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Climate Change

Page Updated:
Sept. 8, 2026

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• • El Niño is About to Raise
  California’s Sea Levels By a Foot

  Bad News When Winter Storms Roll In
  
  {CNN Climate}

  Sept. 8, 2026 - The sea level along California’s coast will increase by about a foot by mid-October due to the influence of El Niño, which is driving a large volume of water northward from offshore of Mexico and Central America.

  This water is coming in the form of a coastal “Kelvin wave,” and it will mark the arrival of one of the first significant impacts of the powerhouse El Niño taking shape in the tropical Pacific. According to Dillon Amaya, an oceanographer at North Carolina State University, the wave is a clear signal that El Niño has arrived in California.

• • UN Sets Out Narrow Path Back to 1.5C
  Warming After Inevitable Overshoot

  Leading Scientists Say Warming Must Peak at 1.8C to Be Able to Reverse Course This Century, But...
  
  {CLIMATE HOME NEWS}

  Sept. 7, 2026, -Governments must slash emissions further and faster, and keep every climate promise they have made for the planet to be able to return to 1.5C of warming by the end of the century after an inevitable overshoot, a group of prominent climate scientists has said.

  In a flagship new report sketching out a way not to lose the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal, the scientists said that global temperatures need to peak at no higher than 1.8C above pre-industrial levels to give the world “a fighting chance” to reverse course. They added that plans to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere can only play a limited role in this effort and cannot substitute for emissions cuts.

• • French Winemakers Forecast 30-Year Low
  Harvest After Severe Drought and Heat

  Estimates Suggest Drop In Production With Vineyards Also Concerned ‘Smoke Taint’ From Wildfires May Affect Quality

  

  Sept. 7, 2026, -French vineyards hit by severe drought and heatwaves are expected to report a 30-year low in wine production after the country’s hottest ever recorded summer, according to the agriculture ministry.

  Initial estimates suggest winemakers will produce just under 34m hectolitres from this year’s harvest: a drop of 6% on last year, and 17% less than the 2021-2025 average.

• • Can Studying Heat Waves in Real Time Save Lives?

  Heat Drove Medical Emergencies Across the Country Last Summer. Tracking Those Changes More Quickly Could Help Doctors Prepare

  

  Sept. 4, 2026, -The volume of patients in Dr. Robert Brewer’s upstate New York emergency room isn’t always predictable, but when there’s a heat wave, he knows he needs to staff up.

  Heat waves mean more dehydration and kidney problems. As patients’ bodies struggle to regulate temperature, dilating blood vessels strain their hearts, sometimes leading to heart failure. Brewer sees more frustration, outbursts and patients less able to manage mental health conditions. Last summer, when the Northeast was hit with uncharacteristically severe heat waves as climate change continues to worsen, all that was especially true.

• • Nepal’s Catastrophic Flood Heralds a New Age of Disasters

  The Sheer Scale of the Himalayan Deluge Shocked Even Climate Scientists
  
  {Bloomberg}

  Sept. 4, 2026, -The giant wave of rock, ice and debris that swept through 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Nepalese valleys last week is the deadliest illustration yet of how climate change is fueling mountain disasters of epic proportions.

  Scientists have long predicted quicker melting of snow and ice and accelerated thawing of permafrost in high mountain areas that are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. For years they have documented the results: more frequent rockfalls, avalanches, lake outbursts, flash floods and landslides.

• • Nepal Bet Big on Hydropower

  One Devastating Flood Just Put That Strategy to the Test
  
  {ZME SCIENCE}

  Sept. 4, 2026 -Nepal’s long-held policy of harnessing hydroelectricity and using it for economic growth has met new challenges: potential catastrophic floods in the snow-fed rivers amid rising global temperatures.

  The Aug. 26 floods that originated on the Nepal-China border, and which knocked out around 10% of installed power from the national grid, has prompted a debate on whether Nepal should rethink its overall strategy or just adopt better-engineered plants. Amid this, the flood could jeopardize the country’s clean energy targets and push it to adopt more solar power.

• • Why States Are Cutting Back on Their Climate Goals
  

  Ambitious Aims Have Given Way to Political Anxiety Over Prices as Many States’ 2030 Emissions Targets Appear Increasingly Out of Reach

  

  Sept. 4, 2026, -After President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement during his first term, many Democratic-led states passed their own laws to curtail carbon emissions.

  But most states that set goals for 2030 are not on track to meet them. Now, with voters worried about inflation, and with the war in Iran raising energy prices, some states have begun to cut back or abandon those goals instead.

• • Keeping Global Warming Below 1.5°C Is No Longer Possible

  We Must Now Remove Carbon
  
  {ZME SCIENCE}

  Sept. 3, 2026 -Humanity is certain to exceed the warming limit set by the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty meant to cap the world’s carbon emissions, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

  Now, to reduce severe threats to human health, food security, water supplies, and more, societies will need to reach net-negative greenhouse gas emissions by not only cutting those emissions, but expanding carbon dioxide removal projects, a pathway called “overshoot, peak and decline.”

• • France Records Its Hottest Summer Since
  Measurements Began Over a Century Ago

  Environment Minister Said on Thursday

  

  Sept. 3, 2026, -Firefighters relentlessly tackled wildfires throughout the summer, even in normally cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany, as France experienced one of its driest years ever. A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux and forced a quarter of a million people to evacuate from their homes.

  “We have experienced the hottest summer ever recorded since measurements began in 1900,” Environment Minister Monique Barbut said at a presentation of the climate report covering the months of June, July and August.

• • Many Italians Long Resisted Air
  Conditioning. Then Europe Got Hotter.

  Amid Record-Breaking Temperatures On the Continent, Households and Businesses in Italy Are Increasingly Installing Cooling Units

  

  Sept. 3, 2026, -Domenico Rizzo, a baker in Sicily, long sweated out the heat. Through years of stifling Italian summers, Mr. Rizzo, 40, refused to install air-conditioning units in his bakery, fearing the cold air would make his muscles ache.

  Three years ago, he finally surrendered, setting up one wall-mounted air-conditioner in the bakery, using the unit mainly to dehumidify the store rather than to cool it. (Air-conditioning, he said, dries out the bread.)

• • Climate Goals Missed, U.N. Says World
  Must Now Remove Carbon at Scale

  Carbon Removal Combined With Emissions Reduction is the Only Remaining Pathway to Avert Catastrophic Levels of Warming

  

  Sept. 3, 2026, -The world has failed in its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, the United Nations said on Wednesday, in a sober assessment that laid out a new goal for fighting climate change that would set the world on an uncertain path.

  A decade ago, most of the world’s countries agreed in Paris to try to limit global temperature rise to “well below” two degrees Celsius while aiming for the more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

• • UN Warns El Nino Could Be
  ‘Off the Charts’, Strongest In Decades

  The World Meteorological Organization Says Forecasts Show Nearly 100 Percent Likelihood That El Nino Will Continue Through February
  
  {ALJAZEERA}

  Sept. 3, 2026, -El Nino is set to intensify to exceptional levels in the coming months and persist into early 2027, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned, raising the prospect of worsening droughts, floods and extreme heat across the globe.

  The United Nations weather agency said on Thursday forecasts show a nearly 100 percent likelihood that El Nino will continue through February, the strongest level of certainty it has ever expressed in an El Nino/La Nina update.

• • Global Warming Will Exceed Limit, UN Says
  

  Maps Path to Get
  Back Below Danger Zone

  

  Sept. 2, 2026, -In a strategic retreat in the fight against climate change, the United Nations has acknowledged that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst of global warming’s harms. So now the world must figure out how to get temperatures below the danger zone and back to safety, officials say.

  Earth is soon going to exceed the safe temperature threshold agreed upon by the world in the 2015 Paris climate accord because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, according to a bleak first-of-its-kind report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme Wednesday.

• • Climate ‘Overshoot’ Is Coming—Are We Ready?

  If Global Warming Remains Above 1.5 Degrees Celsius, a New U.N. report says “there are no good Outcomes.”

  

  Sept. 2, 2026 -Fossil fuel emissions are pushing Earth’s climate toward a dangerous new phase of climate “overshoot,” scientists warned Wednesday in a new report from the United Nations Environmental Programme.

  The report, Limiting Overshoot, projects that global temperatures will exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold identified in the Paris Agreement within a few years, intensifying deadly climate impacts. It says the best chance of restoring a safe climate is to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately...

• • Our Smoky, Sweaty, Itchy, No Escape, Very Long Summer

  Blame Climate Change

  

  Sept. 2, 2026, -Heat. Humidity. Wildfires. Smoke. Ticks. Algae.

  Summer just isn’t what it used to be.

  Extreme weather is pushing up temperatures and making storms more intense. Persistent heat is scrambling routines and upending traditions. Climate change is contributing to disasters around the world, from raging wildfires in Indonesia to the recent glacier collapse in Nepal.

• • Global Heating Will Hit At Least 1.8C, UN Warns

  And There Are ‘No Good Outcomes’

  

  Sept. 2, 2026, -Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion.

  The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now “unavoidable” and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years.

• • Nepal Puts Cost of Disaster at $5
  Billion, Blaming Climate Change

  The Country is Seeking Urgent Help From a Special U.N. Climate Fund, But...

  

  August 31, 2026 -Putting the cost of recovery at $5 billion, a senior Nepali official said his country had requested urgent financial help from the United Nations’ special fund for climate-disaster recovery.

  The official, Maheshwar Dhakal, the climate change chief in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment, explicitly asserted that human-caused climate had been a factor in last week’s horrific glacial collapse and flooding. In an interview on Monday he framed the event as an inequity in which decades of greenhouse-gas emissions from richer nations are harming vulnerable countries like his that can’t cope.

• • Summer a ‘Near Lock’ to Become
  Warmest and Most Humid Across U.S.

  Average Temperatures Are On Track to Surpass the Notoriously Hot Dust Bowl Summer Of 1936.

  

  August 31, 2026 -This summer has broken so many temperature records that each new one can feel almost routine.

  But the biggest record of all may be about to fall.

  Five out the 10 warmest summers on record in the contiguous United States have occurred in the past decade, pushed along by the tailwind of climate change.

• • Summer a ‘Near Lock’ to Become
  Warmest and Most Humid Across U.S.

  Average Temperatures Are On Track to Surpass the Notoriously Hot Dust Bowl Summer of 1936

  

  August 31, 2026 -This summer has broken so many temperature records that each new one can feel almost routine.

  But the biggest record of all may be about to fall.

  Five out the 10 warmest summers on record in the contiguous United States have occurred in the past decade, pushed along by the tailwind of climate change.

• • The Strongest El Niño in a Generation
  Is Wreaking Havoc on Global Economy

  The Weather Phenomenon is Already Roiling Industries, From Shipping to Copper to Fish Feed
  
  {THE WALL STREET JOURNAL}

  August 29, 2026 -For Clément Ray, chief executive of French insect-protein company Innovafeed, El Niño has been a welcome arrival. “It’s perfect timing for us,” he said.

  Innovafeed breeds black soldier flies in a factory in northern France and turns the larvae into an ingredient for fish feed and other products. Until recently, it has been a premium product, a greener alternative to the fish meal that underpins the $300 billion-plus aquaculture industry. But...

• • The Colorado River Is Drying Up

  The West Is Running Out of Easy Choices
  
  {ZME SCIENCE}

  August 28, 2026, - The Colorado River and its reservoirs, which supply water for about 40 million people and 30 tribes across seven states and two countries, is drying up.

  Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border, which has the largest storage capacity of any reservoir in the United States, hit its lowest recorded levels on 7 August. Water levels in Lake Powell, located on the Utah-Arizona border, reached their own record low about a week later.

• • Highway Reborn as Public Park

  The Four-Lane Great Highway Used to Run Along the Pacific Ocean on the West Side of San Francisco, Where It Was At Risk of Flooding From Sea Level Rise
  
  {LOE.ORG}

  August 28, 2026, - The four lane Great Highway used to run along the Pacific Ocean on the west side of San Francisco.

  But in April 2025, this pavement became a little slice of paradise. Now visitors to Sunset Dunes Park can bike, walk, skate, and play next to the water.

  Zach Lipton is a volunteer with the nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes and he joins us now to talk about this highway’s transformation.

• • Climate Change Impacts and Projections
  in Central America and the Caribbean

  Central America and the Caribbean Are Experiencing Pronounced Warming, Shifting Rainfall Patterns and Intensifying Extreme Events, All Driven By Rising Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
  
  {nature index}

  August 28, 2026 -Analysis of water footprints in a semi-arid valley in Mexico has revealed how declining rainfall and higher temperatures since the late 1980s have driven substantial increases in irrigation demand. By quantifying green (rainfall), blue (surface and groundwater) and grey (pollution assimilation) water footprints for key crops, researchers demonstrated that extreme dry years now require up to 73% more water for viticulture than for olive cultivation. This temporal assessment highlights the growing unsustainability of current practices and provides a quantitative basis for developing more rational water-use strategies in agricultural landscapes facing climate stress.

• • A Melting Glacier Contributed
  to the Deadly Nepal Floods

  We Can Expect More Like This
  
  {NPR}

  August 28, 2026 -More than a thousand people are missing and at least 400 people are dead after flash flooding tore through Nepal and Tibet early Wednesday. According to initial assessments, a massive chunk of ice snapped off a glacier and tumbled thousands of feet into the valley below. Rock, ice and mud plunged down for miles, washing away communities along the river.

  Scientists say glaciers in this region, and around the world, are increasingly unstable because of human-caused global warming. Across the mountains of Nepal and Tibet, climate change is causing glaciers to melt at an alarming rate.

• • Why Are El Niños Getting Stronger?

  1,000-Year-Coral Record Points to Climate Change
  
  {nature}

  August 27, 2026 -For Julia Cole, a palaeoclimatologist who uses corals to study Earth’s past climate, the powerful El Niño event now gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean comes as no surprise. It looks like part of a century-long pattern of strong El Niño events happening more often as the planet heats up because of human-caused climate change. “It doesn’t look like a fluke,” she says.

  That observation is based on a reconstruction by Cole and her colleagues of sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean in the millennium before the Industrial Revolution, published today in Science1. According to the analysis of coral skeletons from the Galapagos Islands, the past century has seen strong El Niño events happening more frequently than in the 1,000 years before human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions began to warm the planet.

• • Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods

  Glaciers and Permafrost in the Himalayas Are Melting Faster as Temperatures Rise

  

  August 27, 2026 -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.

• • Denver Water Approves Oct. 1 Ban On
  Lawn Watering, Threatening Fines

  “Hottest Metro July On Record” Calls For Drastic Measures to Save Reservoirs
  
  {THE COLORADO SUN}

  August 26, 2026 -Denver Water for the first time made Oct. 1 the hard cutoff for lawn watering for its 1.5 million customers, under threat of fines, saying 2026 so far is the hottest year ever recorded in the metro area and calling for drastic measures to preserve dwindling reservoirs.

  Customers may still irrigate on their designated two days a week through Sept. 30, the agency’s board ruled Wednesday, but will face warnings and fines for any use of irrigation sprinklers beyond that date. Limited hand watering will still be allowed. With no end to the drought in sight, the agency also warned the lawn watering cutoff is indefinite and will last at least through next spring, with summer 2027 rules depending on the coming snowpack.

• • What El Niño's Return Means For
  the Panama Canal,and Global Trade

  The Panama Canal Authority Walked Back a Previous Pledge to Not Limit Passage as It Gears Up For a Longer-Than-Usual El Niño Season

  

  August 26, 2026 -Just two years after the worst drought in the Panama Canal's history forced ships to wait weeks for passage and triggered multi-million-dollar bidding wars for transit slots, El Niño is again threatening the rainfall that feeds the waterway.

  With El Niño strengthening and reservoirs shrinking, the industry is bracing for a repeat ?of the disruption at one of the world's most important waterways — and some ships are already taking long detours via Africa.

• • Hundreds Missing as Wall of Water Sweeps
  Away Villages in Nepal and Tibet

  At Least 160 People Were Killed When Floods Tore Through a Himalayan River Valley Between Nepal and Tibet

  

  August 26, 2026 -At least 160 people were killed and hundreds of others were missing in Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday after a massive chunk of ice from a highland glacier crashed to the ground, sending torrents of floodwater, mud and debris cascading through river valleys and destroying settlements, officials said.

  Officials in Nepal reported 157 deaths. So far, Chinese officials have reported three deaths in Tibet, an autonomous region of China, but the toll was expected to rise. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said there had been “significant” casualties at the Gyirong port of entry, at the border with Nepal.

• • A Relentless Heat Dome Expands From Texas to California

  Challenging Records

  

  August 25, 2026 -The states of Texas and Oklahoma are no strangers to extreme heat during summer.

  So when temperature records are being challenged in these notoriously hot places, it catches a meteorologist’s attention.

  On Monday, Dallas tied its hottest overall day on record, with an average temperature of 97.5 degrees Fahrenheit. It reached a blistering 109 degrees during the day after a low of just 86 degrees.

• • The World Inches Toward Catastrophic Climate Events

  ‘Bigger Shocks Are On the Way’

  

  August 24, 2026 - In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million people. The devastation causes the world’s nations to unite to combat climate change.

  Scientists have long warned that the world will experience more intense extreme weather events like heat waves, storms, floods and droughts. But what once seemed like the realm of fiction is now discussed as a possibility, even an inevitability.

• • Thousands Rally in Stockholm Over Climate
  Crisis Weeks Ahead of General Election

  Sweden Won't 'Sweeten' the Climate Issue?
  
  {euro news}

  August 24, 2026 -The protest comes as experts in Sweden have warned that the government's climate policy jeopardises the country's emissions-cutting goals to reduce CO? emissions from transport by 70 percent by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045.

  More than 10,000 people marched in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, on Sunday in a protest against human-made climate change, weeks ahead of a 13 September general election where the issue is top among Swedish voters' concerns..

• • The Ocean Just Broke a Temperature Record
  That May Have Stood for Millennia

  Marine Heat Waves Currently Cover 42 Percent of the Planet’s Oceans

  

  August 24, 2026 -As a record-breaking El Niño builds in the Pacific and large swaths of the globe’s oceans are affected by marine heat waves, a significant record has fallen.

  According to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, average global sea surface temperatures have reached a new high, rising to nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit late last week — potentially for the first time in millennia.

• • See the Invisible Force Driving
  Destructive Floods Across the United States

  The Atmosphere Has Been Much More Waterlogged Than Normal, Loading the Dice For Extreme Rainfall

  

  August 23, 2026 -Some of the most extreme weather in the United States this summer has been driven by an invisible force pooling in the skies above: water vapor.

  Although recent destructive floods in Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Texas, West Virginia and many other states may seem geographically disconnected, they share a link to something happening thousands of miles away, in a remote stretch of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

• • Dangerous and Prolonged Heat Wave to Grip Southern States

  Even After Sunset, There Will Be Little Relief...

  

  August 23, 2026 -A prolonged and dangerous heat wave is set to grip parts of the Southern United States this week, as forecasters warned that temperatures are expected to soar into triple digits, with daily records at risk of being broken.

  The most intense heat is initially expected across the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley before shifting west into parts of the Southwest later in the week.

• • A Manhattan-Sized Ice Island Just Broke Off Greenland

  Researchers Say Two More Major Calving Events Are Likely
  
  {SciTechDaily}

  August 22, 2026 -A massive slab of floating ice broke away from Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland on August 4, 2026, creating a 76.4 km² ice island. An international research group led in part by the University of Ottawa says it was Petermann’s largest floating ice loss since 2012 and the biggest Arctic calving event since 2020.

  The tabular iceberg separated from the glacier’s floating ice tongue and may be as much as 150 meters thick. Its surface area is roughly comparable to Manhattan Island, giving researchers an unusual chance to follow how a large Arctic ice mass forms, travels, and fragments over time.

• • Indonesia Bolsters Troop Numbers to Combat Borneo Wildfires

  Fires Between January and July Burned More Than 200,000 Hectares
  
  

  August 22, 2026 -The Indonesian government is sending 1,500 more soldiers to Borneo to help tackle wildfires that have burned through swaths of the island and created thick smog, choking some areas.

  Fires this year have scorched at least 200,000 hectares (495,000 acres) of land – an area three times the size of the capital, Jakarta, the government said – as dry conditions, driven by a powerful El Nino weather pattern, take hold.

• • Denver Breaks Daily Record High
  Temperature With Triple-Digit Heat

  New Record High of 100 Degrees at Denver International Airport on Friday Afternoon
  
  {The Denver Post}

  August 21, 2026 -Denver set a new daily record high temperature Friday before a slight weekend cool-down and a chance of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

  Thermometers at Denver International Airport hit 100 degrees Friday afternoon, breaking the daily record high for Aug. 21 of 99 degrees last set in 2023.

  DIA was not the only place to hit triple digits on Friday — weather sensors across the Front Range and Eastern Plains also logged scorching temperatures, including 100 in Aurora, Broomfield, Boulder and Pueblo; 101 in Loveland and Sedalia; 102 in La Junta; 103 in Granada; and 104 in Rocky Ford.

• • Amid Record Heat and Wildfire,
  Countries Resort to Drastic Steps

  Governments Have Sunk Barges in the Danube, Evacuated Thousands Near Wildfires and Invented New Words in a Summer of Climate Extremes
  
  {E&E NEWS}

  August 21, 2026 -The world is staggering under climate extremes this summer that have forced governments to take drastic steps to deal with record-setting heat and wildfire.

  On Europe’s Danube River, Romania blew up a rock outcrop and Hungary sank two barges this month to keep the dwindling water flowing to nuclear power plants downstream.

  France conducted its largest evacuation outside wartime when it ordered 220,000 people in July to leave an area in the country’s west where wildfire was raging.

• • U.S. Announces Colorado River Cuts
  For 3 States Amid Drought

  Arizona’s Share of the River Will Shrink By a Third, Likely Increasing Reliance On Groundwater and Raising Pressure On Agriculture

  

  August 21, 2026 -Federal officials on Friday sharply cut how much water Arizona, California and Nevada can draw from the Colorado River over the next two years in an attempt to stabilize a system on the verge of collapse because of climate change and overuse.

  The existing rules governing use of the river and of the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, were set to expire this year, just as drought constricts the Colorado’s flow and both lakes shrink to record lows. Friday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reduced the allocation for the three states by about a quarter, in total, reducing Arizona’s share by the most, about a third.

• • Panama Canal to Reduce Shipping as El Niño Strikes Vital Route

  Further Restrictions On Shipping Lane Possible as Central America Gripped By Severe Drought

  

  August 20, 2026 -The Panama canal will cut the number of ships passing through it starting next month because of drought caused by the El Niño phenomenon, the operator of the strategic waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific said Thursday.

  From 3 September, the number of vessels allowed through each day will fall from 36 to 34 due to low water levels in two artificial lakes that feed the canal, the Panama Canal Authority said. From 15 September, the number of ships permitted will drop to 32.

• • Air Flight Impacts:" Fewer Contrails
  Would Be Good For the Climate

  It Could Take Care of At Least a Little Global Warming
  
  {The Economist}

  August 20, 2026 -Good news on global warming is thin on the ground. But there may be some up in the air. Operation Blue Skies, announced on August 18th, is a scientific study being undertaken by Britain’s air-traffic-control service, NATS, and various organisations where people study the effects on climate of the streaks of cloud created by aircraft—known as contrails.

  Over the next two winters the consortium aims to see if it is possible to reduce the number of persistent contrails—the class with the largest such effects—over a swathe of the North Atlantic, thereby measurably reducing the climate impact of civil aviation. If this experiment works, a worldwide application of the same techniques might cut the climate effects of air travel by as much as half.

• • Panama Canal to Reduce Shipping
  as El Niño Strikes Vital Route

  Further Restrictions On Shipping Lane Possible as Central America Gripped By Severe Drought

  

  August 20, 2026 -The Panama canal will cut the number of ships passing through it starting next month because of drought caused by the El Niño phenomenon, the operator of the strategic waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific said Thursday.

  From 3 September, the number of vessels allowed through each day will fall from 36 to 34 due to low water levels in two artificial lakes that feed the canal, the Panama Canal Authority said. From 15 September, the number of ships permitted will drop to 32.

• • As Marine Heat Breaks Records, Countries
  Seek Ocean Roadmap at COP31

  Africa and the EU Are Leading a Push For COP31 to Deliver a Roadmap That Lays Out Measures to Protect Fast-Warming Oceans
  
  {CLIMATE HOME NEWS}

  August 20, 2026 -With record-breaking ocean temperatures weakening the world's largest carbon sink, a group of countries is pushing for the UN COP31 summit to deliver meaningful commitments to protect marine ecosystems. Yet this effort could be hobbled by a shrinking pool of climate finance, experts warn.

  While discussions on oceans at UN climate talks have so far been limited to annual informal dialogues on the sidelines, African countries, the European Union, some Latin American nations and small island states have launched a bid for COP31 to incorporate ocean protection measures into "negotiated decisions".

• • Why One Highway Exploded This Summer
  — and Why Many More Are at Risk

  Hotter Summers Are Buckling Roads and Bending Tracks. One solution: Paint Everything White

  

  August 20, 2026 -It was another sizzling summer day in late July, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees, when one of the main roads cutting through Greenville, Texas, finally just gave up.

  The stretch of U.S. Highway 69 kept expanding in the extreme heat until it exploded, creating a sharp, two-foot-tall ramp where it broke at the pavement joint. Most of the traffic in this Dallas exurb drove around it.

• • U.K. to Test Whether Tweaks to Trans-Atlantic
  Flight Paths Affect Global Warming

  Hundreds of Aircraft Traversing the North Atlantic Will Be Asked to Adjust Their Altitude in an Effort to Reduce Heat-Trapping Contrails

  

  August 19, 2026 -The wispy white contrails that airliners streak across the sky may resemble harmless clouds, but scientists have long warned that they intensify climate change.

  When a jet’s hot exhaust mixes with moisture and soot at high altitude, the lingering trail of ice particles that results can trap dangerous amounts of heat in the atmosphere.

• • Nation’s Largest Reservoirs Are Drying Up

  Threatening Life in the Southwest

  

  August 19, 2026 -Lakes Powell and Mead, the nation’s largest reservoirs, are drying up, sending a Colorado River system that provides water and electricity for millions of people into a state of crisis with no end in sight.

  Water levels in Lake Powell, along the Utah-Arizona border, fell to a record low on Saturday. Lake Mead, the larger of the two and farthest downstream on the Colorado River, dropped to its lowest recorded point a week earlier.

• • England’s Ancient Oak Trees Dying
  In Extreme Hot and Dry Weather

  Trees Struggling In Drought Stress, With Older ‘Survivors’ Disproportionately Affected

  

  August 18, 2026 -England’s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer’s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.

  The heatwaves across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing “early autumn”, wilting and losing their leaves early.

• • Collapse of Atlantic Currents
  Could Drive a Surge in Warming

  The Confusing Impacts
  
  {YaleEnvironmenmt360}

  August 18, 2026 -August 18, 2026 -A vast system of Atlantic currents appears to be weakening, and scientists say its collapse could lead to dramatic cooling in northern Europe. A new study suggests an additional risk: a surge in warming across the rest of the globe.

  The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, carries warm water from the tropics toward Europe. As the water flows north, it cools, becoming more dense, and descends to the depths, where it flows back south. But as oceans warm, those waters are not so cool, nor so dense, as they once were, and measurements suggest the system of circulation is slowing down.

• • How Marine Heatwaves Affect Life in British Seas

  As Warming Seas Push Native Species to Cooler Waters Farther North, Once-Rare Visitors Have Become More Common

  

  August 17, 2026 -‘It sounds silly but I thought it was a person in the water waving,” says Kurt Lander, skipper of the Yellowfin charter boat, based out of Brighton. But when he grabbed his binoculars, he realised the fluttering movement he had noticed in the middle of the Channel shipping lane was a pair of sunfish.

  The huge fish were lying on their sides and flapping their fins. “Apparently, they do it as a visual attraction to birds,” he says. “They’re trying to get the birds to eat the parasites off them.”

• • One of the Strongest El Niños in Recorded History Still Possible

  To Help Colorado With Snow This Winter
  
  {CBS NEWS}

  August 17, 2026 -If you are hoping for powder days in the mountains and a few big snowstorms for the Front Range, we are still on track for the chance of enhanced El Niño driven snow this winter for parts of Colorado.

  Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have released new information that supports the previous outlook for the potential for a very strong El Niño. In July through early August, El Niño has strengthened with sea surface temperatures rising more than 1.0- 2.0 degrees Celsius. This sets the stage for a 90% chance of a very strong El Niño for the fall/winter stretch of 2026/27.

• • See How Europe’s Rivers Are Drying
  Up and Threatening Its Economy

  Intense Heat and Lack of Rain Have Driven Water Levels Across the Continent to Record Lows
  
  {THE WALL STREET JOURNAL}

  August 17, 2026 -A series of severe heatwaves and prolonged droughts have turned many European riverbeds into barren sandscapes this summer.

  Major arteries for trade and agriculture across the continent—including the Rhine, Danube and Po—are now at record low levels, disrupting freight transportation, forcing nuclear power plants to shut reactors and eroding agricultural productivity.

• • As Temperatures Rise, Pesticides Are
  More Dangerous to Farmworkers

  Research Shows Heat Amplifies the Dangers of Pesticides for Farmworkers...

  

  August 17, 2026 -For the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers, climate change is poised to exacerbate the harms of pesticides, a growing body of research shows.

  Heat stresses the body, making it more vulnerable to pesticides and other toxicants, and protective clothing worn in the heat only adds to this stress. Hotter temperatures can also lead to higher evaporation rates, increasing farmworkers’ exposure as more pesticides are applied to crops. And heat can boost rates of chemical transformation of pesticides into more toxic compounds.

• • Spotlight on UN Desertification Summit as
  It Mulls How to Spend $12bn War Chest

  Extreme Weather has Raised the Significance of Cop17 Talks Starting This Week On Tackling Drought and Land Degradation

  

  August 17, 2026 -As swathes of the northern hemisphere bake in what could be the hottest year on record, with wildfires blazing across North America and Europe and heatwaves afflicting millions across Asia, the UN’s bi-annual talks on desertification have assumed much greater importance – and have started attracting more money.

  Work will begin this week on allocating more than $12bn (£8.9bn) to vulnerable countries to help them deal with drought and land degradation, when scores of countries gather in Mongolia for Cop17.

• • How Drought Has Devastated the Danube

  Destroyed Crops, Riverbed Cyclists and a ‘Rock of Starvation’

  

  August 16, 2026 -For centuries, the rock was seen as a warning. When it began to emerge from the Danube, beneath Gellért Hill in Budapest, it meant the river had fallen so low that floating mills could no longer operate, crops were probably failing, and hunger would almost certainly follow. That is why, in the Hungarian capital, where over time the boulder became little more than a legend, it was named Ínség-szikla – the Rock of Starvation.

  Today, amid record-low water levels on the Danube, the rock has not only emerged from the water, but surfaced almost in its entirety, along with the sandy riverbed on which it rests, astonishing geologists and government scientists sent to examine it. And, much as the rock was said to warn, Hungary is now facing an unprecedented energy crisis that has forced the country to shut down all but one of its Danube-cooled nuclear reactors for the first time in 44 years.

• • El Niño Could Reshape Winter Weather
  and Dance With the Polar Vortex

  El Niño's Record-Breaking Force Could Enter a Chaotic Dance With Another Wintertime Powerhouse
  
  {USA TODAY}

  August 15, 2026 -It's still summer, but a potent El Niño is taking center stage, and meteorologists and scientists are looking ahead to what that might mean for the nation's winter weather.

  El Niño can have a number of effects on winter weather in the U.S. It tends to lead to wetter-than-average conditions across the South and less snow around the Great Lakes, interior New England and Pacific Northwest. But its effects could be particularly noticeable this year.

• • Can a Dam Expansion Hold Back Climate
  Considerations on the Colorado River?

  Climate Change Will Almost Certainly Feature Prominently in Any Multi-State Litigation Over the Colorado River

  

  August 15, 2026 -Is climate change enough justification to stop the expansion of a reservoir that will take more water from the dwindling Colorado River?

  That’s the central question in a lawsuit pitting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Colorado’s largest water utility against a consortium of environmental nonprofits. The environmentalists say the Colorado River has no more water to give, while Denver Water, the utility whose Gross Reservoir would nearly triple in capacity, argues it is ensuring its customers can withstand droughts. The Corps contends it is not required to consider climate change or the downstream effects of its expansion of a dam to grow the reservoir.

• • At Least Four Dead and Thousands Stranded
  at Tokyo Airport as Record Rain Batters Japan

  ‘Unprecedented’ Rainfall Floods Roads, Rail Lines and Homes East of Capital
  
  {INDEPENDENT}

  August 14, 2026 -At least four people died and some 7,000 travellers were left stranded at one of Tokyo's international airports after record rainfall flooded roads, rail lines and homes east of the Japanese capital.

  Chiba, the prefecture bordering Tokyo, recorded over 360mm of rain in 24 hours in some parts during one of the busiest holiday weeks of the Japanese year.

• • As Europe Gets Hotter, Its Transportation Systems Struggle to Cope

  The Continent’s Railways and Roads “Were Engineered For a Climate That No Longer Exists”

  

  August 14, 2026 -Tracks are buckling in Sweden. Highways are cracking in Germany. Commuters are sweltering in airless train carriages across the world’s fastest-warming continent.

  This is the new reality in Europe, where much of the transportation infrastructure was not built to withstand the scorching summer heat that’s becoming routine.

• • The Planet’s Strongest Heat Dome Will Tower Over the U.S.

  More Than 100 Million People Will Experience Extreme Humidity Levels This Weekend

  

  August 14, 2026 -It has been hard to keep track of all the heat domes this summer.

  Now another one — growing into the strongest heat dome on the planet this weekend — will tower above the United States, and this time it will be centered in the South.

  It will bring days of extreme heat and humidity lasting into early next week, with temperature records possible across 19 states, mostly across the South. The nights will bring little relief, with temperatures dipping only into the upper 70s to near 80.

• • Will the World’s Drying Lands
  Get Relief From COP17 in Mongolia?

  Governments Will Discuss Ways to Combat Drought and Protect Herders and Their Pastures From Land Degradation in a Warming World
  
  {CLIMATE HOME NEWS}

  August 13, 2026 -Starting on Monday, about 10,000 government negotiators, scientists, journalists and campaigners will gather at a purpose-built venue in a national park in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar to discuss how to stop land turning into desert as the world warms.

  Drought is currently sweeping much of the Northern hemisphere, leaving normally green urban parks looking like dry savannah, causing crops to fail, food prices to rise and billions to be shaved off economic output.

• • More Than 135 Million People in
  Europe Face Temperatures Over 35C

  Europe is the Fastest-Warming Continent in the World and in Some Places is Ill-Equipped to Deal With Hot Weather
  
  {ALJAZEERA}

  August 13, 2026 -More than 135 million people across Europe, mostly in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, face temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) as the continent’s latest heatwave builds.

  According to German weather service forecasts and 2025 population projections from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, nearly three in five Europeans, or about 340 million people, will feel temperatures surpassing 30C (86F) on Thursday. The figures line up with separate tracking from Austria’s Klimadashboard.

• • We’ll Soon Get a Glimpse of Future
  Temperatures, Thanks to This Record El Niño

  It Will Act Like a Climate Time Machine...

  

  August 13, 2026 -This year’s record-smashing El Niño will do more than just shift and enhance patterns of heat, extreme rainfall and drought around the world.

  It will also give the planet a preview of the late 2030s.

  That’s because this El Niño will act like a climate time machine, temporarily pushing global temperatures to levels that might not otherwise be reached for another decade or so.

• • Record heat is Drying Up Europe's Major Rivers

  As These Striking Images Show
  
  {yahoo.com}

  August 12, 2026 -Few places around the world have experienced more unusual heat and drought recently than Europe. A record late-spring heat dome was a harbinger. Then the heat domes just kept coming.

  These extreme conditions have turned once-lush landscapes dusty brown — and led to record-low water levels in Europe's major rivers, according to the European Space Programme. The Seine, Rhine and Danube rivers have been particularly affected.

• • Nurses Fainting in ‘Inhumane’ Conditions Due to Extreme Heat

  RCN Calls For More Air Conditioners as Burnham Faces Pressure To Recognise Urgency of Adaptation to Climate Crisis

  

  August 12, 2026 -Nurses are collapsing during shifts amid “inhumane and impossible” conditions caused by extreme heat, their union has warned, as Andy Burnham promised to grapple with “the bigger questions” of climate adaptation.

  Amid growing pressure from Labour backbenches to fully acknowledge the urgency of adaptation measures as the climate crisis bites, Burnham said he was for now focusing on the immediate crises caused by an ongoing summer of extreme heat.

• • This Year’s El Niño Is Huge and Already Changing the World

  The Recurring Climate Phenomenon is Expected to Peak Later This Year, But...

  

  August 12, 2026 -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.

• • As the World Warms, Butterflies Are
  Relocating at an Astonishing Scale

  A Sweeping New Study of 1,758 Butterfly Species Across 105 Countries Found Many Tropical Species Are Expanding Their Ranges...

  

  August 12, 2026 -The world’s butterflies are on the move.

  Whether it’s the iridescent blue Godartiana byses flitting south in Brazil as temperatures rise or Europe’s endangered Danube clouded yellow losing ground to more intensive agriculture, roughly 1 in 10 of the world’s 19,000 butterfly species appear today in different places than they were once found.

  That’s according to perhaps the most through accounting to date of how butterflies are changing locations as the planet changes around them, published last week in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

• • Trump Administration Kills a Flagship Annual Report on the Arctic

  For 20 Years, the Arctic Report Card Chronicled the Extraordinary Transformation

  

  August 11, 2026 -The Trump administration has pulled federal funding for an annual report chronicling the changing environment of the Arctic, where rapid warming is upending ecosystems, reconfiguring trade routes and scrambling Great Power strategy.

  Every year for the past two decades, the Arctic Report Card has provided a checkup on the health of the region, which is heating up at several times the pace of the rest of the globe. Sea ice has dwindled. Snow cover has shrunk. Glaciers are thinning out. Tundra vegetation has grown more abundant, leading to wildfires that burn through huge areas.

• • NOAA to End Support for Arctic Climate Change Report

  It Jeopardizes Public Dissemination of the Report on the Fast-Changing Region
  
  {CLIMATEWIRE}

  August 11, 2026 -The Trump administration will end support for a major annual scientific report that documents how climate change is affecting the Arctic, according to two people familiar with the issue.

  The move to pull government resources from NOAA’s Arctic Report Card deals a significant blow to efforts to track the health of the Arctic, the region of the planet that has been most heavily affected by rising temperatures from rising greenhouse gases.

• • Europe’s Scorching Summer is Erasing Its Economic Growth

  The Biggest Drag is Expected to Come From People Struggling to Work in Extreme Heat
  
  {CLIMATEWIRE}

  August 11, 2026 -The brutally hot summer is set to cost the EU economy €180 billion ($208 billion) this year — that’s equivalent to roughly 1 percent of GDP, which is all the growth the bloc was expected to generate in 2026, according to new analysis.

  France could lose 1.4 percentage points of growth, which is enough to push its economy into a 0.6 percent contraction, while an 0.8-point hit could almost wipe out the Netherlands’ expected expansion.

• • July Was the Hottest Month Ever Recorded in the U.S.

  Average Temperature Was 76.9 Degrees in the Contiguous U.S.Over Three Degrees Higher Than the 20th-Century Mean
  
  {THE WALL STREET JOURNAL}

  August 11, 2026 -July was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday, dramatically marking an already scorching summer.

  The average temperature was 76.9 degrees, the highest in the agency’s 132-year record and more than three degrees above the 20th-century average. It was a fraction of a degree above the previous highs in July 1936 and July 2012, NOAA said. Daytime maximum temperatures in July averaged nearly 90 degrees.

• • Could England and Wales Ever Run Out of Water?

  Last Month In England Was the Driest July Since Records Began Almost Two Centuries Ago

  

  August 11, 2026 -There is no single definition of drought and every drought is different. But they are all characterised by a prolonged period of low rainfall creating a shortage of water.

  Some droughts are short and intense, like the recent “flash drought” declared across three-quarters of England, which developed quickly because of unusually low rainfall and high temperatures. Others can take a long time to develop over multiple seasons due to prolonged low rainfall.

• • What Will El Niño Bring Where You Live?

  Maps Show Its Wide-Reaching Impacts

  

  August 9, 2026 -A much-anticipated El Niño that developed this summer is on track to become the strongest ever recorded, with cascading effects on global climate peaking late this year and into next.

  Water temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean, where El Niño is measured, have been at record levels for more than two months straight.

• The National Climate Change Assessment
• 6 Things We Can Do About Climate Change
• Climate Change Positive Thoughts (free e-Book)
• Get the Climate Lab Book
• Interactive Climate Map 2050 (CC Consequences)
• The People's Dosier on Climate Change

• Global Warming Report from NOAA
• Another Good Global Warming Resource
• More Climate Change Resources
• NY Times Climate Forward: (Climate Change Q&A)
• Carbon Fee & Dividend Video
• Interactive Air Pollution Map 2100