Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Global warming is real and human-caused. It is leading to large-scale climate change. Under the guise of climate "skepticism", the public is bombarded with misinformation that casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming "skepticism".
Our mission is simple: debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35 2026
Posted on 27 August 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Carbon emissions exacerbating the Western US water crisis, Williams et al., Communications Earth & Environmen
In the western US, limited water supply and high demand--accentuated by anthropogenic climate change--have resulted in overallocated water resources and rapidly depleting groundwater. Simultaneously, legal and policy mechanisms are being pursued regarding the contributions of large emitting entities (“Carbon Majors”) to such impacts. Here, we quantify impacts on western US water resources attributable to the Carbon Majors, and compare results with a simpler-to-use (‘proportional’) approach. Anthropogenic climate change has driven large decreases in water supply (snowpack and streamflow) and increases in water demand (irrigation demand), with roughly half attributable to the Carbon Majors. These changes have led to a widening seasonal gap between water supply and demand, and with Carbon Majors emissions accounting for ~1/3 of observed, climatically-driven groundwater loss in the Central Valley during 2003-2024. Though both approaches yield similar results, consistent over- and underestimations are present in each variable, suggesting caution is needed when using the proportional approach.
Evolution of Global Sea-Level Rise Projections and Their Uncertainty, Garner et al., Earth's Future
For more than 40 years, scientists have projected future sea-level change. Documenting how sea-level projections have evolved is vital for tracking progress, uncertainties, and future research needs. Here, we update and analyze a database of global-mean sea level (GMSL) projections dating from 1982 to 2025, identifying five key findings. First, GMSL projection generation has been concentrated in a small number of developed countries, with 95% of projections produced in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, or Australia. Second, while GMSL projections for 2050 and 2100 have been published regularly since the early 1980s, only 30 of 103 studies have produced projections extending beyond 2100; all but one of these 30 studies postdates 2010. Third, among studies providing multiple estimates, the range of highest GMSL projections for 2100 has broadened since 2007, reaching 0.6–2.0 m across publications since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Fourth, GMSL projections from the IPCC have historically been conservative compared to projections from individual studies. Prior to AR6, ∼66% of 2100 projections at the upper end of uncertainty intervals from individual studies exceeded the corresponding upper projections from IPCC reports. However, the inclusion of “low-confidence” GMSL projections in AR6 to assess higher amounts of GMSL change of poorly known likelihood reduces this problem: the 83rd percentile of these low-confidence projections is exceeded by <25% of upper estimates from individual studies. Finally, analyses suggest that the arrival time of key GMSL milestones are often similar for projections spanning multiple eras and using various methodologies.
Equatorial Extreme Convective Storms Are Expanding and Becoming More Persistent, Zhuang et al., AGU Advance
Extreme rainfall is projected to intensify with climate warming, yet changes in the spatiotemporal structure of extreme-producing storms remain poorly understood in the tropics, as the most convectively active regions of the world are also the most data-scarce. We here leverage the first long-term, sub-kilometer, sub-hourly observational network in equatorial Singapore (730 k?m2), with 122 rain gauges reporting 5 min intensities for 2020–2024 and 82 stations with hourly accumulations for 1980–2024, combined with X-band radar (5 min, 100 m) to produce a high-resolution gridded rainfall reanalysis. Our findings indicate that extreme rainfall in Singapore is becoming larger and more persistent, with intensification resulting in higher storm rainfall volumes while rainfall peak intensities remain largely unchanged. Furthermore, extreme rainfall storms are strikingly compact, with spatial and temporal correlations halving over just 2 km and 4 min, decaying faster than previously recognized and observed elsewhere. This suggests that analyses based on coarse data sets or single stations may have misrepresented rainfall intensification under warming.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Survey reveals gap between climate change concern and actual news coverage, Climate News Tracker/Kantar
A survey of journalists and production staff across UK public service media concluded climate reporting needs new approaches. Broadcast journalists in Britain say they rank climate change and environmental issues above many of the traditional pillars of news coverage – including the National Health Service, international conflict and immigration – yet this is not reflected in what audiences actually see and hear. More than 80% of respondents said crowded news agendas and packed running orders hinder climate coverage. Program editors and channel schedulers may be willing to extend a bulletin for a dramatic, unexpected and consequential story, but the climate crisis rarely meets the threshold for such immediate editorial prioritization. The planet heating up is a slow-burning story whose significance has developed over years rather than hours, making it harder to compete with the urgency of daily news. Journalists also highlighted the difficulty of finding strong editorial “pegs” for climate stories outside major weather events or political announcements. Some 65% said climate stories do not always have a clear or timely news peg.
Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life, Bergin et al., World Weather Attribution
Researchers from Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom collaborated to assess the extent to which human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the extreme sea surface temperature (SSTs) conditions along the European coasts in July 2026. This year’s high SSTs have been remarkable not only in their intensity, but also in how early in the year they were reached. To assess whether all of the observed warming is attributable to human-induced climate change, we combine observations and climate models. In the Celtic region, climate models and observations show very similar trends, while in all other regions the observed trends are much stronger than those simulated by climate models. Despite this, the authors found that in the two Mediterranean regions, the increase in warming attributable to human-induced climate change is about 2°C, substantially surpassing the level of global warming, even under this conservative estimate.
121 articles in 54 journals by 866 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Disturbance characteristics and forest properties regulate surface warming and recovery across Europe, Su et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-02071-5
Trump’s Iran war supercharged EV sales everywhere except the U.S.
Posted on 26 August 2026 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Electric vehicle sales are a surprising beneficiary of the Trump presidency – at least outside of the United States.
The Iran conflict caused global oil prices to surge above $100 per barrel in March, April, and May of this year. Gasoline prices soon followed suit, exceeding $4 per gallon in the United States most days since April Fools’ Day.
As the biggest consumer of oil from the Middle East, Asia was hit hardest by its rising prices, shortages, and restrictions. But China’s measures to cut back on its oil imports have prevented global oil prices from escalating as high as many experts predicted.
Electric vehicles are one contributing factor. A recent analysis estimated that China’s rapid adoption of EVs has reduced the country’s oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day, or nearly 10%.
A new global electric car market report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA, also concluded that the Iran conflict and associated energy crisis “has clearly reinforced the case for EVs as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns," and that it “may therefore further accelerate ongoing shifts in global car markets towards more electrification.”
The share of global new car sales that are electrified – meaning both fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids – has grown steadily in recent years, according to the IEA. In 2020, EVs represented under 5% of global new car sales. That share rose rapidly to 20% in 2024 and reached one-in-four new cars sold last year.
Fact brief - Do wind turbines release more emissions than burning fossil fuels?
Posted on 25 August 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Do wind turbines release more emissions than burning fossil fuels?
Wind turbines generate emissions during construction and transportation, but their overall climate impact is far lower than that of fossil fuels.
“Lifecycle emissions” is a measure of all emissions from raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, installation, operation, and disposal. A National Renewable Energy Laboratory review estimates that wind power produces about 13 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour over its full lifecycle. Natural gas averages about 486 grams, while coal is roughly 1,001 grams–or about 77 times wind’s emissions.
Most wind power emissions occur before turbines begin generating electricity, mainly from transporting components and to a lesser degree, manufacturing. Once operating, turbines generate electricity without directly burning fuel, allowing their low-emissions electricity to offset the emissions associated with their production and transportation.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
National Renewable Energy Laboratory Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electricity Generation: Update
Yale Climate Connections What’s the carbon footprint of a wind turbine?
Industrial Ecology Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Utility-Scale Wind Power
Journal of Cleaner Production Life-cycle green-house gas emissions of onshore and offshore wind turbines
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles
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Climate Adam - Emissions are Flatlining. So Why’s CO2 Rising at Record Speed?
Posted on 24 August 2026 by Guest Author
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Video description
In the fight against climate change, the world has made immense progress on renewable power - with wind and solar growing faster than ever. And finally carbon dioxide emissions are flatlining. But if we've made so much progress, why is CO2 building up in our atmosphere faster than ever before? And what can we do to finally protect our climate and ourselves?
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34
Posted on 23 August 2026 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Education and Communication (6 articles)
- The false and the furious: We aren't just bothered by different beliefs-we're bothered when we think others are wrong When people use facts to defend their preferences, tastes or values, they may turn a disagreement over priorities into a dispute over who is right and who is wrong, turning up the emotional heat. The Conversation, Andras Molnar, George Loewenstein, Aug 15, 2026.
- `It is not only a future certainty - the disaster is already here`: why we need climate fiction As wildfires rage across Europe and Britain swelters through its hottest summer on record, literary fiction has a vital role to play in capturing the severe consequences of climate crisis The Guardian, Tara Menon, Aug 16, 2026.
- Climate Trunk - Science Summary post of John Lang's Climate Trunk visuals in the "Science" ring Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, Aug 18, 2026.
- Climate doom may discourage climate action, but there`s a way to counter it The Conversation, Sander van der Linden & Rachel O'Boyle, Aug 18, 2026.
- The cognitive bias behind bad climate math A new study finds two persistent mental shortcuts—not ignorance—are why people keep overrating recycling and underrating flying less. The Anthropocene, Sarah DeWeerdt, Aug 18, 2026.
- In a Summer of Catastrophe, Climate Scientist`s Words from the 80s Playing Out A review of what scientists were saying to the public about climate change in the 1980s. This is Not Cool, Peter Sinclair, Aug 19, 2026.
Climate Policy and Politics (6 articles)
- In Germany, record heat meets climate action fatigue DW, Oliver Pieper, Aug 17, 2026.
- UK politicians vastly overestimate public opposition to climate policies, study finds Members of Parliament from the UK's three biggest political parties in the House of Commons significantly overestimate levels of public resistance to major policy proposals for tackling climate change, a University of Cambridge study suggests. Phys.org, Gaby Clark, Aug 19, 2026.
- How far-right parties are using extreme weather events to boost their cause Political scientists explain why extreme weather events like this summer's European heatwaves can drive support to parties that traditionally deny human-made climate change. NPR, Ruth Sherlock, Aug 19, 2026.
- How Florida quietly removed climate change content from textbooks Publishers acceded to state requests watering down information on climate change’s impact, WUSF/Hechinger Report investigation finds. Now the state has turned to updating its science standards The Hechinger Report, Jessica Meszaros and Katie Worth, Aug 20, 2026.
- How Trump Is Trying to Crush California`s Climate Policies At least a half-dozen federal agencies have taken action against the state that has led the nation in environmental protections. New York Times, Maxine Joselow, Aug 20, 2026.
- Extreme Heat Waves Fuel Political Tensions in Europe At the limits of adaptation, governments face a choice: point fingers, or seize the moment for transformational change. Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Aug 21, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #34 2026
Posted on 20 August 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Marine Heatwaves Overwhelm the Buffering Benefits of Marine Protected Areas: Two Decades of Collapse in a Mediterranean Gorgonian, Zentner et al., Global Change Biology
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are driving mass mortalities of coastal foundation species globally, threatening their persistence and the ecosystems they support. However, long-term demographic evidence of these impacts at regional scales is scarce. Accordingly, whether ongoing conservation actions, mainly marine protected areas (MPAs), mitigate the impact of MHWs is still an open question. Here, we address these gaps by analysing over two decades of demographic monitoring data from 49 shallow (< 40 m depth) populations of the foundation gorgonian Paramuricea clavata paired with in situ temperature records across the north-western Mediterranean (38°–43° N, 0°–8° E). Using hierarchical Bayesian models, we estimated regional-scale trends and assessed the combined influence of MHW exposure and protection status. We found that increasingly frequent extreme thermal events have caused widespread mass mortality, resulting in a 45% median decline in biomass at the regional scale over the past two decades. Within this context of extensive decline, protection temporarily buffered MHW impacts by sustaining higher overall biomass, despite protected populations experiencing greater absolute losses. Taken together, these findings indicate that local protection alone cannot offset climate-driven mortality and underscore the urgent need to integrate conservation measures with global climate action to preserve shallow marine ecosystems.
Petermann Glacier on the brink: Progress, challenges and insights, Fahrner et al., Science Advances
Petermann Glacier (PG), the largest marine-terminating glacier in northern Greenland based on catchment area and ice discharge, plays a key role in modulating ice export from the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). With an upstream catchment connected to the GrIS interior via a deep subglacial canyon, its future stability has major implications for sea level rise. This review synthesizes recent advances in understanding PG’s dynamics across three critical interfaces. At the surface, reanalysis data and regional climate models diverge from observations in estimates of air temperature and surface mass balance, underscoring the need for improved in situ data and models. At the ocean boundary, enhanced basal melting driven by subglacial runoff and Atlantic water intrusions is identified as dominant driver of recent mass loss of PG, with continued warming posing a serious threat to the stability of the floating tongue. At the bed, geophysical synthesis reveals complex geology, likely spatial variability in geothermal heat flux, and the megacanyon’s influence on seasonal hydrology and velocity fluctuations. An ongoing rifting event, initiated in September 2025, highlights PG’s vulnerability. The anticipated retreat reduces buttressing and brings the terminus closer to the grounding zone, where additional calving could trigger retreat and accelerate ice discharge. As one of Greenland’s largest floating ice tongues, PG may provide important insights into the stability of other marine-terminating glaciers across the GrIS. Improved observations, sustained monitoring of oceanographic and atmospheric parameters, and high-resolution modeling are critical for constraining projections of PG’s future and its role in GrIS stability.
Near-total loss of buttressing stresses observed on Pine Island Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, Wells-Moran et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Ice shelves, the floating extensions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, provide critical buttressing stresses that resist the seaward flow of ice and help set the position of the grounding line, where the ice goes afloat. As buttressing stresses are diminished by thinning or fracturing and collapse of the ice shelf, glaciers tend to accelerate. Here, we focus on the response of Pine Island Ice Shelf (PIIS) in West Antarctica to multiple calving events and the disintegration of the lateral shear margins. Using observed time-series of the surface velocity fields between 2015 and 2024, we show multiple episodes of acceleration in ice flow and a marked reduction in the buttressing stresses. These observations show that PIIS experienced a significant reduction of its buttressing capacity during the observational record. We then investigate how a model glacier responds to loss in margin buttressing, and are able to broadly reproduce observations. By linking model simulations to observations, we recreate a timeline of buttressing loss on PIIS. These losses likely foreshadow a period of grounding line retreat and acceleration of Pine Island Glacier’s contribution to global mean sea level rise.
Failure to track a stable AMOC state under rapid climate change, Westen et al., Nature Climate Change
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a tipping element of the climate system, currently has an estimated global warming threshold for collapse of +4.0 °C (uncertainty range 1.4–8 °C). However, such a threshold may not be meaningful because AMOC stability depends on the rate of radiative forcing change, not a set temperature. Here we identify an AMOC stabilizing mechanism that operates on timescales slower than present-day warming rates. Slow forcing permits coherent adjustment of surface and interior ocean properties, supported by enhanced evaporation and reduced sea-ice extent, counteracting destabilizing feedbacks. Using a slow CO2 ramp (+0.5 ppm yr−1) climate model simulation, we explicitly demonstrate the AMOC remains stable up to +5.5 °C of global warming. By contrast, under faster CO2 ramps, the AMOC collapses at substantially lower warming levels (+2 °C). Our findings demonstrate rate-induced AMOC tipping and imply that limiting the rate of emissions is critical for reducing the risk of an AMOC collapse.
Disrupting the “wrong” target? Climate protest tactics affecting entities deemed undeserving are perceived as immoral, unjust, and reduce activist support, Nylund et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology
In recent years, disruptive climate protest organisations—such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Last Generation—have sought to convey the urgency of the climate crisis through actions that deliberately interrupt daily life. Many of these tactics have targeted entities perceived as having relatively minimal responsibility for climate change, such as cultural institutions, art galleries, or the general public, whereas others have targeted entities seen as highly responsible, such as fossil fuel companies or governments that could regulate them. Yet little empirical work has examined how the perceived responsibility—and resulting perceived deservingness—of targets shapes public reactions to disruptive climate protest. Across two preregistered studies using US participants (Study 1; N = 246) and UK participants (Study 2; N = 640), we found that climate protest tactics directed toward targets deemed undeserving (vs. deserving) were judged as less moral, provoked greater anger at the activists, and reduced support for them. Study 2 further demonstrated that these actions were evaluated as more unjust. However, target deservingness did not affect support for the broader climate movement, cause, or policies. These findings highlight the importance of perceived target deservingness in forming public judgments of disruptive protest and suggest that climate activists may reduce backlash to their activism by directing tactics toward entities seen as more responsible for contributing to the climate crisis.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Temperature Check 2025–26, The Center for Climate Journalism and Communication, University of Southern California
Even though fewer Americans now hear about global warming and climate change through news, newspapers are still the top source of information for climate communicators. Climate communicators still prefer LinkedIn as their go-to social media platform for climate information, followed by Instagram and BlueSky. The use of X/Twitter for engaging in climate media continues to drop even more among climate communicators. Climate communicators are most concerned about the lack of climate action, global warming and the health impacts of climate change this year. Yet, the authors' survey shows climate communicators are also increasingly avoiding terms and phrases such as “climate change” and “global warming,” likely due to increasing politicization of the terms as well as pushback from the government as well as the public.
Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Spring 2026, Leiserowitz et al., Yale University and George Mason University
With the primaries in the 2026 midterm elections underway, the authors found that 58% of registered voters prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming, while 14% prefer to vote for a candidate who opposes action. 42% would like to hear from political candidates more often about efforts to reduce global warming, while 23% would like to hear about this less often. 31% will only vote for a congressional candidate who supports increasing the use of renewable energy, while 7% will only vote for a candidate who supports decreasing the use of renewable energy. 25% will only vote for a candidate who supports decreasing the use of fossil fuels, while 14% will only vote for a candidate who supports increasing the use of fossil fuels.
93 articles in 45 journals by 733 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Abrupt Increase in Marine Heatwave Accumulated Days Over the Gulf Stream Extension Around 2013 Linked to Subtropical Eastern Pacific Warming, Song et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans 10.1029/2026jc024006
Is this El Niño a glimpse of a future, hotter Earth?
Posted on 19 August 2026 by Zeke Hausfather, Guest Author
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather
Global temperatures are predicted to soar due to theEl Niño event that is currently ramping up. Most forecasts predict that 2027 will set records, with the global average temperature reaching levels we would not expect until the late 2030s.
To what extent does this upcoming El Niño give us a preview of what the climate will be like a decade or two from now?
What is El Niño?
Here’s what one of us (AD) wrote in his climate textbook:
Climate Trunk - Science
Posted on 18 August 2026 by BaerbelW
In April 2026 we published a guest blog post by John Lang in which he introduced his "Climate Trunk" graphics project and website. Since then, he has been adding one graphic per week and plans to keep going for about 2 years rounding out the big picture of human-caused climate change graphic by graphic. In this blog post we'll show-case the graphics related to climate science and will keep adding more as they get published.
What we know about the climate system, how we know it and where the uncertainties are.
#1 - It’s real
Global temperatures are rising fast. The long-term trend is unequivocal: Earth has heated by around 1.3°C since the late 19th century – with most of that increase coming recently.
Earth is heating.
#2 - It’s Us
Human activity is driving today’s heating. Greenhouse gases create strong warming, partly offset by cooling from air pollution. Natural factors play a minimal role in the long-term trend.
Raw Data, Wrong Answers
Posted on 17 August 2026 by Zeke Hausfather, Guest Author
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather
This is the second in our three-part series discussing the use of unadjusted data and how it overstates the warmth of the 1930s over the U.S. See part one and part three for more.
Here on The Climate Brink, we’ve written manymany posts about whether temperatures were more extreme in the 1930s than today. Just last week, we wrote about one such plot and pointed out one problem with using raw station records that do not account for well-understood biases associated with large changes in the way we measure temperature over the past century.
There are many similar plots that make the rounds; some focus on the frequency of US heatwaves, others on the number of records set over time. All suffer from similar problems when changes in measurement techniques are not taken into account.
One criticism we got on our prior article that we used the Berkeley Earth data, a different dataset than was used in the construction of the original plot. In this post, we look at a different plot – the number of records over time – and use the same dataset used in the original plot, the Global Historical Climatology Network-daily (GHCNd) data, to analyze it.
The plot
If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen a plot that look like this:
Let’s focus on the top panel, which shows that more high-temperature records were set in the 1930s than today by a huge margin. It’s not even close. And there’s been no increase over time since then, which seems to confound expectations for a warming planet.
This would be great news, if it were true.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #33
Posted on 16 August 2026 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)
- Climate Change Is Rewriting Europe`s Nuclear Cooling Assumptions Much of Europe’s existing nuclear fleet was designed around historical ranges of water temperature and flow that are becoming less dependable. CleanTechnica, Michael Barnard, Aug 06, 2026.
- The Disaster Economy: How Markets, and Con men, are Responding to Climate Change As climate change unleashes billions of dollars of insurance compensation, the climate of fraud also changes. This is Not Cool, greenman3610, Aug 07, 2026.
- What Happens When the World is on Fire The immeasurable gains fossil fuels have given us over the past century are now being taken away in real time, hundreds of houses, thousands of evacuations, and billions of dollars at a time, leaving behind mass trauma, ravaged landscapes, impoverished communities, and a tattered social fabric. TIME, John Vaillant, Aug 08, 2026.
- Alarming charts that reveal a planet in peril - as experts warn record-breaking heatwaves are just the start From record-breaking heatwaves and worsening droughts to deadly wildfires, experts say this record-breaking summer means the case for net zero has never been clearer. The Independent News, Nick Ferris, Aug 08, 2026.
- The U.S. just had its hottest month on record NOAA’s report said last month was not only the warmest July but also the warmest month in the agency’s 132 years of record-keeping. NBC News, Denise Chow, Aug 10, 2026.
- In a Summer of Climate Misery, Businesses Confront the Need to Adapt Businesses are reckoning with the financial toll of this year’s brutal climate shocks. NYT, Lydia DePillis, Aug 11, 2026.
- Drought, water rationing and dry rivers: our water crisis is here | Peter Gleick It doesn’t have to be this way. We know what needs to be done The Guardian, Peter Gleick, Aug 11, 2026.
- Scientists define a new category of heat wave: `Snow eaters` Unseasonably warm weather that rapidly melts snowpack is becoming more widespread in the U.S. West and happening earlier in the year. Grist, Kate Yoder, Aug 12, 2026.
- 2026, the summer that keeps on giving. DrGilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, Aug 13, 2026.
- Antarctica Is Releasing Mercury Faster Than Ever Because of Climate Change A new study shows melting glaciers are remobilizing pollutants. Eos, Grace van Deelen, Aug 14, 2026.
Climate Policy and Politics (5 articles)
- First Nations chiefs in B.C. call on Carney, Smith to halt advancing West Coast pipeline Group says expanding the oil industry will accelerate climate change, natural disasters CBC, CBC staff, Aug 09, 2026.
- As U.S. offshore wind disappears, a generation of workers is left behind Building trades spent the past five years preparing for an offshore wind boom that went bust. Now, U.S. workers mourn the well-paying careers they don’t see coming back Inside Climate News, Inside Climate News, Aug 10, 2026.
- AI`s climate problem is worse than we thought A new study reveals that AI’s climate impact extends far beyond its massive data center footprint. HEATED, Emily Atkin, Aug 12, 2026.
- Half the problem Half of annual carbon emissions can be traced to just 32 firms. Climate Trunk, John Lang, Aug 12, 2026.
- Imposing ignorance': US climate science under siege Phys.org, Issam Ahmed, Aug 13, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #33 2026
Posted on 13 August 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Methane Emissions From Wildfires: Trends and Anomalies, Zhu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
Wildfires emit smoke particles and trace gases including greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, impacting the environment and leading to detrimental impacts on human health and economy. The estimation of spatially and temporally resolved methane emissions from biomass burning (BB) provides critical information in developing measurement-informed methane inventories. The use of satellite active fire products (fire radiative power) is an effective pathway to investigate wildfire emissions around the world. In this study, the Global BB Emissions Product-eXtended algorithm is employed to estimate long-term temporal variation and geographic distribution of methane emissions from BB using satellite observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. Globally, on average about 19 Megatonnes of BB methane are released to the atmosphere every year, nearly half of it originating from Africa, where BB represents a significant proportion of the total methane emissions. Our findings show that methane emissions from wildfires are substantial and can exceed other source sectors during extreme wildfire events, negating gains from years of emission reductions from anthropogenic sources. The contribution of fires to the methane budget is significant for regions with intense fire activities. Effective wildfire prevention and management could be beneficial to rapidly reduce methane emissions from BB.
Diurnal asymmetry in heat stress intensification across Bangladesh, 1985–2024: Accelerated nighttime warming and emerging urban risk, Kamruzzaman et al., PLOS Climate
Bangladesh’s rapidly growing cities are becoming hotter, but how heat stress is changing over the day–night cycle has remained unclear. Using 40 years (1985–2024) of hourly Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) data from ERA5-HEAT, we examined long-term changes in physiologically relevant heat stress across Bangladesh and its major cities. Results show a clear day–night imbalance in warming: nighttime heat stress (UTCI???) is rising faster than daytime extremes. National trends indicate increases of +0.03 °C per decade for UTCI???, +0.02 °C for daily mean UTCI, and +0.01 °C for UTCI???, with the strongest warming occurring in the early morning hours. These national spatially averaged trends reflect the mean across all 194 grid cells; individual grid cells show local trends of +0.1 to +0.4°C per decade, and the cumulative nighttime warming over the full 40-year period reaches approximately 1.0–1.7°C across most of the country. This signals a steady loss of nighttime cooling that people rely on for physical recovery. The most pronounced nighttime warming occurs in western and southern Bangladesh. Major cities—including Dhaka, Rajshahi, Khulna, Chattogram, and Sylhet—show additional intensification consistent with, but not directly attributed to, urban heat-island dynamics at the spatial scale of this analysis. The number of very strong heat stress days (UTCI > 38 °C) has increased by 4–15 days per decade, and cities such as Rajshahi and Dhaka now experience more than 150 such days annually. Together, these findings indicate a transition from occasional heat extremes to persistent, 24-hour heat stress, increasing risks to health, labor productivity, and urban resilience. By identifying when heat stress is rising fastest and where it is concentrated, this study provides evidence to support city-specific heat-action plans, early-warning systems, and climate-responsive urban design in rapidly warming regions.
Significant soil warming across Alaska permafrost and non-permafrost regions from 1997 to 2023, Oliver & Phillips, Frontiers in Climate
Air temperatures in Alaska are increasing at twice the rate of the contiguous United States. Soil temperatures have been shown to be increasing across various landscapes but have overall received less attention. No comprehensive studies have been conducted in Alaska looking at soil temperature trends on a broad scale. In this paper we synthesized soil and air temperature data from 43 weather stations across Alaska spanning a 27-year period (1997-2023). Stations were divided into three regions based on permafrost extent (continuous, discontinuous, and no permafrost). Soil temperature trends were calculated at 5, 20, and 50 cm depth in all three permafrost regions, and additionally at 70, 95, and 120 cm depth for the continuous permafrost region only. Annual average soil temperatures increased significantly across all regions with the fastest warming rates occurring at the highest latitudes. Whole profile warming averaged 0.64, 0.37, and 0.35°C dec-1 in the continuous, discontinuous, and no permafrost regions, respectively. Warming was not slowed by increasing soil depth. Air temperatures warmed faster than soil (p < 0.05) in the continuous permafrost region (1.15°C dec-1) but were not significantly different from soil in the discontinuous and no permafrost regions (p > 0.1). Seasonally, soils in the continuous and discontinuous regions warmed fastest in the winter months, whereas in the no permafrost region soils warmed fastest in the summer months.
Optimizing the Rainwater Harvesting and Roof Sprinkling System to Adapt to Urban Extreme Heat, Yu et al., Earth s Future
Roof watering is a novel strategy for reducing air conditioning energy consumption and mitigating excess urban heat, yet its application is often constrained by water availability. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptation strategy that integrates rainwater harvesting tank with roof sprinkling to strengthen urban heat resilience. We develop a new module implemented in the Community Land Model Urban (CLMU) to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed strategy, whose parameters were further determined by a framework using multi-objective optimization combined with a transformer-based tabular foundation model. This integrated modeling framework enables the optimization of the proposed strategy and provides insights into its impacts on air conditioning energy consumption and its co-benefits on the urban thermal environment. Results show that the temperature threshold for triggering sprinkling is a more important parameter than rainwater tank size or sprinkling intensity. The optimal strategies effectively reduce cooling energy demand, lower extreme temperatures, and decrease heatwave days. However, a trade-off exists between rainwater tank size and the reduction in cooling energy consumption and heatwave days. Additionally, the energy saving is more pronounced under higher atmospheric temperatures. The implementation of the rainwater harvesting and roof sprinkling system in CLMU provides valuable insights for improving urban resilience and can be further coupled into Earth system model for large-scale studies.
From this week's government/NGO section:
State of the Climate in 2025, Blunden et al., American Meteorological Society
The authors provide a comprehensive, observation-based assessment of Earth’s climate system that not only documents what happened during a given year (e.g., 2025), but also how that year compares to previous years in the observational record. Thus, it is critical to have continuous, long-term observations of various components of the Earth system to document variability and change over time. Many of these observations, both current and historical, are also assimilated into various reanalysis products (e.g., ERA5 and MERRA-2), which are physically constrained representations of the Earth system and are used extensively throughout the State of the Climate report. Reanalyzes are particularly useful in regions where in situ and satellite observations are sparse.
Built for backup, contracted to run: China’s coal support system risks crowding out clean power, Qin et al., The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor
New coal power plants entering operation in China reached the highest first-half year level since 2016, with 10 GW entering operation for every 1 GW retired, despite a policy shift towards tighter control of new project approvals. China commissioned 30 GW of new coal power, up 43% from last year, while retiring only 2.7 GW. Another 25.4 GW started construction; Coal power generation rebounded 3.4% year-on-year in H1 2026, reversing the 2025 decline. The rapid expansion of coal power capacity led to worsening oversupply, reflected both in the increase of wasted wind and solar generation and in falling utilization of coal power plants; The rebound was not evidence of a broad return to coal following LNG shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. China’s combined domestic coal production and imports in fact fell by 1.4% year-on-year in H1 2026, rather than expanding in response to the external energy shock. Growth in clean energy supply and electrification helped offset the fall in oil supply and limit increases in fossil fuel consumption; Estimated wind and solar curtailment, including both reported and unreported curtailment, reached 360 TWh in H1 2026, up 49% year-on-year. Had this electricity been absorbed, the additional power supply could have met all demand growth and allowed coal power generation to fall.
132 articles in 58 journals by 1667 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Regime shifts of AMOC-sea surface temperature relationship, Fan et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-76149-4
The real energy use of agentic AI
Posted on 12 August 2026 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink
AI energy use is a huge and controversial topic at the moment. Credible estimates have AI data centers accounting for around 12% US electricity use by 2030. But at the same time consumers have been given reassuringly small numbers about the impact of their own AI use, numbers that seem on their face somewhat inconsistent with the staggering size of their aggregate usage.
In 2025 Google published an article calculating that median Gemini text prompt used only 0.24 watt-hours (Wh), less energy than “watching nine seconds of television”. Around the same time, Sam Altman said that an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.34 Wh, and Epoch AI came out with similar numbers. Writers like Andy Masley and Hannah Ritchie have shown that at these rates an individual using chatbots has a pretty negligible impact, with one prompt only amounting to roughly 1/150,000th of an average American’s daily emissions.
Those numbers are basically right. They are also increasingly divorced from how AI is actually being used today.
The fastest-growing way that software engineers and scientists actually use AI is not typing questions into a chat box. Rather, we use AI agents through tools like Claude Code and Codex that plan, write code, run it, read the results, and iterate on their own. These agents make dozens of model calls per human prompt, and engage in complex reasoning chains that involve attempting and evaluating multiple answers to the same question.
I work for a company in Silicon Valley (Stripe) and admittedly use the latest AI tools more than most people. But I thought it would be instructive to take a deep dive into my own AI use over the past 8 weeks and calculate the actual energy use I was responsible for.
Over the past 8 weeks I typed 1,138 prompts into Claude Code. Those prompts triggered more than 14,000 model calls that processed 3.2 billion tokens. My best estimate is that this used around 170 kWh of data center electricity (with an uncertainty range of roughly 70 to 330 kWh across methods and assumptions). That works out to around 150 Wh per prompt (60 to 290 Wh), which is roughly 600 times (250 to 1,200) the energy of a median chat prompt. A “prompt” is ultimately not a unit of AI use any more than “trips” is a measurement of driving; it’s how far you go that matters.
Agents supercharge AI usage
Part of the impetus for this post is the publication of a new white paper from Watershed (Bistline et al. 2026) proposing a standardized framework for corporate AI emissions accounting. It is the most careful treatment I have seen of why published per-query numbers differ by orders of magnitude (system boundaries, mostly), and it contains a figure that should reframe the whole discussion: electricity per AI task spans more than five orders of magnitude, from thousandths of a watt-hour for text classification to 50-500 Wh for an agentic workflow making 5-50 frontier model calls. As they put it, emissions attributed to one “interaction” may understate the compute actually consumed “by an order of magnitude or more.”
Other researchers have found similar results. Bai et al. (2026) measured coding agents on real software tasks and found they consume roughly 1,000 times the tokens of an ordinary chatbot interaction. And these sort of agents tasks represent the most rapid driver of increased AI usage; Anthropic’s Economic Index found that 97% of their API usage now show “automation-dominant” patterns associated with agents.
To put these values in perspective, the figure below compares published per-prompt and task estimates (blue) with what I measured from my Claude Code use (orange) as well as common benchmarks for energy use (running a microwave, a fridge, or a whole home):
My median Claude Code session uses around 0.6 kWh (0.25 to 1.2 kWh), which is at the top end of Watershed’s generic agentic usage estimate, and fifty times the energy used to charge a cellphone. My average day of Claude Code (3.0 kWh, range 1.2 to 5.9 kWh) uses more electricity than running two refrigerators.
Fact brief - Are there enough minerals for solar power expansion to help mitigate climate change?
Posted on 11 August 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Are there enough minerals for solar power expansion to help mitigate climate change?
Global mineral supplies are large enough to support solar development for climate change mitigation.
A 2023 analysis of 75 emissions-reduction scenarios found that projected median mineral demand largely remains within known geological resources. Projected median demand for silver was about 68,000 metric tons, compared to 530,000 tons of estimated reserves; cadmium demand was 38,000 tons against 500,000 tons of reserves.
Tellurium may constrain cadmium-telluride panels, a minority of the global solar market, but research suggests improved refining and material efficiency could substantially reduce this strain.
Recycling can further reduce demand for newly mined minerals by recovering silver, copper, silicon, and other components for reuse in future panels. Recent innovations are improving recycling cost-effectiveness, while federal programs continue to support domestic mineral supply chains and recycling research.
The main challenge lies in expanding production and supply chains, not mineral shortages.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
AP News Study: Enough rare earth minerals to fuel green energy shift
Joule Future demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios
USGS Byproduct Mineral Commodities Used for the Production of Photovoltaic Cells
Yale School of the Environment As Millions of Solar Panels Age Out, Recyclers Hope to Cash In
Resources, Conservation and Recycling Innovating the recycling of silicon-based solar panels with an eco-friendly alkaline leaching process
MIT Climate Can solar panels be recycled?
U.S. Department of Energy End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics
Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles
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The floods of the future won’t come one at a time
Posted on 10 August 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
When a weak 45-mph tropical storm named Harvey moved through the Lesser Antilles Islands in August 2017 and then petered out in the central Caribbean Sea, no one could have suspected that the meager clump of clouds that remained would go on to become the second-costliest weather disaster in world history. But after crossing Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico, Harvey was rejuvenated, rapidly intensifying into a ferocious Category 4 hurricane that hit Texas just north of Corpus Christi.
Harvey's true mischief came after it stalled inland as a tropical storm for two days, dumping at least 40 inches of rain across a gigantic area from Houston to Port Arthur — larger than the entire state of Delaware. The storm total of 60.58 inches (1,534 mm) at Nederland, Texas, was the heaviest single amount ever recorded from a tropical cyclone or its remnants in the U.S. With damages of $164 billion (2026 USD) — mostly from flooding, Harvey became a historical catastrophe exceeded only by Hurricane Katrina of 2005.
When all of Harvey’s rainfall runoff rushed toward the ocean, it encountered the blocking influence of seawater being pushed inland by the persistent onshore winds of the tropical storm, creating a significant compound flood event — coastal flooding that resulted from a combination of storm surge and river runoff unable to drain into the ocean because of the storm surge waters piled up against the coast.
A similar setup could cause an even worse catastrophe in the future. Climate change is causing more intense, slower-moving hurricanes, increased rainfall, and higher sea levels. But traditional risk assessment methods typically consider one hazard at a time — ignoring compound flood events — leading to an underestimation of the danger. If we include all the ways climate change will likely increase flooding, the future flood risk along significant portions of the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts is nearly certain to make them unlivable by late this century, even under a moderate global warming scenario.
How climate change worsens the danger
A 2023 study looking at the flooding from Harvey near Port Arthur, Texas, found that 19% of the flood area occurred because of compound flooding. Under a global warming scenario where a repeat of Harvey hits with an additional sea level rise of 0.57 meters (1.9 feet), accompanied by 18% more total rainfall — plausible in 2050 — this area would increase to 33%. A potential sea level rise of 1.6 meters (5.2 feet) and an additional 50% in total rainfall, plausible by 2100, would cause the compound flooding area to rise to 46%, increasing the number of structures impacted by about a factor of 23 compared to 2017, causing tens of billions in additional damage.
Figure 1. Storm-total rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, August 24-31, 2017. Harvey dumped over 40 inches (yellow colors) in Houston, with isolated amounts over 50 inches (pink colors) south of Houston and northwest of Port Arthur. Image credit: NOAA.
There are three main ways climate change can increase flood risk along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts:
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32
Posted on 9 August 2026 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (11 articles)
- El Niño and climate change are affecting rice crops in weird ways Researchers explain how El Niño and global warming are combining to create "the haves and the have-nots." Grist, Tik Root & Frida Garza, July 31, 2026.
- Heatwaves and raging fires mark Europe’s ‘dystopian’ summer This article about the recent record-breaking heat and wildfires in Europe dives into the science about the causes, quoting several experts. ABC News, Romy Stephens, Alex Lim and Fran Rimrod, Aug 1, 2026.
- Climate shocks hit hydropower in Southern Africa, reviving interest in coal The Daily Climate, Chisapi Kumbutso, Aug 02, 2026.
- Climate change could dramatically reduce water flowing from the West's headwaters Phys.org, Northern Arizona University, Aug 02, 2026.
- Washington`s wildfires are a warning for the entire U.S. Dry conditions and climate change are putting forests across the country at risk for disaster Scientific American, Mary Randolph, Aug 03, 2026.
- Factcheck: How nuclear, gas, wind and solar power are affected during heatwaves Carbon Brief, Molly Lempriere, Aug 04, 2026.
- French wildfires are turning animals’ homes into ‘a desert of ashes’ The catastrophic fires have potential to do long-term damage to many wild animal populations, but a toad species could be the most affected. National Geographic, Melissa Hobson, Aug 4, 2026.
- Butterflies are on the move as the planet warms: new research A comprehensive survey indicates that one in ten known butterfly species have already shifted in range. The Conversation, Shawan Chowdhury, Aug 05, 2026.
- Summer of wildfires sees catastrophe bonds approach new record Wildfires raging across the U.S. and Europe this summer are pushing more and more insurers into slashing their risk by issuing catastrophe bonds to investors, and the so-called CAT bonds on the market are already nearing levels from all of last year. Callaway Climate Insights, David Callaway, Aug 06, 2026.
- Climate change created conditions for Canada fires, scientists say, as Trump blames mismanagement A new study calculates that human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood of the tinderbox weather conditions that sparked Canada’s massive summer wildfires. The Okaloosa Herald, EHN Curators, Aug 06, 2026.
- Heatwaves have killed millions. Here’s how scientists tally lives lost Two very different methods are used to estimate the human toll of heatwaves such as those now hitting parts of Asia and Europe. Nature, Kaia Glickman, Aug 6, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #32 2026
Posted on 6 August 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
‘Towards electric vehicle misinformation communities: Shared narratives, networked validation, and reassurance among Australian consumers, McEwen et al., Energy Research & Social Science
Electric vehicles (EVs) provide a pathway to sustainable transport systems. Yet public understanding of EVs is shaped by contested information environments in which misinformation circulates alongside facts. Existing EV misinformation research has largely focused on individual EV beliefs, attitudes, and information deficits. However, less is known about how EV misinformation becomes socially meaningful in everyday life. Drawing on qualitative ethnographic data from 122 Australian consumers, we introduce the concept of EV misinformation communities to help interpret how participants share narratives and engage in social interactions and everyday sense-making practices relating to misinformation about EVs across online and offline settings. Our analysis explores how EV misinformation becomes socially meaningful through symbolic framing, networked validation, and reassurance. We suggest that countering EV misinformation requires socio-cultural understanding of people's ideologies, dispositions and circumstances, and recognition of the value and sense of shared experiences that misinformation provides. Policy and programme interventions to accelerate the transition to EVs should seek to foster community through opportunities for creating positive value and shared experiences in addition to the provision of information.
Managing climate overshoot: a risk-based strategy for climate stabilisation, Taylor et al., Frontiers in Climate
Global warming is accelerating, yet current climate strategies centred on emissions reduction and carbon removal are unlikely to prevent temperatures from crossing dangerous tipping points. Although essential, these approaches operate too slowly to counter near-term warming driven by Earth’s growing energy imbalance, weakening carbon sinks, and amplifying climate feedbacks. This mismatch reflects systemic shortcomings in climate risk assessment that underestimate nonlinear risks and the escalating costs of delay. We argue that climate stabilisation should be treated as a risk-management challenge rather than an incremental policy process. This requires explicit comparison of intervention risks with those of continued warming. We outline a comparative risk–risk framework that integrates mitigation, carbon removal, and cooling interventions, and suggests that a viable strategy may require combining rapid decarbonisation and expanded carbon removal with carefully governed cooling interventions to limit near-term warming. Without aligning response timelines with accelerating climate threats, the likelihood of irreversible Earth-system disruption will continue to grow.
Ecological Transformations of Coastal Wetlands of the Conterminous United States in Response to Contemporaneous Sea-Level Rise, Neville et al., Earth s Future
Coastal wetlands are among the most important ecosystems on the planet but are increasingly imperiled by accelerating sea-level rise (SLR). In the past, biogeomorphic feedbacks have allowed coastal wetlands to adjust vertically and persist through periods of accelerated SLR. Recent rates of SLR are faster than any in recent geologic history, making the fate of coastal wetlands highly uncertain. Here, we synthesize surface elevation table marker-horizon data from 442 stations in coastal wetlands across the conterminous United States to evaluate if they are largely persisting in the face of accelerated SLR, or if they are undergoing ecological transformations of submergence and/or migration. Across the conterminous United States, 11% of coastal wetlands in this sample are on a trajectory of submergence whereas 73% of sites are lagging SLR, but may be able to migrate upslope, and 16% of sites are gaining elevation at rates which exceed SLR indicating persistence and an ability to migrate seaward. Vulnerability of these systems to ecological transformation varies across the three coasts of the conterminous United States which, span large biogeomorphic gradients. These results serve as one of the first national syntheses of coastal wetland elevation trends and may help focus conservation and restoration efforts in a rapidly changing future.
Long-Term Trends in the Ionospheric Equivalent Slab Thickness as a Proxy of Climate Change in the Ionosphere, Pignalberi & Alberti, Geophysical Research Letters
Anthropogenic greenhouse emissions do not affect all parts of Earth's atmosphere in the same way. While the lower atmosphere warms, the upper atmosphere is expected to cool and contract, and this may also change the ionosphere, the region containing charged particles (plasma). In this study, we analyzed nearly three decades of observations from three stations spanning equatorial to high latitudes. We focused on ionospheric equivalent slab thickness, a quantity that measures how broadly plasma is distributed around the main ionospheric peak. We found that slab thickness generally decreases over time, although the strength of the decrease is neither spatially uniform nor equally detectable at all latitudes. We then linked these changes to the plasma scale height, which controls how fast plasma density decreases with altitude. The results show that the ionospheric profile is becoming narrower with time, especially at middle and high latitudes. This suggests that long-term climate-related changes in the upper atmosphere are also affecting the vertical structure of ionospheric plasma.
Disrupted Skies: How Offshore Wind Farms Alter Flight Behavior of Breeding Seabirds, Liang et al., Ecology and Evolution
Offshore wind farms are expanding rapidly as part of global climate mitigation efforts, but their effects on seabird movement behavior remain incompletely understood. While collision risk has received substantial attention, less is known about how turbines may alter flight routes through evasive behavior and meso-avoidance, particularly near breeding colonies where repeated commuting flights may accumulate energetic costs. We investigated flight responses of breeding Bridled Terns (Onychoprion anaethetus) to offshore wind turbines near their colony using high-resolution satellite tracking data collected at 1-s intervals and lower-resolution data collected at 1-h intervals. We quantified within-trajectory flight traits, including mean redirection, number of turns, flight speed, and flight altitude, in relation to turbine exposure. We assessed avoidance using both proximity-based and direction-sensitive metrics. At the near-colony scale, we tested whether flight behavior changed with increasing alignment between the trajectory bearing and turbine bearing from the colony. At the broader breeding-range scale, we tested whether behavior differed inside and outside wind farms or with distance to turbines, while accounting for colony distance, wind, and landscape variables. Bridled Terns showed increased mean redirection and lower flight altitude when trajectories were more closely aligned with turbine directions from the colony, suggesting localized route alteration in obstacle-facing directions. However, flight behavior was not significantly associated with turbine proximity, nor did it differ significantly inside and outside wind farms. These findings suggest that offshore wind farms may influence seabird movement through localized, direction-dependent route alteration rather than simple distance-dependent responses, highlighting the value of movement-context metrics and within-trajectory traits in wind farm impact assessments.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Interim heat mortality monitoring report, England: May and June 2026, UK Health Security Agency
During the May and June 2026 heat events there were an estimated total of 2,877 heat-associated deaths, an estimated 753 heat-associated deaths occurred during the May heat episode; an estimated 2,124 heat-associated deaths occurred during the June heat episode, and the mortality burden is already close to the highest annual totals previously recorded by UKHSA. Although these estimates remain provisional and are subject to revision as more complete mortality data becomes available, the magnitude of the impact is already comparable with some of the highest annual heat-associated mortality estimates previously reported through UKHSA’s heat mortality monitoring programme. For context, UKHSA estimated 2,295 heat-associated deaths during the whole of summer 2023, 1,311 during summer 2024 and 1,504 during summer 2025. The highest annual estimate recorded to date remains summer 2022, when 2,985 heat-associated deaths were observed across 5 heat episodes.
Climate change increases likelihood of compounding drivers of severe wildfire conditions in France and Spain, World Weather Attribution
The authors perform a super rapid analysis of trends in fire-conducive weather conditions in the two affected areas in France and Spain, analyzing observations only. In both study regions observations show strong trends of increasing likelihood and severity with global warming.
99 articles in 50 journals by 827 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Climate modes synergistically influence marine heatwaves in the North Sea, Lin et al., Ocean science Open Access pdf 10.5194/os-22-2287-2026
New Mexico’s clean energy success story
Posted on 5 August 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk
It’s hot. Fans and air conditioners are humming in homes, offices, commercial buildings, and factories. July is the most electricity-intensive time of year in the U.S., and the grid is working hard to keep up.
In many places, high electricity demand equals high pollution. That used to be true in New Mexico, but the state’s electricity supply flipped from majority climate-warming fossil fuels to majority renewables in just five years. Spurred by an ambitious clean energy law called the Energy Transition Act, utilities have been busy building solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and transmission lines. A major coal plant was retired and demolished. Solar panels proliferated on homes, schools, and businesses.
And even while New Mexico was building out its clean energy future, electricity prices remained cheaper than average.
A case study in cleaner electricity
New Mexico’s largest utility is the Public Service Company of New Mexico, or PNM. Only five years ago, most of PNM’s cooling needs were met by coal and gas, which made up 83% of its electricity generation in July 2021.
But the state’s abundant sunshine now provides much of the region’s electricity.
The golden line on the graph below shows grid-scale solar energy production in PNM’s territory every day for a week. The sun generated 41% of the total electricity the week of July 6, when I did this analysis.
Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?
Posted on 4 August 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from By the Numbers by Hannah Ritchie
Over the last week, this chart of wildfire burn in Europe has been doing the rounds on social media and traditional media outlets. Carbon Brief goes through some of this coverage here.
The underlying narrative is that Europe is having its lowest wildfire year on record, which is quite at odds with the huge wildfires we see from France and Spain on the news.
But this data and the media headlines are not as contradictory as they first appear.
The wildfire data we present on Our World in Data comes from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). This uses satellite imagery, which doesn’t distinguish, for example, between forest fires and large-scale burning of agricultural land, grasslands, or savannah.
Its aggregate category “Europe” includes Russia. On OWID, we also have predefined regions across our datasets, and Russia falls under “Europe”.
Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026
Posted on 3 August 2026 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink
Jim Hansen and I have spent much of this year making seemingly opposite predictions about where 2026 will end up in the global temperature record books. He has argued since the spring that 2026 will be the warmest year on record; I have made the case that it is more likely than not to end up in second place. And in a recent post he framed our disagreement in memorably equine terms:
Based on this scientific evidence, we expect that when the horse race comes down the stretch, in November and December of this year, we will be riding a thoroughbred, a strong young horse, and Zeke will be atop a fading old nag.
For the record, I am the fading old nag in this metaphor. I have been called worse.
But here is the fun part: when the race comes down the final stretch at the end of 2026, there is a good chance we will both be declared winners. Hansen’s prediction is about NASA’s GISTEMP record specifically. Mine is about the average across the major surface temperature datasets. And when I run my own forecast model separately on each of six datasets, it gives GISTEMP a ~65% chance of a new 2026 record even as the multi-dataset average only has a ~32% chance and is likely to come in second place.
First, where my forecast stands. Back in December I projected 2026 at 1.41C (1.27C to 1.55C) above preindustrial levels, and in early June I revised that up to 1.46C (1.36C to 1.59C) as forecast models converged on a doozy of an El Niño developing in the latter half of the year. Hansen, via the Washington Post, cited my June estimate of a 26.6% chance that 2026 sets a new record.
That number has continued to creep up. With observations through June and the latest El Niño forecast ensemble, my current central estimate for 2026 is 1.50C (1.44C to 1.57C) above the 1850-1900 baseline in the average of six surface temperature datasets.1 That translates into a ~32% chance that 2026 beats 2024’s record, a ~66% chance it comes in second, and almost no chance (<2%) it falls to third or below. The figure below shows where those projections sit against the observational record.
Here we see 2026 sitting just below the 2024 record line, with 2027 well above it. So the horse race (to continue the metaphor) is drifting in Hansen’s direction, though still short of the finish line. In the average of all the groups reporting global surface temperatures, second warmest remains my central call for 2026.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Posted on 2 August 2026 by Sue Bin Park
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (7 articles)
- State of the climate: Rapidly developing El Niño raises chance of record-warm 2026 Chances of a record setting 2026 El Niño rapidly increase, taking us closer to an important warming threshold. Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather, Jul 24, 2026.
- Why is Germany building roads for yesterday's climate? As the Autobahn buckles under heat waves, Germany is still paving roads for a past climate. Engineers know how to fix that — so what's the holdup? DW, Tim Schauenberg, Jul 28, 2026.
- Summer of Heat, Fires and Storms Is a Reckoning for Europe on Climate Europe is experiencing some of its biggest fires and highest temperatures ever; residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to respond and “it will get worse,” one climate expert said. NYT, Mark Landler and Chico Harlan, Jul 29, 2026.
- `The heat took him from me`: India`s death toll rises amid escalating heat crisis As extreme heat claims the lives of workers in India’s poorest areas, many fear the true mortality rate is being dangerously undercounted. The Guardian, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan, Jul 29, 2026.
- 4 things to know about cyclospora and climate change A fragile food system, uneven public health messaging, and global warming are all working to supercharge the parasite’s spread. Grist, Frida Garza, Jul 30, 2026.
- `Was this heatwave caused by climate change?` - we`re asking the wrong question The question is not whether climate change caused the heatwave, but how much hotter and more dangerous heatwaves have become because greenhouse gases, primarily from burning fossil fuels, have accumulated in the atmosphere. The Conversation, Prof. Haley J. Fowler & Prof. Ed Hawkins, Jul 31, 2026.
- Everything on fire DrGilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, July 31, 2026.
Climate Science and Research (6 articles)
- Human-driven climate change largely responsible for last 50 years of worsening fire weather in Western North America, new study shows Just as detectives can find literal fingerprints at a crime scene, scientists can detect human and natural ‘fingerprints’ in climate and meteorological data like temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity— all factors that can influence fire behavior. Science Feedback, Science Feedback team, May 8, 2025.
- How do scientists know if climate change made a heat wave, extreme storm or wildfire worse? When a devastating heat wave, hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, people often want to know: How much did human-caused climate change influence this event, if at all? The Conversation, Kevin T. Smiley, Deepti Singh, Jennifer Marlon, Jim Hurrell, Jul 24, 2026.
- Low-Level Cloud Loss Amplifies Global Warming A new study adds weight to concerns over the positive feedback effects of clouds on global warming. CalTech, Katie Neith, Jul 24, 2026.
- Canopy-mediated climate feedbacks in the boreal continuous permafrost zone A vast amount of carbon locked up in permafrost is protected by a thin and increasingly threatened layer of vegetation. Nature Climate Change, M. Langer, Jul 27, 2026.
- Rising CO2 Alters Upper Atmosphere Response to Stratosphere Sudden Warming A whole-atmosphere model simulation shows that rising CO2 changes how the upper atmosphere and ionosphere respond to a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), with implications for future space weather.? Eos, Huixin Liu, Jul 29, 2026.
- Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026 Whether 2026 sets a new record is increasingly likely to be a split decision between different groups The Climate Brink, Zeke Hausfather, Jul 30, 2026.
