on degraded land and local wildlife . The panels block the sun, allowing the soil to retain more moisture to the point where China's largest solar farm is changing the desert around it , turning a once dry landscape green with plant life. Animals can also benefit from solar farms, including the San Joaquin kit fox, an endangered species that lives in central California, whose population faces many threats, including habitat loss and predators. ...Researchers examined how the facilities impacted local foxes in two separate studies carried out from 2014–2017, with results published in a 2019 report .... They found that solar farms' fences kept out common predators like bobcats and coyotes, animals too large to fit underneath. Additionally, the solar panels provided shielding from birds of prey like the golden eagle.... Another study carried...out between 2019 ...

By Aman Azhar , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit dismissed the appeal after the Justice Department filed a motion for its voluntary dismissal on June 10.  The case against Trump’s executive order was filed in May, 2025 by a coalition of attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Monday’s decision affirms the Dec. 8 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris, which concluded that Trump’s January 2025 executive order was unlawful, findin...

By Wyatt Myskow , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: For the first time ever, researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally and mapped the ecosystems where they are densest. Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultra-thin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the sun, according to new research published in Science on Thursday. These fungal communities form intimate relationships with the roots of plants, which they provide with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, 1 billion tons of which the networks sequester underground annually, previous research has found. If the fungal network wasn’t storing it, that carbon would be warming the atmosphere. But those networks have never been mapped globally until now. The new study led by Society for the Protectio...

By Martha Pskowski , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Railroad Commission of Texas shut down injection wells to control a leak in a church parking lot. But 1.5 million gallons of toxic wastewater still spilled to the surface. ...The state regulator, the Railroad Commission, spent $1.49 million plugging the leak and another $1.16 million disposing of the wastewater back underground. By early June, crews had stopped the flow and plugged the wellbore....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11062026/texas-oil-well-leaks-million-of-gallons-of-toxic-wastewater/ . 

By Paul Voosen, Science.  Excerpt: After decades of warnings, new data suggest the Atlantic’s vital circulation may withstand climate warming better than feared. ...Climate models have long warned that global warming could weaken “deep-water formation”—the density-driven sinking that is the engine of the AMOC [Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation]. The logic is straightforward: As Greenland’s ice sheets melt and sea ice formation declines, North Atlantic waters will freshen. Combined with warmer sea temperatures, the freshening makes surface waters more buoyant. The AMOC was thought to have shut down abruptly during past climate warmings, and a handful of researchers now argue such a tipping point could occur this century. ...Yet for all the alarming headlines, most climate researchers think the AMOC is more resilient than these worst case scenarios make it seem. Emerging evidence suggests the AMOC may not have actually collapsed in the warm climates following ice ages. More...

By Daniel M. Gilford , et al, Science.  Abstract: The rate and impacts of sea level rise vary considerably around the world, but the contribution of human-caused climate change to increases in local and regional flood risks has not yet been systematically explored. ...we quantify human-caused climate change’s contributions to sea level rise at worldwide locations using budget-based and semiempirical model methods. Results show that human-caused sea level rise is quantifiable at 97% of 519 tide gauge sites and is responsible for 58% (44 to 65%) of the observed daily extreme water level exceedances over 2000–2018. On average, human-caused sea level rise has caused a near-tripling in the number of days with attributable exceedances since the 1970s....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz3595 .   See also Nature article, Human-driven sea-level rise has quadrupled the frequency of coastal sea-level extremes since 1900 . 

By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the world’s largest ongoing infrastructure program, has a substantial climate impact. More than half its emissions stem from steel, the majority of which was produced in China. ...More than 130 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are tied to the construction of transportation, energy, building and water projects that were part of China’s Belt and Road international development initiative from 2008 to 2024, according to a study published Monday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. ...The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s trillion-dollar development effort designed to help expand Beijing’s global influence. ...Carbon-intensive steel accounted for 53 percent of the projects’ total emissions, according to the study. ...China produces more than half of all steel worldwide, and its manufacturing accounts for approximately 15 percent of the country’s total carbon dioxide...

By Pragati K.B. and Anupreeta Das , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Severe heat waves have been hitting India since April, forcing many of the country’s essential workers to make tough decisions. ...For millions of workers like Mr. Rastogi — wage laborers, construction workers, street vendors, delivery drivers — the scorching summer in New Delhi often forces them into a bitter trade-off between health and income. They keep the machinery of this city running, and they are among the most susceptible to its harshest conditions. ...On the hottest days, the surface temperature of the ground can reach 140 degrees, according to the Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based think tank. That is when tarmac starts to soften and barefoot workers risk blistering their feet....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/world/asia/india-heat-workers-health-income.html . 

By Dan Vergano , Scientific American.  Excerpt: At a White House briefing on Thursday, President Donald Trump invoked a national defense law to steer nearly $700 million to support coal power plants and exports. Trump aims to use the 1950 Defense Production Act to refurbish 13 coal plants , build two new ones and establish a West Coast coal export facility in the U.S.—even as many coal plants around the country are retiring and the fossil fuel is in long-term decline....  Full article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-invokes-defense-production-act-to-keep-u-s-coal-plants-running/ .  See also WIRED article, China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center , and Gizmodo article, America's Solar Just Hit a Critical Milestone That Won't Make Trump Happy ...solar overtook coal power generation in the U.S. electricity mix for the first month on record in May, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the energy think tank Ember.... 

By NRDC Nature's Voice.  Excerpt: Siding with NRDC and our allies, a federal court has ruled that the Department of Transportation under the Trump administration acted illegally when it tried to freeze a $5 billion federal initiative to build a nationwide network of reliable, high speed electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations and odered the funds restored. ...It aims to bu9ild EV charging stations every 50 miles on major highways across all 50 states....  Full article at https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_summer_2026 (page 2). 

By Emily Gardner and Grace van Deelen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: “NSF’s failure to provide any explanation for its decision—let alone a reasonable one—thwarts meaningful judicial review and renders the challenged action arbitrary and capricious,” the judge wrote. A Colorado judge has granted a preliminary injunction to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The move temporarily blocks the federal government from moving forward with one part of its effort to dismantle UCAR’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) by transferring stewardship of a state-of-the-art supercomputing facility....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/judge-blocks-nsf-from-dismantling-ncar .   See also https://www.science.org/content/article/court-blocks-nsf-s-transfer-climate-lab-s-supercomputing-facility . 

By Eric Niiler , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html .  See also E.U. Steps Up Ocean Monitoring as Trump Administration Backs Away .

By Peter Aldhous , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: With a puny snowpack in the Western mountains and a widespread drought, the nation is a tinderbox. A reorganization of federal firefighting efforts and the departure of many staff qualified to join the fight are heightening concern....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31052026/experts-warn-of-upcoming-wildfire-season/ .   See also A ‘Reforestation Pipeline’ in New Mexico Trains Seedlings to Survive in Burn Scars . 

By Michelle Lewis , Electrek.  Excerpt: Despite the impression that large solar farms are constantly sparking local fights, a new study from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that most large-scale solar projects in the US move forward with relatively little public opposition. The study, published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science , looked at 686 utility-scale solar projects that came online between January 2022 and November 2023. Researchers found that 56% of the projects fell into “no” or “low” conflict categories, while just 19% experienced high levels of conflict. ...Researchers also found that utility-scale solar projects approved through state-level permitting systems tended to face less conflict than those reviewed under local or hybrid permitting systems. However, Katz cautioned that the study shouldn’t be interpreted as proof that state-level permitting systems are automatically better than local review processes. Instead, she sa...

By Ishan Thakore , Colorado Public Radio (CPR) News.  Excerpt: Renewable energy production has more than doubled in Colorado over the last decade, according to a new report from the advocacy groups Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) and Environment Colorado. In 2025, solar, wind and geothermal produced the equivalent of 44% of the power consumed in the state, up from just 19% in 2016. Solar saw a particularly large jump — the state generated eight times as much solar power last year compared to 2016.  The lion’s share of Colorado’s renewable electricity comes from wind energy. The state produced enough electricity from wind last year to power more than 1.5 million homes, according to the report.  Colorado also saw a massive increase in the number of registered electric vehicles and installed EV charging ports compared to 2016. ...The nationwide increase in renewable energy is being driven in part by its lower costs. Utility-scale solar and wind farms now pr...

By Ben Tracy of Climate Central .  Excerpt: ...Unlike traditional rooftop solar, which requires thousands of dollars in upfront costs, specialized mounting hardware and professional electricians, this system is designed for the everyday consumer. It’s a $400 kit from Bright Saver, a non-profit advocating for “plug-and-play” solar that works for renters and homeowners alike. The setup is deceptively simple: you hang the panel on a balcony or prop it up in a back yard and plug it directly into a standard wall outlet. ...While these panels won’t take a home entirely off the grid, Stryker says the units can trim monthly costs by 10% to 25% depending on how many panels a user installs. More savings can be had if the panels are paired with batteries that can store excess solar energy. “They cover a part of your energy bill and then you do need to draw the rest from the grid as you do now,” Stryker said. While the technology is just gaining a foothold in the US, it is already a cultural p...

By Yujia Huang , ScienceNews.  Excerpt: On April 28, a fierce hailstorm battered Springfield, Mo., dropping ice chunks the size of baseballs, with some even larger than grapefruits. The giant hail smashed cars, wrecked homes and injured both people and animals. This type of destructive hail is making headlines more frequently. In a warming world, ice falling from the sky might seem more likely to melt away. But hailstones may instead grow larger and more destructive in many parts of the world , though the risks will vary by region, researchers report May 27 in Nature ....  Full article at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/large-hail-climate-change-more-common . 

By Brad Plumer and Eric Niiler , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...an international team of researchers published a major revision of the emissions scenarios used to study global warming. When scientists try to model how hot Earth could get this century, they typically look at a range of possibilities for how much planet-warming pollution humans might pump into the atmosphere. ...In this latest update, the researchers abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now “implausible” given recent energy trends. ...The majority of climate scientists still say global warming is a serious problem, and that even more plausible, medium-emissions scenarios can carry grave dangers. But the new paper has raised questions about whether some of the risks of climate change have been poorly communicated or overstated in years past and how bes...

By Blaine Harden , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The population has plummeted over the past seven years as climate change triggers mass starvation in warming Arctic waters....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052026/pacific-gray-whales-threatened-by-warming-waters/ . 

By Marta Zaraska , Knowable Magazine.  Excerpt: On  a blazing hot day in South Africa, female southern pied babblers can’t think straight. The medium-sized black-and-white birds are trying to get at tasty mealworms behind a see-through barrier. On cooler days, the birds can quickly figure out that all they have to do is go around the small wall of plastic. But when the mercury goes up, the birds just keep stubbornly pecking at the barrier. That experiment is part of a growing body of research showing that animals get their minds muddled during heat waves. When it’s hot outside, birds struggle to learn, dogs bite more often, goat-like chamois pick fights. ....If the animals can’t stay alert enough to find food or avoid predators, their chances of survival go downhill, says Amanda Ridley , a behavioral ecologist at the University of Western Australia who coauthored the pied babbler study....  Full article at https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2026/hea...

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 .