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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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