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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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