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Climate Change

Page Updated:
Feb. 10, 2026

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• • Accelerated Global Warming Could
  Lock Earth Into a Hothouse Future

  Scientists Say Warming is Increasing Faster Than At Any Time in At Least 3 Million Years

  
  

  Feb. 11, 2026 -If you think of Earth’s climate system as a backyard swing that’s been gently swaying for millennia, then human-caused global warming is like a sudden shove strong enough to disrupt the usual arc and buckle the chains.

  And if humans keep heating the planet with greenhouse gas pollution, the climate swing could lock Earth into a hothouse trajectory, as parts of the system feed on their own momentum, even if emissions are reduced later, an international team of scientists warned Wednesday in a new paper published in the journal One Earth.

• • EPA to Repeal Its Own Conclusion That Greenhouse
  Gases Warm the Planet and Threaten Health

  The Decision is the Legal Framework That Allows the EPA to Regulate Emissions. Its Reversal Could Upend Many Climate Change Policies
  
  {NBC NEWS}
  
  

  Feb. 10, 2026 -The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday plans to repeal the legal framework that underpins its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

  "President Trump will be joined by Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.

• • Why This Country Declared an Ocean
  Current Collapse a National Security Risk

  The Disruption of a Current That Carries Heat North From the Tropics Would Make Much of the World Hotter, While Turning Iceland Into “One Giant Glacier”

  
  

  Feb. 10, 2026 -It is just one scenario among many, but by far the most cataclysmic.

  Sometime over the next 100 years, human-driven warming could disrupt a vital ocean current that carries heat northward from the tropics. After this breach, most of the world would keep getting hotter — but northern Europe would cool substantially, with Iceland at the center of a deep freeze. Climate modeling shows Icelandic winter extremes plunging to an unprecedented minus-50 degrees Fahrenheit. Sea ice could surround the country for the first time since it was settled by Vikings.

  “At that point, Iceland would be one giant glacier,” said Hildigunnur Thorsteinsson, the director general of the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

• • What Over a Century of Ice Data Can
  Tell Us About the Great Lakes’ Future

  Using Old Records, Scientists Created a New Dataset On How Ice Coverage Has Shifted Since 1897. Researchers Are Already Using It to Study a Declining Fish Species

  
  

  Feb. 9, 2026 -Michigan researchers have gone back in time to get a picture of how ice cover on the Great Lakes has evolved since the late 19th century.

  Using historical temperature records from weather stations around the region, researchers improved their understanding of where ice might have formed and for how long it lasted — spanning the last 120 years.

• • There Are More Signs of a Coming El Niño
  That Could Trigger Record Global Warmth

  A Record Wind Burst is a Key Sign of a Coming El Niño. It Could Have Wide-Reaching Impacts Across the Planet

  
  

  Feb. 9, 2026 -For the second time in as many months, a wind burst occurred in a remote part of the western Pacific Ocean during January — and odds are rising that it will trigger a significant change in the planet’s weather patterns later this year.

  For the second time in as many months, a wind burst occurred in a remote part of the western Pacific Ocean during January — and odds are rising that it will trigger a significant change in the planet’s weather patterns later this year.

• • Don’t Let Climate Fatalism Become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

  The Idea That It’s “Too Late” to Reduce Emissions Fuels Cynicism and Despair, Putting Us On an Even Worse Trajectory.

  
  

  Feb. 9, 2026, By Hannah Ritchie -I read Mark Lynas’s book “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” when I was 14 years old, and it scared the life out of me. Lynas takes the reader on a journey of what to expect from a world that’s one degree warmer, two degrees, three degrees, all the way up to six degrees. By the middle of the book, your blood pressure is high; by the end, you’re on the floor.

  It is a well-researched book that offers us a window into many possible futures. Fortunately, the scientific consensus has moved away from the most extreme scenarios since its publication. Unfortunately, a lot of the public messaging has not. Many people believe a pathway to 5°C or 6°C is already locked in, and the only thing we can do now is prepare for the worst.

  Let’s look at what the latest science says about where we might end up by 2100.

• • Many Kids Feel Hopeless About Climate Change

  Here's What Helps
  
  {CBC News}
  
  

  Feb 5, 2026 -Despite being concerned about the high use of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources, 14-year-old Midu Nguyen remains hopeful that the world will take action on climate change.

  To her, it’s all about perspective. She takes the same approach to it as she does to tests at school.

  “If you have a test and you don’t want to study for it because you think you’re already going to fail it, then you will fail,” she said in an interview with CBC News.

  “If you change that mindset and think, I will be able to change this, then I think you can really do that.”

• • MaiStorm Leonardo Flooding Kills Man in
  Portugal, Woman Swept Away in Spain

  Two Reservoirs Close to Overflowing Near Jerez

  
  

  Feb. 5, 2026 -Storm Leonardo pounded the Iberian peninsula with torrential rains on Thursday, prompting more flood warnings, as a man was killed by a deluge in Portugal and Spanish rescuers searched for a woman swept away by a river as she tried to save her dog.

  Leonardo is the latest in a wave of half a dozen winter storms to hit Portugal and Spain since the start of 2026, killing several people, ripping roofs off homes and flooding towns.

• • Landslides On One Side, Floods On the Other

  The Costa Rican Village Desperate to Escape the Climate Crisis

  
  

  Feb. 3, 2026 -In Emilio Peña Delgado’s home, several photos hang on the wall. One shows him standing in front of a statue with his wife and oldest son in the centre of San José and smiling. In another, his two sons sit in front of caricatures from the film Cars. For him, the photos capture moments of joy that feel distant when he returns home to La Carpio, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Costa Rica’s capital.

  Delgado migrated with his family from Nicaragua to Costa Rica when he was 10, as his parents sought greater stability. When he started a family of his own, his greatest hope was to give his children the security he had lacked. But now, that hope is often interrupted by the threat of extreme weather events.

• • Deep Inside an Antarctic Glacier,
  a Mission Collapses at Its Final Step

  Scientists Lost Their Instruments Within Antarctica’s Most Dangerously Unstable Glacier

  
  

  Feb. 2, 2026 -A daring attempt to study Antarctica’s fast-melting Thwaites Glacier collapsed over the weekend after the scientists’ instruments became entombed within the half-mile-thick ice.

  A team of British and South Korean researchers was trying to install instruments beneath the immense glacier, where they would collect data, the first of its kind, on the warm ocean waters that are melting away the ice at a rate of hundreds of feet per year.

• • Morocco Evacuates 50,000 as Flooding
  Threatens City After Weeks of Heavy Rain

  Officials Said the Floods Were Partly Triggered By Water Released From the Nearby Oued Makhazine Dam

  
  

  Feb. 2, 2026 -Morocco has evacuated more than 50,000 people, nearly half the population of the northwestern city of Ksar el-Kebir, as flooding driven by weeks of heavy rain threatened to inundate the city, state media said on Monday.

  "The city has become a ghost town," local resident Hicham Ajttou told Reuters by phone. "All markets and shops are closed and most residents have either left voluntarily or been evacuated."

• • With Waters Rising, Pennsylvania’s
  Historical Treasures Must ‘Adapt or Collapse’

  As Climate Change Supercharges Floods and Rainfall, the State’s Water-Adjacent Landmarks Are Especially Vulnerable

  
  

  Feb 1, 2026 -Karen Young stood in a cavernous room perched on the edge of the Schuylkill River that was once a public swimming pool.

  Abandoned in 1972 after a hurricane, the old natatorium is part of the Fairmount Water Works, an interpretive center and event venue housed in a 200-year-old structure that powered Philadelphia’s municipal water system for almost a century. The room is trapped in time: The paint is peeling, rust crawls across the ceiling and the bleachers sit empty next to the pool’s drained basin.

• • ‘Ghost Forests’ Are Even More Widespread Than We Thought

  How Scientists Recently Mapped Millions of Dead Trees Along the Atlantic Coastline, and What It Tells Us About the Changing Climate

  
  

  Jan. 30, 2026 -From above, there’s no mistaking the loss.

  More than 11 million points pepper a map of the East Coast, each representing a once-living tree, in a trail of mortality stretching from South Carolina to Maine.

  “We can pretty confidently say we can count basically every dead tree,” said Xi Yang, a University of Virginia professor and one of a team of researchers whose recent work has helped shed new light on the proliferation of what are known as “ghost forests.”

• • A Nor’easter Will Bring Snow and Flooding

  What to Expect In Your Area

  
  

  Jan. 29, 2026, -Blizzard conditions, damaging winds, coastal flooding and dangerous cold are all expected along the East Coast this weekend as a powerful nor’easter rapidly intensifies into a bomb cyclone.

  The storm’s heaviest snow will fall across the Carolinas, where swaths of 3 to 6 inches are likely, as well as along the coastline from southeast Virginia to southeast Massachusetts — with localized amounts eclipsing 6 inches.

• • The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate

  With Warming Set To Pass The Critical 1.5-Degree Limit, Scientists Are Warning That the World Is On Course to Trigger Tipping Points That Would Lead to Cascading Consequences
  
  {Yale Environment-360}
  
  

  Jan 28, 2026 -he world is poised to overshoot the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as for the first time, a three-year period, ending in 2025, has breached the threshold. And climate scientists are predicting devastating consequences, just as the world’s governments appear to have lost their appetite for tackling the emissions that are causing the warming.

  The 1.5-degree target was set at the Paris Climate Conference a decade ago, at the insistence of more vulnerable nations, to forestall severe weather impacts and potential runaway warming that could lead to exceeding irreversible planetary tipping points. But climate scientists say that 10 years of weak action since mean that nothing can now stop the target being breached.

• • Western States Face 'Snow Drought' as Snowpack Hits Record Lows

  Despite the Recent Winter Storm, Colorado, Utah and Other Western States Are Severely Lacking In Mountain Snow
  
  {NBC NEWS}
  
  

  Jan 28, 2026 -Last weekend’s winter storm may have covered much of the country in a glut of snow and ice, but the season has not delivered out West, where several states face a snowpack drought.

  In Colorado, the snowpack is “the lowest on record for this point in the season,” said Peter Goble, the assistant state climatologist. “All of our mountain ranges are well below normal.”

• • Rainforests Can Rebound—But Not
  as Quickly as the Climate Clock is Ticking

  Left Alone, Tropical Forests May Recover—But..

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026 -Lots of people are rooting for logged tropical forests to grow back. Here’s one way to jumpstart it: Add a splash of nitrogen.

  Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a key component in agricultural fertilizer would help trees grow faster. But new research clarifies how much it helps and for which forests, as well as suggesting ways to give forests a boost without the ecological damage that can come with fertilizers.

• • Court the Netherlands to Protect
  a Caribbean Island From Climate Change

  Bonaire, a Dutch Overseas Territory, Deserves the Same Protections as Europe, the Ruling Said.

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, -A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that the Netherlands violated the human rights of residents of the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, by failing to protect them from the effects of climate change.

  The Hague District Court ordered the national government to set binding targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions within 18 months and to draft a detailed adaptation plan for Bonaire to be implemented within four years. The court found that the government had discriminated against the approximately 26,000 residents of Bonaire by failing to come up with such a plan, despite the well-known dangers of global warming.

• • Weekend Winter Storm That Battered Eastern
  U.S. Was Supercharged By Climate Change

  A Warmer Atmosphere Can Hold More Moisture, and That’s Why Last Weekend’s Winter Storm Dumped More Snow, Sleet and Freezing Rain Than Similar Weather Systems Might Have In the Past

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026 -If you live in the eastern U.S., you are likely among the millions dealing with the aftereffects of the heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain that buried the region over the weekend. And while it may be extremely cold, new research reveals that last weekend’s weather was in fact supercharged by global warming.

  Some of the hardest hit places saw more than two feet of snowfall, while up to an inch of ice from freezing rain shut down roads and cut power throughout the Southeast. No doubt, this storm was big. It was always going to pack a punch—but it dumped more frozen precipitation than it would have if the storm had occurred decades earlier. It may seem paradoxical that a warming climate could mean heavier snowfalls, but hotter, albeit still below freezing, temperatures are nonetheless a recipe for more snow.

• • Life On an Antarctic Glacier

  After Working and Camping For a Week On Thwaites Glacier, Scientists Were Ready to Start Drilling Into the Ice

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, - On Tuesday, a week after scientists from Britain and South Korea pitched tents on Antarctica’s remote Thwaites Glacier, they were pretty much ready to start drilling into the half-mile-deep ice.

  The multiday drilling operation would be the culmination of the eight-week voyage of the icebreaker Araon. If successful, it would allow the researchers to lower instruments through the glacier into the ocean below, providing never-before-seen data on how the water is melting the ice from the bottom up. This melting contributes to global sea-level rise by allowing the part of the glacier still sitting on land to slide more rapidly into the ocean..

• • Can Cities Build Their Way Out of Both
  the Housing and the Climate Crises?

  Cities Can Deliver Millions of New Homes Without Exhausting the World’s Carbon Budget—If They Abandon Carbon-Intensive Construction Norms

  
  

  Jan. 27, 2026 -Building things in cities accounts for 10-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study, and could soon gobble up the entire remaining carbon budget available to keep global warming within 2° C.

  “Construction emissions are an important but often-overlooked part of the climate change picture,” says study team member Keagan Rankin, a graduate student at the University of Toronto. “Cities have a lot of control over what gets built in the future, so they are in a good position to reduce construction emissions, but they have historically overlooked construction emissions in their decarbonization plans.”

• • Australian Heatwave Fans Bushfires, Towns Evacuated

  Melbourne Endures Hottest Day in 17 Years

  
  

  Jan. 27, 2026, -A major heatwave across Australia's southeast stoked bushfires, forced hundreds of residents in rural towns to evacuate and brought record-breaking temperatures, with Melbourne recording its hottest day in nearly 17 years.

  Temperatures in parts of Melbourne, the capital city of Australia's second-most populous state of Victoria, exceeded 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

• • Scientists Record Coldest Ocean Temperature Ever in Earth's History

  And Wonder How Life Survived

  
  

  Jan. 27, 2026, -About 700 million years ago, Earth was entombed in a veneer of ice?hundreds of feet?thick—a frozen state scientists refer to as “Snowball Earth.” Oceans cooled but managed to retain some heat to avoid freezing.

  Now, researchers have an estimate—published in Nature Communications—of how cold and salty oceans were during this period.

  By analyzing data from rock deposits, the study’s authors estimate that sea temperatures were 5°F (minus 15°C). That’s about 22°F (12°C) cooler than even the coldest ocean temperatures today. The study also notes salinity was more than four times higher, allowing the ocean to get extremely cold without freezing. These estimates suggest all the microbes, phytoplankton, algae, and sponges that lived on Earth during this time endured even harsher conditions than scientists suspected.

• • Smothering, Bullying, Stabbing: How It Feels
  to Be In One of the Hottest Places on Earth

  Everything Felt Like It Was Swelling, and Despite My Diligent Consumption of Water and Hydralyte, I Couldn’t Quite Escape the Persistent, Low-Level Nausea

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, By Stephanie Convery -My mother grew up in Warracknabeal, a speck of a town four hours from Melbourne, Australia, in the wide, wheat country of the Wimmera – that part of Victoria where the sky starts to stretch, where you can see weather happening 100 kilometres away.

  Once or twice a year, our family would pack into the rattling old LandCruiser and drive up to visit my grandmother. It can’t always have been blistering weather but my memories of those trips are shot through with summer heat: the peeling paint of my grandmother’s house, the blasted-dry grass of the reserve over the road and its ancient metal monkey bars, so hot they burned your hands. Once, a dust storm blew up while we were there, engulfing the small weatherboard house in howling dirty orange.

• • What Happens to the Human Body In 49C Heat?

  Australians Are Finding Out

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026 -Australia’s southern states are scorching in extreme heat that was expected to break temperature records in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales.

  January and all-time records were forecast to be set, with temperatures approaching 50C across inland areas, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

• • A Winter Storm Fueled by Global
  Warming Tests U.S. Disaster Response

  FEMA is Less Prepared Than It Was a Year Ago

  
  

  Jan. 26, 2026 -A sprawling winter storm that left hundreds of thousands without power, grounded thousands of flights and disrupted travel across the eastern half of the U.S. could be the first real test of the second Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency.

  The president has said that he wants to eliminate FEMA, and the agency has lost thousands of employees since his second term began. Emergency-management experts have braced for the moment that a weakened FEMA would face a multi-state disaster.

• • Is Climate Change Weakening the Polar Vortex?

  Rising Arctic Temperatures and Melting Sea Ice Could Cause Cold Air to Flow Into the Northern Hemisphere

  
  

  Jab. 24, 2026 -The polar vortex is a ribbon of high-altitude, fast-moving air that traps cold air as it circles the planet’s Arctic region in a counterclockwise direction. But occasionally, the polar vortex stretches into an oval shape, weakens and allows a blob of cold air to spill south into North America.

  That’s what’s happening this week. A mass of cold Arctic air is colliding with a warm, moist high-pressure system moving west from California, producing a sprawling area of freezing rain, ice and snow across much of the Midwest, Southern and Eastern United States.

• • How This Brutal Winter Storm is Even Possible With Climate Change

  And Maybe Even More Likely
  
  {CNN Climate}
  
  

  Jan 22, 2026 -The frigid temperatures, massive snow and deadly ice storm taking shape east of the Rockies might seem to conflict with life on a rapidly warming planet. But all of these things still happen, even with climate change, and some of them could be even more severe than before when the conditions are right.

  Bone-chilling cold is becoming less common and severe as the world warms — cold comfort for millions of people about to experience a prolonged period of frigid temperatures. Winter is the fastest-warming season in the US, and even this winter so far, warm temperature records have been outnumbering cold records in the Lower 48 states.

• • Should the Climate Fight Shift Focus From
  Curbing Emissions to Reducing Human Suffering?

  What to Expect In Your Area

  
  

  Jan. 22, 2026 - As 2025 was winding down, Bill Gates published this letter, explaining how his views on climate change have changed. And, this being the internet, it set off a swath of reactions and hot takes of varying quality.

  But at the heart of his argument was a provocative question. The climate movement is now about 45 years old, and the UN concluded its 30th climate change conference last year. Have we reached a point at which our focus should shift, even subtly, from emissions reduced to lives improved?

• • Half the World’s 100 Largest Cities Are in High Water Stress Areas

  Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro Among Worst Affected

  
  

  Jan. 22, 2026 -Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 38 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

  Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.

• • Mozambique Counts 13 Dead in Floods So Far

  But Toll Expected to Rise

  
  

  Jan. 22, 2026 - Mozambique authorities on Thursday reported 13 deaths from severe floods over the past two weeks, though the figure is expected to rise sharply, with aid workers saying they expect more bodies to be found as waters recede.

  The country has been hit with heavy rains that caused rivers and dams to overflow, submerging towns and affecting more than half a million people. Parts of neighbouring South Africa were also flooded.

• • A Winter Drought Grips the U.S.

  Most of the Country Faces Unusual Dryness Or Drought

  
  

  Jan. 20, 2026 -January is known for cold weather, snow and a lack of daylight. It’s not known for drought.

  But that’s exactly what’s going on across much of the United States.

  More than two-thirds of the country is facing unusual dryness or drought, stretching from the Pacific Northwest to the East Coast, touching every state except California. The stretch since July has been the driest period nationally since 2012.

• • Early January Australian Heatwave Made 5 Times More Likely

  Australia Just Recorded Its Most Severe Heatwave Since 2019
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026 -Human-caused climate change made the intense heatwave that hit parts of Australia earlier this month five times more likely, an analysis has concluded.

  The country just recorded its most severe heatwave since 2019, when extreme weather conditions fueled what have become known as the Australian Black Summer fires. Maximum temperatures across southeastern Australia were consistently above 40C between January 7-9, topping 44.4C in Melbourne on January 9.

• • One of the Biggest Storms in Years is Near

  What to Expect In Your Area

  
  

  Jan. 22, 2026 - A massive winter storm is about to clobber much of the Lower 48, bringing high-end totals of snow, ice and sleet to a swath more than 1,500 miles long. Winter storm watches and warnings stretch from Arizona and New Mexico all the way to New England. The storm is already beginning to form off the California Coast.

  Snow and ice will start on Friday across the Rockies and Plains, push into the South, Midwest and Appalachians on Saturday, then reach the East Coast on Sunday. The storm will bring dangerous travel conditions and probably road closures.

• • As Winter Warms, Olympic Athletes,
  Organizers Hunt for Elusive Snow

  Future Games Will Need to Be Held at Higher Altitudes, and Spread Over Multiple Venues to adapt to a Changing Climate
  
  
  

  Jan. 21, 2026 -As an elite cross-country skier who grew up in Alaska, Gus Schumacher is used to training and racing in biting cold and driving snowstorms. But in recent years, Mr. Schumacher, who is preparing to compete in several events at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics next month in Italy, has been skiing through wet, mushy snow surrounded by barren hillsides.

  “It’s entirely man-made snow and kind of brown on the sides,” Mr. Schumacher said about some of his recent competitions. “It’s not the nicest way to ski.”

• • Antarctic Penguins Have Radically Shifted Their Breeding Season

  Seemingly In Response to Climate Change
  
  

  Jan. 20, 2026 -Penguins in Antarctica have radically shifted their breeding season, apparently as a response to climate change, research has found.

  Dramatic shifts in behaviour were revealed by a decade-long study led by Penguin Watch at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, with some penguins’ breeding period moving forward by more than three weeks.

  The changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food, increasing concerns for their survival. “We are very concerned because these penguins are advancing their season so much, and penguins are now breeding earlier than in any known records,” said the report’s lead author, Dr Ignacio Juarez Martínez.

• • Skies Clear, and a New Outpost Springs
  Up at the Bottom of the World

  Low Clouds Have Lifted Long Enough for Helicopters to Ferry Scientists and Their Gear to a Fast-Melting Glacier on the Edge of Antarctica
  
  
  

  Jan. 20, 2026 -After a series of weather delays threatened to derail their mission, scientists on Monday managed at last to set up camp on Antarctica’s remote and fast-melting Thwaites Glacier. For the next few weeks, they will be attempting a difficult but vital operation.

  They aim to bore half a mile through the ice and place instruments in the warming ocean waters below, giving the world a rare, close-up look at how this gargantuan glacier is being corroded by the sea. Researchers fear that Thwaites’s thinning could someday trigger its total collapse, which would raise sea levels around the globe.

• • Floods in Mozambique Displace More
  Than 300,000 People in One Province

  This According to the Governor
  
  {AP News}
  
  

  Jan. 19, 2026 -More than 300,000 people have been displaced by flooding in a province in Mozambique, its governor said Monday. Authorities had already announced that around 40% of the Gaza province has been submerged by floodwater following weeks of torrential rain in parts of southern Africa.

  Mozambican President Daniel Chapo has canceled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, because of the severe flooding impacting central and southern parts of the country, according to the state-run daily newspaper Noticias.

• • How the US Climate Progress, at Home and Abroad

  One Year of Trump
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Jan. 20, 2026 -2025 was a pivotal year for US climate policy. Since assuming office for his second term, Donald Trump has taken sweeping actions to reverse America’s environmental agenda and withdraw from international commitments. These moves have fundamentally altered the nation’s role in the global fight against climate change, a crisis the President has dismissed as a “con job”.

  A long-time defender of planet-warming fossil fuels, Trump’s focus has been on strengthening ties with the industry in spite of the countless climate commitments the US has made at home and on an international level. From a former fracking executive taking the reins of the Energy Department to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) packed with political appointees who formerly lobbied for the chemical and fossil fuel sectors, Trump has surrounded himself with the right people to execute his anti-climate agenda.

• • Study Measures the Toll of Climate
  Change In Rio De Janeiro Favelas

  Heat Inequalitye
  
  
  

  Jan. 19, 2026 - Michele Campos feels like crying every summer when temperatures in Rio de Janeiro climb above 40°C (100°F), heating up the cement that covers every corner of the favela of Chapeu Mangueira where she lives and making life unbearable in her windowless bedroom.

  “Sleeping is the worst part," said the 39-year-old. "In the favela we experience the heat in a very different way from people who can afford air conditioning."

• • The Fate of the Planet’s Coastlines Depends
  On How Fast Antarctica’s Ice Sheets Melt

  We Don’t Know What’s Coming

  
  

  Jan. 17, 2026 -On one side of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi’s view across the vast Totten ice shelf, the sun sat low on the Antarctic horizon. On the other, a full moon.

  The ice shelf is “flat and white”, says Galton-Fenzi. “If there’s cloud around, you lose the horizon.”

  With temperatures at -20C and a wind chill threatening frostbite, Galton-Fenzi was there in the summer months of 2018-2019 to retrieve radar instruments that were checking the thickness of the ice.

• • Scientists Just Produced the Best Map
  of Antarctica’s Sub-glacial Landscape

  And It’s Good News for Climate Change
  
  
  

  Jan. 17, 2026 -For decades, scientists have repeated some variations of a striking statistic: we know more about the topography of Mars and Mercury than we do about the ground beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. It’s pretty crazy that it’s easier to map the inner solar system than peer through the ice of the “White Continent”, but here we are.

  For decades, scientists have repeated some variations of a striking statistic: we know more about the topography of Mars and Mercury than we do about the ground beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. It’s pretty crazy that it’s easier to map the inner solar system than peer through the ice of the “White Continent”, but here we are.

• • How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change

  Six Years After the Financial Industry Pledged to Use Trillions to Fight Climate Change and Reshape Finance, Its Efforts Have Largely Collapsed
  
  
  

  Jan. 17, 2026 -In January 2020, Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, stunned the business world by declaring that he intended to use the trillions of dollars managed by his firm to address global warming.

  “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change,” Mr. Fink wrote, calling for “a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

• • Sailing Through a ‘Death Trap’ Once Covered by Antarctic Ice

  Part of Pine Island Glacier Collapsed Several Years Ago, Forming an Unstable Inlet Where No Ship Had Sailed. Until Now
  
  
  

  Jan. 16, 2026 -With the icebreaker Araon spending a few days away from Thwaites Glacier, the scientists aboard have had a chance to work at another of Antarctica’s fastest-deteriorating masses of ice, Pine Island Glacier.

  Like Thwaites, Pine Island is being eroded by warm ocean currents that wash up against its floating end. If both glaciers melted away completely, Thwaites would add more to global sea-level rise than Pine Island. But over the past half-century, Pine Island has shed more of its ice than Thwaites.

• • Climate Change Has Already Shrunk US Salaries By 12%

  Unaddressed Climate Change is Even More Expensive
  
  
  

  Jan. 16, 2026 -Discussions of climate change typically look ahead, a doomsday clock ticking for the future. That attitude is costing us dearly. A new analysis shows how costly climate change already is.

  In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Derek Lemoine of the University of Arizona reports that climate change has already reduced U.S. income, making salaries lower by about 12% than they would have been without climate change.

• • Climate Change Exposes a Major Home Insurance Gap

  Home Insurance Is Essential For Recovering After Disaster Hits. But, As an Increasing Number of Homeowners Are Finding Out, Payouts May Not Be Enough to Rebuild
  
  {Bloomberg}
  
  

  Jan. 16, 2026 -A year after the Los Angeles wildfires, many survivors face the same problem: Their insurance policies aren’t paying out enough to cover the cost of rebuilding.

  It’s a tragic predicament. And it will happen again when the next disaster hits.

  Since the 1990s, American homes have been systematically underinsured in the event that they are completely destroyed. Study after study shows that, counter to the public’s understanding, many home insurance policies are not required to cover total replacement of homes.

• • The Climate Question That Economists Cannot Answer

  Models Can Predict Catastrophic Or Modest Damages From Climate Change, But..
  
  {The Atlantic}
  
  

  Jan. 15, 2026, By Noah Kaufman -Most Americans now accept the basic physics of climate change—that manmade greenhouse-gas emissions are raising global temperatures. Yet the public discussion of climate change is still remarkably broken in the United States. Leaders of one political party frame climate change as an existential emergency that threatens human life and prosperity. Leaders of the other dismiss it as a distraction from economic growth and energy security.

  Economists like me, trained to think about trade-offs, are uneasy with both camps. But, in practice, we have helped fuel the extremes of this dysfunctional debate. High-profile economic studies claim to quantify the global damages that will be caused by climate change centuries into the future and have produced estimates that range from modest to catastrophic. They have lent a veneer of scientific authority to arguments for both complacency and alarm, even though these studies are far too limited to support either position.

• • U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded

  Thousands of Cities Around the World Saw Their Hottest Year On Record in 2025 as the Planet Has Inched Closer to a Key Temperature Threshold
  
  
  

  Jan. 15, 2026 -Last year, thousands of places, from Shanghai to Moscow to Salt Lake City, saw their hottest average annual temperatures since at least 1950.

  As for cities with record-breaking cold, there was just one last year: Manvi, in the Indian state of Karnataka. It’s the first time any city in the world has seen its coldest year since 2014, according to new data from scientists at Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

• • The Cities That Broke Heat Records Last Year

  Thousands of Cities Around the World Saw Their Hottest Year On Record in 2025 as the Planet Has Inched Closer to a Key Temperature Threshold
  
  
  

  Jan. 15, 2026 -Last year, thousands of places, from Shanghai to Moscow to Salt Lake City, saw their hottest average annual temperatures since at least 1950.

  As for cities with record-breaking cold, there was just one last year: Manvi, in the Indian state of Karnataka. It’s the first time any city in the world has seen its coldest year since 2014, according to new data from scientists at Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

• • The Past 3 Years Have Been the Three Hottest on Record

  It Will Only Get Hotter
  
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -Global average temperatures in 2025 were the third hottest on record, surpassed only by 2024 and 2023, according to an analysis published by Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit climate research organization.

  According to the analysis, last year’s global average temperature was about 1.35°C–1.53°C (2.43°F–2.75°F) greater than the 1850–1900 average. The previous year, 2024, was 1.46°C–1.62°C (2.63°F–2.92°F) above the preindustrial baseline, while 2023 was 1.48°C–1.60°C (2.66°F–2.88°F) above the baseline.

• • Climate Insiders Want to Stop Talking About ‘Climate Change’

  They Still Want to Decarbonize, But They’re Over the Jargon
  
  {HEATMAP}
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -Where does the fight to decarbonize the global economy go from here? The past 12 months, after all, have been bleak. Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement (again) and is trying to leave a precursor United Nations climate treaty, as well.

  He ripped out half the Inflation Reduction Act, sidetracked the Environmental Protection Administration, and rechristened the Energy Department’s in-house bank in the name of “energy dominance.” Even nonpartisan weather research — like that conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research — is getting shut down by Trump’s ideologues. And in the days before we went to press, Trump invaded Venezuela with the explicit goal (he claims) of taking its oil.

• • The Polar Vortex Returns

  Here’s How Cold It’ll Get Where You Are
  
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -A January thaw that brought widespread record warmth to the United States is coming to an end.

  It will be replaced by the familiar polar vortex pattern that caused below-average temperatures in the Midwest and East last month — with lobes of Arctic air frequently blowing in during the second half of January.

• • A Tree’s Bark Can Take a Staggeringly
  Large Bite Out of Climate Change

  The Trillions of Microbes Inhabiting Tree Bark Can Suck Up Planet-Warming Gases
  
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -Trees have a well-earned reputation as climate heroes for their ability to suck up carbon dioxide and respire oxygen.

  But until now, people have been overlooking tinier but far more numerous parts of the equation: the trillions of bacteria inhabiting tree bark.

  Scientists in Australia spent five years peering into the microscopic world of bark, emerging with a description of a place teeming with life, much of it consuming and “exhaling” gases important for the climate. They dubbed it the “barkosphere.”

• • 2025 Among World's Three Hottest Years On Record

  This, According to the WMO
  
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -Last year was among the planet's three warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, as EU scientists also confirmed average temperatures have now exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for the longest since records began.

  The WMO, which consolidates eight climate datasets from around the world, said six of them - including the European Union's European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the British national weather service - had ranked 2025 as the third warmest, while two placed it as the second warmest in the 176-year record.

• • Searching For Life Across the Planet’s Frigid Frontiers

  To Understand the Massive Changes Afoot in the Warming Polar Regions, Oceanographer Allison Fong Hunts For the tiniest clues

  
  

  Jan. 27, 2026, -The northern and southern reaches of our planet are heating up faster than anywhere else on Earth. While researchers already know that the region is poised to change dramatically—with ice melting and sea levels rising—there’s a larger question of just what species may survive under those new conditions. Which is how microbial oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer Allison Fong found herself wearing a dry suit and 80 pounds of scuba gear underneath a 26-foot-thick ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, clutching a glorified turkey baster.

  Fong was using the enormous syringe to slurp up a thin film of tiny organisms living in the floe’s underbelly. These microbes, like photosynthetic phytoplankton and sea ice algae, are “fundamental to the habitability of Earth,” she says. By studying them, we can understand how ecosystems are thriving—or not—and how different parts of the planet will transform as climate change accelerates.

• • Tantalizingly Close to an Antarctic
  Glacier, but Weather Blocks the Way

  Low Clouds Have Prevented Helicopters From Moving Scientists and Gear Onto the Continent’s Fastest-Melting Glacier
  
  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026 -After sailing to one of the world’s most remote glaciers, members of our Antarctic expedition have finally set foot on its hostile, deeply fractured surface.

  Then they almost got stuck there overnight.

  One of the trickiest operations on this voyage has begun, sort of. A 10-person team aboard the icebreaker Araon is hoping to drill deep into the immense Thwaites Glacier to better understand why it is melting at such an alarming rate.

• • Flying Foxes Die In Their Thousands In Worst
  Mass-Mortality Event Since Australia’s Black Summer

  Volunteers Found Thousands of Dead Bats at Melbourne’s Brimbank Park
  
  
  

  Jan. 12, 2026 -Thousands of flying foxes have perished in the heatwave that scorched south-east Australia last week, the largest mass mortality event for flying foxes since black summer.

  Extreme temperatures resulted in deaths in camps across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Grey-headed flying foxes, listed as vulnerable under federal environment laws, were the most affected.

• • New Climate Reports Show ‘Unprecedented Run of Global Heat’

  Data From Multiple International Agencies Shows the Reality of a Rapidly Warming World

  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026 -Several annual international climate reports released Tuesday indicate that relentless human-caused warming continued in 2025, especially in the oceans and at the poles.

  For the third year in a row, Earth’s average temperature ran close to 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the climate that sustained human civilizations as the 20th century began, before fossil-fuel pollution started damaging the atmosphere.

• • How Hot Was Your Town Last Year?

  Look Up Where You Live
  
  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026 -Planet Earth isn’t cooling off anytime soon.

  Last year’s global average temperature was the third warmest since the preindustrial era, according to new data released Tuesday by scientists at Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

  The past 11 years have been the hottest on record, and that warmth has fueled more powerful storms, floods, heat waves, droughts and wildfires across the globe.

• • The View From Above Antarctica’s Fastest Melting Glacier

  Times Journalists Were Able to Get Tantalizingly Close to the Thwaites Glacier, Which Scientists Are Hoping to Spend Weeks Studying Up Close
  
  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026, By Raymond Zhong -After sailing to one of the world’s most remote glaciers, members of our Antarctic expedition have finally set foot on its hostile, deeply fractured surface.

  One of the trickiest operations on this voyage has begun, sort of. A 10-person team aboard the icebreaker Araon is hoping to drill deep into the immense Thwaites Glacier to better understand why it is melting at such an alarming rate.

• • 2025: A Year of Fire and Floods

  Last Year Was Earth’s Third Hottest Globally, But Temperature is Just One Measure of Climate Change’s Influence
  
  
  

  Jan. 13, 2026 -Last year — the third-warmest in modern history — opened with history-making fires in Los Angeles and closed with catastrophic floods in the United States and Southeast Asia. The intervening months were punctuated with disasters and extreme weather across the globe.

  All the while, emissions of greenhouse gases climbed to new heights as the world burned coal, oil and gas for energy. Excess heat building up in the atmosphere and the oceans creates conditions that can exacerbate extreme weather. Here are some of the notable events that marked 2025.

• • ‘Fear of the Next Deluge’: Flood-Scarred
  Britons Join Forces to Demand Help

  Climate Breakdown Puts Millions More People at Flood Risk
  
  
  

  Jan. 12, 2026 -Darren Ridley is always on high alert, constantly checking his phone for rain warnings – even in the middle of the night.

  “Our whole family is permanently on edge,” he says. “If we hear rain, day or night, we’re up and checking the house. I can’t sleep without replaying our flood plan in my head for weaknesses.”

  Ridley’s house in Folkestone floods at least twice a year. His garden far more often. Most of the floods happen at night or in the early hours of the morning. “The floods come so quickly that it’s unbelievable. We often wake up to find our garden a metre deep,” he says.

• • Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet

  His Embrace of Fossil Fuels and Withdrawal From the Global Fight Against Climate Change Will Make It Hard to Keep Warming At Safe Levels
  
  
  

  Jan. 12, 2026 -By pulling the United States out of the main international climate treaty, seizing Venezuelan crude oil and using government power to resuscitate the domestic coal industry while choking off clean energy, the Trump administration is not just ignoring climate change, it is likely making the problem worse.

  President Trump has never been shy about rejecting the scientific reality of global warming: It’s a “hoax,” he has said, a “scam,” and a “con job.”

• • Road Washout Severs WA Tribe’s Link to Cemeteries

  SUIATTLE RIVER ROAD, Skagit County
  
  
  

  Jan. 11, 2026 -Fueled by torrential December rains, a nameless creek draining from Suiattle Mountain saw a landslide hurtle hip-high boulders, uproot trees and blow through a road.

  It carved a roughly 70-foot-deep ravine, creating a 130-foot-wide gap in this Forest Service road, severing the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe’s connection to its cemeteries and ancestral homelands, and closing another door to a major recreation corridor in the North Cascades.

• 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