Skeptical Science

Two videos about the Atlantic Meriodonal Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

Mon, 11 May 2026 10:21:23 EST

These videos include personal musings and conclusions of the creators and climate scientists Dr. Adam Levy and Dr. Ella Gilbert. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

ClimateAdam - Our Oceans Are Tipped To Collapse: Can we still act?

Climate change is driving a crucial ocean current close to collapse. As global warming heats our planet, it's slowing down the vast Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - or AMOC. And scientists fear that it could reach a tipping point - effectively shutting down this ocean circulation, and causing rapid climate change and disasters across the world: brutally cold European winters; sea level surges in America; and disrupted monsoon rains. But what do we actually understand about our risks of an AMOC tipping point? How big are the risks as our climate changes? And can we still act to protect ourselves?

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

Dr Gilbz - This critical climate system is tipping…. Or is it?

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - or AMOC - is one of the world's most vital ocean currents, transporting water, heat and carbon around the planet. It's part of the "global conveyor belt" that keeps our planet moving.

And scientists are warning that it could be weakening - with terrible consequences for humanity.

But... is it?? What's behind the contrasting headlines? Let's dig in

Support Dr Gilbz on patreon: https://patreon.com/Dr_Gilbz

2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19

Sun, 10 May 2026 10:30:46 EST

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 3, 2026 thru Sat, May 9, 2026.

Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (6 articles)

The ramifications of record-shattering heat on the West`s ecosystems Not only did Western US locations set new March highs but many exceeded temperature records for May, according to Climate Central scientist Zachary Lab. Grist, Christine Peterson, May 02, 2026.
Flooding in Chicago Is Getting Worse. Here`s Why. Over the past century in Chicago, the likelihood of heavy rainstorms has increased sevenfold. Inside Climate News, Brett Chase, May 04, 2026.
`Point of no return`: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds Louisiana’s cultural hotspot could be surrounded by Gulf of Mexico before end of this century, authors say The Guardian, Oliver Milman, May 04, 2026.
Dangerous heavy rains are getting more likely and widespread Seven of the top 11 highest-volume precipitation events over the past 77 years have occurred just in the past 10 years. Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, May 04, 2026.
New Study Shows Risks of Amazon Deforestation. And Rewards of Protection. Researchers examined the combined effects of tree loss and global warming in an effort to better understand how and when an ecosystem collapse could unfold. NYT, Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, May 06, 2026.
Our Oceans Are Tipped To Collapse: Can we still act? ClimateAdam on Youtube, Adam Levy, May 8, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (6 articles)

Benjamin Santer: Speaking Science to Power Youtube, College of the Holy Cross, Mar 27, 2026.
Climate scientist finds large errors in a global climate pollution database New research from Northern Arizona University found that a global greenhouse gas emissions database produced by the Climate TRACE consortium is underestimating vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in cities by an average of 70%. Phys.org, Gaby Clark, May 05, 2026.
Climate models struggling to capture human impact on storm tracks Models are accurately capturing the impact of a warmer atmosphere holding more moisture, but struggling to represent the shift in atmospheric circulation patterns caused by human emissions, which ultimately determine where the rain falls. The Guardian, Kate Ravilious, May 06, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #19 2026 Our regular weekly scan of scientific, NGO and government research publications on matters pertaining to climate change. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack , May 07, 2026.
Why fears are growing over the fate of a key Atlantic current Mounting evidence suggests the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current may be nearing a tipping point, though the research is far from certain. The Daily Climate, Nicola Jones, May 08, 2026.
Antarctic sea ice defied global warming for decades - now, hidden ocean heat is breaking through 'Antarctica was long considered a part of the climate system expected to change slowly. The speed of the recent sea ice decline has therefore come as a shock.'' The Conversation, Aditya Narayanan, May 08, 2026.

Miscellaneous (5 articles)

Two months in, the Iran war has changed the global energy system forever The conflict may be the beginning of the end of fossil fuel dominance and a clear opening for accelerated energy modernization. Grist, Jake Bittle, May 01, 2026.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #18 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 26, 2026 thru Sat, May 2, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, May 3, 2026.
Why we need to treat Earth like a spaceship 'On Earth, there is no mission control – only us.'' The Conversation, Chris Rapley, May 06, 2026.
Faster slaughterhouse line speeds are increasingly a climate problem Worker safety, animal welfare and climate concerns overlap in ways that are not immediately obvious. The Daily Climate, EHN Curators, May 07, 2026.
EGU2026 - Five days of virtual learning This is the diary our team member Bärbel Winkler wrote over the past week while participating online in a large scientific conference. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, May 9, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (3 articles)

DeBriefed 1 May 2026: Countries chart path away from fossil fuels | China`s clean-tech surge | Global forest loss slows Countries attending a first-of-its-kind summit have walked away with plans to develop national “roadmaps” to move away from fossil fuels, along with new tools to address subsidies and carbon-intensive trade. Carbon Brief, Daisy Dunne, May 01, 2026.
Hard choices test breakaway climate summit A first-of-its-kind conference that focused on phasing out fossil fuels now confronts the challenge of turning plans into policy. Politico, Sara Schonhardt, May 01, 2026.
Trump’s NOAA cuts would save less than a day and a half of Iran War spending Administration's incoherent and/or ignorant national security policy exposed by funding priorities. Heated, Emily Atkin, May 7, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (2 articles)

Spiralling global temperatures A decade later... Climate Lab Book, Ed Hawkins, May 8, 2026.
A look back at `An Inconvenient Truth,` 20 years later Al Gore’s famous documentary has mostly stood the test of time. Yale Climate Connections, Dana Nuccitelli, May 08, 2026.

Health Aspects of Climate Change (2 articles)

Extreme heat is a growing threat to health, jobs and food security in southern Africa - study looks for practical solutions The Conversation, Jerome Amir Singh & Caradee Yael Wright, May 03, 2026.
How climate change makes your allergies worse As pollen season worsens, allergies compound with other climate health hazards. Ars Technica, Keerti Gopal, May 08, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (1 article)

States are demanding property insurance records to study climate change State insurance regulators are undertaking the most comprehensive analysis of the nation’s battered property-insurance market to try to understand how climate change is affecting the price and availability of coverage. Poltico E&E Daily Climate, Saqib Rahim, May 01, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 article)

Despite big storms, U.S. winters are still warming Events like the January 23rd storm capture headlines and attention, but they don’t occur often enough to outweigh the long-term influence of human-caused global warming on U.S. winter temperatures. climate.us, Rebecca Lindsey, Jan 01, 2031.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (1 article)

Fact brief - Were the 2022 whale deaths off the US East Coast caused by offshore wind development? No - The 2022 whale deaths have not been linked to offshore wind surveys or construction. Research has found no evidence of wind farms driving whale deaths, and responsibly developed wind farms avert systemic harms of fossil fuels. Skeptical Science, Sue Bin Park, May 4, 2026.

Climate Law and Justice (1 article)

Event With Links to Oil Industry Teaches Judges "Healthy Skepticism" of Climate Science As congressional Republicans accuse climate scholars and lawyers of colluding to influence the judiciary, a symposium hosted by a center funded by the fossil fuel industry injects free market ideology into courts. ProPublica, Abrahm Lustgarten, May 02, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #19 2026

Thu, 7 May 2026 11:54:04 EST

Open access notables

Emerging low-cloud feedback and adjustment in global satellite observations, Ceppi et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics

From mid-2003 to mid-2024, a global decrease in low-cloud amount enhanced the absorption of solar radiation by 0.22±0.07 W m−2 per decade (±1σ range), accelerating the energy imbalance trend during that period (0.44 W m−2 per decade). Through controlling factor analysis, here we show that the low-cloud trend is due to a combination of cloud feedback and adjustments to greenhouse gases and aerosols (respectively 0.09±0.02, 0.05±0.03, and 0.03±0.03 W m−2 per decade), which jointly account for 74 % of the trend. The contribution of natural climate variability is weak but uncertain (0.01±0.08 W m−2 per decade), owing to a poorly constrained trend in boundary-layer inversion strength. Importantly, the observed low-cloud radiative trend lies well within the range of values simulated by contemporary global climate models under conditions close to present day. Any systematic model error in the representation of present-day global energy imbalance trends is thus likely to originate in processes unrelated to low clouds.

When Thunderstorms Reach the Stratosphere: Why Storm Structure May Matter for Climate, Cairo, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmosphere

Deep convection that overshoots the tropopause provides one of the fastest pathways for exchanging air between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Using extensive in situ observations from the dynamics and chemistry of the summer stratosphere (DCOTSS) campaign, Shepherd et al. (2026, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JD045514) showed how storm-scale characteristics and environmental conditions shape the magnitude, depth, and pathways of stratosphere-troposphere exchange in the midlatitudes. Their analysis indicates that storms producing above-anvil cirrus plumes, as well as large mesoscale convective systems, are associated with disproportionately strong stratospheric perturbations, particularly in water vapor. This Commentary places these results in a broader context, highlights the main conceptual advances enabled by DCOTSS, and discusses remaining uncertainties while outlining priorities for future work. In particular, it argues that the main significance of these results lies not in resolving the large-scale stratospheric water vapor budget, which remains uncertain, but in helping identify which storm classes and physical pathways are most likely to matter if such impacts are to be quantified more robustly.

Record-Breaking Marine Heatwaves Across Global Coral Reefs in 2024, Yao & Wang, Geophysical Research Letters

The record-breaking annual mean global sea surface temperature in 2024 fueled extensive marine heatwaves (MHWs) across global coral reef zones, yet their spatiotemporal characteristics have not been comprehensively quantified. Here, we show that during the 2024 warm-season, MHW total days and cumulative intensity exceeded the historical mean by more than 3 standard deviations. Widespread and persistent MHWs occurred across major coral reef regions, particularly in the Red Sea, Coral Triangle, Fiji, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Most coral biogeographic provinces experienced significant increases in the frequency of Moderate, Strong, and Severe MHW categories relative to the 1985–2024 climatology. These extreme events were associated with substantial accumulation of ocean heat content in the Indo-Pacific warm pool and tropical Atlantic following the transition from the triple-dip La Niña (2020–2023) to the 2023–2024 El Niño. Regional oceanographic conditions further modulated the intensity and drivers of warm-season MHWs in 2024.

Beyond post-truth: Projecting the future trajectory of climate misinformation, Rice, PLOS Climate

Climate misinformation represents one of the most significant barriers to effective climate action in the 21st century. Building upon Yotam Ophir’s comprehensive framework in Misinformation & Society, this essay examines the evolving landscape of climate misinformation and projects its future trajectory. Ophir’s interdisciplinary approach, which integrates historical, psychological, and technological perspectives, provides crucial insights into how climate misinformation operates within broader systems of information disorder. This paper extends Ophir’s arguments by examining critical dimensions of his work, including the shift from outright denial to more sophisticated delay and deflection tactics, the role of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence in amplifying misinformation spread, and the political economy of climate misinformation characterized by asymmetric epistemic relationships. Drawing on recent research, I project that climate misinformation will increasingly manifest through narratives of technological futurism and transformation, the pretense of economic crisis through environmental catastrophe, and the social implications of international weaponized uncertainty inflamed by misinformation. The essay concludes by proposing an integrated intervention framework that reviews proposed solutions including psychological inoculation, systemic media literacy, and structural reforms to digital and online platform governance. Understanding these trajectories is essential for developing resilient communication strategies that can withstand the evolving tactics of climate action obstruction.

From this week's government/NGO section:

European State of the Climate – Report 2025, Emerton et al., World Meteorological Organization and European Union, represented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

Rapid warming in Europe is reducing snow and ice cover, while dangerously high air temperatures, drought, heatwaves and record ocean temperatures are affecting regions from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Europe, along with many other regions of the globe, is exposed to increasing impacts – from record heatwaves on land and at sea, to devastating wildfires, and continuing biodiversity loss – with consequences for societies and ecosystems across Europe.

Climate Change in Central Finland, Kühn et al., Finnish Meteorological Institute

Climate change is progressing in Finland faster than the global average, and its impacts are already clearly observable in Central Finland. The authors examines the current state of the climate in Central Finland and the Jyväskylä region, observed changes, and the projected development of the climate throughout the current century. The assessments are based on long?term observational datasets, the latest climate model simulations, and SSP emission scenarios.

PwC’s Third Annual State of Decarbonization Report, PwC

The authors draw on AI-enabled insights of millions of data points from across thousands of corporate disclosures and related documents. Many companies changed how they talk about sustainability, but not what they do about it. Commitments were persistent even as the ground shifted beneath them. Eight in ten (82%) companies held steady or accelerated the timeline they needed for achieving their ambitions. More companies are increasing ambitions (23%) compared to those decreasing (18%). Progress held, with more organizations on track to meet their targets than in prior years.

87 articles in 49 journals by 717 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown modulates atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate, Mimi et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72555-w

Emerging low-cloud feedback and adjustment in global satellite observations, Ceppi et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-4153-2026

Stratospheric polar vortex shapes Arctic surface climate via a radiative pathway, Xia et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72698-w

When Thunderstorms Reach the Stratosphere: Why Storm Structure May Matter for Climate, Cairo, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2026jd046663

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Drivers and mechanisms of heatwaves in South West India, Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-024-07242-x 16 cites.

Observations of climate change, effects

Climate-driven upward spread of forest fires in European mountain regions, Beloiu et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72551-0

Quantitative attribution of climate change effects on the 2023 North China heatwave, WAN et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.016

Spatial and temporal variability of snow in the Andes using MODIS snow product 2000–2025, Saavedra et al., Frontiers in Earth Science Open Access 10.3389/feart.2026.1564035

Strengthening of the out-of-phase relationship between Eurasian winter and summer temperature anomalies since the early 1990s, Zhu et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109057

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Increasing Fire Activity in African Tropical Forests Is Associated With Deforestation and Climate Change, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2023gl106240 36 cites.

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

Dynamically-Informed Extreme Event Attribution Using Circulation Imprints, Dorrington & Messori, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl116869

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Towards Energy-Balance Closure with a Model of Dispersive Heat Fluxes, Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 10.1007/s10546-024-00868-8 13 cites.

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown modulates atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate, Mimi et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72555-w

Future heatwave hotspots in India from climate projections, Lakshman et al., Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 10.1002/qj.70220

Increased shallower tropical cyclones under extreme warm climates, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72386-9

Robust Responses of Tropical and Post-tropical Cyclones to Climate Warming in WRF and CAM Storyline Ensembles, Li et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100909

Storyline-Based Climate Attribution Reveals Strong Intensification of 2018–2022 Multi-Year Droughts in Europe, Kettaren et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007547

The pace of meeting carbon emission targets alters regional climate risks, Park et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aec4566

The Role of Tropical Cyclone—Ocean Interactions in Future Changes in Hurricane Katrina, Forbis et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl122126

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
High-resolution modelling identifies the Bering Strait’s role in amplified Arctic warming, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02008-z 17 cites.

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

A Sea-Ice-Enhanced KPP Parameterization: Impacts on AMOC Simulation and Physical Pathways, Tseng & Wang, Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans 10.1029/2025jc023767

Attributing Upper-Tropospheric Warm Biases in CMIP6 Models to Ice Cloud-Radiation Interaction Deficiencies Over Tropical Oceans, Li et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120130

Heavy precipitation simulation in non-hydrostatic CESM modeling over the Western US, Huang & Medeiros, Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109058

Sources of Uncertainty in Ocean Net Primary Productivity Projections Under Climate Change, Grix & Tagliabue, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl119652

Uncertain dynamic response of mid-latitude winter precipitation, Gu et al., Nature 10.1038/s41586-026-10474-y

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Understanding the Cascade: Removing GCM Biases Improves Dynamically Downscaled Climate Projections, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2023gl106264 36 cites.

Cryosphere & climate change

Comprehensive Assessment of Six Snow Depth Products and Trends across the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, Li et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0263.1

Global glacier-free topography reveals a large potential for future lakes in presently ice-covered terrain, Frank et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72548-9

Spatial and temporal variability of snow in the Andes using MODIS snow product 2000–2025, Saavedra et al., Frontiers in Earth Science Open Access 10.3389/feart.2026.1564035

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
An Intercomparison of Snow Mass Budget over Arctic Sea Ice Simulated by CMIP6 Models, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-22-0539.1 2 cites.

Sea level & climate change

Climate-driven depopulation and adaptation realities in America’s coastal ground zero, Törnqvist et al., Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-026-01820-z

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Determining sea-level rise in the Caribbean: A shift from temperature to mass control, Scientific Reports, 10.1038/s41598-024-60201-8 7 cites.

Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry

Mid-Holocene retreat of the Greenland Ice Sheet indicated by subglacial methane release, Hatton et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-026-01976-5

Temperature-Driven Silicate Weathering Feedbacks Terminated the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, Ma et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121765

Tight regulation of Earth’s long-term temperature over Phanerozoic time, Zheng et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72672-6

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
High-frequency climate forcing causes prolonged cold periods in the Holocene, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01380-0 26 cites.

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

A few key species drive community thermophilization under experimental warming, Dobson et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pdf 10.1073/pnas.2533434123

A Functional Trait-Based Approach to Mapping Climate-Driven Changes in Temperature-Dependent Feeding Suitability, Marchessaux et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73623

Climate Change Alters Elevational Distribution Patterns of Cormus domestica Habitat, Li et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73602

Climate Change Shapes Suitable Habitat and Ecological Niche Overlap Between Hyphantria cunea and Its Parasitoid Chouioia cunea in China, Ouyang et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73469

Climate-Driven Habitat Suitability Modeling for the Vulnerable Species Euryops pinifolius A. Rich in Ethiopia: Implications for Conservation, Birhanu et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73566

Coral Reefs in the Indonesian Seas Threatened by Heat and Cold Stress, Watanabe et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121003

Geographical differences in marine heatwaves across global coral reef zones, YAO & WANG, Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.015

Hemisphere-Level Comparison of Climate-Driven Humpback Whale Breeding Migrations to the Eastern Pacific Off Costa Rica, Pelayo-González et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73594

PondNet – towards a global network of experiments on the effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems, Matias et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.07450

Potential Geographic Distribution of the Rare and Endangered Plant Sauvagesia rhodoleuca in China Under Climate Change Scenarios, Wei et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73295

Prevalent Greening Conceals the Forgone Ecological Potential of Forest Loss in Southeast Asia, Zhao et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121593

Projected Future of African Marine Ecosystems Under Climate Change and Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, Awo et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022687

Record-Breaking Marine Heatwaves Across Global Coral Reefs in 2024, Yao & Wang, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl122086

Sources of Uncertainty in Ocean Net Primary Productivity Projections Under Climate Change, Grix & Tagliabue, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl119652

Spatial Distribution of Topmouth Gudgeonis Pseudorasbora parva Under Climate Change by Ensemble Models, Li et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73612

Warming climate amplifies vapor pressure deficit limits on gross primary productivity, Xu et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72549-8

Warming temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns may exacerbate pest damage in North American forests, Clipp et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution 10.1038/s41559-026-03039-9

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Coastal ecological disasters triggered by an extreme rainfall event thousands of kilometers inland, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01418-3 31 cites.

GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

A Global Comparison of Direct and Legacy Effects of Drought on Ecosystem Productivity, Liu et al., Ecology Letters Open Access 10.1111/ele.70390

Atmospheric oxygen constraints on Southern Ocean productivity and drivers of carbon uptake, Jin et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-026-01944-z

Current understanding of viral contributions to soil carbon cycling, Mei & Balcázar, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00774-2

Ecosystem-Scale Methane Emissions From Peatlands of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Bieniada & Humphreys, Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2025jg009439

Incorporating methane isotopologues alters tropical and subtropical methane emission estimates, Yu et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72668-2

Methane intensity and emissions across major oil and gas basins and individual jurisdictions using MethaneSAT observations, Williams et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5961-2026

Mid-Holocene retreat of the Greenland Ice Sheet indicated by subglacial methane release, Hatton et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-026-01976-5

Nitrogen Release From Permafrost Thaw May Partially Offset Future Soil Carbon Losses, Gaillard et al., PubMed pmid:42068065

Phytoplankton and Temperature Control Seasonal Dynamics of Greenhouse Gases in a Large River, Koschorreck et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2025jg009300

Soil microbes are the tiny bioengineers running Earth’s underground factory, Hassan-Dalléac et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03544-6

Soil pH Amelioration Fosters Persistent Carbon Sinks Through Mineral Stabilization and Aggregate Protection, Dong et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70896

Tree diversity reduces the temperature sensitivity of soil carbon release, Yan et al., Journal of Ecology 10.1111/1365-2745.70333

Warming climate amplifies vapor pressure deficit limits on gross primary productivity, Xu et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72549-8

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The Total Carbon Column Observing Network's GGG2020 data version, Earth system science data, 10.5194/essd-16-2197-2024 94 cites.

CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Articulating conditions for geological carbon storage: Conditional acceptance in three European communities, Oltra et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104739

Managed rainforests support higher carbon density and sequestration in the Congo Basin, Sagang et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72399-4

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The carbon dioxide removal gap, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-01984-6 75 cites.

Decarbonization

A multi-criteria assessment of decarbonization pathways for heavy-duty trucks, ?ahin & Özekinci, Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability Open Access 10.1088/2634-4505/ae62a1

A multi-dimensional framework for comparing zero-carbon energy sources in the energy transition, Park, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104721

Integrated planning of net-zero power systems for all, Zhu et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-026-02054-1

Photovoltaic Modelling Within the Pan-European Climate Database v4.2: Capturing PV Diversity for a Climate-Resilient European Grid, Silva et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.202500387

The electrifying moment? Electric vehicles and the rural-urban divide in Germany and the U.S., Gabehart & Stefes, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115356

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Evaluating microgrid business models for rural electrification: A novel framework and three cases in Southeast Asia, Energy Sustainable Development/Energy for sustainable development, 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101443 21 cites.

Geoengineering climate

Projected Future of African Marine Ecosystems Under Climate Change and Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, Awo et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022687

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Dependency of the impacts of geoengineering on the stratospheric sulfur injection strategy – Part 2: How changes in the hydrological cycle depend on the injection rate and model used, Earth System Dynamics, 10.5194/esd-15-405-2024 11 cites.

Aerosols

Atmospheric warming contributions from airborne microplastics and nanoplastics, Liu et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02620-1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Impacts of spatial heterogeneity of anthropogenic aerosol emissions in a regionally refined global aerosol–climate model, Geoscientific model development, 10.5194/gmd-17-3507-2024 2 cites.

Climate change communications & cognition

Beyond post-truth: Projecting the future trajectory of climate misinformation, Rice, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000916

Climate dissonance: Examining the relationship between climate beliefs and attitudes toward fossil fuel activities in Norway, Nadeau et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104750

Identifying Flawed Reasoning in Contrarian Claims about Climate Change, Flack et al., Environmental Communication 10.1080/17524032.2026.2663476

Polarizing figures in polarized times: presidential involvement and public opinion on climate policy, Childree, Environmental Politics 10.1080/09644016.2026.2666997

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Scientists’ identities shape engagement with environmental activism, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01412-9 22 cites.

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Improved management reduces carbon losses in semi-arid grasslands: An analysis of upscaled CO? fluxes from portable chambers, Carrascosa et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111215

Locally led climate adaptation: Business unusual for agricultural research, Hellin et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000910

Low Climate Benefit of Nordic Coastal Marshes: Site Conditions Outweigh Grazing Effects and Shape Trade-Offs Between Carbon Storage and Its Stability, Leiva-Dueñas et al., PubMed pmid:42068073

Managed rainforests support higher carbon density and sequestration in the Congo Basin, Sagang et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72399-4

Rainfall Dynamics in Sri Lanka Over Five Decades (1970–2023): Implications for Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change, Abeysingha et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70415

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Crop rotational diversity can mitigate climate?induced grain yield losses, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17298 41 cites.

Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

Are Changes in Seasonal and Annual Precipitation in the Balkan Peninsula Driven by Increases in Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases or by Teleconnection Variability?, Buri?, Journal of Hydrometeorology 10.1175/jhm-d-25-0184.1

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown modulates atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate, Mimi et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72555-w

Projected runoff responses to climate and vegetation changes on the Tibetan Plateau, FENG et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109024

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Hidden delta degradation due to fluvial sediment decline and intensified marine storms, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adk1698 38 cites.

Climate change economics

Climate finance challenges and solutions for global climate change, Park, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1007/s13412-021-00715-z

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Empirical testing of the environmental Kuznets curve: evidence from 182 countries of the world, Environment Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-024-04890-1 17 cites.

Climate change mitigation public policy research

Beyond technical and financial feasibility: The role of collaborative governance in renewable energy adoption at municipal wastewater treatment plants in the United States, Gupta et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104729

The politics and governance of phase-out: a framework for empirical research, Rinscheid et al., Environmental Politics 10.1080/09644016.2026.2666995

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-48112-8 77 cites.

Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Climate change-related migration and displacement: addressing the adaptation gap, Marcus, The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101462

Decision to stay in climate-risk areas: cognitive biases and preferences in coastal Bangladesh, Vollan et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32168527.v1

“Global significant trends and countermeasures pertaining to climate change adaptation: Translating ambition into action post-COP29”, Liu et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104391

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Wildfire risk management in the era of climate change, PNAS Nexus, 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae151 43 cites.

Climate change impacts on human health

Climate health: an emerging transdisciplinary field, Rifai, Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1837784

Future age-specific exposure to heavy rainfall disasters under climate and demographic change, Matsuura et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2026.100817

Reclassifying lethal heat, Rouse et al., Apollo Open Access 10.17863/cam.128895

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Effects of climate vulnerability on household sanitation access, functionality, and practices in rural Cambodia, Environment Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-024-04881-2 6 cites.

Climate change & geopolitics
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
China at COP27: CBDR, national sovereignty, and climate justice, Climate and Development, 10.1080/17565529.2024.2349652 1 citation.

Other

Evolving Fire Frequency in the Western United States and Its Links to Human Influence, Madakumbura et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007077

Transient tracer observations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence reveal shift from younger to older inflow waters, Gerke et al., Ocean science Open Access 10.5194/os-22-1391-2026

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

2026 Value of Water Index, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, and New Bridge Strategy

Half of voters say they have been impacted by a major weather event, e.g., wildfire, flooding, a hurricane, a deep freeze, or drought, in the last five years. Roughly one in five say that they lost water service after a major weather event.

2030 Climate Action Plan, City of Boston, Environment Department, City of Boston

The plan is grounded in two core and interconnected areas of work: mitigation and resilience – which frame every strategy and action included. Mitigation efforts focus on rapidly reducing emissions from the sectors that contribute most to Boston’s carbon footprint, particularly buildings, transportation, and energy. Resilience strategies are designed to protect people, infrastructure including new, existing, and historic assets, open space, and neighborhoods from the growing impacts of climate change, while strengthening the City’s ability to adapt over time and creating pathways to good green jobs that support resilience and mitigation investments. In addition to tracking progress on mitigation and resilience, we acknowledge the broader impacts of climate work across three deeply interconnected areas: public health outcomes, climate justice, and the intersection of mitigation and resilience benefits. This approach recognizes that effective climate action must deliver healthier living and working environments, address historic inequities, and maximize co-benefits, ensuring that investments reduce emissions while also protecting communities most exposed to climate risks. Climate justice is embedded throughout the plan, recognizing that the impacts of climate change will not affect neighborhoods equally and that climate action presents an opportunity to correct past harms. Communities that have been and will be adversely affected by climate change must be prioritized in both decision-making and investment.

Where rising climate risks and insurance costs will hit hardest, Manann Donoghoe, The Brookings Institution

One concept to help understand how climate-related risks could differentially affect households across the U.S. is adaptive capacity, or the ability of a household or community to plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change. By analyzing adaptive capacity in relation to instability in the homeowners insurance market, the author identifies which regions and demographic groups that instability is likely to adversely affect. Drawing on data from the U.S. Treasury Department on homeowners insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Risk Index, and Census Bureau demographic data on wealth, race, and ethnicity, the author shows the insurance premium increases and nonrenewal rates (the proportion of policies that an insurer decides not to extend at term’s end) that different demographic groups and regions faced between 2018 and 2022.

Critical Minerals, Water Insecurity and Injustice, Nunbogu et al., United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health

The investigation finds that systemic global failures are allowing the costs of critical minerals extraction to fall disproportionately on some of the world's most vulnerable communities, while the benefits accumulate elsewhere in the form of electric vehicles (EVs), renewable energy systems, and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The authors do not question the need for clean energy systems or the digital infrastructure underpinning them. Instead, it asks who is paying for and benefitting from humanity’s progress in those areas, and finds a deeply unjust answer.

European State of the Climate – Report 2025, Emerton et al., World Meteorological Organization and European Union, represented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

Rapid warming in Europe is reducing snow and ice cover, while dangerously high air temperatures, drought, heatwaves and record ocean temperatures are affecting regions from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. Europe, along with many other regions of the globe, is exposed to increasing impacts – from record heatwaves on land and at sea, to devastating wildfires, and continuing biodiversity loss – with consequences for societies and ecosystems across Europe.

Climate Change in Central Finland, Kühn et al., Finnish Meteorological Institute

Climate change is progressing in Finland faster than the global average, and its impacts are already clearly observable in Central Finland. The authors examines the current state of the climate in Central Finland and the Jyväskylä region, observed changes, and the projected development of the climate throughout the current century. The assessments are based on long?term observational datasets, the latest climate model simulations, and SSP emission scenarios.

PwC’s Third Annual State of Decarbonization Report, PwC

The authors draw on AI-enabled insights of millions of data points from across thousands of corporate disclosures and related documents. Many companies changed how they talk about sustainability, but not what they do about it. Commitments were persistent even as the ground shifted beneath them. Eight in ten (82%) companies held steady or accelerated the timeline they needed for achieving their ambitions. More companies are increasing ambitions (23%) compared to those decreasing (18%). Progress held, with more organizations on track to meet their targets than in prior years.

France's Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, Climate Interminsterial Team, Government of France

Since 2017, France has committed to a gradual phase-out of fossil fuels, mobilizing a broad range of ecological planning tools. The 2017 Climate Plan introduced a legislation to phase out hydrocarbon production in France by 2040, notably by ending the granting of new exploration permits and by not renewing existing exploitation concessions. This plan has also led to a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption in buildings which fell by 42% between 2017 and 2022. It further aimed at accelerate the electrification of the transport sector in order to reduce its dependence on oil, by setting a end-of-sale target for thermal passenger vehicles by 2040. France will also address five environmental challenges including mitigation of global warming, adaptation to the inevitable consequences of climate change, preservation and restoration of biodiversity, conservation of resources, and reduction of pollution that impacts health.

How import rules can cut global methane emissions, Anna Kanduth and Claudio Forner, Climate Analytics

Methane is one of the quickest levers available to slow warming in the near term, yet current policies are nowhere near enough to deliver the cuts needed by 2030. As governments look for ways to narrow that gap, methane import standards are emerging as a powerful new tool. This briefing explores how the European Union’s new rules for imported oil, gas, and coal could drive emissions cuts far beyond its borders – and how, if other major importers follow, they could help close more than 40% of the gap to a 1.5°C-consistent methane pathway. At current trade levels, an EU standard of 0.2% methane intensity could reduce emissions by more than 3 Mt CH? annually from its imports alone. Wider adoption by six other major importers could cut global methane emissions by over 10 Mt CH?, driven in particular by Russia and the United States, which have the largest excess methane emissions relative to a 0.2% intensity standard.

Water Supply Systems, Fire, and Finance: A Workshop Synthesis Report, Pierce et al., UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

A new UCLA-led convening highlights how wildfire risk could reshape water system planning and finance. Water systems were designed to provide drinking water and fight structure fires — not urban wildfires. Expanding system capacity to fight extreme events creates tradeoffs with water quality and affordability. Fire-related water use is often not fully paid for, straining system finances. Coordination between water and fire agencies is inconsistent and often informal. Recovery of wildfire-related costs raises equity concerns for ratepayers.

Massachusetts Carbon Dioxide Removal Study, Mittelman et al., Massachusetts Clean Energy Center

The authors build on Massachusetts’ prior planning to assess which carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pathways are most feasible and scalable in the state’s policy, economic, and natural resource context. The outcomes of this effort will inform future iterations of the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plans (CECPs), which are the flagship climate planning documents, to provide an assessment of best practices and policy options that Massachusetts should consider when responsibly integrating CDR into its net-zero strategy. The authors describe and assess 23 CDR and storage pathways across several characteristics, analyzing their suitability for deployment and research and development (R&D) leadership in Massachusetts.

Diesel Reduction Progress II, Bledsoe et al., Pembina Institute

Clean electricity projects in remote communities grew 20 times faster between 2016 and 2026 than the previous decade, with most of this progress (about 92%) occurring between 2020 and 2025. Roughly three quarters of community-scale clean electricity projects built in remote communities are wholly or majority Indigenous-owned. Altogether, remote communities have added more than 65 megawatts (MW) of clean electricity capacity over the past decade, and now produce over 126 GWh clean energy annually, with 35% from wind, 33% from hydro, and 30% from solar. Remote renewable electricity generating projects have reduced annual diesel consumption by more than 31 million liters, and now account for 7% of total electricity supply in remote communities. Since 2016 these projects have displaced over 142 million liters of diesel, more diesel than all three territories use to generate electricity in an entire year.

Credit Where Credit is Due. Strengthening carbon markets to protect Ontario steel and mobilize low-carbon investment, Chloe McElhone and Richard Mullin, Clean Prosperity

In order to protect Ontario’s steel sector and signal to other industries that Ontario is open for business, the authors recommend strengthening Ontario’s carbon market in the following ways; recognize real emissions reductions from fuel-switching investments in the steel sector; award carbon credits to clearly signal that the Ontario carbon market recognizes and values real emissions reductions achieved through low-carbon investments; support predictable and stable credit values by redistributing credit revenues among all regulated emitters and opening the market to third-party investors; and publish market data frequently and create a centralized marketplace to build investor confidence and incentivize investment.

2026 State of the Water Industry, American Water Works Association

The industry survey respondents reveal a sector facing growing pressure across infrastructure, financing, and long-term water supply reliability. While overall sector health remains stable, the five-year outlook has declined to its lowest level in nearly a decade, signaling growing concern about the future. Aging infrastructure remains the most pressing challenge, closely followed by the need for sustainable funding and long-term water supply reliability. Many utilities are struggling to fully recover costs through rates and fees, creating a widening gap between revenues and rising expenses. External pressures, including economic uncertainty, political dynamics, natural hazards, and supply chain disruptions, are compounding these financial challenges and complicating long-term planning.

Oil Fund Vote Watch: Climate 2025. Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) voting at fossil fuel AGMs, Lucy Brooks, Framtiden i våre hender / Future in Our Hands

The author evaluates Norges Bank Investment Management's (NBIM) 2025 active ownership activities at 12 priority portfolio companies. These firms were selected because they are the world’s largest investor-owned upstream oil and gas developers currently expanding production in defiance of scientific pathways to net-zero. The author examines whether NBIM used its voting power and escalation tools to signal accountability for these firms' climate failings. Despite NBIM’s stated position that "climate risk is fundamental financial risk," the fund’s actions in 2025 at these high-priority firms reveal a significant implementation gap. Of the 23 priority votes analyzed across 12 companies, NBIM signaled disapproval of management in only three instances—with just one potentially linked to climate concerns.

Stop Greed, Build Green. A Working Class Climate Agenda, Climate and Community Institute

The climate crisis is a core driver of the cost-of-living crisis and instability we see across the economy. Electricity and gas bills are the highest drivers of inflation, rent gouging and skyrocketing insurance premiums are making housing unaffordable, extreme weather is driving food prices up, and the last three summers have been the three hottest on record. And while prices go up, the quality of our health care, goods, and homes is getting worse. Amidst all of this, billionaires are becoming richer, Big Tech firms are spending trillions on energy-hungry data centers, and a majority of U.S. residents are profoundly disillusioned with the political system. A Working Class Climate Agenda would quickly relieve the cost-of-living crisis and transform the economy to stem future climate-fueled affordability crises. More importantly, it puts the majority of voters in the driver’s seat of economic and climate transformation

The Reuse Dividend: Unlocking Economic Growth from Britain's Existing Buildings, Nelson et al., Don't Waste Buildings

The authors analyzed financial incentives used across eight developed economies — including France, Germany, the United States and Ireland — and found a proven blueprint that Britain has failed to adopt. The authors recommends four complementary measures to address building reuse including levelling the value added tax playing field, tax credits or relief, such as introducing capital gains tax relief and stamp duty discounts for bringing vacant buildings back into use while meeting sustainability quality measures, creating targeted grants for struggling high streets and derelict buildings; and subsidized finance by establishing long-term low-interest loans with repayment grants for deep reuse projects through the National Wealth Fund, or a similar institution

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EGU2026 - Five days of virtual learning

Sat, 9 May 2026 10:59:01 EST

This blog evolved over the week of May 4 to 8, 2026 when I was adding to it from day to day as time allowed. It may still see some updates even after fully published on our homepage as some more information becomes available.

This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) took place from May 4 to 8 2026 both on premise in Vienna and online as a fully hybrid conference. This year, I had decided to join virtually, picking and chosing sessions I was interested in. This blog post is a compilation - a kind of personal diary - of the happenings in Vienna from my perspective.

All told, 21,117 abstracts were submitted for the conference back in January and this year’s programme included over 1,000 scientific sessions, 62 short courses, 16 keynote Union Symposia and Great Debates, 38 Medal and Award lectures, as well as the Job Centre, Artists in Residence, GeoCinema, Science-Policy events and much, much more.

As this post is fairly large, you can jump to the different days, via these links:

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Summary

The already published prolog blog post contains a summary of what I had planned for the week. Let's see how well - or not - the plans match reality!

Monday, May 4

EGU Today

The very first session I attended at this year's EGU conference was EOS1.1 Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection which started at 8:30 in the monring and lasted until lunchtime with a 30 minutes break in the middle.

Science communication includes the efforts of natural, physical and social scientists, communications professionals, and teams that communicate the process and values of science and scientific findings to non-specialist audiences outside of formal educational settings. The goals of science communication can include enhanced dialogue, understanding, awareness, enthusiasm, influencing sustainable behaviour change, improving decision making, and/or community building. Channels to facilitate science communication can include in-person interaction through teaching and outreach programs, and online through social media, mass media, podcasts, video, or other methods. This session invited presentations by individuals and teams on science communication practice, research, and reflection.

During this session we heard about many examples of science eduction and communication in various countries (Italy, Spain, Ireland, The Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium...), settings (schools, university, public outreach, prisons...) and topics (Climate change, natural hazards, polar science, geodesy...):

Lorena Salgado - SmarTerrae: Applied scientific training in geoscience from the earliest educational stages
Gabriele Weigelhofer - Interactive wetland education: Classroom materials following a constructivist instructional framework (Horizon Europe Restore4Life)
Martin Sehnal - Scientific Storytelling in Geodesy: Using Cartoons, Videos, and Digital Platforms to Reach New Audiences
Chiara Anzolini - Speculative Storytelling as a Tool for Biodiversity and Climate Communication
Rob Butler - The Shear Zone Channel – reflections on sharing geological science on YouTube
Reinout Verbeke - Planet Belgium: narrating the geological odyssey of a country through multimedia storytelling
C. Nur Schuba - Using sequential art to communicate scientific ocean drilling
Federica Flapp - “Signals from the climate in FVG”: a magazine enhancing climate awareness and bridging the gap between science and society at the regional level
Rodrigo Martinez-Abarca - A guide to outreach geosciences on social media: the case of Divulgación Terróloga
Maria del Socorro Fonseca Cerda - From Science to Practice: Co-Designing Windstorm Hazard & Risk Information for Dutch Portals
Sandra Ricart - Co-Designed, Stakeholder-Driven Governance for the WEFE Nexus under Climate Extremes: Lessons from Lake Como, Italy
Alex Lipp - www.SewageMap.co.uk and POOPy: Open-source tools for understanding and communicating the impacts of sewage pollution on waterways in real-time
Tatiana Izquierdo - Access, verification, and trust in extreme weather events communication: age and discipline matter
Thais Siqueira - From Landscape to Geohazard: Assessing volcanic hazard communication in Tenerife geosites
Deniz Vural - From Network to Ecosystem: Reflecting on Early Career–Led Science Communication through APECS
Carla Mateus - Prison talks: bringing climate change conversations into the Irish prisons

This session included my own presentation right in the middle before the coffee break where I talked about our website relaunch project as already mentioned in my prolog blog post. In the meantime, I created a "companion blog post" for my presentation which includes all the slides and accompanying text as well as a link to download the PDF-version.

The session ended for today - there'll be more tomorrow! - with Philip Heron giving the invited Katia and Maurice Krafft Award Lecture titled What we’ve learned from teaching people in prison to Think Like a Scientist. Here is a snippet from this abstract to give you some context

Scientific thinking requires the critical analysis of information, while science itself thrives on the diversity of ideas. Yet, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects have historically struggled to be inclusive and accessible to students from underrepresented communities - meaning we often miss a diversity of voices. Furthermore, STEM subjects have often been rigid in their teaching structure, creating barriers to education for students with more specific (or unrecognised) learning needs.

To address this, our science outreach course Think Like A Scientist was designed to improve critical thinking and encourage independent thought by applying adaptive education practices to create inclusive and accessible classroom environments. The program started in 2017 and has been applied in several different settings (e.g., schools and adult learning centres), but has mainly featured in prisons around the world (including England, Canada, Australia, and Spain).

In the afternoon I joined session EOS4.1 Geoethics: Linking Geoscience Knowledge, Ethical Responsibility, and Action. This session was created by merging EOS4.1 (26 abstracts) Geoethics: Linking Geoscience Knowledge, Ethical Responsibility, and Action, EOS 2.6 (9 abstracts) From crisis to action: Education and communication for climate, ocean, overshoot and geoethics and EOS4.2 (7 abstracts) Geoscience research and collaboration in times of geopolitical crises.

Geoscientists play a key role in providing essential information in decision-making processes that consider environmental, social, and economic consequences of geoscience work. Therefore, their responsibilities extend beyond scientific analysis alone. Global challenges, such as climate change, resource management, and disaster risk reduction, push geoscientists to expand their role beyond research and to engage ethically in public efforts.

Geoethics provides a framework for reflecting on the ethical, social, and cultural implications of geoscience in research, practice, and education, guiding responsible action for society and the environment. It also encourages the scientific community to move beyond purely technical solutions by embracing just, inclusive, and transformative approaches to socio-environmental issues.

Furthermore, science is inseparable from social and geopolitical contexts. These conditions shape what research is funded, whose knowledge is valued, with whom we collaborate, and who has access to conferences. As Earth and planetary scientists, we must consider the human and environmental consequences of our work. This is especially true in Earth observation, where many satellites have both scientific and military applications, and where scientific tools have at times enabled ecocide and resource exploitation under neocolonial systems.

This session will offer insights and reflections across a wide range of topics, from theoretical considerations to case studies, foster awareness and discussion of sensitive issues at the geoscience–society interface and explore how geoethics can guide responsible behavior and policies in the geosciences.

The nine presentations in the first half of the session covered a wide range of topics related to the field of geoethics. We heard about moral values in the scope of ecosystems and biodiversity, about creating a new curriculum for ethical awareness in Ghana, about respecting indegenous knowledge in Australia in the era of big data, about turning sustainability into practice, about a workers.coop in the UK creating data tools for scientists, about avoiding "impact washing", about the ethical usage of AI and LLMs, about the ongoing anthropocene debate and the needed ethical framework for climate intervention research:

Jeannine G.M. de Caluwe - Ecological Moral Voluntarism is a Corollary of Ethical Education
Samuel Nyarko - Paving the way for geoethics pedagogy in Ghana: what students’ geoethical reasoning reveals
Simon Haberle - Humanising Natural History Collections: Putting CARE principles into practice in the geosciences in Australia
Janne J. Salovaara - Critical Sustainability in Geosciences — A praxis
Jacqueline Campbell - Worker Co-operative Research Laboratories; An Alternative Model for Ambitious Science
Rosa Rantanen - Social impact or impact washing? The case for a deeper ethical understanding and concrete action
Paul Cleverley - Fostering the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in the Geosciences
Emlyn Koster - The Anthropocene as Earth’s natural to unnatural history transition
Billy Williams - An Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Research: Keeping Pace with Rapidly Evolving Needs

After the coffee break we heard about the EU's high dependency on critical raw materials, how AGU responds in the U.S. with science being under threat by the current administration, about solar-radiation management concerns in Pakistan, about Climate Interactive's en-Roads simulator and how its utilized, about the game ClimarisQ, about the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's Antarctic Station Akademik Vernadsky, about the Palestine Space Institute and doing science in regions of war, about different measures scientific institutions are taking (or not) in case of armed conflicts and genocide:

Ludwig Hermann - Four-pillar policy recommendation to increase the European Union’s critical raw material resilience
Janice Lachance - Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Climate Science and Engagement in Shifting Policy Environments
Abdul Waheed - Towards Inclusive and Ethical SRM Governance in Pakistan: Bridging Policy Gaps and Global South Representation
Juliette Rooney-Varga - Interactive simulation with En-ROADS spurs climate action among decision-makers
Davide Faranda - ClimarisQ: What can we learn by playing a game for climate education?
Svitlana Krakovska - From Polar Science to Public Action: 30 Years of the Ukrainian Antarctic Station Akademik Vernadsky in Times of Polycrisis
Divya M Persaud - Political Education in Science: Two Years of Palestine Space Institute
Stefano Corradini - Beyond Scientific Neutrality: Ethical Responsibility and Geopolitical Accountability in Public Research Institutions
Shahzad Gani - Best practices for geosciences in the time of crises

In this part of the session, I had the chance to tell participants about the results of the Skeptical Science experiment. Like with my other presentation you can read up on it in a companion article from where you can also download the PDF-version of my talk.

Before my presentation I had asked Pimnutcha Promduangsri to grab a few pictures onsite in Vienna to also get some impressions from how it looked like as seen in the conference room. Here is a compilation of some of the images Pim was kind enough to send over:

Tuesday, May 5

EGU Today

Tuesday morning started at 8:30 with the 2nd half of EOS1.1 Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection and lasted until lunchtime with a 30 minutes break in the middle.

In the presentations before the coffee break, the speakers told us about projects in Switzerland, Hongkong, France, Japan, Greenland, Italy, the UK and the United States. We heard about projects related to food, rainfall, soil, caves, air quality, clean water and flood hydrology and how they were used in communication and outreach activities with the public.

Alex Valach - Community outreach using positive sensory experiences: A taste of climate change
Hermione Mok - Communicating Food and Climate: The Role of Science Communication for Engagement
Auguste Gires - Enhancing awareness of the geophysical environment through a multisensory rainfall experience
Keiko Mori - Appealing to the senses, long-run workshops and exhibitions on soil for museum visitors
Gina E. Moseley - Science communication in Greenland: Experiences from the Kalaallit Nunaat Caves and Climate Outreach Project (KINDLE)
Marta Galvagno - Engaging young audiences in climate change: moving beyond fear through active science communication
Carly Reddington - Visualising historical changes in air pollution with the Air Quality Stripes
Luisa Galgani - The Italian Citizen Science Observatory: a growing association open to collaboration to foster public participation and education in water research Europe-wide
Lisa Gallagher - Learning, creating, and sharing: A science communication framework for water and climate education
Linda Speight - Communication within the UK flood hydrology community: bridging the gaps between science and practice

After the coffee break we heard about AI-created virtual climate scientists, how generative AI could be utilized for paleontological communication, how some activism increases trust in climate scientists, how science communication and activism is impacted by authoritarianism and how knowledge can be made relevant for society as well as for individual choices. Last but not least, Joshua Howgeg gave the Angela Croome Award Lecture in which he talked about lessons for non-ficting writing based on his experience as a magazine editor.

Corinne Brevik - Creating AI-driven Virtual Climate Scientists to introduce both students and the general public to climate science careers
Luis Azevedo Rodrigues - Generative AI and 3D Digital Technologies for Paleontological Heritage Communication: An Epistemological Framework and Practical Applications
Erik van Sebille - A little bit of activism increases trust in climate scientists
Karsten Haustein - Science communication and academic activism in times of rising authoritarianism and Trumpism
Rosa Rodríguez Gasén - From Knowledge Production to Societal Relevance in Earth Sciences
Elena Claire Ricci - Expanding the Space of Climate Agency: From Individual Decisions to System Dynamics
Joshua Howgeg - Sleepy cat and the cosmic dust: Lessons for non-fiction writing from 10 years as a magazine editor - Angela Croome Award Lecture

After the lunch break I joined short course SC3.4 Science Diplomacy: What is it and how to engage to learn more about the overlap between science and diplomacy. This course was convened by Lene Topp, Zsanett Greta Papp, Alfonso Acosta and Noel Baker who all gave short keynote about their connections with the topic. They were joined online by Jan Marco Müller who gave a short presentation about his path from geoscientists into science diplomacy at the European Commission.

Global challenges, such as climate change and natural hazards, are becoming increasingly complex and interdependent, and solutions have to be global in scope and based on a firm scientific understanding of the challenges we face. At the same time, Science and technology are playing an increasingly important role in a complex geopolitical landscape. In this difficult setting, scientific collaboration can not only be used to help address global challenges but also to foster international relations and build bridges across geopolitical divisions. Science diplomacy is a broad term used both to describe the various roles that science and researchers play in bridging geopolitical gaps and finding solutions to international issues, and also the study of how science intertwines with diplomacy in pursuing these goals.

During this Short Course, science diplomacy experts will introduce key science diplomacy concepts and outline the skills that are required to effectively engage in science diplomacy. They will also provide practical insights on how researchers can actively participate in science diplomacy, explore real-life examples of science diplomacy, and highlight resources where participants can learn more about science diplomacy moving forward.

Here are some of my take-aways from this course:

Science and diplomacy are intricitely linked in that one informs the other and one is needed for the other and this goes both ways in each case
The rise of populism and authoriatarianism are changing the landscape
Geoscience has a lot of touchpoints with diplomacy
Quote (Maria Leptin): "We don't ask our researchers to be diplomats - yet their excellent science naturally feeds into global policy."
Nations retreat from multilateralism
Nations put up barriers to international scientific collaboration
Some challenge evidence-informed policymaking
Scientific endeavours like turning a wetland into a protected area can have diplomatic implications if the water comes from across the border or if too much water is used for agriculture
Right now, scientific spending often has to compete with defense spending
Some institutions may be tempted to accept defense funding for "dual use" research
Such "dual use research" could however make an institution's campus a military target in case of war

Resources linked in the presentation for anybody interested in learning more:

EU Science Diplomacy Alliance

Free online 8-module introduction course on Science Diplomacy
9 case studies on Science Diplomacy

The World Academy of Sciences
Towards a European Framework for Science Diplomacy (e.g. new EU report)
Article: What is a Science Diplomat?
Article: Building a Science Diplomacy Curriculum
EGU GeoPolicy Blog: Science Diplomacy in a new Geopolitical order
The Science Diplomat

After the afternoon coffee-break it was time for a fun but most likely challenging session for the authors: EOS1.6 - Up-Goer Five Challenge: Making Big Ideas Simpler by Talking About Them in Words We Use a Lot. The session was held in one the underground PICO sessions and unfortunately, the Zoom-sessions wasn't completely stable, so I didn't always get the full presentation.

Whether you thrill at the chance to tell taxi drivers and dinner-table companions about your research or want to hide every time someone asks, “What do you do?”, we offer an exciting and valuable challenge for you.

Inspired by the XKCD comic that describes the Saturn V Rocket using only the thousand most common words in English (https://xkcd.com/1133/), we ask speakers to present short (~5-minute) scientific talks using the same vocabulary (determined via the Up-Goer Five Text Editor: https://splasho.com/upgoer5). The talk is preferably about your own research but can also be about a general topic you are interested in.

Here are some examples for Up-Goer-Five lingo - can you guess what they describe (solutions below the image)?

people-flying things
sky water
space eye in the sky
black underground burn stuff
computer pictures
middle water
cold part of the world with water

Solutions:

people-flying things = airplanes
sky water = rain
space eye in the sky = satellite
black underground burn stuff = coal & oil
computer pictures = models
middle water = Mediterranean Sea
cold part of the world with water = Arctic

Wednesday, May 6

EGU Today

My day started with Union Symposium US6 - Climate change, morals, values and policies, convened by Noel Baker, Chloe Hill, Mario Scharfbillig, Emmanuel Salmon and Maria Vittoria Gargiulo:

The climate challenge is no longer only about understanding the Earth system, it is also about understanding ourselves as humans. As a global society, response to climate change information and climate action policies is shaped not only by scientific evidence, but also by moral values, cultural identities, religious beliefs, fears, and psychological dynamics. Attitudes that may appear irrational often reflect deeper questions of meaning, trust, and social belonging. How can scientists and governments communicate climate science in ways that resonate with diverse societies without resorting to manipulative tactics? How can decision-makers design ethical and inclusive policies that inspire meaningful action at individual, community, and societal levels?

This Union Symposium will bring together experts from multiple disciplines to explore these questions through both scientific research and practical experience. Speakers will examine the moral, psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that shape public engagement with climate change. Perspectives from religious traditions, as well as indigenous and marginalized communities, will broaden the dialogue and offer insights into how climate communication and policy can become more inclusive, trustworthy, and impactful.

The symposium started with an introduction by Dr. Mario Scharfbillig, who uses behavioural insights to improve evidence-informed policymaking and democratic processes in the EU. He first noted that there is broad global support for climate action but that this is not really well-known due to a perception gap leading people to consistently underestimate the willingness of others to act. This also holds true for politicians and there own voters.

People have different priorities dependent on whether the focus is on higher order values, personal values, values terminology, social identities or the big picture. People live in different worlds which can be caused by and/or lead to information overload, distorted reality, echo chambers or even echo platforms and a "fantasy-industrial complex".

Illustration based on JRC-Publication Values and Identities - a policymaker's guide

After this introduction, each panelist gave a 10-minute keynote to "set the stage" for the subsequent discussion.

Raffaella Russo is an economist and project manager working at the science-policy intcrface, focusing on the socio-cconomic impacts of climate risks, risk perception, and adaptation strategies. She is a member Of EGIYs Climate Hazards and Risks Task Force.

She started with a quote from the European Environement Agency: "Climate change is already impacting Europeans' daily lives and will continue to do for the foreseeable future. Europe is expected to get warmer, some regions getting drier, while others wetter. These changes will not only impact our health bu also the ecosystems we depend on. The EU is preparing to live with a changing climate through various adaptation measures."

She then gave a few examples illustrating the transition from isolated shocks to recurring and compoundng events happening in Italy just between 2023 and 2025. She pointed out that - while funding from the country and EU was allocated after the 2023 Emilia Romagne flooding - there is a need to strengthen the private sector involvement in climate adaptation programming. In addition, fragmentation has to be replaced by coordination in order to reach a whole-of-society approach to climate resilience.

Eli Mitchell-Larson is a climate advocate, policy entrepreneur, and Ph.D. researcher based at the University of Oxford. Eli currently advises the Climate Pathfinders Foundation, facilitating grants to advance carbon dioxide removal and next-generation climate interventions. He previously co-founded and served as Launch Director and Chief Scientist at Carbon Gap, Europe's leading NGO dedicated to responsibly scaling carbon dioxide removal.

He laid out five hypothesis related to climate advocacy [I updated the list after watching the recording]:

For geoscientists there are no neutral choices. Every choice we make is politically relevant.
Climate policy-advocacy is not a monolith, it can be behind the scenes, it can be slow, it can be measured, it can be injecting expertise where needed.
Engaging with climate policy is not as challenging or isolating as a lot of researchers may fear.
Engaging with climate policy makes you a better scientist.
Geoscientists are uniquely suited to be climate policy advocates.

Dr. Gabriel Filippelli is the Chancellor's Professor, Director of the Center for Urban Health, Executive Directorr Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University in the United States. He started his keynote with an image of the Keeling Curve which is a "5-alarm fire" for scientists but doesn't really mean much for people you might meet in a train or on the street.

Individuals care about concrete instead of abstract things (e.g. fuel prices vs. polar bears) and there's therefore a need to change the message. Compare "things" like energy infrastructure on equal footing and with concrete numbers, so for example point out the noise and pollution caused by an oil refinery to that of a solar farm. You may also need to change the messenger. So, instead of having a climate scientist talk with a local community, train students to become "Climate Fellows" who can then work towards making their neighbourhood climate resilient. This also provides an opportunity for the students, many of whom later work in sustainability and environmental careers.

Emelina Corrales Cordero is a Costa Rican marine biologist, environmental consultant, and executive coach With over 20 years of experience in marine conservation and climate action. She integrates science, mindfulness—rooted in the Plum Village tradition— and leadership to support leaders navigating eco-anxiety while sustaining purposeful action. She is the co-creator of Politics of Being, author of Grandmother Ocean Speaks, and was awarded the French Senate Medal of Honor in 2025.

After a short meditation exercise, Emelina introduced us to "The Mediator, The Warrior and The Artist" to help with navigating geological and biological timescales. She started her keynote with a quote from Christine Wamsler et al. (2019): "Transformative change toward sustainability depends on changes in inner dimension such as: beliefs, values and worldviews.". This was followed by a quote from Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn: "There are two dimensions to life, and we shall be able to touch both. One is like a wave and we call it the historical dimension. The other is like water and we call it the ultimate dimension."

Emelina Corrales ended her keynote with reciting her poem "All Waters: The Ocean of Life" which you can read on her website.

After these diverse keynotes, the discussion was opened to questions from the audienence and many participants made good use of this opportunity. It was tricky to capture all the questions and answers, so here are just a few notes:

How can those who protect the environment be better protected? Response was along the lines of making their voices heard, don't visit countries where activists are getting persecuted or even killed.
Focus on dialog instead of persuation
Ask people questions and really listen to their replies.
What ONE advice should high school teachers give their students?

Take care of what you do in every day life.
Get involved and vote!
Take them outside
Put down the phone!

The session was recorded and if/when the video is made publicly available on Youtube, I'll add the link here. In the meantime, this compilation gives an idea of what all was covered in this symposia:

After the lunch break I had planned to join short course SC3.13 - Get your writing right: A hands-on, participatory workshop to help improve writing skills, but it turned out that this was only available onsite in Vienna, so I couldn't join it virtually. Poking around in the program for an alternative, I noticed one of the science sessions and joined ITS2.1/CL0.7 - Compound weather and climate events instead.

High-impact climate and weather events typically result from the interaction of multiple climate and weather drivers, as well as vulnerability and exposure, across various spatial and temporal scales. Such compound events often cause more severe socio-economic impacts than single-hazard events, rendering traditional univariate extreme event analyses and risk assessment techniques insufficient. It is, therefore, crucial to develop new methodologies that account for the possible interaction of multiple physical and societal drivers when analyzing high-impact events under present and future conditions. This session aims to address several challenges and topics.

These include: (1) identifying the compounding drivers, including physical drivers (e.g., modes of variability) and/or drivers of vulnerability and exposure, of the most impactful events; (2) Developing methods to better shape the definition and classification of compound events, i.e. legitimate the ‘cut-offs’ in the considered number of hazard types or variables to ultimately disentangle enough information for decision-making; (3) Understanding whether and how often novel compound events, including record-shattering events, will emerge in the future; (4) Explicitly addressing and communicating uncertainties in present-day and future assessments (e.g., via climate storylines/scenarios); (5) Disentangling the contribution of climate change in recently observed events and future projections (attribution); (6) Employing novel Single Model Initial-condition Large Ensemble simulations, which provide hundreds to thousands of years of plausible weather, to better study compound events. (7) Developing novel statistical methods (e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence, and climate model emulators) for studying compound events; (8) Assessing the weather forecast skill for compound events at different temporal scales; (9) Evaluating the performance of novel statistical methods, climate and impact models, in representing compound events and developing novel methods for constraining/reducing uncertainties (e.g., multivariate bias correction and observational constraints); and (10) engaging with stakeholders to ensure the relevance of the aforementioned analyses.

From the description this seemed to be a scientific session which didn't require too much prior knowledge and this turned out to be true. Sonia Seneviratne introduced the topic with a longer than usual presentation for these oral sessions to explain what the purpose and main focus was. Compound extreme events happen when for example a flood event follows quickly after a drought event, or when several of these events happen close after or to each other, limiting resources for help and clean-up activities. These events can come with high costs in both lives lost and money.

The authors for example talked about a need to adapt to larger scale drought and to ensure that water is still available where and when it is needed, about the risks extreme humid heatwaves pose for human health, wether there are detectable trends in soil moisture, how marine and terrestrial heatwaves are connected, that marine heatwaves are happening more frequently, are getting more intense and last longer, that heatwaves often coincide with river-low-flows (less water flowing downstream), that rivers can get too warm for cooling nuclear power plants, that low-flow events have from the local to a European scale and that climate extremes like heatwaves and extreme floods are happening with less time in between in Pakistan.

Sonia I. Seneviratne - Compound extreme events in a warming climate: Implications for climate change adaptation and mitigation
Manuela I. Brunner - Hydrological drought but not flood synchronicity increases over Europe
Jian Fang - Increasing risk of global compound humid heatwaves and the impacts of antecedent precipitation
Takumi Therville - Drivers of compound drought-heatwave events: assessments of univariate extremes and causal soil moisture-temperature feedback
Fabíola Silva - Connecting Marine and Terrestrial Extremes: Oceanic Drivers of Temperature and Precipitation in Europe
Name - More frequent and intense compound low-flow and heatwave events in European rivers since 1960
Sumayya Ijaz - Historical Evidence of Compound Heatwave and Extreme Precipitation in Pakistan, 1980-2024

As my last session for the day I joined PICO EOS1.3 - Games for Geoscience showcasing many creative ways of how to turn science into fun and interesting learning experiences. The session was convened by Christopher Skinner, Rolf Hut, Elizabeth Lewis, Lisa Gallagher and Maria Elena Orduna Alegria. As is typical for a PICO session, presenters only had 2 minutes for their pitch during the first part of the session and afterwards moved to their individual screens for more detailed discussions.

Games have the power to ignite imaginations and place you in someone else’s shoes or situation, often forcing you into making decisions from perspectives other than your own. This makes them powerful tools for communication, through use in outreach, disseminating research, in education and teaching at all levels, and as a method to train the public, practitioners, and decision-makers in order to build environmental resilience.

Games can also inspire innovative and fun approaches to learning. Gamification and game-based approaches add an extra spark of engagement and interaction with a topic. Gaming technology (e.g. virtual reality) can transport and immerse people into new worlds providing fascinating and otherwise impossible experiences for learners.

The 2-minute pitches covered all sorts of games: card games, board games, role plays, simulations, planning games, escape games and digital games. They also touched many topical areas like natural hazards (think: mud slides or earth quakes), resource management (think: aquifers in danger of drying up), climate resilient planning, policy simulations, geothermal energy, saving oceans, climate change and mitigation and more!

Noemi Mannucci - Playback to the Future: a card game for inclusive engagement with environmental hazards
Guillemette Legrand - Model Fatigue: role-playing climate infrastructural imaginaries
Blair Schneider - Ogallala: A New Educational Geoscience Game Designed to Teach Groundwater Resource Management in Agriculture
Silvia De Angeli - Habit’Action: a serious game approach to exploring human habitability under Climate Change in mid-mountain communities
Silvio Kmetyko - Moving Mountains: A Board Game to Communicate the Risks of Landslides in High Mountain Terrain
Emanuele Intrieri - Earthvism - Dangers and Dwellers: a project to promote civic engagement through a board game on geological hazards
Pierre-Antoine Versini - From Play to Planning: Récré'Action, a Serious Game for Climate-Resilient Schoolyards
David Crookall - A policy simulation on sea level rise in the SIDSs: Come help build it
Marek Götsch - Escape the Quake – an educational escape room on geothermal energy and associated risk of induced seismicity
Jan Steinhauser - Hotspot Earth: a climate action game
Priscilla Le Mézo - Climat Tic Tac (Climate Tick-Tock) Ocean: playing together to save our oceans and coasts
Ivan Miranda Moral - Soil Guardians: A visual and accessible digital game for learning soil functions
Hanna Pfeffer - (Un)Real Landslides: Game Engine Technologies for Process Simulation and Communication
Jenny Bjordal - The Climate Casino: Teaching Climate Change and Mitigation Through Play
Alexis Johnson - Building Geologic Maps and Models in Minecraft for Use in Early Education

Thursday, May 7

EGU Today

As the first session I joined short course SC3.2 - Instruments and Initiatives for Policy Engagement convened by Erika von Schneidemesser, Zsanett Greta Papp, Chloe Hill and Alice Albertini

Are you keen to see your research results integrated into decision-making but don’t know where to start? Science for policy can be very rewarding, but some basic considerations for engaging in science-policy can help you get your foot in the door or up your level of impact. A basic introduction that provides some tips for engagement will be followed up with short impulse talks from a panel of experts, highlighting different opportunities for policy engagement and the skills that got them there. It will also include teasers for different existing toolkits (e.g., Sci-4-Pol Competence Framework) and training opportunities (e.g., Science-Policy Pairing Scheme, or IEEP-EGU mentorship scheme) to boost your science for policy engagement skills. The session will end with an open Q&A with the panel.

This short course started with Zsanett Greta Papp giving us an overview of what all EGU offers for scientists who might want to get into the wide field of Science for Policy. Detailed information is available in this EGU blog post from 2024: GeoPolicy: 10 things that you can do to start engaging with policymaking today and this flyer lists them all:

Florian Schwendinger then told us about his experiences with working in the field of Science for Policy. He mentioned that you need quite a lot of different competencies and that you have to be prepared for "information overload" because you'll need to collect it, sift through it and then interpret and summarize it for the policy maker you are working with. You need to be aware of the policy implications the information has and understand the context and different timelines you are working in. You need to invest time in order to build trust, you need to understand available support structures and the different attitudes involved. And most important of all: don't fall for the myth that policy makers are bound to ignore scientific findings! If you manage to make information accessible and legible for them, chances are good that they'll take it into account.

Next Nicole Arbour enthusiastically (and without slides) told us about non-traditional was to engage in Science for Policy. One of the first things she mentioned was that soft skills - contrary to what some believe - are very important in this area where science and policy overlap and interact. Active listening is especially relevant as is building a network by meeting as many people at receptions as possible (even if that is not your favorite kind of event). She for example regularly organizes what she called "Science parties" where she brings in a scientist prepared to give a 15-minute keynote - without scientifc charts or error bars - for invited policy makers. In addition, she encouraged scientists to write op-eds (you never know who reads those, but they can have a direct impact on policy), go on podcasts, join advisory boards and accept expert roles.

As the last speaker of this short course Alice Albertine explained the new mentoring program set up by EGU and the Institute for European Environment Policy (IEEP) of which she was the first mentee. This mentoring scheme is a 12-month flexible, hybrid programme for early and mid-career researchers who have completed a PhD. The objectives are to gain experience in a non-academic sector, broaden the mentee’s professional network, develop/increase an understanding of the European policy landscape, enhance their science for policy skills, and learn about how they and their institutions can increase the policy impact of their research. Activities include contributing to existing IEEP projects and publications, attend IEEP events and networking. Alice pointed out the human factor is very important and that helps to engage with many teams even those not directly linked to your project.

To learn more about Science for Policy, here are a few links:

European Commission - Competence Framework ‘Science for Policy’ for researchers
European Commission - Smart4Policy: Reflect about your work on policy!
European Union Academy - Science for Policy - Maximise your Policy Impact
EGU - Subscribe to the Newsletter

After the coffee break it was time for short course SC3.3 - New Toolkits – the destabilisation of science and what we can do about it convened by Lene Topp, Zsanett Greta Papp, Erika von Schneidemesser and Chloe Hill:

Science is increasingly under pressure from political polarisation, misinformation, and declining public trust. These dynamics not only destabilise scientific communication but also challenge the ability of researchers to engage effectively with society and policymakers. To navigate this landscape, scientists and science communicators are developing new “toolkits” – practical methods, frameworks, and strategies – that support resilience, credibility, and impact.

This short course will introduce participants to a set of emerging toolkits designed over the coming year, focusing on how researchers can strengthen the role of science in public discourse and policy. The session will explore key questions: How can scientists better anticipate and counter misinformation? Which communication strategies foster trust across diverse audiences? What can we learn from cross-disciplinary and international experiences in addressing science denial and disinformation campaigns?

The invited speakers gave short keynotes to set the stage for the course:

Sheena Cruickshank is a science communicator, immunologist, and Professor in Biomedical Sciences and Public Engagement at the University of Manchester. During the COVID-pandemic she learned a lot about how important it is to communicate science effectively and to build trust with communities you work with. She trained communicators from communities of how to translate scientific jargon and to give them the necessary vocabulary and toolkits. She also stressed the importance of what she called the "Five C's":

Confidence and trust in the people making vaccines, the science, etc
Complacency considers whether people feel complacent regarding risks of infection vs vaccine
Convenience is how easy is it to get vaccinated
Communication is about how clear the communication is and if it is in the right language and accessible
Context considers cultural contexts and barriers like e.g. whether there is historical mistrust in a group

George N. Georgarakis is the Moritz Schlick Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Political Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. Together with a team he conducted research into how misinformation spreads online and what options exist to decrease sharing of false information and increase the sharing of true content. They found that a lot of misinformation is shared by actual people and not by bots, that political motivation, heuristics (mental shortcuts) and accuracy neglect are some of the reasons for this.

He mentioned various forms of interventions like debunking, pre-bunking and credibility lables, or asking people actively to not share false information. They found that the interventions didn't increase polarization with results replicated in several countries already.

Matthias Fejes is the Co-founder of Scicomm-Support, TUD Dresden University of Technology spokesperson, and member of the executive board of the German Association for University Communication. He introduced participants to the Scicomm-Support platform which is a central point of contact for scientists if they get attacked or harrassed. He explained the four different dimensions of hostility towards science, namely anti-science, ingorance about science, science skeptisim and denial of science.

He gave some pointers of how to recognize the situation (what it is, whether or not it's dynamic, what happened, who should be contacted), what the context of the situation is (social media posts, threads via phone, email or letters), which information can be found online about you, what are the options (refute, confront, ignore, criminal prosecution).

The subsequent discussion touched on topics like necessary smarter regulation of platforms; they may need to be forced to bring fact-checking back. Everybody needs to be mindful of self-care and resilience. The course ended with some tips for attacked or harrassed scientists:

whenever available get prevention training
be aware about how sensitive your research topic is
draw on the academic community for support
report incidents to police
but pick your battles and make use of the block option online

After lunch, another short course was on the menu: SC3.10 - Elevate your Pitch: Developing Engaging Short Scientific Presentations convened by Antara Dasgupta, Hannah Cloke, Hazel Gibson and Simon Clark. This was a neat mixture of input from the conveners and a practical exercises for 1-minutes pitches with getting feedback on.

The scientific communication landscape in the digital era is rapidly becoming all about effectively delivering ideas in brief. As scientific conferences move from longer physical meetings to more condensed hybrid formats, not only are short presentations necessary for pitching yourself to senior scientists or your next entrepreneurial venture to Venture Capitalists, but also for promoting your research. The opportunities of networking rarely reveal themselves, unless you are able to tell a brief, informative, and compelling story about you and your research.

It is truly an art to engage people through these short presentations and ignite a fire in their hearts, which will burn long enough for them to remember you and reach out to you later about relevant opportunities. While practice makes perfect is the mantra for delivering power-packed short presentations, there are several tricks to make your content stand out and set yourself apart from the crowd.

In this hybrid format course, we will bring together ideas and tips from years of sci-comm experience to provide you a one stop shop with the tricks of the trade. Finally, a hands-on exercise where participants will receive structured feedback on all aspects of their talk will help solidify the learning outcomes.

In the first part of the session, Antara Dasgupta walked us through some tips about succesful presenting:

Ground yourself before giving a talk (try a "power pose" like "The Cormorant")
Concentrate on a good pitch: clarity, conficence, delivery
Simple story-telling is a key to a killer pitch, so channel your inner story teller
Know your audience
Record yourself for effective practicing
Own your mistakes (everybody makes them!)
Identify your stumbling blocks, words you have problems with and if need be replace them
Be careful with jargon and acronyms - even fellow scientists may not know what they mean if they work in a different field
Talk to the audience not the floor or screen
Be careful with reading from a script as veering off from it, may trip you up

This theoretical section was then followed by an exercise where on-site participants split into pairs to prepare and practice a 1-minute pitch. Online participants were encouraged to do this as well, albeit on their own. Volunteers had a chance to give their pitches in the room after about 20 minutes preparation and some did. So, we heard from a meteorologist who keeps the planet safe by forecasting "space weather" or about how wind turbines "feel" about their job and a few more.

I used the opportunity for a quick pitch about the Cranky Uncle game, recycling parts from a PICO-session I gave in 2022. Based on the reactions from the room - I did hear some chuckling at the expected places - and the feedback provided, it came across quite well.

I'd like to briefly introduce you to Cranky Uncle, a critical thinking game developed by John Cook to build resilience against climate and other misinformation.

The game helps you to understand Cranky Uncles by becoming a Cranky Uncle yourself.

And you learn the techniques of science denial which are: fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking and conspiracy theories.
All easily memorable via the abbreviation FLICC.

Cranky Uncle mentors you on how to deny science by using these FLICC techniques.

You then practice spotting these techniques with the help of cartoon quizzes and other forms of quiz questions.

As you move along you build up Cranky points.

And the more cranky points you get, the more you are able to level up and see your mood get ever crankier.

To wrap up the day I joined Great Debate GDB3 - Geoengineering - Overarching Great Debate convened by Marie G. P. Cavitte, Zsanett Greta Papp, Noel Baker and Erika von Schneidemesser:

As our world approaches 1.5°C of global warming, as worldwide emissions continue to grow, and the impacts of climate change escalate, there is a general sentiment that we are running out of time. Increasingly, geoengineering concepts are being pushed into the media and policy spheres, using this sentiment of urgency to frame these concepts as “buying us time” for mitigation. There are many concepts, with the most advanced concepts including solar radiation management (marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol injection mostly), sea ice thickening/brightening, sea curtains, tarping mountain glaciers, ocean fertilisation or alkalinity enhancement, as well as ocean biomass dumping, and many more. Some might target the root cause of our rising temperatures by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but with detrimental effects on the ecosystems impacted. Other concepts would just attenuate the symptoms of our planet, the rising global temperature.

Are geoengineering concepts a distraction from our urgent need for adaptation and mitigation? In a world where research funding, political focus on the green transition, and geopolitical order are dwindling, are we reducing our chances of reaching the highest possible mitigation ambition to stay well below 2°C and pursue efforts to stay below 1.5°C by even discussing these options? Several of the targeted ecosystems (e.g. our deep ocean, cloud-aerosol interactions, etc.) are not yet well understood at a fundamental level. Is it appropriate to advocate for their manipulation without first conducting adequate fundamental research?

Not too surprisingly given the topic, this turned out to be a very interesting and timely session, for which the focus had been restricted to two kinds of geo-engineering: solar radiation management (SRM) and Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). The debate started with 10 minute keynotes from the panelists. The information provided below is based on my notes and the slides presented:

Carl Friedrich Schleussner leads the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at IIASA, and is also an Honorary Professor at Humboldt University Berlin. His research spans extreme climate events, climate impact projection, tipping elements and the societal implications of climate change, with a special focus on international climate negotiations and climate overshoot.

Carl Schleussner expects that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will become necessary in one form or the other to compensate for the very likely overshoot our continuing emissions are causing. He noted that there'll be side effects and unitended consequences and that SRM obviously doesn't fix the root cause of the problem. He also mentioned that there is no defined governance at the moment and that it could be used for geopolitical leverage and cause conflicts.

Yolanda López-Maldonado is a Maya Indigenous Earth systems scientist advancing Indigenous science in global environmental governance. Lead author of the upcoming UNEP Global Environment Outlook Report, a Review Editor for the 2nd IPBEST Global Assessment, and the founder of Indigenous Science, an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to integrating Indigenous knowledge into global scientific and diplomatic frameworks. Yolanda bridges Indigenous knowledge and global policy at the highest levels.

Yolanda López described SRM as a hypothesis about climate interventation but not a proven solution. Indigenous people nned to be involved and heard as right-holders instead of just stake-holders (if even that). Any intervention that alters the Earth system should be evaluated with a multidecadal perspective that Indigenous knowledge often provides. A globally inclusive, transparent and equitable scientific assessment process for SRM is required (UNEP 2023). Ethically, Indigenous peoples must be involved because they have a legitimate right to participate in decisions that may affect their territories and futures. If SRM is ever considered seriously, it must be governed as a planetary issue, not a technocratic fix: scientifically uncertain, ethically consequential, and inseparable from justice, Indigenous rights, and long-term observation.

Philippe Tulkens is head of the unit “Climate and Planetary Boundaries” in the Healthy Planet Directorate in DG Research and Innovation at the European Commission. His unit co-programs EU R&I activities in the areas of climate change, biodiversity, nature-based solutions and environmental observation. His unit is the EU focal point to the IPCC and EU co-focal point to the IPBES. Philippe is also the Deputy Mission Manager for the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change.

Philippe Turkens stated that from an EU perspective SRM is seen as a risk and is poorly understood. A commitment to assess the risks and uncertainties, to promote international discussions which are guided by the precautionary principle is needed and a moratorium on deployment is called for.

Sian Henley is a Reader in Marine Science and Deputy Head of the Global Change Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh. Her research spans climate and environmental change in the polar oceans, both the Arctic and Antarctic, to climate change impacts on children worldwide. Sian is active at the science-policy interface with a focus on Earth’s polar regions, such as at the COPs and the UN Ocean Conferences.

Sian Henley focused on the mCDR options and none of the proposed ideas really passes scrutiny. Even if they are tried, they will most likely not have much of an impact and these thought experiments should not distract from the urgen task to decrease emissions as quickly as possible. Of the proposed options, only iron fertilization has been tried experimentally but the results were not conclusive. There is however a risk that ocean chemistry would be changed with the nature of these changes being unknown. Impacts on fisheries and therefore people in the global south could be high, so they would be the ones most affected by decisions made in the global north - possibly even without their involvement.

Wil Burns serves as the Founding Co-Director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, a research center at American University in Washington DC, and is a Professor in the School of International Service. His research focuses on the law and governance of carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification approaches.

Wil Burns touched on some of the same issues Sian Henley mentioned and also pointed out that decarbonization of industry has to be tackled aggressively. He still fears that some carbon removal will be needed, something the IPCC expects as well.

A lot more points were raised in the subsequent panel discussion and during the Q&A part, here are some of them:

no governance framework exists for CDR and it doesn't fit into any of the existing climate-related frameworks
77 countries include CDR in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) without giving any details
geo-engineering is complex and therefore hard to explain to policy makers
community led and nature based solutions may be better options
topic is sensitive
there's no transparency of who and why is currently pushing for geo-engineering
how to avoid falling into the trap of "technical fixes"?
some want to deploy e.g. SRM quickly because the situation is so dire
some say that mitigation and adaptation needs to speed up first
CDR could be abused for coercion
we could be opening a Pandora's box
large-scale testing will most likely happen - w/o asking - on indigenous land or near disenfranchised communities
how big is the risk of somebody going roque and "simply" start something? Would we even be able to detect it?

So, at the end of the debate there were perhaps more open than closed questions but it definitely was thought-provoking!

Friday, May 8

EGU Today

I started the last day of virtual EGU with another PICO-session: NH9.13 - Innovative Approaches to Hazards, Risk and Disaster Education and Communication convened by Bruce D. Malamud, Thomas Glade, Annika Fröwis, Faith Taylor, Caroline Michellier and Solmaz Mohadjer:

Resilience building requires effective communication, teaching and understanding of hazard and risk. Traditional outreach methods often struggle to engage diverse audiences; connect science and practice; or influence policy. Innovative approaches can address some of these challenges. For example, digital tools such as serious games, (massive) open online courses (MOOCs), simulations and immersive virtual/augmented reality can bring hazard scenarios to life. Equally, non-digital methods such as role-play, participatory mapping, classroom activities and tabletop demonstrations can foster engagement and deeper understanding of risk. This session welcomes abstracts that explore the development, application and evaluation of education and communication innovations across a spectrum: from primary through the postgraduate learning, and from public to expert engagement. We particularly welcome contributions of serious games, VR/AR simulations and digital platforms in addition to non-digital methods such as classroom demonstrations and participatory activities. Presentations that reflect on co-production with stakeholders, inclusivity and approaches for evaluating outcomes are strongly encouraged. In this session, we hope to bring together researchers, educators and practitioners to share best practice, showcase cutting-edge tools and teaching methods, and critically reflect on the role of innovation in hazard and risk education and communication. We plan on having a PICO session to ensure a lively combination of discussion and poster presentation.

The conveners had divided this 2-part PICO-session thematically. Before the morning coffee-break we heard about serious games & simulations and academic & professional eduction projects. Afterwards the themes changed to child & youth eduction, public engagement and media. Unfortunately, some of the speakers didn't make it in time to the session because there were issues with public transport in Vienna.

Initially, I wasn't quite sure if a session from the Natural Hazards (NH) science section of EGU would make much sense for me to join as I usually gravitate towards the education, outreach and policy sessions offered at the conference. However - and after taking a closer look at the submitted abstracts - this could just as well have been an EOS-session given that the talks were in fact about different education and outreach strategies in the realm of natural hazards.

As this was a PICO-session, short 2-minute pitches followed in rapid succession during the first part of each timeblock. We heard about an online simulation game where players have to evacuate people after an earthquake without getting into landslides while doing so, about gamified flood resilience simulation and effective risk communication, about underappreciated hazards of burning lowlands, about disaster risk reduction in case of floods and wildfires, about necessary civic engangement when it comes to natural hazards, about climate-driven geohazard mitigation, about enhancing risk management through education, research and innovation, about webplatforms collecting natural hazards, about storytelling and podcasts to get the word out.

In addition to the many different topics touched upon, where these projects are done is just as varied: they could be very local (Tübingen in Germany), regional (lowlands in The Netherlands), moutaineous areas in Nepal, Pakistan, Austria, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Italy, volcanic regions in The Democratic Republic of Congo, on the Canary Islands or the Philippines. Or they could be in virtual and synthetic worlds simulating various places.

List of presentations:

Martin Mergili - Geogames and geohazards
Binod Prasad Parajuli - Immersive Flood Education for Effective Risk Communication: Field-Based Testing of Virtual Reality and Gamified Simulations for Flood Preparedness in Terai region of Nepal
Milica Mijailovi? - Burning Lowlands: A Serious Game to Evaluate Citizen Learning, Communication, and Decision-Making in Climate Adaptation
Innocent Bahati Mutazihara - Using serious games to communicate disaster risk: Insights from interrupted implementation in Eastern DR Congo
Jakob F. Steiner - Asking those who feel it - indigenous knowledge on climate risks in mountains: Transdisciplinary teaching to enhance student engagement
Sophia Sternath - EUMAplus: Digitalization of educational materials for Disaster Management and Civil Protection experts and professionals
Monica May L Mendoza - Advancing Disaster Education and Risk Communication through the Fundamentals of Resilience MOOCs in the Philippines
Solmaz Mohadjer - Fostering Civic Engagement on Natural Hazard Uncertainty: A Service-Learning course to create an active dialogue between science and society
Graham Lewis Gilbert - Educating for Climate-Driven Geohazard Mitigation and Management – Experience from the GEOMME International Partnership in Norway, South Korea, and Japan
Lisa Van Well - Communicating Cascading Natural Hazards through Co-Created Visualization with Youth
Bruce D Malamud - Low-Cost and Accessible Approaches to Natural Hazard Education in Secondary Schools
Luca Piciullo - Halfway through the NATRISK project: Enhancing risk management and resilience to natural hazards in India, Brazil and Norway through collaborative education, research and innovation
Carla Iadanza - The IdroGEO web platform: an innovative tool for landslide hazard and risk communication in Italy
Alfonso Senatore - PAER: A new web platform for acquisition, storage, processing, and visualization of natural risks
Saverio Romeo - Innovative Tools for Disaster Risk Education: Twenty Years of LARES Initiatives in Italy
Paul Caesar Flores - From Data to Stories: Human-Centered Podcasting for Hazard and Risk Communication
Nemesio M. Pérez - The role of media and journalism in volcanic risk reduction: insights from the Canary Island

This turned out to be the last session I documented during the week. The virtual poster session I had on my list for the afternoon turned out to contain only a few presentations from a cross-section of what had already been covered in oral sessions during the week and lasted for only 30 minutes. Some of the posters were flagged as "no pictures allowed" and some were in a format not really suitable to grab screenshots of.

Over the final lunch break of EGU26 I headed back up to the rooftop in Gather on the off-chance that somebody might come there for the last networking session I had offered to chat about Skeptical Science. While nobody came for the session itself I had a nice - if short - chat with another participant who joined EGU virtually from Australia.

Summary

As you can tell by the length of this blog post (sorry about that!), EGU kept me pretty occupied during the week. All told, I gave 2 oral presentations, joined 14 timeslots covering 4 Education and Outreach sessions (EOS) two of which were done as oral sessions and two as PICOs, 1 Natural Hazards PICO session (NH), 1 Inter- and Transdisciplinary Studies session (ITS), 4 short courses (SC), 1 Union Symposium (US) and 1 Great Debate (GDB). Joining the sessions virtually worked pretty well and only one of the PICO-sessions did have some technical issues with the Zoom-Meeting.

During the sessions I grabbed about 500 screenshots of which 162 made it into my visual session summaries and from there into the daily compilations. I took a lot of notes on my iPad during the sessions but fear, that I won't really be able to read my own scribbles when I look at them again in a short little while. But they did help with writing my diary, so served their main purpose quite well.

Final update from the EGU-website: "The EGU General Assembly 2026 welcomed 22,497 registered attendees, of which 20,027 made their way to Vienna from 125 countries and 2,470 joined online from 107 countries. It was a great success with 20,173 presentations given in 1,014 sessions. [...]"

To paraphrase a saying: "After a General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union is before the next one"! I plan to join EGU27 onsite in Vienna next year when the conference will happen a month earlier than this year from April 4 to 9. I'm already looking forward to the trip!

2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #18

Sun, 3 May 2026 10:48:30 EST

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 26, 2026 thru Sat, May 2, 2026.

Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (8 articles)

Why delaying climate action now means higher seas by 2100 The Conversation, Helen Millman, Martin Siegert, Richard Alley, Apr 24, 2026.
Next El Niño could be tipping point for a hotter climate Pacific heat pulse is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not. Ars Technica, Bob Berwyn, Apr 27, 2026.
The world is getting too hot to feed itself A new UN report maps how extreme heat is tearing through every layer of the global food system — and mostly overlooks the people at the heart of it. Grist, Ayurella Horn-Muller, Apr 27, 2026.
Red Alert: India Heat Index Turns Dangerous As Viral Reddit Post Shows 42-44°C Glow Red Amidst Urban Heat Crisis Record-breaking heat and urban heat islands intensify India's heatwave crisis, posing severe health risks International Business Times, Rohit David, Apr 27, 2026.
Europe is warming more than TWICE as fast as the global average, report reveals - as scientists warn 'climate change is not a future threat, it is our present reality' Experts say that Europe's rapid warming is driving a wave of extreme weather, heat-related deaths, and devastating wildfires. Daily Mail UK, editorial@mailonline.co.uk (Editor), Apr 29, 2026.
Major hurricanes in the Northeast are rare. Could climate change make them common? Nuanced analysis of possible changes in hurricane behavior by expert Jeff Masters Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, Apr 29, 2026.
Surgeon warns that climate change can disrupt cancer care Wildfires, storms, and floods can lead to missed appointments and hospital closures – with life-and-death consequences. Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team, Apr 30, 2026.
Climate Change is Destroying Lives... Now ClimateAdam on Youtube, Adam Levy, Apr 30. 2026.

Miscellaneous (5 articles)

China`s solar exports reach "gigantic" record in March as energy crisis bites China exported a record amount of solar components and photovoltaic panels last month, as the Iran war drives stronger demand for clean energy technologies. Climate Home News, Chloé Farand, Apr 22, 2026.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 19, 2026 thru Sat, April 25, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, John Hartz & Doug Bostrom, Apr 26, 2026.
World `will not see significant return to coal` in 2026 - despite Iran crisis A much-discussed ''return to coal'' by some countries in the wake of the Iran war is likely to be far more limited than thought, amounting to a global rise of no more than 1.8% in coal power output this year. Carbon Brief, Josh Gabbatiss, Apr 28, 2026.
What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war 'Governments are under pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. It’s time for a power shift'' Climate Home News, Megan Rowling, Apr 29, 2026.
`A study showed…` isn`t enough - scientific knowledge builds incrementally as researchers investigate and revisit questions A professor of geography offers tips on how to make skepticism genuine and useful. The Conversation, Jeffrey A. Lee, Apr 30, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (4 articles)

Rivers worldwide reveal greenhouse gas rise that's been overlooked for decades Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) quantify how rivers worldwide are under severe stress as they warm, losing oxygen and as a result emitting increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. Phys.org, KIT press office, Apr 27, 2026.
Antarctica`s ice shelves are vulnerable to melting from below - knowing how far ocean heat reaches is crucial A rare dataset collected by instruments at the point where Antarctica’s largest ice shelf begins to float reveals ocean processes that drive melting at this critical part of the continent. The Conversation, Craig Stevens, Apr 28, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #18 2026 Skeptical Science's latest survey of climate research includes 114 academic research articles in 55 journals by 1150 contributing authors, and 14 government and NGO reports. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Apr 30, 2026.
Higher warming predictions for 2026 and 2027 An update to my December estimates of global temperatures over the next two years The Climate Brink, Zeke Hausfather, Apr 30, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (3 articles)

Climate policy isn`t partisan - research suggests more on the right support it than oppose it The Conversation, Emily Huddart, Tony Silva, Apr 28, 2026.
If it feels like the world is rejecting science and truth, here are five ways to fight back | Helen Pearson All of us can choose to consider facts, not vibes, in our next decision. One simple hack is go and look up some easily accessible peer-reviewed studies The Guardian, Helen Pearson, Apr 28, 2026.
How an army of volunteers is fighting climate misinformation online Instead of arguing with trolls, they’re amplifying the truth. Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team, May 01, 2026.

International Climate Conferences and Agreements (3 articles)

Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens More than 50 countries, including oil producers and major consumers, are converging in Colombia for a fossil-fuel exit conference. Los Angeles Times, Fabiano Maisonnave, Apr 26, 2026.
Six nations at Santa Marta could shape fossil fuel futures A small but critical handful of countries attending the conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels remain deeply committed to expanding their fossil fuel output. Climate Home News, Megan Rowling, Apr 29, 2026.
Santa Marta: Key outcomes from first summit on `transitioning away` from fossil fuels Countries attending a first-of-its-kind summit have walked away with plans to develop national roadmaps away from fossil fuels, along with new tools to address harmful subsidies and carbon-intensive trade. Carbon Brief, Daisy Dunne, Apr 30, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (2 articles)

How better weather forecasts could save lives New research finds improved weather forecasts could reduce heat deaths as the climate warms. Futurity, U. Arizona, Apr 26, 2026.
Peatlands are vital for tackling climate change, yet scientists still haven`t found them all English - The Conversation, Alice Milner, Apr 28, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (2 articles)

Fossil-Fuel Funded GOP Leaders Claim a Renowned Scientific Institution Has `Potential Conflicts of Interest` Republican allies of the oil and gas industry question the objectivity of an independent report from the nation’s top science advisers on the harms of human-caused climate change. Inside Climate News, Liza Gross, Apr 24, 2026.
Germany`s climate U-turn is the worst possible response to the oil shock 'Prices at the pump have leapt since the start of the conflict – but clinging to fossil fuels will only prolong the pain.'' The Guardian, Tania Roettger, May 01, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 article)

Climate Science Under Siege: Dr. Michael Mann on Fighting Fossil Fuel Disinformation Youtube, David Fenton, Apr 19, 2026.

Fact brief - Were the 2022 whale deaths off the US East Coast caused by offshore wind development?

Mon, 4 May 2026 10:43:24 EST

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.

Were the 2022 whale deaths off the US East Coast caused by offshore wind development?

The 2022 whale deaths have not been linked to offshore wind surveys or construction. Research has found no evidence of wind farms driving whale deaths, and responsibly developed wind farms avert systemic harms of fossil fuels.

Bad practices like construction during peak migration, high-speed vessels, or not monitoring whale presence can increase risk. However, established regulations such as seasonal construction limits, population monitoring, and vessel-speed rules reduce exposure. Once operating, turbine noise is significantly less disruptive than ships.

According to the NOAA, boat collisions and fishing gear entanglement account for most whale deaths, not wind turbines.

In contrast, fossil fuel drilling and burning routinely harm marine life. Oil and gas exploration uses highly disruptive sonar, oil spills kill marine animals, and emissions acidify oceans, weakening coral and shellfish. Warming causes population-level harms to marine mammals through altered migration routes and habitat loss.

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

Yale Climate Connections Wind opponents spread myth about dead whales

NOAA Frequent Questions—Offshore Wind and Whales

U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Vineyard Wind 1 Offshore Wind Energy Project Final Environmental Impact Statement

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America How loud is the underwater noise from operating offshore wind turbines?

Save the Sound Clearing the Air on Offshore Wind

Biological Conservation Population consequences of disturbance by offshore oil and gas activity for endangered sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)

National Audubon Society More Than One Million Birds Died During Deepwater Horizon Disaster

NOAA What is Ocean Acidification?

Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles

Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability. Thank you!

About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.

Climate Adam - Climate Change is Destroying Lives... Now

Wed, 6 May 2026 10:28:25 EST

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

Climate change isn't tomorrow's problem. It's devastating lives right now in every corner of the world. In this video I take a look at four experiences of climate change in different countries: air pollution in India, extreme heat's impact on the elderly in Japan, malnutrition's effects on the young in South Africa, and the mental health toll of the crisis in Brazil. These stories show how the crisis is already affecting us. And just how much we have to save if we choose to act to halt climate change.

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #18 2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:56:36 EST

Open access notables

Unprecedented 2024 East Antarctic winter heatwave driven by polar vortex weakening and amplified by anthropogenic warming, Tang et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

During July–August 2024, East Antarctica experienced the most intense winter heatwave in the 46-year satellite era, with regional mean surface air temperatures across Dronning Maud Land exceeding the climatological mean by more than 9°C for 17 consecutive days. To explore the physical drivers and quantify the anthropogenic contribution to this unprecedented event, we propose a multi-model, multi-method attribution framework integrating regional climate model-based storyline attribution, circulation analogues, and large-ensemble probabilistic attribution. The results show that a pronounced weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex initiated a quasi-barotropic high-pressure anomaly, which enhanced meridional heat and moisture transport and accounted for approximately 50% of the observed surface warming. Across different models and attribution methods, synthesis of the attribution results indicates that anthropogenic warming intensified the event by approximately 0.7°C and more than doubled the likelihood of such exceptional winter heatwaves in the current climate. Probabilistic attribution further indicates that, compared to a natural climate without human influence, the likelihood of such events increases from 2–3 times today to ~6 times under moderate emissions and up to 26 times under high emissions by 2100. These findings reveal how human-induced warming is transforming even the coldest regions, with implications for ice shelf stability and predictability of future Antarctic extremes.

A recent stabilization in the lengthening of the Arctic sea ice melt season into a highly variable regime, Boisvert et al., Communications Earth & Environment

The melt season length of the Arctic sea ice is an important indicator and driver of large changes occurring in the climate system. Since 1979 the melt season has lengthened by ~40 days, driven mostly by delayed freeze onset (~ 34 days) compared to earlier melt onset (~ 7 days). However, since 2010 the melt season length has stabilized (~ 108 days), showing no consistent change over the years, instead becoming highly variable (+/− 11 days), largely driven by a loss of multi-year ice in 2000–2009 and a small change in the freeze onset (~ 2 days). There is a stark difference between the decades, where the largest changes in the melt season occurred between 2000–2009 (+ 25 days) and the smallest occurred between 2010–2023 (−2 days). This leads us to believe that, while there might be some periodicity in the processes that control the decadal variations in the melt season length, anthropogenic forcing has altered the Arctic background state and led to a new Arctic melt season that is much longer with a much thinner ice pack that is more susceptible to external forcings.

Field Observations of Sea Ice Thickening by Artificial Flooding, Hammer et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans

Arctic sea ice is retreating at a high rate, also due to the positive ice-albedo feedback loop: as ice melts and disappears, it reflects less sunlight, further accelerating ocean warming. One proposed way to slow the retreat is by thickening sea ice in winter, increasing its chances of surviving summer melt. This could be achieved by artificially flooding existing sea ice with seawater pumped from below, allowing it to freeze at the surface through exposure to cold air and thicken the ice layer. However, the effectiveness of this approach remains uncertain, as numerical models show contrasting results and few field experiments have been conducted. This study examines the growth and melt of ice through spring and summer after artificial flooding covering , resulting in thickened (+26 cm) snow-covered first-year sea ice. Observations were carried out in Vallunden Lagoon (Van Mijenfjord), Svalbard, from 20 March to 24 June 2024, with flooding and intensive in situ measurements from 11–15 April. Artificial flooding significantly heated the upper two-thirds of the original 90 cm thick ice, increasing salinity. Surface albedo evolution was influenced by specific events such as slush formation, snow drift, and a major meltwater drainage event in spring. Artificial flooding resulted in thicker ice and delayed rotten ice formation by 6 days, but did not delay the disappearance of ice in summer compared to a non-flooded reference site. Experiments at other scales and locations could help reveal how local conditions and flooded area size influence results and the potential of this method.

The achievability of low-emission IPCC sea-level rise scenarios, Millman et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report (2021) provides a range of projections on greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and the consequential impact on global sea level through thermal expansion of sea water and by glacier and ice-sheet mass loss. This paper assesses the likelihood of lower IPCC sea-level rise scenarios (SSP1–1.9 and SSP1–2.6) in light of current ice-sheet observations and model limitations, alongside today’s emissions trends and current shortfall of climate commitments. We conclude that ‘low-end’ projections may underestimate the true pace and magnitude of future sea-level rise and, if we continue on today’s mid-higher emissions pathway (SSP3–7.0), sea-level outcomes of more than 1 m by 2100 should be planned for. The worst can still be avoided through rapid deep emissions reductions, but it is essential that the IPCC continues to reflect these true risks for decision-makers, with rises of more than 2 m this century and several metres thereafter a real possibility.

Audience engagement with climate change content on YouTube: an analysis of video attributes and user interactions, Aharonson et al., Frontiers in Climate

Results indicate that videos presented by scientists are significantly more likely to elicit positive audience attitudes than those presented by politicians or other public figures. Solution-focused framing is strongly associated with positive engagement, while blame-oriented framing is associated with negative responses. Additionally, threaded comment discussions show a higher proportion of positive attitudes than independent comments, suggesting that conversational interaction enhances constructive engagement. These findings highlight the importance of expertise-based communication, solution-oriented narratives, and interactive discourse in digital sustainability communication. The study contributes both methodological tools and practical insights for designing climate change communication strategies that foster informed and constructive public engagement.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Trust, Media Habits, and Misperceptions Shape Public Understanding of Climate Change, Marryam Ishaq and M. Speiser, ecoAmerica

A hidden climate majority exists. Most Americans are concerned about climate change, but they do not realize how widely that concern is shared. This perception gap (pluralistic ignorance) masks a strong hidden consensus on climate concern. Trust in information and personal concern about climate change reinforce each other. Americans who trust the information they see or hear are far more likely to be concerned about climate change (79%) — and those who are climate-concerned report higher trust. This creates a reinforcing loop between trust and concern. Media ecosystems shape climate beliefs. Where Americans get their news influences what they believe about climate and energy. While mainstream national media, local news, and social media remain the most widely used sources overall, partisan and age differences shape which sources are most relied on, which in turn shapes climate beliefs. Americans trust the information they encounter but doubt others’ ability to recognize climate misinformation. While many Americans trust the information they personally consume, they are far less confident in others’ ability to distinguish climate fact from fiction — especially when they perceive others as less concerned about climate change. Mistrust of others and misperceptions are core barriers to climate action. Rather than a lack of concern, some of the biggest barriers include eroded trust and misperceptions. Misperceptions about energy sources and others’ climate beliefs, combined with low confidence in the public’s ability to navigate climate misinformation, suppress visible engagement and slow individual and collective action.

People and Climate Change, Ipsos

As temperatures rise, the individual responsibility to act has fallen. The past 11 years have been the warmest in the modern era, but people increasingly place less responsibility in needing to act. In the last five years, all countries surveyed in the report in both 2021 and 2026 have seen falls in the proportion who agree that individuals would be failing future generations by not acting against climate change. Short-term fear is countering long-term preparation. While climate concern remains present – 59% on average across 31 countries say they country should be doing more in the fight against climate change - more immediate risks are seen as greater priorities. Our What Worries the World survey finds concern about climate change in 11th place, behind more tangible, immediate worries issues like crime, unemployment, and inflation. The energy transition is at a crossroads. Public support for transitioning to clean energy is increasingly conditional, contingent on affordability, reliability, and security trade-offs. The Ipsos Energy Transition Barometer finds one in two (50% across 31 countries) support governments prioritizing low energy prices even if emissions increase.

Climate Change and Migration from Central America: Insights from Migrants in Mexico, Kerwin et al., UC Berkeley School of Law

The authors examine how climate-related harms intersect with and exacerbate violence, exclusion, discrimination, and weak state protection to drive migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Drawing on interviews, desk research, and surveys with people on the move in Mexico, the authors show that climate change rarely operates as a single cause of displacement. Instead, migrants consistently describe how environmental shocks—such as droughts that destroy crops, storms that damage homes and livelihoods, and deforestation and extreme heat that undermine health and economic stability—exacerbate existing insecurity and hardship. The authors focus on Mexico as both a transit and destination country for Central American migrants impacted by these dynamics. The findings demonstrate that better understanding how climate change intensifies vulnerabilities to violence, insecurity, and loss of livelihood—and integrating that analysis into refugee and immigration representation and adjudication— can improve access to protection and to regular migration status under Mexico’s existing legal framework. The authors also offer specific recommendations to strengthen institutional responses to climate migration by the Mexican government and civil society actors to climate migration.

114 articles in 55 journals by 1150 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Climate feedback of forest fires amplified by atmospheric chemistry, Chen et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-01926-1

Differences in actual evapotranspiration and responses of pure and mixed forests to climate change on the Chinese Loess Plateau, Wu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111210

Imbalance Trajectories of GPP–TER Coupling Under Global Warming, Yang et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70857

Influence of Sea Surface Temperature Patterns and Mean Warming on Past and Future Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity, Levin et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0635.1

Mechanisms for Decadal Variability of Ocean Heat Uptake Inferred From Adjoint Sensitivities, Köhl & Fernández, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl119283

Meteorological drivers of the low-cloud radiative feedback pattern effect and its uncertainty, Tam et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-4289-2026

Ocean Meridional Heat Transport Estimated from Energy Budget Constraint, Pan et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0522.1

Poleward migration of warm Circumpolar Deep Water towards Antarctica, Lanham et al., Apollo (University of Cambridge) Open Access pmh:oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/400387

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Asymmetric impacts of forest gain and loss on tropical land surface temperature, Nature Geoscience, 10.1038/s41561-024-01423-3 53 cites.

Observations of climate change, effects

Climatology and Trends in Spatial Scales of Extreme Precipitation Over Land in the Contiguous US, Chatterjee et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120662

Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and the human influence, Forster et al., Earth system science data Open Access pdf 10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023

Persistent 2023–2025 Wildfire Extremes in Canada Produced Unprecedented Emissions and Air-Quality Impacts, Chen et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70891

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide ignites metal mobilization in acid mine drainage, Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03551-7

Spatiotemporal Trends and Urban-Climate Interactions of Land Surface Temperature Dynamics Across Bangladesh, Haque et al., Anthropocene 10.1016/j.ancene.2026.100547

Unprecedented 2024 East Antarctic winter heatwave driven by polar vortex weakening and amplified by anthropogenic warming, Tang et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41612-026-01392-x

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Increasing Risk of a “Hot Eastern?Pluvial Western” Asia, Earth s Future, 10.1029/2023ef004333 14 cites.

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

An observational record of global gridded near surface air temperature change over land and ocean from 1781, Morice et al., Earth system science data Open Access pdf 10.5194/essd-17-7079-2025

ENSO contribution to the assessment of long-term cloud feedback on global warming, Liu et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5589-2026

Global open-ocean daily turbulent heat flux dataset (1992–2020) from SSM/I via deep learning, Wang et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2929-2026

Mapping sea ice concentration using Nimbus-5 ESMR and local dynamical tie points, Tellefsen et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2891-2026

Reanalyses in the Age of Machine Learning: Why Dataset Curation Matters Now More than Ever, Abel et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-25-0149.1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Russian collaboration loss risks permafrost carbon emissions network, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02001-6 15 cites.

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Identifying atmospheric rivers and their poleward latent heat transport with generalizable neural networks: ARCNNv1, Mahesh et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-3533-2024

Large and projected increases in compound heatwaves-extreme precipitation events driven by anthropogenic emissions, Liu et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100908

Projected Future Changes of Atmospheric Rivers by a High- and Low-Resolution CESM, Wang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0377.1

Rising Temperatures Will Amplify the Risk of Future Compound Dry–Hot Events over the Mongolian Plateau, Kang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0592.1

Seasonality and scenario dependence of rapid Arctic sea ice loss events in CMIP6 simulations, Sticker et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-19-3259-2025

The burden of El Niño–Southern Oscillation-related dengue attributable to anthropogenic climate change: a multicountry modelling study, Li et al., The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101454

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Emergent Constraints on Future Projections of Tibetan Plateau Warming in Winter, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl108728 16 cites.

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

A Signal-to-Noise Problem in Model Simulation of Decadal Climate Modes, Clement et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0190.1

CMIP7 Data Request: atmosphere priorities and opportunities, Dingley et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-2945-2026

Comments on “Mediterranean Drying by a Positive North Atlantic Oscillation Trend over the Last 65 Years Is an Extreme Outlier in the CMIP6 Multimodel Ensemble”, Vicente-Serrano et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-26-0055.1

Development of the global chemistry-climate coupled model BCC-GEOS-Chem v2.0: improved atmospheric chemistry performance and new capability of chemistry-climate interactions, Sun et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-2111-2026

Enhancing Urban Near-Surface Temperature Simulations through Anthropogenic Heat Parameters Adapted to Local Climate Zones, LV et al., Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 10.1175/jamc-d-25-0224.1

Physics-based models outperform AI weather forecasts of record-breaking extremes, Zhang et al., Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.18929001

Reply to “Comments on ‘Mediterranean Drying by a Positive North Atlantic Oscillation Trend over the Last 65 Years Is an Extreme Outlier in the CMIP6 Multimodel Ensemble’”, Seager et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-26-0138.1

Successes and Failures of Current AI Climate Models, Scaife, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl122615

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Global 1 km land surface parameters for kilometer-scale Earth system modeling, Earth system science data, 10.5194/essd-16-2007-2024 27 cites.

Cryosphere & climate change

A recent stabilization in the lengthening of the Arctic sea ice melt season into a highly variable regime, Boisvert et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03534-8

Antarctic grounding zone and bedrock: the interplay shaping Antarctic sea-level contribution, Nowicki & Seroussi, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rsta.2024.0544

Assessment of snow model uncertainty in relation to the effect of a 1 °C warming using the snow modelling framework openAMUNDSEN, Rottler et al., SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología Open Access pmh:oai:doaj.org/article:6ac18b8f1acb47c891ce634ea62de79e

Far-reaching effects of Tibetan warming amplification on polar sea?ice retreat, M et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03542-8

Field Observations of Sea Ice Thickening by Artificial Flooding, Hammer et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022738

Glacier-level and gridded mass change in the rivers' sources in the eastern Tibetan Plateau (ETPR) from 1970s to 2000, Zhu et al., Earth system science data Open Access pdf 10.5194/essd-17-1851-2025

Hard rocks and deep wetlands beneath Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, Zeising et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03502-2

Results of the second Ice Shelf–Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (ISOMIP+), Jordan, Cronfa (Swansea University) pmh:oai:cronfa.swan.ac.uk:cronfa71766

The impact of ice structures and ocean warming in Milne Fiord, Bonneau et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-19-2615-2025

Uncertain ground: impact of bed topography on Antarctic Ice Sheet projections, Caillet et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rsta.2024.0543

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Climate projections of the Adriatic Sea: role of river release, Frontiers in Climate, 10.3389/fclim.2024.1368413 31 cites.

Sea level & climate change

The achievability of low-emission IPCC sea-level rise scenarios, Millman et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rsta.2024.0565

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Assessing coastal flood risk under extreme events and sea level rise in the Casablanca-Mohammedia coastline (Morocco), Natural Hazards, 10.1007/s11069-024-06624-y 6 cites.

Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry

East Antarctic Ice Sheet Variability In The Central Transantarctic Mountains Since The Mid Miocene, Bromley et al., Climate of the past Open Access pdf 10.5194/cp-21-145-2025

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Stable isotope evidence for long-term stability of large-scale hydroclimate in the Neogene North American Great Plains, Climate of the past, 10.5194/cp-20-1039-2024 7 cites.

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

A Modern Ghost Story: Increased Selective Mortality of Salmon Under Climate Extremes, Sturrock et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70854

Adapting Species Risk Assessments to a Changing Climate: The Underestimated Vulnerability of Foundational Trees, McLaughlin et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70866

Amazonian understory forests change phosphorus acquisition strategies under elevated CO2, Martins et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72098-0

Estimating the total mortality of seabirds following a marine heat wave, Lavers et al., Conservation Biology Open Access 10.1111/cobi.70273

Evolutionary conservation hotspots: key areas for threatened Neotropical glassfrogs under climate change scenarios, Vega-Yánez et al., PeerJ Open Access 10.7717/peerj.21165

Global Conservation Status of Key Areas for Climate Diversity, Junjun, Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.17744471

Imbalance Trajectories of GPP–TER Coupling Under Global Warming, Yang et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70857

Interacting Effects of Sea-Level Rise and Ocean Warming Reshape Thermal Environments on a Coral Reef, Rogers et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120406

Phragmites australis and Argyrogramma albostriata Suppress the Invasion of Solidago canadensis in China Under Future Climate Change, Zhang et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73573

Predators Can Reverse the Effects of Warming on a Marine Ecosystem Engineer, Malakooti et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70846

Relationships Between Water-Use Efficiency and Climatic Factors in Conifers From Different Genera in China, Qin et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg009734

Shifting snake ranges in a warming world, Wan et al., Conservation Biology 10.1111/cobi.70293

Warming advanced leaf senescence in alpine plants through advancing leaf emergence and increasing soil drought, Chen et al., Journal of Ecology 10.1111/1365-2745.70325

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Interactions between climate change and urbanization will shape the future of biodiversity, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-01996-2 69 cites.

GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

A top-down evaluation of bottom-up estimates to reduce uncertainty in methane emissions from Arctic wetlands, Basso et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-2815-2026

Canadian net forest CO₂ uptake enhanced by heat drought via reduced respiration, Dong et al., MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) pmh:oai:pure.mpg.de:item_3686498

Carbon dioxide release driven by organic carbon in minerogenic salt marshes, Kainz et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-2865-2026

Climate benefits of lake nutrient management in China, Zhao et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-01971-w

Designing National Forest Inventories for Accurate Estimation of Soil Carbon Change, Buchkowski et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70868

Disproportionate Belowground Carbon Loss and Ecotone Sensitivity in Boreal Peatland Wildland Fires: Insights From LiDAR and Field Data, Nelson et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access 10.1029/2025gb008982

Diurnal versus spatial variability of greenhouse gas emissions from an anthropogenic modified German lowland river, Koschorreck et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-21-1613-2024

First global carbon dynamics from an observational and process-informed hybrid perspective: Oversimplified respiration representation likely drives divergence in terrestrial carbon sequestration across models, Zhu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111197

Global blue carbon losses from salt marshes exceed restoration gains, Zheng et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-70158-z

Global CO emissions and drivers of atmospheric CO trends constrained by MOPITT satellite measurements, Tang et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5531-2026

Greenhouse gas accounting in urban digital twins, Lylykangas et al., Environmental Research Infrastructure and Sustainability Open Access 10.1088/2634-4505/ae5a57

Methane leakage thresholds for net climate benefits of wastewater biogas recovery, Li et al., Nature Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41893-026-01818-7

Microbial Responses to Warming Reduce Deep Blue Carbon Storage, Xiao et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70883

Phosphate scarcity governs methane production in the global open ocean, Wang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2521235123

Priority research questions in global peatland science, Milner et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03321-5

Seasonal Drought Reduces Carbon Sequestration in Coastal Wetlands, Jia et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70865

Tracing carbon dynamics during vegetation succession in a subtropical forest, Chen et al., Journal of Ecology 10.1111/1365-2745.70319

Why both trees and technology are important in the race to mitigate carbon emissions, Walker, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-01300-6

Wintertime production and storage of methane in thermokarst ponds of subarctic Norway, Pismeniuk et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-1497-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
High-resolution US methane emissions inferred from an inversion of 2019 TROPOMI satellite data: contributions from individual states, urban areas, and landfills, Atmospheric chemistry and physics, 10.5194/acp-24-5069-2024 56 cites.

CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Hemispheric contrast in summer season duration responses to CO₂ removal, Park et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.31898308

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The performance of solvent-based direct air capture across geospatial and temporal climate regimes, Frontiers in Climate, 10.3389/fclim.2024.1394728 18 cites.

Decarbonization

A straightforward trajectory strengthens support for the transition away from natural gas: a population-based survey experiment in the Netherlands, Noordzij et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104699

End of life electric vehicle batteries in China to 2060 and related resource management implications, Li et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03555-3

Life cycle assessment across three generations of photovoltaic systems: Insights from net-zero perspective, Tan et al., Energy Sustainable Development/Energy for sustainable development 10.1016/j.esd.2026.102012

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Impact of electric vehicle charging demand on power distribution grid congestion, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2317599121 84 cites.

Aerosols

Desert dust exerts twice the longwave radiative heating estimated by climate models, Kok et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-70952-9

Size-resolved condensation sink as an approach to understand pathways how gaseous emissions affect health and climate, Lepistö et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-26-4215-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Aerosol forcing regulating recent decadal change of summer water vapor budget over the Tibetan Plateau, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-46635-8 25 cites.

Climate change communications & cognition

Audience engagement with climate change content on YouTube: an analysis of video attributes and user interactions, Aharonson et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1803829

Beyond broken homes: Why climate resilience must start with the human psyche, Sahu & Basu, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000908

Beyond Memory and Experimenter Demand: Scientific Consensus Messages Correct Misperceptions, Geiger et al., Open Science Framework Open Access 10.17605/osf.io/s8zgh

Narratives of youth climate activism: exploring the diversity of meaning-making on climate change and citizenship, Fonseca & Castro, Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103044

Obstructing change: political inertia and the maintenance of climate inaction in Australia, Bowden et al., Environmental Politics Open Access 10.1080/09644016.2026.2664291

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Generative AI tools can enhance climate literacy but must be checked for biases and inaccuracies, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01392-w 48 cites.

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Agrivoltaic System Potential to Mitigate Effects of Climate Change in Viticulture, Meier et al., JuSER (Forschungszentrum Jülich) pmh:oai:juser.fz-juelich.de:1050469

Deep learning model anticipates climate change induced reduction in major commodity crop yields for Canada in 2050, Bhullar et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1748516

Escalating Compound Drought-Heatwaves and Demographic Shifts Threaten Simultaneous Global Breadbasket Failures, Sabut & Mishra, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118650

Fast Net Carbon Balance Recovery After Clear-Cutting but Uncertain Long-Term Carbon Accumulation in Eucalyptus Plantations, Guillemot et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70881

Harmonized European Union subnational crop statistics reveal climate impacts and crop cultivation shifts, Ronchetti et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-16-1623-2024

Integration of SEBAL-Derived Evapotranspiration With Climate Change Projections to Assess Basin-Scale Water Resources and Crops Yield, Mikaeili & Shourian, International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70398

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Climate-smart agriculture: adoption, impacts, and implications for sustainable development, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 10.1007/s11027-024-10139-z 114 cites.

Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

A tale of two coasts: Unveiling US Gulf and Atlantic coastal cities at high flood risk, Dey & Shao, Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aec2079

Climatology and Trends in Spatial Scales of Extreme Precipitation Over Land in the Contiguous US, Chatterjee et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120662

Future Changes in the Atmospheric Water Cycle Over the Tibetan Plateau, Zou et al., Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-026-08094-3

Impact of climate change on future flood susceptibility using different climatic parameters and deep learning algorithms in eastern Himalayan region, Paramanik et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1729457

Impacts of climate change on groundwater resources: a comprehensive review, Kunwar et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1606354

Projected Future Changes of Atmospheric Rivers by a High- and Low-Resolution CESM, Wang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0377.1

Rising Temperatures Will Amplify the Risk of Future Compound Dry–Hot Events over the Mongolian Plateau, Kang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0592.1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Impact of Soil Moisture Dynamics and Precipitation Pattern on UK Urban Pluvial Flood Hazards Under Climate Change, Earth s Future, 10.1029/2023ef004073 10 cites.

Climate change economics
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Higher education’s impact on CO2 mitigation: MENA insights with consideration for unemployment, economic growth, and globalization, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1325598 11 cites.

Climate change mitigation public policy research

Promising climate progress from net-zero ambitions to the Paris Agreement goal, Tagomori et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-026-02615-y

Strategic retrenchment in the energy transition: Shell Pernis and the emergence of second-order carbon lock-in, Unruh et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104718

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Catalysts for sustainable energy transitions: the interplay between financial development, green technological innovations, and environmental taxes in European nations, Environment Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-023-04081-4 34 cites.

Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Disentangling urban vulnerability to rising temperatures, Achebak et al., The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101451

Weave framework: harnessing local knowledge in donor-funded climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction projects, Yukich et al., Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2661681

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Governance, institutions, and climate change resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: assessing the threshold effects, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1352344 23 cites.

Climate change impacts on human health

Heatwaves Constrain the Future Persistence of Mosquito Vectors in Europe, Kramer et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70876

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Analysing health system capacity and preparedness for climate change, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-01994-4 31 cites.

Climate change & geopolitics
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The challenges of the increasing institutionalization of climate security, PLOS Climate, 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000402 7 cites.

Other

Artificial intelligence to support cross-disciplinary climate change research, Ou et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02624-x

Iron and Manganese Cycling in the Atlantifying Barents Sea: Concentrated Inputs and Emerging Limitations, Hawley et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access 10.1029/2025gb009031

Research on the impact of climate risk attention on enterprise energy efficiency, Song, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115325

Strengthening Climate Action through Career Aspirations: A Life-Course Perspective on Circular Citizenship Behaviours, Pribadi, Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103055

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Extreme hydrometeorological events induce abrupt and widespread freshwater temperature changes across the Pacific Northwest of North America, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01407-6 14 cites.

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Avoid Sacrificing Nature to Truly Achieve Net Zero, Rigolot et al., Conservation Letters Open Access 10.1111/con4.70046

Potential futures for the IPCC’s approach to artificial intelligence, Buck et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03514-y

Scientific coherence in climate change research: a meta-research perspective to accelerate scientific progress and climate justice, Acosta-Monterrosa et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1766738

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE), Earth system science data, 10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024 36 cites.

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

Managing Natural Hazards and Climate Risks in Elections, Asplund et al., International IDEA

Elections are the cornerstone of democracy, but like all public functions they are vulnerable to disruption by events in the natural world, including earthquakes, floods, wildfires and heatwaves. As the climate changes, many natural hazards are increasing in frequency and severity, prompting electoral practitioners to seek ways to protect the vote from such phenomena. The authors survey the risk that meteorological and geological events pose to elections and offers an analysis of the strategies that electoral management bodies (EMBs) around the world have put in place to safeguard electoral processes. The authors draw on a rich database of more than 100 cases of disaster-disrupted elections between 2006 and 2025 to document the various effects that events in the natural world can have on all aspects of the electoral cycle and to delineate the range of strategies that are available to electoral administrators to minimize their adverse consequences.

Solar Permitting Scorecard. Grading all 50 states on removing obstacles to rooftop solar and home batteries, Elizabeth Ridlington and Johanna Neumann, Frontier Group and Environment America Research & Policy Center

The authors reviewed policies relating to the permitting and inspection of residential solar energy systems and battery storage in all 50 states. They found that a majority of states have done little to adopt common-sense practices that reduce the costs and delays that permitting and inspection requirements impose on families wishing to install solar panels and batteries. Only two states – California and Texas – received a “B” in the scorecard, two received a “C,” 24 received a “D” and the remaining 22 received an “F.”

People and Climate Change, Ipsos

As temperatures rise, the individual responsibility to act has fallen. The past 11 years have been the warmest in the modern era, but people increasingly place less responsibility in needing to act. In the last five years, all countries surveyed in the report in both 2021 and 2026 have seen falls in the proportion who agree that individuals would be failing future generations by not acting against climate change. Short-term fear is countering long-term preparation. While climate concern remains present – 59% on average across 31 countries say they country should be doing more in the fight against climate change - more immediate risks are seen as greater priorities. Our What Worries the World survey finds concern about climate change in 11th place, behind more tangible, immediate worries issues like crime, unemployment, and inflation. The energy transition is at a crossroads. Public support for transitioning to clean energy is increasingly conditional, contingent on affordability, reliability, and security trade-offs. The Ipsos Energy Transition Barometer finds one in two (50% across 31 countries) support governments prioritizing low energy prices even if emissions increase.

Extreme Heat and Agriculture, Simpson et al., Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization

Extreme heat refers to situations where daytime and nighttime temperatures rise above their usual ranges for a protracted period, leading to physiological stress and direct physical damages to food crops, livestock, fish, trees and human beings. The authors examine how extreme heat ripples through agricultural systems and how heatwaves can interact with other climatological variables, including rain, solar radiation, humidity, wind and drought – to trigger compound effects that wreak havoc on individuals and entire ecosystems.

The 2026 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: narrowing window for decisive health action, Kriit et al., The Lancet Public Health

This third iteration of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change in Europe report systematically tracks the health effects of climate change adaptation and mitigation action, economics and finance, and the engagement of various societal actors with the climate change and health nexus, drawing on data up to 2025. The report features seven new indicators, methodological updates, extended time series for existing indicators, and highlights inequalities in health risks and impacts where possible.

Global Electricity Review 2026, Fulghum et al., Ember

75%=Share of global electricity demand growth met by solar power in 2025. 33.8%=Share of renewables in global power generation in 2025 – above a third for the first time, overtaking coal. -0.2%=Year-on-year change in fossil generation.

Climate Change and Migration from Central America: Insights from Migrants in Mexico, Kerwin et al., UC Berkeley School of Law

The authors examine how climate-related harms intersect with and exacerbate violence, exclusion, discrimination, and weak state protection to drive migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Drawing on interviews, desk research, and surveys with people on the move in Mexico, the authors show that climate change rarely operates as a single cause of displacement. Instead, migrants consistently describe how environmental shocks—such as droughts that destroy crops, storms that damage homes and livelihoods, and deforestation and extreme heat that undermine health and economic stability—exacerbate existing insecurity and hardship. The authors focus on Mexico as both a transit and destination country for Central American migrants impacted by these dynamics. The findings demonstrate that better understanding how climate change intensifies vulnerabilities to violence, insecurity, and loss of livelihood—and integrating that analysis into refugee and immigration representation and adjudication— can improve access to protection and to regular migration status under Mexico’s existing legal framework. The authors also offer specific recommendations to strengthen institutional responses to climate migration by the Mexican government and civil society actors to climate migration.

High Voltage. The global potential for industrial electrification, Cassandra Etter-Wenzel and Jan Rosenow, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Industrial electrification is becoming a matter of economic security as well as decarbonization. The authors argue that continued reliance on fossil fuels leaves 75% of global industry exposed to recurring price shocks, while electrification offers a pathway to stable and resilient energy costs.

Trust, Media Habits, and Misperceptions Shape Public Understanding of Climate Change, Marryam Ishaq and M. Speiser, ecoAmerica

A hidden climate majority exists. Most Americans are concerned about climate change, but they do not realize how widely that concern is shared. This perception gap (pluralistic ignorance) masks a strong hidden consensus on climate concern. Trust in information and personal concern about climate change reinforce each other. Americans who trust the information they see or hear are far more likely to be concerned about climate change (79%) — and those who are climate-concerned report higher trust. This creates a reinforcing loop between trust and concern. Media ecosystems shape climate beliefs. Where Americans get their news influences what they believe about climate and energy. While mainstream national media, local news, and social media remain the most widely used sources overall, partisan and age differences shape which sources are most relied on, which in turn shapes climate beliefs. Americans trust the information they encounter but doubt others’ ability to recognize climate misinformation. While many Americans trust the information they personally consume, they are far less confident in others’ ability to distinguish climate fact from fiction — especially when they perceive others as less concerned about climate change. Mistrust of others and misperceptions are core barriers to climate action. Rather than a lack of concern, some of the biggest barriers include eroded trust and misperceptions. Misperceptions about energy sources and others’ climate beliefs, combined with low confidence in the public’s ability to navigate climate misinformation, suppress visible engagement and slow individual and collective action.

Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Analysis for the United States 1990-2024, Desai et al., Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland

The authors present a comprehensive picture of greenhouse gas (GHG) sources and sinks covering the geographical region of the United States. The data are presented for each year from 1990 through 2024, the latter being the most recent year when comprehensive data are available for the entire economy. Along with detailed results for single years and analyses of trends over time, the authors present methodological descriptions, data inputs, a characterization of uncertainties, recalculations, and improvements. The report was developed to supports comparability and continuity with past official U.S. inventories prepared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

From energy crisis to energy security: Actions for policy makers, Walker et al., The International Renewable Energy Agency

The current energy crisis stemming from the conflict in the Middle East re-iterates the inherent structural weakness and vulnerability of national energy systems that remain reliant upon fossil fuels, and markets where the costs of oil and gas are highly influential on electricity prices. There is an immediate opportunity, however, to urgently reassess these fundamentals and prioritize reactions that enhance long-term energy stability. The authors provide key short- medium- and long-term actions for policy makers responding to the present crisis. Policy makers must urgently consider intervening to direct investment and emergency responses to accelerate the deployment of renewable power generation capacity, and the electrification of energy-consuming processes and sectors.

State of Energy Policy 2026, Cozzi et al., International Energy Agency

The authors provide a unique review of policy progress made in 2025 across all energy sectors and instruments, with a special focus on government spending, energy efficiency regulations, and the contribution of the energy sector to nationally determined contributions and long-term net zero pledges. This year’s report brings an extensive examination of energy security policies to the period 1973-2025, from oil and natural gas to clean energy technology supply chains and critical minerals. It also spotlights the policy momentum around energy access, most particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, taking stock of the policy progress since the IEA Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in 2024.

2025 State of the Heat Pump Water Heater Market Report, New Buildings Institute and the Advanced Water Heating Initiative

The authors discuss how residential and commercial manufacturers released more new and updated products in 2025 than any other year in the heat pump water heater's (HPWH) history. Five new residential manufacturers brought HPWHs to market, and many other established manufacturers brought updated and increasingly innovative products to market. New configurations and form factors also emerged, from flexible voltage (120-volt and 240-volt in the same unit) products, to split systems (where the compressor and tank are separated), to high temperature commercial and industrial HPWHs, to HPWHs with thermal storage.

Climate Change & Adaptation. Rethinking climate risk integration across business, finance and policy, Holloway et al., FTI Consulting

Financial institutions, corporate executives and investors are operating with climate risk models that systematically underestimate exposure by a factor of two to four times. This is not a compliance issue, instead it represents one of the most significant mispricing phenomena in modern capital markets, materializing today across credit spreads, equity valuations and capital allocation decisions. The authors analyzed 148 global companies representing $31.4 trillion in market capitalization to test whether current climate risk models provide decision-useful intelligence. The findings are stark: conventional platforms project approximately 2.0% portfolio losses, while the author's integrated analysis reveals 7.7% average exposure – a four-fold gap that stems from systematically underweighting transition risks relative to physical climate impacts.

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Wildfires used to ‘go to sleep’ at night. Climate change has them burning overtime

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:16:48 EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found.

Fires used to die down or even die out at night as temperatures dropped and humidity increased, but that’s happening less often. The number of hours in North America when the weather is favorable for wildfires is 36% higher than 50 years ago, according to a study published earlier this month in Science Advances.

Places such as California have 550 more potential burning hours than in the mid-1970s. Parts of southwestern New Mexico and central Arizona are seeing as many as 2,000 more hours a year when the weather is prone to burning fires, the highest increase seen in the study, which looked at Canada and the United States. The research looked at times when conditions were ripe for fire, but that didn’t mean fires occurred during all that time.

Recent big fires in LA and Hawaii burned at night

Fires that surge at night are tougher to fight and included the Lahaina, Hawaii fire in 2023, the Jasper fire in Alberta in 2024, and the Los Angeles fires in 2025, the study said. Maui’s fire ignited at 12:22 a.m.

It’s not just the clock that is getting extended. The calendar is too. The number of days with fire-prone weather increased by 44%, which effectively added 26 days over the past half-century.

It’s mostly from warmer, drier nighttime weather, with a bit of extra wind, the study authors said.

“Fires normally slow down during the night, or they just stop,” said study co-author Xianli Wang, a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “But under extreme fire hazard conditions, fire actually burns through the night or later into the night.”

And Wang said Earth’s warming atmosphere means it’s like to get worse.

Tougher to fight fires at night

Fires that don’t “go to sleep” get a running start the next day, making it harder to knock them down, University of California, Merced fire scientist John Abatzoglou, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email.

“Nights aren’t what they used to be — that is, more reliable breaks for wildfire,” he added. “Widespread warming and lack of humidity is keeping fires up at night.”

Wildland firefighter Nicholai Allen, who also founded a firm that makes home fire prevention tools, said it’s very difficult to fight fires at night.

“You have to understand that you have snakes and bears and mountain lions and all the stuff you have in daytime,” Allen said, noting a colleague was bitten by a bear. “But at night, they’re really scared, and they’re running away from the fire.”

The Canadian researchers analyzed nearly 9,000 larger fires from 2017 to 2023 using a weather satellite and other tools to get hour-by-hour data on atmospheric conditions during the fires, such as humidity, temperature, wind, rain, and fuel moisture levels. They created a computer model that correlated weather conditions and fire status and applied to historical data in Canada and the United States from 1975 to 2106.

Nights are warming faster than days

Scientists have long said heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas make nights warm faster than days because of increased cloud cover that absorbs and re-emits heat down to Earth at night like a blanket. Since 1975, summers in the contiguous U.S. have seen nighttime lowest temperatures warm by 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius), while daytime highest temperatures have gone up 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Humidity at night “doesn’t rebound” from its daytime dryness like it used to, said study lead author Kaiwei Luo, a fire science researcher at the University of Alberta.

Wildfires often coincide with drought, especially extreme drought, which means not only drier air, but hotter, drier air that sucks up more moisture from the ground and plants, making fuels for fire more flammable, Wang said. In a drought, there’s often a vicious circle of drying and when it is quite dry, a warmer atmosphere has more power to suck moisture out of fuels.

Just as warmer nights, especially in heat waves, don’t let the body recover, the warmer nights are not allowing forests to recover, Wang said. It can take weeks for dead fuel to recover its lost moisture and be less fire-prone, he said.

“It’s just a stress to the plants,” Wang said. “That also increases fuel load.”

From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States on average burned an area the size of Massachusetts each year, slightly more than 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers). That’s 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Canada’s land burned on average for the last 10 years is 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Syracuse University fire scientist Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the research, called the study a sobering reminder of climate change’s role in driving “increased fire potential across almost all of the fire-prone environments of North America.”

Transition risk: The human cost of net zero

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:55:56 EST

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler

I am finalizing a textbook on climate risk and am posting chapters as I finish them. I’d previously posted chapters about embedded energy and physical climate risk; this post is a chapter on transition risk, the economic and social risks of the transition to a clean-energy economy.

Introduction

In the context of climate risk, transition risk encompasses the economic and social risks associated with a shift towards a low-carbon economy. Such an effort would fundamentally reshape our world and create critical financial uncertainty for assets and industries tied to the old, carbon-intensive system.

Net zero

Reaching “net zero” is the ultimate goal of most climate policy. This means reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible, with any remaining emissions that are too difficult or costly to eliminate are canceled out by an equivalent amount of “negative emissions” — processes that actively pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These negative emissions are the “net” part of net zero and it acknowledges the practical reality that some sectors, like long-distance air travel or ocean shipping, may be incredibly difficult to decarbonize in the near future.

What are these negative emissions technologies? The two primary methods discussed are Direct Air Capture (DAC), which uses machines to filter carbon dioxide directly from the air, and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS), which involves growing crops, burning them for energy, and capturing and burying the resulting carbon dioxide. However, both technologies face significant hurdles, including high costs, large energy requirements, and, in the case of BECCS, immense land use needs that could compete with food production and biodiversity.

Once we reach net zero, global temperatures will stabilize — although they won’t recover to pre-industrial levels for tens of thousands of years. Getting the climate to actually cool on time scales we care about (decades to centuries) would would require pulling even more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, or deploying some type of climate engineering approach like injecting aerosols into the stratosphere.

The scale of the net zero transformation means that reaching net zero will fundamentally overhaul vast parts of the global economy. Many big sectors of our economy — energy, transportation, industry, agriculture — must be reshaped, and that reshaping will create enormous opportunities as well as painful dislocations. The transition to a low-carbon economy is not simply a matter of swapping one energy source for another; it requires rebuilding infrastructure, retraining workers, and redirecting trillions of dollars in investment.

Some industries are poised to prosper. Renewable energy is the most obvious example: in 2025, the world added over 700 GW of new capacity, and sustaining that pace for decades will require ongoing investment in manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of wind turbines and solar panels. The profits for those well positioned will be enormous.

The electric vehicle industry and its supply chains — from battery manufacturers to mining operations for lithium and cobalt — also stand to grow dramatically. Companies that build and manage electrical grid infrastructure, including new transmission lines and energy storage systems, will see surging demand. So too will firms specializing in energy efficiency, building retrofits, and emerging technologies like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels. Even agriculture could see new revenue streams as farmers are paid to adopt practices that sequester carbon in soil.

Other industries, however, face serious decline. Fossil fuel producers (coal, oil, and natural gas) confront the prospect of their core product becoming obsolete, stranding assets worth trillions of dollars. Workers in these industries, from coal miners to oil rig operators, risk losing their livelihoods.

The effects extend well beyond extraction: refineries, pipelines, and petrochemical plants all face an uncertain future. The automotive sector will also see significant disruption, as the shift to electric vehicles renders the internal combustion engine and its complex supply chain of transmissions, exhaust systems, and fuel injection components irrelevant. Communities built around these industries may face economic devastation if the transition is not carefully managed.

This uneven distribution of winners and losers will create difficult economic and political challenges, particularly during the transition period. The enormous capital investment required — in renewable generation, grid modernization, EV charging infrastructure, industrial retooling, and carbon removal — must be mobilized quickly, creating the risk of supply chain bottlenecks, inflation in key materials, and financial instability. Managing this transition in a way that is both fast enough to meet climate targets and equitable enough to maintain broad public support is one of the defining policy challenges of our time.

Stranded assets

A core concept in transition risk is the “stranded asset”. A stranded asset is defined as an asset that loses significant value well before the end of its expected economic life. This loss is often sudden and unexpected, driven by changes in market conditions, technology, or policy. While this can happen for many reasons, it is a particularly potent risk in the context of climate change, arising from both direct physical impacts and the economic shifts of the energy transition.

For example, here is a house that literally fell into the ocean in North Carolina in Sept. 2025:

link

From Zillow.com, this was a pricey house:

link

This house could have stood for another few decades, but it collapsed into the ocean due to coastal erosion that was certainly made worse by sea level rise. When that happened, its value instantly dropped to zero, a stark, nonlinear impact that produced a stranded asset.

While physical risks can strand assets, the concept first gained prominence in discussions about transition risk and the fossil fuel industry. Oil and gas companies are valued in the trillions of dollars, with much of that valuation based on their proven reserves—oil and gas that is in the ground and ready to be produced. The transition to a net-zero economy, however, requires that a significant portion of these reserves be “left in the ground” and never burned. Once the market fully accepts that these assets cannot be produced due to climate policies, their value could drop to zero rapidly.

The danger of these fossil fuel assets becoming stranded extends far beyond the energy companies themselves. It poses a systemic risk to the broader economy because large swaths of the general public have financial exposure to these companies through their investments, including 401k programs, pensions, and mutual funds. The sudden devaluation of these energy assets could negatively affect many people’s investment and retirement funds, which in turn could have a widespread and devastating impact on the financial security of the general public.

This same principle applies to the real estate sector. Consider a commercial office building with a low energy efficiency rating located in a city that passes a new ordinance mandating high-performance standards for all buildings. The owner is suddenly faced with a difficult choice: either undertake a costly, large-scale retrofit to meet the new legal requirements or risk being unable to legally rent the space. If the retrofit is too expensive, the building’s value is stranded, as its primary function — generating rental income — has been eliminated by a policy change aimed at reducing emissions.

Another often-overlooked category of risk lies in intangible assets. For companies in the S&P 500, these assets — such as brand value, reputation, and intellectual property (IP) — can represent up to 90% of their total market value. Their non-physical nature makes them vulnerable to rapid devaluation. For example, imagine a company that holds a highly valuable portfolio of patents for a new, efficient diesel engine technology. If a major country or region, aiming to meet climate targets, decides to ban the sale of all new diesel cars, the market for that technology disappears. The intellectual property, once a significant asset, has its value evaporate almost overnight. This is a direct parallel to the risk facing fossil fuel companies, whose reserves — a tangible asset on paper — could become worthless if they cannot be produced.

A final critical category that is often overlooked is human capital. Human capital represents the skills, knowledge, and expertise that workers have developed over their careers — assets that can suddenly lose their value in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Consider a mechanic who has spent 30 years perfecting the art of repairing internal combustion engines. This individual has accumulated expertise in diagnosing problems, understanding the mechanical systems, and maintaining gasoline-powered vehicles. As the world shifts to electric vehicles — which require fundamentally different maintenance skills — this expertise becomes obsolete. The mechanic’s human capital, built over decades, is stranded.

The scale of this challenge is enormous. Huge numbers of workers have built their careers in fossil fuel industries. Coal miners possess specialized knowledge about underground operations, safety protocols, and extraction techniques. Oil field workers understand drilling technologies, reservoir management, and petroleum systems. Pipeline operators and refinery technicians have invested years developing skills specific to a carbon-intensive economy. As these industries contract or disappear entirely, these workers face the prospect of their expertise becoming rapidly becoming worthless.

This creates both an economic and social crisis. Unlike a stranded power plant that can be written off a company’s books, stranded human capital represents real people with families, mortgages, and communities that depend on their income. A 50-year-old coal miner cannot simply retrain as a software developer overnight. The geographical concentration of these industries compounds the problem — entire regions have been built around fossil fuel extraction, creating communities where the primary source of skilled employment may disappear.

The human dimension of stranded assets also creates political risk for the climate transition itself. Workers facing the loss of their livelihoods can become powerful opponents of climate action, slowing the transition for everyone. The fear and anger generated by the transition can translate into political movements that resist or reverse climate policies, as workers vote to protect their immediate economic interests over longer-term economic reality.

The TCFD Framework: Four Key Drivers of Transition Risk

To better understand and manage transition risks, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) developed a framework that organizes these risks into four distinct categories. This framework has become the global standard for how companies and investors think about and report climate-related financial risks.

1. Policy and Legal Risks

Policy and legal risks emerge when governments and courts take action to address climate change. These interventions can fundamentally alter the economic landscape, often with little warning.

Carbon pricing represents one of the most direct policy tools. When governments implement a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, they make it more expensive to emit CO₂. For instance, a carbon price of $50 per ton of carbon dioxide would add around $20 to the cost of a barrel of oil, fundamentally changing the economics of oil production and consumption. Companies that built their business models around cheap fossil fuels suddenly face dramatically higher operating costs.

Efficiency standards create another layer of policy risk. The UK’s Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) provides a clear example: it prohibits landlords from renting properties with poor energy efficiency ratings. A landlord who owns an older, inefficient building faces a stark choice — invest heavily in retrofits or watch the property become unrentable, thereby creating a stranded asset.

The legal dimension adds another layer of risk through climate litigation. There are many lawsuits winding through the courts where people are taking fossil fuel companies to court because they have been or expect to be harmed by climate-change-driven extreme weather. This potential climate liability could expose fossil fuel companies to enormous financial risk, much like tobacco companies faced when the health impacts of their products became legally actionable.

2. Technology Risks

Technology risk represents the classic story of disruption — when a new, cheaper, or better technology makes existing technologies obsolete. In the climate context, this risk is accelerating as clean technologies have reached critical tipping points.

The most dramatic example is the drop in renewable energy costs. Solar power costs have fallen nearly 90% over the past 15 years. In most parts of the world, building a new solar or wind farm is now cheaper and faster than building a new coal or gas plant — even without subsidies. This is rapidly reordering energy economics and energy markets. Coal plants that were expected to operate profitably for 40 years are being shut down early not because of regulation, but because they simply can’t compete economically with cheaper energy sources. Natural gas plants will be next.

Electric vehicles present another technological disruption. As battery costs decline and performance improves, EVs are becoming not just environmentally preferable but superior products — they accelerate faster, require less maintenance, and increasingly cost less to own and operate than internal combustion engines. This technological shift threatens not just automakers who are slow to adapt, but entire ecosystems built around gasoline vehicles: gas stations, oil change shops, parts suppliers, and even dealerships whose business models depend heavily on service revenue from complex internal combustion engines.

3. Market Risks

Market risks encompass the shifts in supply, demand, and investor sentiment that can rapidly revalue assets and companies.

As an example, demand for transition minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper is soaring as the world builds batteries and renewable energy infrastructure. Companies that secured supply chains for these materials early have gained significant competitive advantages, while those arriving late face production bottlenecks and inflated costs. Conversely, demand for thermal coal is collapsing in many regions, leaving coal mining companies with reserves that may never be extracted.

Perhaps more significant is the shift in investor perceptions. For decades, oil companies were valued based on their proven reserves — the oil and gas they had rights to extract. Now, many investors view these same reserves as worthless, unburnable carbon that will never generate revenue. This shift in perception led BP to write down its assets by $17.5 billion in 2020, with Shell following with a $22 billion write down. These companies acknowledged that much of their oil would likely remain in the ground forever.

The power of changing investor sentiment was dramatically demonstrated in 2021 when Engine No. 1, a tiny activist hedge fund, successfully won three board seats at ExxonMobil. Their argument wasn’t environmental but purely financial: Exxon’s failure to plan for the energy transition was destroying long-term shareholder value. This showed that transition risk has moved from the margins to the center of corporate governance.

4. Reputational Risks

Reputational risk reflects the changing expectations of consumers, employees, and society at large. As public concern about climate change grows, companies associated with high emissions face damage to their brands and their social license to operate.

The financial sector illustrates how reputational concerns translate into business decisions. In 2019, Goldman Sachs announced it would no longer finance new thermal coal mines or Arctic oil exploration. While framed partly in risk management terms, the bank explicitly cited reputational considerations and changing client expectations as key drivers. They recognized that being associated with these projects was becoming bad for business, potentially costing them clients and talented employees who increasingly consider environmental factors in their career choices.

Consumer pressure is also reshaping entire industries. The rapid growth of plant-based milk alternatives like Oatly directly responds to, among other things, consumer concerns about dairy’s environmental impact. Traditional dairy companies, seeing their market share erode, are scrambling to launch their own non-dairy alternatives. This shift isn’t driven by regulation or technology costs but by changing consumer preferences that make high-emission products less desirable, regardless of price or quality.

5. Putting it together

These four categories of risk — policy and legal, technology, market, and reputation — don’t operate in isolation. They interact and amplify each other, creating feedback loops that can accelerate the transition and magnify risks for unprepared economies.

Consider how technological advances in renewable energy trigger cascading effects across all risk categories. As solar and wind become cheaper than fossil fuels (technology risk), governments gain political cover to implement stricter emissions standards and carbon pricing (policy risk), knowing these policies won’t dramatically increase energy costs for voters. These policies, in turn, shift investor capital away from fossil fuels and toward renewables (market risk), further driving down clean energy costs through economies of scale. Companies slow to adapt find themselves not just technologically obsolete but facing reputational damage for clinging to outdated, polluting technologies (reputational risk), which makes it even harder to attract capital, customers, and talent.

The automotive industry provides another vivid example of these interconnected risks. As electric vehicles improve and battery costs fall (technology risk), governments implement EV mandates and phase out internal combustion engines — Norway by 2025, the UK by 2030 (policy risk). These policies signal to investors that traditional automakers without credible EV strategies are poor long-term investments, triggering capital flight (market risk). Meanwhile, young consumers increasingly view gas-powered vehicles as environmentally irresponsible, especially luxury gas vehicles (reputational risk). Each risk reinforces the others: technological improvements justify stricter policies, which shift market dynamics, which shape public perception, which in turn creates pressure for even more aggressive policies and faster technological development.

Understanding these interconnections is essential for understanding transition risk. A company cannot address one type of transition risk while ignoring the others — they must recognize that these risks compound and prepare for the systemic changes that result from their interaction.

The “Just Transition”

The recognition that the shift to a low-carbon economy will create winners and losers, particularly among workers and communities reliant on fossil fuel industries, has given rise to the concept of a just transition. A just transition is an effort to ensure that the benefits of a green economy are shared broadly and that the costs do not fall unfairly on those who can least afford them.

The core idea is to provide support, retraining, and new economic opportunities for workers and communities whose livelihoods are threatened by the phase-out of carbon-intensive industries. This is not merely an ethical consideration; it is a pragmatic one. The threat of widespread job losses can create powerful political opposition to climate action, potentially slowing down or even derailing the transition for everyone. Therefore, managing the human side of the transition is critical to its success.

In a just transition, we would repurpose skills: For example, the skills required to build an offshore oil rig are similar to those needed for constructing an offshore wind platform. A just transition would facilitate this shift through targeted programs.

The private market is unlikely to manage this process efficiently or equitably. Government action is therefore needed to fund retraining programs and help workers seamlessly switch to new jobs in the growing green economy.

Germany’s approach to phasing out coal mining in its Lausitz region serves as a prominent example. The German government is investing €40 billion to manage the process by funding new infrastructure, research institutes, and extensive retraining programs. The goal is not just to compensate for lost jobs but to actively build a new, sustainable economic future for the region.

Conclusion

Transition risk represents a fundamental restructuring of the global financial and social order. As this chapter has detailed, the journey toward a net-zero economy is far more than a simple technological swap. It is a complex, multi-dimensional shift driven by the interplay of policy, technology, and market and social dynamics. While this transition offers immense opportunities for innovation and growth in green sectors, it simultaneously creates the systemic threat of stranded assets — devaluing not just physical infrastructure and fossil fuel reserves, but also intangible intellectual property and the human capital of millions of workers.

Ultimately, the success of this overhaul hinges on the ability to manage these risks. Because the private market is not naturally equipped to solve the social dislocations caused by such rapid change, proactive governance and strategic investment are essential to ensure a just transition, so that the shift to sustainability does not leave vulnerable communities behind. Balancing the urgent need for decarbonization with the economic security of the workforce is not just a moral imperative, but a practical necessity to maintain the political and social stability required to reach our climate goals.

This is a draft of a section of my climate risk textbook (slightly edited & reformatted to make it appropriate for Substack). I’d very much like to identify errors now, so if you see any, please let me know in the comments.

How strong can a hurricane get in a warming world?

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:38:19 EST

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters

October 28, 2025, was a very bad day to be in Jamaica. That morning, Category 5 Hurricane Melissa intensified into the strongest hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic: 190 mph (305 km/h) winds, a tie with Hurricane Allen of 1980. That afternoon Melissa powered ashore in Jamaica, causing a catastrophic $8.8 billion in damage, equivalent to 41% of Jamaica’s GDP.

Melissa came close to its maximum potential intensity

The maximum potential intensity of a tropical cyclone is the maximum strength a storm can achieve based on the existing atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Potential intensity theory was pioneered in 1987 by MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel, who showed that human-caused global warming will increase the maximum strength that a hurricane can achieve. Hurricanes are heat engines that take heat energy out of the ocean and convert it to the kinetic energy of wind, so it makes sense that the winds of the strongest hurricanes will get stronger as the oceans heat up.

Melissa’s 190-mph winds were very close to its maximum potential intensity: The hurricane’s maximum potential intensity was about 197 mph (317 km/h), according to the SHIPS model, and about 200 mph (320 km/h), according to a graphic available at the University of Wisconsin’s CIMSS (Fig. 1). It is quite rare for a hurricane to come this close to its maximum potential intensity — all conditions have to be perfect, and the atmosphere and ocean make up a complex system where perfection is rarely achieved.

Figure 1. The maximum potential intensity (MPI) of Hurricane Melissa on Oct. 28, 2025, was about 175 knots (200 mph). (Image credit: University of Wisconsin’s CIMSS)

Given the less-than-ideal conditions for intensification – light to moderate wind shear of 5-15 knots, a very slow forward speed of less than 5 mph that allowed upwelling of cooler water from the depths to affect it, and interaction with the rugged terrain of Jamaica – Melissa came remarkably close to its maximum potential intensity. (The formula for maximum potential intensity does not include wind shear and slow hurricane motion.)

So how strong could Melissa have gotten if everything were going its way? Melissa formed in late October, when ocean temperatures were about 30 degrees Celsius (86°F). Six weeks earlier, during the early- to mid- September peak of sea surface temperatures, ocean temperatures in the central Caribbean were near 31 degrees Celsius (88°F). According to a 2023 paper, the maximum potential intensity increases 5-7% per degree Celsius of sea surface temperature increase. Thus, Melissa’s maximum potential intensity would have increased by about 11-15 mph (18-25 km/h) had it formed during the September peak in sea surface temperatures. If we assume the other factors limiting its intensification were not present, Melissa could have peaked with 215 mph (345 km/h) winds.

This is the same intensity achieved by the strongest known hurricane in world history, 2015’s Hurricane Patricia. Patricia formed off the Pacific coast of Mexico over record-warm waters of 30.5-31 degrees Celsius (87-88°F). And though the difference between 180 mph and 215 mph may not seem like much, it would actually represent about a fourfold increase in damage potential, according to NOAA.

Figure 2. The strongest tropical cyclones observed globally, 1972-2025, using windspeed ratings from the National Hurricane Center for the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific and from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center elsewhere.

How strong can a hurricane get?

The global list of tropical cyclones during the satellite era (1972-present) with winds as strong or stronger than Melissa is a short one: just 11 storms (Fig. 2). (There were 19 Western Pacific typhoons from 1955-1966 that “officially” have winds of 195 mph or higher, but hurricane experts agree that the intensities assigned to typhoons during that pre-satellite period suffered from a high bias and are not reliable.)

For most of the Northern Hemisphere’s tropical cyclone-prone areas, September will be the month with the highest possible maximum potential intensity, since that is when sea surface temperatures peak. Emanuel, the MIT hurricane scientist, created maps of the top 10% maximum potential intensity expected within 1,000 km of a given point during September, using climate data from the period 1982-1995 (Fig. 3). In the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean have the highest values: 224 mph (100 m/s) or higher. In the Pacific, the southern Philippines, Mexico, and most of Central America also have a top 10% maximum potential intensity of 224 mph (100 m/s) or higher.

Figure 3. Top 10% maximum potential intensity winds within 1,000 km of a given point for tropical cyclones expected during September, using climate data from the period 1982-1995. The only places with an MPI in excess of 110 m/s (246 mph) are the ocean areas of the Middle East. (Image credit: Kerry Emanuel)

Emanuel also created a table showing the top-10% maximum potential intensities for individual cities across the globe. All of these numbers (and the ones in Fig. 3) need to be adjusted upward because the climate has warmed significantly since the 1995 cutoff of the historical data used. A 2022 paper, A potential explanation for the global increase in tropical cyclone rapid intensification, reported that between 1982 and 2017, potential intensity during August-September-October in the Northern Hemisphere tropics increased by 2.3-2.4 mph per decade, or 8.6 mph over the 36-year period (1.02-1.06 m/s per decade). During that same period, Northern Hemisphere tropical sea surface temperatures increased by 0.17-0.23 degree Celsius per decade, or 0.6-0.8 degree Celsius over the 36-year period. A 2021 paper, Poleward expansion of tropical cyclone latitudes, reported similar numbers, with larger increases in potential intensity observed in the eastern Caribbean and western Gulf of Mexico.

These results suggest that the maximum potential intensity numbers in Fig. 3 and in Emanuel’s table should be adjusted upward by about 9 mph (4 m/s). Here are the adjusted numbers for the U.S. from Emanuel’s table showing the top-10% maximum potential intensities for individual cities:

Boston: 78 mph (35 m/s), Cat 1
Honolulu: 186 mph (84 m/s), Cat 5
Miami: 226 mph (101 m/s), Cat 5
Galveston: 220 mph (98 m/s), Cat 5
New Orleans: 231 mph (103 m/s), Cat 5
New York City: 112 mph (50 m/s), Cat 2
San Diego: 72 mph (32 m/s), Tropical Storm
Washington D.C.: 105 mph (47 m/s), Cat 2

Note that for cities like Boston and Washington, D.C., fast-moving storms coming from the south – where they typically move over warmer waters – can arrive at these cities at a strength higher than the local maximum potential intensity. This is why there is a separate entry in Emanuel’s table for the highest maximum potential intensity within 1,000 km of each city. I didn’t show this quantity in the list above, though it is plotted in Fig. 3.

A 300-mph (134 m/s) tropical cyclone is possible in the Persian Gulf

Globally, the highest maximum potential intensities are found in the ultrahot waters of the Middle East. There has never been a tropical cyclone observed in the Persian Gulf because it is narrow and prone to high wind shear and dry air.

Figure 4. Category 1 Tropical Cyclone Gulab makes a bid at entering the Persian Gulf on Oct. 3, 2021. (Image credit: NASA World View)

However, for their eye-popping 2015 paper, Grey swan tropical cyclones, Ning Lin and Kerry Emanuel performed modeling showing that strong tropical cyclones can move through the Persian Gulf, representing an underappreciated threat to major cities like Dubai. The modeling showed that a sea surface temperature of 35 degrees Celsius (95°F) can create a maximum potential intensity of 296 mph (132 m/s) in the Persian Gulf. Their worst-case 1-in-30,000-year storm was a 257 mph (115 m/s) Category 5 beast with a central pressure of 784 mb that brought a colossal storm surge of 24 feet (7.5 meters) to Dubai.

The study used the climate of 1980-2010, and sea surface temperatures in the Persian Gulf have warmed significantly since then. Over the period 1981-2012, the Persian Gulf had peak summer sea surface temperatures of 32-35 degrees Celsius (90-95°F). But in July 2020, those temperatures hit 37.6 degrees Celsius (99.7°F). More recently, in August 2023, sea surface temperatures above 36 degrees Celsius (97°F) were measured over portions of the Persian Gulf. Thus, an even stronger storm – with winds over 300 mph (134 m/s) – would be possible in today’s climate.

There has been a recent close call for a strong tropical cyclone entering the Persian Gulf: In 2021, Category 1 Tropical Cyclone Gulab (Fig. 4) entered the Gulf of Oman, which connects to the Persian Gulf. A four-day forecast from the HWRF model (Fig. 5) predicted Gulab would pass over Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, enter the Persian Gulf, and then intensify into a Category 2 storm with a central pressure of 958 mb. Fortunately, Gulab ended up weakening into a tropical storm and making landfall in Oman, near the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Figure 5. Four-day windspeed forecast from the HWRF model made on Oct. 1, 2021, for Tropical Cyclone Gulab. The model predicted Gulab would be a Category 2 storm with a central pressure of 958 mb in the Persian Gulf. Purple colors correspond to Category 1 winds (74 mph or greater). (Image credit: Levi Cowan, Tropical Tidbits)

Sources of real-time maximum potential intensity data

Kerry Emanuel’s website
University of Wisconsin CIMSS (for active storms)
SHIPS model (for active storms)

2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:51:19 EST

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 19, 2026 thru Sat, April 25, 2026.

Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)

A more troubling picture of sea level rise is coming into view Scientists have uncovered a “blind spot” in the research on rising seas, revealing that tens of millions of people thought safe from coastal flooding are at risk of inundation. Grist, Fred Pearce, Apr 18, 2026.
Wildfires used to 'go to sleep' at night. Climate change is turning them into prime burning hours Phys.org, Seth Borenstein, Apr 18, 2026.
The Guardian view on Japan`s cherry blossom: when spring slips out of time | Editorial A 1,200-year dataset shows the ‘peak bloom’ is arriving earlier. Global heating is unsettling nature’s rhythms – and their cultural meaning The Guardian, Editorial, Apr 19, 2026.
Lost millennium of Galapagos deep-sea corals linked to major Pacific climate shift Phys.org, University of Bristol, Apr 20, 2026.
State of the climate: Strong El Niño puts 2026 on track for second-warmest year The first three months of 2026 have been the fourth warmest on record, with each successive month surpassing historical averages by a greater margin. Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather, Apr 21, 2026.
What`s driving the catastrophic wildfires in Georgia Drought conditions have been worsening for months in the Southeast. Now tens of thousands of acres are burning, displacing people and destroying dozens of homes. Grist, Emily Jones, Apr 22, 2026.
As Climate Disasters Create an Insurance Crisis, a California Bill Seeks to Make Fossil Fuel Companies Pay Premiums “have gone through the roof” and insurers have been leaving the state as the costs of disasters soar amid worsening extreme weather. Inside Climate News, Steven Rodas, Apr 23, 2026.
Hot, dry and hurricane-scarred: How climate change fueled wildfires in Georgia and Florida Widespread drought in the Southeast is largely to blame for the fires, but their spread has also been fueled by leftover debris from past hurricanes that swept across the region. NBC News, Denise Chow, Apr 24, 2026.
The “grim news” that isn’t making headlines Dr Gilbz on Youtube, Anna Gilbert, Apr 24, 2026.
The Next El Niño Could Lock Earth Into a Hotter Climate The Pacific heat pulse is temporary, but scientists warn that its climate impacts are not. Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Apr 25, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (3 articles)

Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse for `first time ever` Renewable energy has overtaken coal to become the world’s largest source of electricity in 2025, according to thinktank Ember. Carbon Brief, Molly Lempriere, Apr 20, 2026.
Why Climate Work Is Community Work State of the Planet, Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht, Apr 23, 2026.
Transition risk: The human cost of net zero Stranded assets and ghost factories The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler, Apr 23, 2026.

Climate Law and Justice (3 articles)

Climate Change, the Courts and US policy - a Critical Perspective From a Former Judge of the UK Supreme Court Climate Law Blog, Robert Carnwath, Apr 22, 2026.
Republicans introduce extreme bill to ban lawsuits against Big Oil forever HEATED, Emily Atkin, Apr 23, 2026.
Criminalisation of climate protesters in UK is counterproductive, research finds Study of 1,300 campaigners finds arrests, fines and jail terms increase determination of activists to take direct action The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Apr 25, 2026.

Miscellaneous (3 articles)

Big Oil Breaks Everything The planet, our democracy, our courts... The Crucial Years, Bill McKibben, Apr 19, 2026.
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #16 A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 12, 2026 thru Sat, April 18, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, John Hartz and Doug Bostrom, Apr 19, 2026.
EGU2026 - My plans for attending virtually The European Geoscience Union's General Assembly will take place from May 4 to 8 in Vienna and online. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, Apr 22, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (2 articles)

Madagascar's ancient baobabs store 700 years of climate secrets-what they reveal The Conversation, Estelle Razanatsoa, Lindsey Gillson, Malika Virah-Sawmy, Apr 20, 2026.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #17 2026 2026''s 17th edition of Skeptical Science's weekly climate research introduces a new regular feature: scoreboarding citations of previously listed articles. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Apr 23, 2026.

International Climate Conferences and Agreements (2 articles)

Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to `halt new expansion` Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief. Carbon Brief, Daisy Dunne, Apr 20, 2026.
New global panel aims to accelerate move away from fossil fuels Scientists and economists will help countries develop plans to reduce dependence on oil, gas and coal The Guardian, Jonathan Watts and Fiona Harvey, Apr 25, 2026.

Health Aspects of Climate Change (2 articles)

This Growing Climate Threat Could Be Increasing Your Blood Pressure Lede: A growing body of research suggests that saltwater leaching into freshwater supplies is increasing the risk of human health problems. Inside Climate News, Kiley Price, Apr 21, 2026.
Pollen season in UK and mainland Europe extended by climate breakdown Research finds global heating has already lengthened the pollen season in addition to worsening heatwaves and droughts The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan, Apr 22, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (1 article)

The really big picture, in four pictures If you had to explain climate change in 10 seconds, what would you say? Climate Trunk, John Lang, Apr 22, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (1 article)

Q&A: What Magyar`s defeat of Orbán in Hungary means for climate and energy The right-wing populist Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán has suffered a landslide electoral defeat to the centre-right Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar. Carbon Brief, Josh Gabbatiss, Apr 17, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (1 article)

Trust, Media Habits, and Misperceptions Shape Public Understanding of Climate Change Most Americans are concerned about climate change, but they don’t think most others share that concern. That quiet misunderstanding is one of the biggest barriers to climate action in the United States. This report explores how trust in information, media consumption patterns, and perceptions of others shape how people think about climate change. The findings point to a striking paradox: while many Americans trust the information they encounter and are concerned about climate change, they believe others are far less concerned and less able to recognize accurate information. ecoAmerica, Marryam Ishaq , Apr 09, 2026.

EGU2026 - Presentation about the Skeptical Science Experiment

Tue, 5 May 2026 10:14:54 EST

As mentioned in the recently published prolog to EGU2026 article, I submitted an abstract to talk about the results of the experiment we ran on Skeptical Science to gauge the effectiveness of our rebuttals. This blog post is a "companion article" to that presentation in session EOS4.1 Geoethics: Linking Geoscience Knowledge, Ethical Responsibility, and Action and will go into somewhat greater details than is possible in the 8 minutes available during the oral session for my presentation about Results of the Skeptical Science experiment and impacts on relaunched website.

Introduction

Skeptical Science (SkS) is a website and non-profit science education organization with international reach founded by John Cook in 2007. Our main purpose is to debunk misconceptions and misinformation about human-caused climate change and our website features a database that currently has more than 250 rebuttals based on peer-reviewed literature. SkS has evolved from a one-person operation to a team project with volunteers from around the globe.

Why set up an experiment?

We wanted to find out how effective our rebuttals are at reducing belief in myths and how effective they are in increasing acceptance of facts. We hoped to find out if there was a need to improve our rebuttals, whether we could identify key features of effective rebuttals, learn who is interested in reading our rebuttals and even if we could measure real-world impact of them.

Design of the experiment (1)

Users arriving via an organic Google search at an English language rebuttal were invited to participate in a short survey via a modal screen. If they provided informed consent they were shown a pre-rebuttal survey and after reading through the rebuttal and reaching its end they were shown the same survey again as the post-rebuttal part. We also tracked their start and end times to measure how much time they spent on the page.

Design of the experiment (2)

For both the pre- and post-rebuttal survey participants were shown the same statement related to the rebuttal they accessed. They randomly either saw a fact or a myth statement. The full list of statements used in the experiment is available in Appendix A of our published paper.

Here is an example:

Rebuttal: "How reliable are climate models"
Fact statement: "Scientists' computer models have been successful at predicting global warming over long time periods."
Myth statement. "Scientists' computer models are too unreliable to predict future climate."

Participants then selected their level of (dis)agreement with either of those statements on a 6-point Likert scale from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree".

Experiment by the numbers

The data analysed for our recently published paper spans the period from November 2021 to July 2025. During that time, 858,016 visitors were shown the initial invitation, 13,432 consented to participate and filled out the pre-survey. 6,261 of them also completed the post-rebuttal form. 3146 participants were shown a factual statement in the survey quiz while 3115 were shown a myth statement.

Results - incoming climate perceptions

The majority of participants came to the website already convinced about climate change with nearly half of them (46.3 %) showing either full agreement with the climate fact or full disagreement with the climate myth. We may therefore either be just "chanting to the choir" or - what we hope is the case as it's a more constructive interpretation - our content is “teaching the choir to sing” by providing resources that empower people to respond to climate misinformation. Our survey also reached a significant number of undecided or dismissive users.

Results - change in accuracy

We also looked at the change in accuracy - the difference between the pre- and post-rebuttal surveys. And the results are a bit of a mixed bag:

The good news is that overall, the belief in myths decreased and that we saw improved climate perceptions even among "dismissive" readers, those who either agreed strongly with the myth or disagreed strongly with the fact in the pre-survey.

The not so good news is that for a small subset of visitors and specific rebuttals, percpetion actually decresased. Those who were already highly certain (strongly agreed with facts) sometimes saw a slight dip in accuracy after reading a rebuttal. Certainly, not what we had hoped to see!

A bit of a guessing game

We had decided to keep the survey short with only one question asked to maximize participation, and therefore didn't include a question to learn why participants selected one of the options. Because of that we had to play a bit of a "guessing game" to find out what might have led to the decrease in perception for some rebuttals.

We decided to look at rebuttals which had received at least 50 completed surveys and devided them into two groups of top vs bottom performing rebuttals. We then compared the Top 3 (positive shift) to the Bottom 3 (negative shift) performers:

Top performers: Always articulated a replacement fact and frequently identified the logical fallacy used in the myth.
Bottom performers: Failed to provide a replacement fact and only rarely explained the underlying fallacy.

What's next?

In parallel to running our experiment, we have been working on a complete relaunch of the Skeptical Science website (see related companion blog post for EOS1.1). One new feature will be the inclusion of the fallacy employed by the climate myth. The results of our experiment indicate that moving to the fact-myth-fallacy structure in our rebuttals is a pretty good idea to increase chances of a successful debunking.

Future plans

We plan to restart the experiment some time after the relaunch of the Skeptical Science website. When we do, we plan to improve the survey design based on what we learned during this first run. We will most likely also add a few targeted and potentially open-ended questions to avoid having to guess what brought people to our website or what influenced their rating.

The team setting up the experiment

The setup for the experiment was implemented by members from our volunteer team, bringing their respective experience and knowledge to the table:

John Cook provided the research know-how and the fact/myth statements related to the rebuttals.
Doug Bostrom setup the necessary technical underpinnings in the backend.
Collin Maessen and Timo Lubitz did all of the needed programming and made sure that the current website worked together well with the server running the experiment.

Our paper in Geoscience Communication

Our full results were published open access in Geoscience Communication on April 2, 2026 in Quantifying the impact of Skeptical Science rebuttals in reducing climate misperceptions.

You can download the full presentation in PDF-format here (2.5MB).

Reference: Winkler, B. and Cook, J.: Results of the Skeptical Science experiment and impacts on relaunched website, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4110, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4110, 2026.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #17 2026

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:07:32 EST

Technical note: new feature in New Research

Every article we list here is eyeball-scanned by a real human but we do lean on bibliographic catalogs (publication databases) to supply article metadata for assembly of each edition of our weekly research surveillance scan. A little in-house software on our end connected via an API to a rich suite of upstream bibliographic information makes regular production possible.

While recently making API changes to improve our background tooling for New Research, we found ourselves unable to resist tapping into a little more information to include in our regular product. There's one key metric to help us all better understand what practicing scientists find most useful (and stimulating) in the torrent of climate-related research reports we sample here each week: "how many investigators cite a work in their own inquiries?" Our knowledge boundaray inexorably expands past any given report, but older results may well be foundational to newer exploration. So, we've added an little retrospective to each domain section in our weekly listing. For each section, we query our data, asking "what paper listed here 2 years ago has been most cited since it appeared?" This new feature appears at the end of each section:

There's a vast wealth in our bibliographic resources of ways to see how fresh information travels and effloresces after publication. For instance, by looking at raw cite statistics one might think that Springer-Nature is the center of mass of the entire academic publishing world. But by other metrics quite likely better describing concentration of thought and new insight, the barycenter of cutting-edge human intellect may well lie elsewhere. Given enough effort it's possible to "see" such things in diagram form— but there are not 36 hours in a day, unfortunately. Hopefully we'll have time to explore more!

After this round of tinkering, we now rely entirely on OpenAlex for bibliographic catalog API services. While this speeds internal production, we continue to recommend Unpaywall, and particularly the Unpaywall browser extension which for readers denied institutional privileges affords much handier access to many research articles.

Open access notables

Increasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future

Compound sequential heatwave-downpour (SHD) events, characterized by abrupt shifts from heatwaves to heavy rainfall, pose serious threats to health, infrastructure, and agriculture. However, the anthropogenic influence on the increasing trend of SHD events is poorly understood, and projections also exhibit large uncertainties. Our study revealed that the affected area of SHD events has grown notably across the Northern Hemisphere. The anthropogenic influences account for approximately 82.2% of the increase in affected areas of SHD events, with greenhouse gas emissions contributing the most. The constrained projection found that the exposure of population and cropland will increase nearly 8-fold under a high-emission scenario in the long term (2081–2100), compared to the current climate baseline (1991–2020). Notably, climate change, rather than population or land use change, is identified as the dominant driver of this increased exposure. Our finding highlights that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can mitigate the impacts of SHD on populations and croplands.

Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications

2024 is the hottest year on record, accompanied by extreme precipitation, droughts and fires. The global atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024 reached a historic high of 3.73 ppm yr-1, significantly surpassing the previous record set during the 2015/16 El Niño event. Here, we investigate the causes and underlying mechanisms of this record-high growth rate by combining satellite-based atmospheric inversions and estimates of gross primary production and fire emissions. We find that the record-high CO2 growth rate is due to large reductions in the land CO2 sink. This is dominated by a dramatic increase in total ecosystem respiration, which occurred primarily in grass and shrub lands, owing to compound hot-wet climatic conditions in 2024. Given the projected increase in the frequency and intensity of compound pluvial-hot extremes under warming, changes in ecosystem respiration will become more drastic and cause positive feedback to climate warming.

Climate futures require politics, Leininger et al., Nature Communications [commentary]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) seventh assessment cycle (AR7) has begun. Scientists have started to assess the literature on feasible and just climate and sustainability scenarios. The recommendations of the IPCC Workshop on the lessons learnt from the use of scenarios in AR6 point to the need for political science expertise to improve scenarios1. One key aspect highlighted in this report is political development2, including the quality and effectiveness of institutions, rule of law, and maintenance of peace. These factors have not yet been incorporated systematically and quantitatively into the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) used to generate pathways of climate action that are assessed in the IPCC. Findings of the IPCC have substantially influenced global climate action. If the omission of political development biases the conclusions drawn from scenario analysis, then the real-world merit of the scenario-based findings is called into question. Therefore, the purpose of this commentary is to suggest steps to improve the incorporation of political development in scenarios during the AR7 assessments and beyond.

A weakened diurnal weather constraint leads to longer burning hours in North America, Luo et al., Science Advances

Contemporary North American wildfires exhibit increasingly erratic intraday burning, posing immediate operational and socioeconomic challenges. Here, we show that climate-driven weakening of day-night (diurnal) weather constraints extends and intensifies burning hours, a key mechanism behind broader fire regime transformations. Analyzing hourly geostationary satellite observations for ~9000 fires (>200 hectares; 2017–2023), we found western mountains and boreal forests experienced the longest active burning hours, with approximately one-third of active days exceeding 12 hours. About 60% of fires reached peak intensity within 24 hours of detection, while 14% of active days peaked at night. On the basis of fire weather, annual potential burning hours were estimated to rise 36% over 1975–2024, with pronounced increases in western regions and spring/fall (48 to 57%). Regions with significant changes gained 26 more potential active days annually and 1.2 additional potential burning hours daily, while extreme days (≥12 or 24 potential burning hours) rose 81 to 233% in fire-prone biomes. Future management requires adaptation to wildfires that increasingly defy diurnal norms.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Climate Change Concern Near Its High Point in U.S, Jeffery Jones, Gallup

Americans’ concern about global warming or climate change remains elevated compared with what it had been prior to 2017. At least four in 10 U.S. adults have expressed “a great deal” of concern about the matter throughout the past decade except for a 39% reading in 2023. Between 2009 and 2016, worry was typically in the low-to-mid 30% range but dropped to as low as 25% in 2011. Currently, 44% of U.S. adults worry a great deal about global warming or climate change, among the highest in the full trend since 1989, along with 46% measured in 2020 and 45% in 2017.

A Global Fleet Under Wind: Scaling Wind Propulsion for Emission Reduction, Energy Demand and Equity, Mason et al., Seas at Risk

The authors present a first-ever study showcasing the benefits of wind propulsion when scaled up to the global fleet. Drawing on 1.74 billion kilometers of real voyage data – the equivalent distance from Earth to Saturn – wind propulsion could, conservatively, reduce modelled wind ship fuel use by 6.3-9.4%, with an even greater potential if paired with other optimization measures such as weather routing, slowing down speeds, and hull cleaning. By 2050, it could deliver up to 762 million tons of cumulative CO2 savings, getting us closer to our climate targets. The technology is here, but is policy willing?

173 articles in 70 journals by 1545 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Can Large-Scale Clustering of Tropical Precipitation Be Used to Constrain Climate Sensitivity?, Blackberg & Singh, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2025jd045282

Global warming intensifies pantropical coupling and its control on northern hemisphere tropical cyclones, Zhao et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41612-026-01412-w

Large Overestimation of Projected Western U.S. Wildfire Burned Forest Area With Warming, Cheng et al., AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2026av002350

Response of Ocean Mesoscale Coherent Eddies to Global Warming, Yang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120228

The combined role of sea surface temperature and sea ice in the summer heatwaves over Pakistan, Li et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108977

The Emergence of a Human Fingerprint in the Boreal Winter Extratropical Zonal Mean Circulation, Blackport & Sigmond, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121773

The role of upper ocean stratification in resurgent marine heatwaves in the East/Japan Sea, Kim et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47541-3

Weakening sensitivity of China’s terrestrial evapotranspiration to vegetation greening in a warmer world, Guo et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111183

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Hydrologic cycle weakening in hothouse climates, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.ado2515 13 cites.

Observations of climate change, effects

A weakened diurnal weather constraint leads to longer burning hours in North America, Luo et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aed0725

Declines in Autumn Precipitation in Southwestern China and the Yangtze River Basin Linked to the Tropical Pacific and Atlantic Warmings, Deng et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0479.1

Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72189-y

Global glacier mass change in 2025, Network et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00777-z

Heatwave Characteristics and Trends Across Eight Japanese Cities, Mcgregor & Suzuki-Parker, Durham Research Online (Durham University) Open Access pmh:oai:durham-repository.worktribe.com:5179207

Increasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007442

Large-scale aggregation of humid heatwaves exacerbated by coastal oceanic warming, Cai et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-01952-z

Ocean warming weakens the sea–land breeze in coastal megacities, Xiao et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2022ef003341

Tropical precipitation response to anthropogenic climate change in recent decades, Joseph et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-71187-4

Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado River headwater, Siirila-Woodburn et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-01945-y

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Record-breaking fire weather in North America in 2021 was initiated by the Pacific northwest heat dome, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01346-2 36 cites.

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

A harmonized 2000–2024 dataset of daily river ice concentration and annual phenology for major Arctic rivers, Qiu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2703-2026

ALTICAP: a new global satellite altimetry product for coastal applications, Cancet et al., Earth system science data Open Access pdf 10.5194/essd-18-2319-2026

Annually resolved atmospheric CO2 growth rate over the past nine centuries, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72220-2

From Extreme Days to Event-Scale Persistence: Characterizing for Persistent Extreme Precipitation Across Multisource Datasets, Zhao et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100905

Improvements and limitations of the new Climate Hazards Center Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPSv3) dataset: Insights from multiple spatio-temporal scales in Colombia, Valencia et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.108971

Precipitation observing network gaps limit climate change impact assessment, Su et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10300-5

Sampling Biases in Daily Average Temperatures From Greenland Climate Records, Rapp et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70317

Warming-induced positive age trends challenge MXD detrending, Esper et al., Dendrochronologia Open Access 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126529

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Data Drought in the Humid Tropics: How to Overcome the Cloud Barrier in Greenhouse Gas Remote Sensing, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl108791 22 cites.

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Air Quality Penalty in Southeast Asia Driven by AMOC Slowdown, Vella et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121309

Amplified European Future Warming Under Mesoscale-Resolving Sea Surface Temperature Forcing, Moreno?Chamarro & Ortega, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120578

Climate change affects future sea-bed mobility via storms and sea level rise, Rulent et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03500-4

Emerging Importance of Compound Flooding in Future Tropical Cyclone Hazard Profiles, Gori et al., Open MIND pmh:10.17615/ggmz-8m83

Enhanced Decadal Variance in Nordic Seas With AMOC Weakening in CESM, Patrizio et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118635

Impact attribution of the March 2022 Antarctic heatwave reveals amplification by cloud feedbacks and increased future meltwater, González et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03485-0

Mediterranean and Global Sea Surface Temperature Trends to 2100: An ARIMAX Time-Series Forecasting Approach, Yildirim et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 10.1016/j.jastp.2026.106810

Multi-Model Evaluation and Future Projections of Radio Refractivity over West Africa Using CMIP6, Israel et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 10.1016/j.jastp.2026.106811

Multidecadal Oscillation Masks Ocean Wave Climate Trends in 75-Year Global Wave Hindcast, Shimura et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022340

The Hydroclimate Paradox of the Indian Summer Monsoon Projections: Dual Amplification of Deficit and Excess Rainfall in CMIP6 Models, Kulkarni et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70401

Twenty-First Century Projections and Trends of JJAS Rainfall Over the Greater Horn of Africa Under CMIP6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios, Jima et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70390

Widespread shift toward extreme dominated precipitation with pronounced trends in arid and mediterranean regions, Zaerpour et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47708-y

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Characteristic changes in compound drought and heatwave events under climate change, Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107440 49 cites.

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

Advancing Weather and Climate Science in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean: A Novel Regional Multiweek Convection-Permitting Simulation, Ocasio et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-25-0023.1

CMIP7 Data Request: atmosphere priorities and opportunities, Dingley et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-2945-2026

Evaluating model uncertainty in critical threshold estimations from time series data: application to the Atlantic meridional Overturning Circulation, Cotronei et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1761461

Modeling snowpack dynamics and surface energy budget in boreal and subarctic peatlands and forests, Nousu et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-18-231-2024

Three decades of simulating global temperature patterns with coupled global climate models, Brunner et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03497-w

Towards improved Euro-Mediterranean discharge simulations in regional coupled climate models: a comparative assessment of hydrologic performance, Hamitouche et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-2881-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Projected changes in compound hot-dry events depend on the dry indicator considered, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01352-4 29 cites.

Cryosphere & climate change

A harmonized 2000–2024 dataset of daily river ice concentration and annual phenology for major Arctic rivers, Qiu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2703-2026

Antarctic Meltwater-Stratification Feedback Is Less Pronounced Under High Climate Forcing, Kreuzer et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl118643

Atmospheric Teleconnections as Potential Drivers of Ross Ice Shelf Basal Melt, Xiahou, Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2026jc024241

Giant iceberg behaviour impacts regional biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean, Taylor et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03440-z

Glacier mass balance and its response to 2022 heatwaves for Kangxiwa Glacier in the eastern Pamir: insights from time-lapse photography, Xie et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-2279-2026

Global glacier mass change in 2025, Network et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-026-00777-z

Ice front positions for Greenland glaciers (2002–2021): a spatially extensive seasonal record and benchmark dataset for algorithm validation, Lu et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-2635-2026

Permafrost tipping point triggered by warming-driven loss of old carbon, Wei et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72122-3

Recent extremes in Antarctic sea ice extent modulated by ocean heat ventilation, Wilson et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2530832123

Regional extreme Antarctic sea-ice retreat linked to tropical forcing, Liang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03488-x

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Geometric amplification and suppression of ice-shelf basal melt in West Antarctica, , 10.5194/egusphere-2023-1587 8 cites.

Sea level & climate change

Rapid Intensification and Relative Sea-Level Rise Amplify Compound Flooding From Hurricanes Harvey and Beryl, Lee et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007678

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Sustained increase in suspended sediments near global river deltas over the past two decades, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47598-6 61 cites.

Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry

Climate and ocean circulation changes toward a modern snowball Earth, Obase et al., arXiv (Cornell University) Open Access pdf pmh:oai:arXiv.org:2603.26700

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Ocean cavity regime shift reversed West Antarctic grounding line retreat in the late Holocene, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47369-3 9 cites.

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

Biogeochemistry of climate driven shifts in Southern Ocean primary producers, Fisher et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-22-975-2025

Bumble bee species display contrasting phenological responses to climate variation, Elshoff et al., Ecology 10.1002/ecy.70385

Climate change and non-climatic drivers jointly enhanced the NDVI of alpine grassland in the Source Region of the Yellow River (2000–2022), An et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.3389/fevo.2026.1748078

Climate change dominates blue-green water shifts in China’s Arid Northwest: Evidence from the Heihe River Basin, Ma et al., Environmental Earth Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1007/s12665-026-12940-2

Climate modes can be leveraged to forecast coral bleaching months in advance, Galochkina et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03438-7

Climate warming and drought modify galling effects on tall goldenrod, Parker et al., Oecologia Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00442-026-05889-3

Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024, Dong et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72189-y

Drivers of Thermal Habitat Use in Turtles Studied Under Semi-Natural Conditions, White et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73325

Ecological Divergence Governs Plant Resilience to Compound Salinity–Waterlogging Stress Under Global Change, Qiu et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70875

Fire and Snow: Effects of Snowpack Variation and Wildfire on Small Mammal Dynamics in Sub-Alpine Habitats, Green et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73525

Fish and Zooplankton Co-Responses to Environmental Gradients Under Different Climate Change Scenarios, Paquette et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70845

Frequent Dry–Hot Extremes Slow the Loss of Semi-Arid Ecosystem Resilience, Shi et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70835

Gene-to-Population Level Responses to Multiple Stressors on the Rocky Shore, Wilson et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73368

Giant iceberg behaviour impacts regional biogeochemical cycling in the Southern Ocean, Taylor et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03440-z

Global Warming Amplifies Nitrogen Over Phosphorus Limitation in Aquatic Ecosystems: A Multi-Trophic Meta-Analysis, Zhong et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70832

Hyperdominant Trees Reveal Savanna Vulnerability Under Climate Change, Alvarez et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70859

Mesothermic fishes face high fuel demands and overheating risk in warming oceans, Payne et al., Science Open Access 10.1126/science.adt2981

Monitoring Coral Reef Metabolism Under Changing Oceans–Novel Insights From Seawater Stable Carbon Isotopes, Bolden et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2025jg009416

Permanence Risks to Biodiversity and Nature-Based Carbon Offsets, Dhond et al., Conservation Letters Open Access 10.1111/con4.70044

Predicted Range Shifts of Non-Native Grasses in Response to Climate Change Are Influenced by Photosynthetic Pathway: A Case Study in the Hawaiian Islands, Daehler et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.70190

Projected heatwave-related excess mortality under climate change scenarios across 2288 communities in Australia: a nationwide ecological projection modelling study, Chen et al., The Lancet Planetary Health Open Access 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101446

Quantifying Under-Ice Phytoplankton Blooms in the Changing Arctic and Southern Oceans, Payne et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121750

Reconsidering the role of introduced species in the climate-affected and highly invaded eastern Mediterranean, Katsanevakis et al., Conservation Biology Open Access 10.1111/cobi.70288

Temperature-Related Changes in Avian Nestling Provisioning: A Global Analysis, Molenaar et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70871

Temporal shifts in kelp forest structure and distribution largely reflect recent ocean warming trends, Salland et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.08280

The effect of trait choice on hybrid species distribution model projections under climate change, Delva et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.08355

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Mechanisms, detection and impacts of species redistributions under climate change, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43017-024-00527-z 165 cites.

GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

2019–2024 trends in African livestock and wetland emissions as contributors to the global methane rise, Balasus et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-4601-2026

Annually resolved atmospheric CO2 growth rate over the past nine centuries, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-72220-2

Deadwood carbon pool and uncertainty estimates: effects of decay status and vegetation types, Masanja et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1706865

Diurnal versus spatial variability of greenhouse gas emissions from an anthropogenic modified German lowland river, Koschorreck et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-21-1613-2024

Drivers and implications of declining fossil fuel CO₂ concentrations in Chinese cities revealed by radiocarbon measurements, Li et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5085-2026

Hydrological Control on Soil Redox Condition and Carbon Loss of Coastal Wetland Under Sea-Level Rise, Chen et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007528

Permafrost tipping point triggered by warming-driven loss of old carbon, Wei et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-72122-3

Quantifying urban and landfill methane emissions in the United States using TROPOMI satellite data, Wang et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adz9308

Soil texture prevails over vegetation change in determining soil organic carbon storage in an African savanna, Zhou et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access 10.1111/1365-2745.70307

Space-based observation of global increase in urban methane emissions from 2019–2023, Whiting et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2504211123

Tidal Wetland Soil Carbon Accumulation Rates for Coastal California, Holmquist et al., Scientific Data Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41597-026-06935-8

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
An Assessment of CO₂ Storage and Sea?Air Fluxes for the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea Between 1985 and 2018, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10.1029/2023gb007862 23 cites.

CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Achieving carbon neutrality in China via carbon capture and storage with onshore-offshore geological storage, Wen et al., Global Environmental Change 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103158

Current and potential carbon storage in soils of Chilean Patagonia, Figueroa et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1789707

Decades of increased emissions from forest-fuelled BECCS, Searchinger et al., Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-026-01817-8

Hydrological Mismatch in Arid Planted Shrublands: Non-Responsiveness to Precipitation Changes and Unsustainable Water Use, You et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg009715

Machine learning reveals insufficient carbon capture storage deployment to meet climate goals, Li et al., Global Environmental Change 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103157

Rethinking carbon dioxide removal: a justice-centred analysis of CDR perspectives research, Pues et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.31864323

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Public perceptions on carbon removal from focus groups in 22 countries, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-47853-w 56 cites.

Decarbonization

Aligning offshore wind deployment with local priorities to accelerate power system decarbonization, Peng et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03533-9

Does rail transportation matter for climate outcomes? evidence from public transport systems in Asia, Choudhary et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1807635

Exponential AI growth and the physical limits of renewable energy systems, Henni & Mohammed, Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115314

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Artificial intelligence-aided wind plant optimization for nationwide evaluation of land use and economic benefits of wake steering, Nature Energy, 10.1038/s41560-024-01516-8 39 cites.

Geoengineering climate
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The Potential of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection to Reduce the Climatic Risks of Explosive Volcanic Eruptions, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2023gl107702 8 cites.

Aerosols

Contrail Formation Within Cirrus: Contrail Induced Perturbations and Cirrus Adjustments, Verma & Burkhardt, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2025jd045269

Isotopic apportionment of sulfate aerosols between natural and anthropogenic sources in the outflow of South Asia, Clarke et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-26-5333-2026

Significant Radiative Absorption of Brown Carbon Aerosols From Residential Fuel Combustion in Developing Regions, Gao et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl121829

Substantial aircraft contrail formation at low soot emission levels, Voigt et al., Nature Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41586-026-10286-0

Climate change communications & cognition

Apocalyptic Climate Change Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation in White-Nationalist Communities Online: An Analysis of 25 Years of Discourse on Stormfront, Ophir et al., Environmental Communication 10.6084/m9.figshare.31832763.v1

Heatwaves and online climate sentiment: evidence from Chinese social media, Feng et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32032693

How Communication of Scientific Uncertainty Affects Trust in Science—A Systematic Review, Schuster & Scheu, Risk Analysis 10.1111/risa.70233

Questioning Net Zero: a case study of the UK’s national press coverage, Painter et al., Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2649378

The convergence of barriers: why people resist personal carbon account?, Wu et al., Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10.1007/s11027-026-10308-2

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
“This community will grow” — little concern for future wildfires in a dry and increasingly hotter Swedish rural community, Regional Environmental Change, 10.1007/s10113-024-02227-2 10 cites.

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

A land-based pathway to carbon neutrality in rural districts, Pizzileo et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1792209

Adaptive Sowing Helps Mitigate Future Wheat Losses Globally, Qiao et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef006554

Asymmetric Shifts in Precipitation Alter Nitrogen Use Strategies in Global Croplands, Cui et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70863

Enhanced weathering leads to substantial C accrual on crop macrocosms, François, Open Science Framework Open Access 10.17605/osf.io/ah75t

Food sovereignty and climate resilience through regional development assistance programs: insights from the Pacific region, Platts & Yoon, Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2654672

From heterogeneity factors to targeted policy: an application of econometrics and machine learning to Climate-Smart Agriculture adoption in maize production, Zhao et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32016933

Increasing Population and Cropland Exposure to Human-Induced Sequential Heatwave-Downpour Events, Guan et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007442

Interactive effects of heat and drought on wheat yield change from synergistic to antagonistic as their severity increases, Chisaka et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111189

Mapping current and future coffee suitability in Peru under climate change: implications for restoration and deforestation-free development, Zabaleta-Santisteban et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1777634

Measuring carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation potential of croplands under different climatic scenarios using RothC model, Adeel et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1801916

Peak carbon sequestration rate reached on the Loess Plateau plantations, Jia et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03419-w

Phosphorus enrichment does not enlarge the predicted CO2 fertilization effect on forest carbon sequestration, Wang et al., Open Access CRIS of the University of Bern Open Access 10.48620/97012

Polish Agriculture in the Face of Climate Change: Better or Worse?, Szwed & Holka, International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70387

Positive effects of species mixing on soil carbon sequestration and water retention in global forest plantations, Huang et al., Journal of Ecology 10.1111/1365-2745.70321

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Rethinking the social license to operate? A theoretical exploration of its synergies with social acceptance and energy justice for a just transition, Energy Research & Social Science, 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103552 26 cites.

Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

Declines in Autumn Precipitation in Southwestern China and the Yangtze River Basin Linked to the Tropical Pacific and Atlantic Warmings, Deng et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0479.1

Green water will deviate the planetary boundary twice by the end of the 21st Century, Yang et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105482

Precipitation observing network gaps limit climate change impact assessment, Su et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10300-5

Rapid Intensification and Relative Sea-Level Rise Amplify Compound Flooding From Hurricanes Harvey and Beryl, Lee et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007678

Regional drying over the Western U.S. driven by enhanced atmospheric subsidence amid global moistening from 1980 to 2020, Ding et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71818-w

Transpiration Changes With Soil Warming: Insights From a Mechanistic Model, Luo et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120046

Tropical precipitation response to anthropogenic climate change in recent decades, Joseph et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-71187-4

Warming and snow loss increase reliance on old groundwater in a Colorado River headwater, Siirila-Woodburn et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-01945-y

Widespread shift toward extreme dominated precipitation with pronounced trends in arid and mediterranean regions, Zaerpour et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-47708-y

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Dynamic pathway linking Pakistan flooding to East Asian heatwaves, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adk9250 62 cites.

Climate change economics

Achieving climate justice: climate finance and income inequality in developing countries, Li et al., Open MIND Open Access pmh:10.6084/m9.figshare.31389871

Digital economy-driven decarbonization pathways: analyzing how digital economy and globalization impact climate change in the top-10 digital economies, Bashir et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1784967

Fixed climate feedback assumptions systematically underestimate policy-relevant economic risks: Implications for climate resilience, SHEN et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.004

Loss and damage fund and countries’ incentives to compensate for climate-related damages, Silipo et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115300

Making expertise in international environmental governance: establishing loss and damage expert groups in the UNFCCC, Johansson, Environmental Sociology Open Access 10.1080/23251042.2026.2657318

Public support for climate finance to developing countries: a contingent valuation study in South Korea, Shin & Huh, Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.32054467.v1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The relationship between CO2 emissions and macroeconomics indicators in low and high-income countries: using artificial intelligence, Environment Development and Sustainability, 10.1007/s10668-024-04880-3 18 cites.

Climate change and the circular economy

Water–energy–food nexus in the circular economy: implications for climate mitigation, Papadas et al., Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2026.101649

,Climate change mitigation public policy research

Aligning climate change mitigation strategies with policy objectives beyond cost savings, [authors did not process], Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02617-w

Humanitarian blind spots in Western climate change policy and discourse, Qamar & Baig, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02613-0

Regional priorities in implementing forestation and wind energy as climate solutions in facing their trade-offs, Zhang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71674-8

Sector-specific climate policies for a green industrial transition with public support, Hansen & Koslowski, Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.31939110.v1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Modeling V2G spot market trading: The impact of charging tariffs on economic viability, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114109 44 cites.

Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Adapting to what? Regional climate policy in Russia, Andreeva, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2643215

Assessing walkability and climate adaptive capacity in relation to urban morphology and historical development, Shartova & Mironova, GeoJournal 10.1007/s10708-026-11635-2

Centring Power in Climate Adaptation Politics Through Cross-Scale Governmentalities: A Systematic Review of High-Income Countries, Garland et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Open Access 10.1002/wcc.70057

Gender and climate change: differential risks and resilience among internal migrants at their urban destination in coastal Bangladesh, Brisebois & Hoffmann, Climate and Development Open Access 10.1080/17565529.2026.2651955

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Challenges for climate change adaptation in Latin America and the Caribbean region, Frontiers in Climate, 10.3389/fclim.2024.1392033 27 cites.

Climate change impacts on human health

A global research and evaluation agenda for centering health and equity in city Climate Action Plans, Adlakha et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000891

Association Between Observed Climate Change and Cardiovascular Disease in the United States, Yeager et al., GeoHealth Open Access 10.1029/2025gh001588

Climate and health at a critical juncture, Lokmic-Tomkins et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000895

Global hotspots of compound extreme heat-pollution linked to local surface and atmospheric conditions, Huang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03460-9

Weather forecasts become more important for reducing mortality as the climate warms, Shrader et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2523372123

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Mapping urban heatwaves and islands: the reverse effect of Salento’s “white cities”, Frontiers in Earth Science, 10.3389/feart.2024.1375827 4 cites.

Climate change & geopolitics

Global climate cooperation under the 2 °C goal: Mechanisms and pathways via a coupled CGE–ABM framework, Chen et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.04.002

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:

Transparency is what states make of it: whose climate priorities are reflected in the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework?, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2024.2341945 10 cites.

Climate change impacts on human culture

Climate Influences on Intangible Cultural Heritage in China over Two Millennia and its SDG Implications, Zhang et al., Anthropocene 10.1016/j.ancene.2026.100543

Extreme heat and humidity reduce the recreational value of urban green spaces, WANG et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03389-z

Other

Do scientometric studies serve climate research?, Dyachenko et al., Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2652538

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Diversity in global environmental scenario sets, Global Environmental Change, 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102839 6 cites.

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Climate futures require politics, Leininger et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71711-6

Editorial: Assessing greenhouse gas emissions at city and regional levels: challenges and methods, Hu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1839415

Why more fossil fuels won’t fix the Iran energy crisis, Wagner, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-01197-1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Human influence can explain the widespread exceptional warmth in 2023, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01391-x 19 cites.

Book reviews

What does the future hold for the thawing Arctic?, Gehrke, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-01258-5

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

Climate Change Concern Near Its High Point in U.S, Jeffery Jones, Gallup

Americans’ concern about global warming or climate change remains elevated compared with what it had been prior to 2017. At least four in 10 U.S. adults have expressed “a great deal” of concern about the matter throughout the past decade except for a 39% reading in 2023. Between 2009 and 2016, worry was typically in the low-to-mid 30% range but dropped to as low as 25% in 2011. Currently, 44% of U.S. adults worry a great deal about global warming or climate change, among the highest in the full trend since 1989, along with 46% measured in 2020 and 45% in 2017.

Utility Spending is Rising: A Review of Utility Capital Expenditure Plans, Powerlines

PowerLines found that investor-owned utilities are planning to spend at least $1.4 trillion over the next five years through 2030 on capital expenditures (CapEx)—a more than 21 percent increase over the $1.1 trillion over a five-year period outlined last year. Capital expenditures include expenses on physical assets such as power plants, transmission lines, and distribution poles and wires. This planned spending comes at a time when utility bills are rapidly rising. PowerLines analysis has shown that utility bills have increased approximately 40 percent since 2021, with no signs of slowing down. In 2025 alone, utilities requested $31 billion in rate increases, while electricity and gas became the fastest drivers of inflation. Most utilities expect high levels of capital spending to continue through 2030, a trend that promises to intensify growing affordability pressures. While these proposed spending amounts do not necessarily equate on a one-to-one basis to rate increases, utility CapEx plans are often a leading indicator of incoming rate increase requests. These growing costs could become the key driver behind utility rate increase requests over the next five years.

Delivering on Adaptation: An Assessment of International Adaptation Finance Flows, INKA Consult, DanChurchAid

The authors map and analyze international public adaptation finance, providing a better understanding for how progress toward the goal of tripling adaptation finance by 2035 can be achieved. The authors used publicly available data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Climate-Related Development Finance (CRDF) database. There have been some estimates to enable the analysis.

Measure twice, cut once: A state-level framework for effective wildfire risk mitigation, Wara et al., Milliman

The authors present a risk-based framework guiding states to focus their efforts where they are more likely to see results: the built environment, particularly existing structures and surrounding vegetation, and electricity infrastructure. The framework consists of six steps including inventory the universe at risk; establish metrics for quantifying risks and damages; determine the key physical risks to mitigate and the appropriate actions needed to address each of them; assess the cost of mitigations and potential funding source; secure stakeholder buy-in; and create an action plan prioritizing mitigation methods and targets.

2026 Heat Safety Awareness Toolkit, Shivank Jhanji, The Alliance for Heat Resilience and Health

The author developed a new toolkit to help organizations and individuals take meaningful action around the national Heat Safety Week. It is designed for anyone who wants to raise awareness about extreme heat and support policies that protect the people most at risk. The toolkit is structured around three levels of engagement: Level 1: Social Media Amplify heat safety messages during NIHHIS Heat Safety Week (May 18–22). Share content, use #HeatSafety, and help spread the word. Level 2: Proclamation Request an official proclamation from your mayor or governor recognizing Heat Safety Week, using our step-by-step guide and templates. Level 3: Legislation Explore local and state policy options to protect your community from extreme heat, with real-world examples.

Stop Greed, Build Green: A Working Class Climate Strategy, Bigger et al., Climate and Community Institute

The US is staring down deepening cost-of-living and climate crises. A framework that focuses on immediate relief, robust regulation, state capacity, and massive investment can move us towards a stable, green economy that works for everyone. Enter Green Economic Populism (GEP), an intellectual framework and political strategy for a new era of climate and economic urgency. GEP recognizes that the affordability crisis is not a temporary setback but a structural challenge that will be intensified by the climate crisis. Therefore, any attempt to solve or even to alleviate the affordability crisis must, in tandem, address the climate crisis. The Green Economic Populism has four key planks including provide immediate economic relief to the cost-of-living crisis; regulate the industries and corporations driving economic and climate catastrophe; build a public sector that works for everyone; and mobilize massive green investments in communities, infrastructure, and industry.

A Global Fleet Under Wind: Scaling Wind Propulsion for Emission Reduction, Energy Demand and Equity, Mason et al., Seas at Risk

The authors present a first-ever study showcasing the benefits of wind propulsion when scaled up to the global fleet. Drawing on 1.74 billion kilometers of real voyage data – the equivalent distance from Earth to Saturn – wind propulsion could, conservatively, reduce modelled wind ship fuel use by 6.3-9.4%, with an even greater potential if paired with other optimization measures such as weather routing, slowing down speeds, and hull cleaning. By 2050, it could deliver up to 762 million tons of cumulative CO2 savings, getting us closer to our climate targets. The technology is here, but is policy willing?

The State(s) of Distributed Solar — 2025 Update, Ingrid Behrsin, The Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Distributed solar, which can be owned by individuals, small businesses, and public entities, is turning the electricity industry upside down as individuals choose to generate their own solar power on their rooftop or through participation in community solar. In 2025, of the 36 new gigawatts of solar capacity installed, 19% (6.8 GW) was distributed throughout communities. Many individuals who cannot go solar themselves can subscribe to a community solar garden. These solar arrays offer the same electric bill stability and savings as rooftop solar, but operate remotely under a subscription model. In 25 states and the District of Columbia, there’s sufficient distributed solar to serve one in every 25 households (a state distributed solar saturation of more than 100 watts per capita). This is the same as last year, although the average watts per capita among these leading states has risen from 273 to 329, suggesting that leading states continue to progress.

Mayor Bass' Climate Action Plan for Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles

Los Angeles is working to address the growing impacts of climate change and build a safer and more sustainable city. Developed in partnership with City departments, the roadmap outlines the actions, investments, and measurable targets needed to reduce emissions, strengthen infrastructure, and protect communities. Taking action now is critical to improving public health, reducing climate risks, and ensuring a more resilient and equitable future for all Angelenos.

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Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:20:12 EST

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters

In brief:

Multiple studies have found that tropical cyclones are becoming stronger worldwide.
New so-called attribution studies have linked increased wind speeds to human-caused ocean warming.
In the future, scientists expect an increase in the proportion of Category 4 and Category 5 tropical cyclones.

The dangers posed by one of humanity's greatest scourges – the tropical cyclone – are being significantly increased by human-caused global warming. In fact, one of the more confident predictions about how climate change will affect these great storms — which we will refer to by their Atlantic name when they reach winds of 74 mph (119 km/hr) or greater, the hurricane — is that the winds of the strongest ones will get stronger. But how much stronger? Are we already seeing this happening? And how do scientists know?

Spotty data

People began collecting high-quality, satellite-based global tropical cyclone data only around 1982. The relatively poor quality and short length of the global hurricane database, combined with the natural high variability in hurricanes, make ironclad scientific statements on how climate change is affecting hurricanes difficult. In their Global Warming and Hurricanes explainer, scientists at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory wrote, "it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability." Statements like this are often used by climate deniers to downplay climate change risks.

That said, scientists do understand the basics. Hurricanes are heat engines that take heat energy out of the ocean and convert it to the kinetic energy of their winds. A hotter ocean will allow hurricanes to grow more powerful, assuming that the other factors that support intensification, including low wind shear and a moist atmosphere, are present.

And there is already evidence that the strongest storms are getting stronger. For example, a July 2025 analysis found that human-caused climate change increased the intensity of 2024's Atlantic hurricanes by 3%-12%. This may seem trivial, but a 5% increase in hurricane winds yields about a 50% increase in damage: Hurricane damage increases exponentially with an increase in winds (see NOAA's damage multiplier table in Fig. 3)

For 2024's devastating Hurricane Helene, another study found an 11% increase in winds because of climate change, accounting for 44% of the $81 billion in damage caused by Helene.

An increase in Cat 5 storms globally

High-quality satellite-based data shows an increase in the number of Category 5 storms. Of the 217 Cat 5s globally during the 44-year period 1982 to 2025, 59% occurred in the last half of the period (Fig. 1), and there has been an increase in the number of Cat 5s since accurate global satellite data became available in 1982 (and technically, this is statistically significant at better than the 1% level – meaning that this is a real trend and not random variability). And if we look at the strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin since 1980 (Fig. 2), the records for nine out of 11 of these ocean basins were set in the last half of the 46-year period ending in 2025.

Figure 1. Category 5 storms globally, 1982-2025. The blue line shows a linear increasing trend, which is statistically significant at better than the 1% level.

Figure 2. Strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin, 1980-2026, using ratings from NHC and JTWC. Background image credit: Robert Rhode.

Five studies showing tropical cyclones are already getting stronger

According to a 2020 paper by MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel, Evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger, global warming should cause an increase in the probability of encountering major tropical cyclone wind speeds (Cat 3 and stronger) of about 7.5% per decade. This finding mirrors the most often-cited study showing that the strongest hurricanes are already getting stronger – a 2020 paper, Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades. Based on a review of six-hour data points of hurricane strength collected from 1979 to 2017, the study found that the fraction of major hurricane data points increased by 10%. This increase was greatest in the Atlantic, where major hurricanes data points comprised 40% of all hurricanes data points in the most recent 20-year period they studied, compared to 23% during the prior 20 years.

At least four other studies have since also observed that tropical cyclones are getting stronger globally:

A 2026 paper, Weak self-induced cooling of tropical cyclones amid fast sea surface warming, found that from 1992-2021, Cat 1+ hurricanes globally intensified by 3.9 mph (6.3 km/h) over the 30-year period.
A 2026 paper, Shortened intensification duration offsets the increase of tropical cyclone lifetime maximum intensity, found from 1982-2023, Cat 3+ hurricanes globally intensified by 8.8 mph (14 km/h) over the 42-year period.
A 2022 paper, Ocean currents show global intensification of weak tropical cyclones, found that tropical cyclones below hurricane strength strengthened by four mph (6 km/h) per decade over the period 1991-2020, based on ocean current measurements.
A 2020 paper, Continued Increases in the Intensity of Strong Tropical Cyclones, found from 2007-2019, winds of Cat 1+ hurricanes globally were 4% higher than those from the prior 26 years, when considering the strongest 25%, 10%, and 5% of storms. In the Atlantic, the strength of the strongest 5% of hurricanes increased by about 5%.

Figure 3. Damage multiplier for hurricane winds compared to a minimal Category 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds. The difference in damage potential between each Saffir-Simpson category is roughly a factor of four. (Image credit: NOAA)

Model predictions for the future: a global 5% increase in intensity for 2°C more global warming

A 2020 review paper by 11 hurricane scientists, Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: Part II: Projected Response to Anthropogenic Warming, summarized dozens of modeling studies on how hurricanes would respond to 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, relative to 1986-2005 conditions. (Because Earth has been warming at about 0.2 degree Celsius per decade, we've already seen about 0.6 degree Celsius of that 2-degree warming.) Globally, in the higher-resolution studies, the median projected increase in lifetime maximum surface wind speeds was about 5%, and the increase in the proportion of tropical cyclones reaching Category 4-5 levels was +13%. For the Atlantic, the 52 models evaluated showed about a 3% increase in lifetime maximum surface wind speed.

New studies evaluate the influence of climate change on hurricanes

Still in their infancy, attribution studies examining specific hurricanes are now being performed in near real time. These studies evaluate the degree to which climate change influenced a given weather event.

For example, human-caused climate change increased Hurricane Melissa’s peak sustained wind speeds by 7% (11 mph, or 18 km/h), making 34% of its damages attributable to climate change, according to researchers at the Imperial College of London. Melissa made landfall in Jamaica in October 2025 as the strongest landfalling hurricane on record, with sustained winds of 185 mph (300 km/h). In a separate report, the researchers found that the winds of Category 4 Hurricane Beryl of July 2024 were increased by 10 mph (16 km/h) – a 7% increase – as the storm brushed Jamaica.

World Weather Attribution, an international scientific group, released a report showing that the winds of Florida's 2024 Hurricane Milton increased by about 11 mph (18 km/h), or 10%, as a result of climate change, a conclusion echoed by researchers at the Imperial College of London, who studied the same storm independently.

A third organization, France-based climatameter.org, also performs attribution studies shortly after extreme events occur. They found that human-caused climate change could have increased the winds of Hurricane Ian (2022) by 6 mph (10 km/h), Hurricane Beryl (2024) by 5.6 mph (9 km/h), Hurricane Helene (2024) by 3 mph (5 km/h), and Hurricane Melissa (2025) by 5 mph (8 km/h).

A 2024 paper, Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes, found that between 2019 and 2023, the maximum sustained winds of Atlantic hurricanes were, on average, 19 mph (31 km/h) higher because of human-caused ocean warming. A parallel report by Climate Central, a nonprofit scientific research organization, applied the techniques developed in the paper to the 2024 hurricane season, finding that climate change increased maximum wind speeds for all 11 Atlantic hurricanes in 2024 by nine to 28 mph (14-45 km/h).

Figure 4. Change in wind speed for the 11 Atlantic hurricanes of 2024 from human-warmed ocean temperatures (revised version from July 2025). (Image credit: Climate Central)

However, these approaches looked only at how warmer oceans alone influenced storm strength. Rising atmospheric temperatures and moisture can make the tropical atmosphere more stable, counteracting the intensity increase computed using sea surface temperatures alone.

In an email, the lead author of that study, Daniel Gilford of Climate Central, said that an improved method taking this effect into account had been developed, and using this method, "I expect the 2019-2023 estimates to be about 50% lower, though the amount of damping will vary from storm to storm."

In July 2025, Climate Central used this improved method for the hurricanes of 2024, resulting in climate change-driven intensification estimates (Fig. 4) that were about 50% lower than their original estimates. Below is their revised table, published in July 2025, showing a human-caused intensity increase ranging from 3%-12% for 2024's Atlantic hurricanes:

Hurricane	Maximum intensity	Increase in maximum intensity
Beryl	165 mph	5 mph
Debby	80 mph	5 mph
Ernesto	100 mph	8 mph
Francine	90 mph	7 mph
Helene	140 mph	10 mph
Isaac	105 mph	12 mph
Kirk	145 mph	6 mph
Leslie	105 mph	6 mph
Milton	175 mph	8 mph
Oscar	80 mph	3 mph
Rafael	120 mph	14 mph

Climate change expected to generate more "Cat 6" superstrength hurricanes

A paper published in 2024 by hurricane scientists Michael Wehner and James Kossin, The growing inadequacy of an open-ended Saffir – Simpson hurricane wind scale in a warming world, argued that we now need a “Category 6” rating for hurricanes with winds of 193 mph (311 km/h) or greater, because global warming is expected to cause significant increases in maximum potential intensity. The study found that if the climate warms by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels – which could happen by midcentury – the risk of such a Category 6 storm in the Gulf of Mexico would double (Fig. 5).

Figure 5. Change in days where the tropical cyclone potential intensity exceeds the Category 6 threshold for 2°C of global warming above preindustrial levels. (Image credit: Wehner and Kossin, 2024, The growing inadequacy of an open-ended Saffir – Simpson hurricane wind scale in a warming world, PNAS, February 5, 2024, 121 (7) e2308901121,https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308901121, CC BY)

Scientists expect an increase in the proportion of Cat 4 and Cat 5 tropical cyclones

One of the first analyses documenting an apparent global increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricane frequency was published in September 2005, less than a month after catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. Interest in the topic has been keen ever since. Because there are many more Cat 4 and 5 storms than Cat 5 storms alone, there is a higher potential for a change to be deemed statistically significant.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published in 2021, says: “The proportion of intense tropical cyclones (Category 4-5) and peak wind speeds of the most intense tropical cyclones are projected to increase at the global scale with increasing global warming (high confidence).”

Preliminary evidence suggests this shift may already be occurring. A 2022 paper, Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity: 1990–2021, found a 2%/decade increase in the percentage of global hurricanes reaching Cat 4 or Cat 5 strength (Fig. 6). The increase was highest in the Atlantic basin, with a 5% per decade increase.

Figure 6. The percentage of global hurricane-strength tropical cyclones reaching Cat 4 or Cat 5 strength since 1982 has been increasing, according to ratings by NHC and JTWC. The blue linear trend line is statistically significant at better than the 1% level – meaning that this is a real trend and not random variability.

In a 2019 review paper by 11 hurricane scientists, Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: Part I. Detection and Attribution, eight of 11 authors concluded that the balance of evidence suggests that human-caused climate change contributed to the detectable increase in the global average intensity of global hurricanes since the early 1980s. All 11 authors agreed that the balance of evidence suggests that the proportion of all hurricanes reaching Category 4 to 5 strength has increased in recent years; eight of 11 authors concluded that the balance of evidence suggests that human-caused climate change contributed.

A preprint of a 2025 paper that is under review and has not yet been published, Oceanic Warming Has Lengthened Intense Tropical Cyclone Seasons Globally, found that since 1980, the length of the Cat 4 and Cat 5 hurricane season globally has increased by nine to 14 days per decade. The lengthening is characterized by a late end to the season in the Atlantic and an early onset in most of the other ocean basins.

However, though the proportion of Cat 4 and Cat 5 hurricanes globally has increased, the total number did not see an increase between 1990 and 2021, according to a 2022 paper, Trends in Global Tropical Cyclone Activity: 1990–2021. One potential reason: a more La Niña-like base climate state from 1990 to 2021, which suppressed tropical cyclone activity in the North and South Pacific – the most active ocean basins for tropical cyclones. As a result, a reduction in the total number of hurricanes of all categories globally occurred (though the Atlantic saw an increase in activity).

Our other posts in this series

Bob Henson contributed to this post.

This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.