The Met Office has issued an Amber wind warning for the whole of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and parts of West Devon ahead of the arrival of Storm Austen.
The Golden State has a long history of cataclysmic floods.
The head of ESA's Earth observation program tells Live Science why a striking image of a recent heat wave scorching Southern Europe gives her hope that we can properly monitor — and eventually prevent — similar extreme weather events in the future.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Volume 131, Issue 10, October 2026.
Learn how thousands of years of living and working with humans have shaped sled dogs' legs. And why stubby limbs are the key to pulling sleds across the Arctic.
Image: Demonstrating that the visible channels of Sentinel-3C’s sea and land surface temperature radiometer are working as expected, on 2 October the instrument captured this image of Hurricane Rachel over the eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula.
Fall color covers the forested slopes of Bieszczady National Park, while patches of polonina, a type of high-mountain meadow, have turned tan.
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 11, 2026 thru Sat, October 17, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Science and Research (6 items) Fingerprint Evidence for Human Effects on Climate: Advances After the 2009 Endangerment Finding Academic report finds obvious human effects on climate behavior and formally discredits a July 2025 report published by the US Department of Energy, Earth's Future, Benjamin Santer, Susan Solomon, David Thompson, Qiang Fu, Gabriele Hegerl, Sep 12, 2026. Fired Government Scientists Are Finding New Ways to Spread the Word on Climate Change Donald Trump’s administration fired scientists working on the next National Climate Assessment...
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Volume 131, Issue 20, 28 October 2026.
A phenomenon rarer than a solar eclipse and more powerful than any single storm system is unfolding this fall, and NASA is tracking it closely. El Niño is a natural climate pattern that emerges roughly every two to seven years marked by warmer-than-normal water temperatures in parts of the equatorial Pacific. NASA scientists are keeping […]
While the Atlantic slumbers, we need to watch two potential rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones in the Pacific.
Space-based solar power has the potential to meet Earth's energy needs many times over. Will it see the light of day?
Researchers have revealed the climate that some of the first people in North America experienced around 23,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum.
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 . Does onshore wind power need subsidies to compete with fossil fuels? Unsubsidized onshore wind is now generally cheaper than building fossil fuel plants. Cost of energy sources are compared using “levelized cost of energy,” or the average lifetime cost to build and run a power plant divided by electricity produced. A 2026 report estimated the mean LCOE of unsubsidized onshore wind at $68 per megawatt-hour, compared to $90 for new natural gas plants and $124.50 for coal. Developments like supply chain maturation, improved monitoring, and larger, more productive turbines have allowed...
The ice reached its third-lowest maximum extent since satellite observations began.
Climate Central says climate-warmed Gulf waters made Isaias’s winds 7 mph stronger than they otherwise would have been. This would result in over a doubling of the hurricane’s damages, because of the exponential rise in damage with winds.
But over 80% say they’re worried about it.
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 09 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02773-zThe authors developed simulations to examine the role of topographic variation in mediating species response to climate change. They show that topographic variation can reduce energy expenditure by up to 20.8% and increase buffering benefits of elevation shifts by 82.1% for a diurnal ectotherm.
The most likely landfall intensity of Isaias has an unusually large range, from a strong tropical storm to a strong Category 2 hurricane.
The sea surface temperature in a key El Niño region has exceeded 86 degrees F for the first time on record, hinting that the strength and location of some El Niño events are transforming.
Colleges and universities in the area are teaching people skills like habitat restoration and piloting drones to monitor coastal changes.
Isaias is expected to quickly strengthen into the season’s first hurricane by early Thursday – the latest first-forming Atlantic hurricane in reliable records by a wide margin.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Volume 131, Issue 19, 16 October 2026.
Satellite records show Arctic sea ice covering less of the ocean in both winter and summer.
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Twenty years ago, wind, solar and other non-hydro renewables were close to a rounding error. In 2005 they supplied a mere 2.0% of the world’s electricity generation. By 2015 that had risen to 6.8%, and by 2025 it was up to 19.8%. According to the IEA Electricity 2026 outlook, non-hydro renewables will supply around 21.8% of global electricity in 2026, edging past natural gas (21.6%) to become the second-largest source of power after coal. 1 That is a remarkable pace of growth from an industry that barely existed two decades ago. But not everyone is impressed; many commenters on social media have responded to these figures by pointing out that despite the growth of renewables, fossil fuel generation continues to grow...
The ozone hole above Antarctica is unusually large right now, and it might signal a shift in how the gap in Earth's protective layer behaves.
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A crisis is brewing for the U.S. electricity grid – one that could make your electric bill skyrocket and thwart efforts to address climate change. To understand the problem, think of transmission lines – the poles and wires that transport electricity from power plants to homes and businesses – as an interstate highway system for electrons. Like too many cars on the road, too many electrons traveling across power lines can cause traffic jams. These sorts of jams haven’t been a problem until just recently, as power-hungry data centers proliferate and demand from electric vehicles, heat pumps, and air conditioning grows. As a result, Americans’ electricity rates , which already spiked by more than...
The city’s Seeds of Change program is funding community gardens, composting efforts, solar installations, a bike repair program, and more.
Open access notables Centuries of global heating from Carbon Majors: Dependence on future emissions pathways , Frierson & Henrie, PLOS Climate We perform simulations that attribute the amount of global warming due to corporations, governments and other entities into the future. We utilize the Finite Amplitude Impulse Response (FaIR) model run until 2500, and the Carbon Majors dataset, a database with the emissions history associated with the top 178 oil, gas, coal, and cement producers. We perform counterfactual experiments to calculate the warming attributable to the emissions associated with these entities, using several different future emissions scenarios. The future atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) anomaly attributable to a company’s past emissions is smaller...
When Anak Krakatau erupted a few weeks ago, the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE satellite, orbiting above, captured vertical profiles of different constituents within the volcanic plume. Designed primarily to advance our understanding of how clouds and aerosols influence Earth’s climate, here EarthCARE also provided valuable information to support safe air travel.At the same time, these observations offer new insights into the impact that volcanic eruptions have on the climate system.
The cost of clean energy just keeps falling as the price of coal ramps up. Politicians promising affordability will follow those savings no matter who is in the White House. And in the meantime, there are ways to speed up the transition, says associate professor Leah Stokes.
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Barbara Grady As the Western United States grapples with severe drought, leading cities to scramble for water and farmers to abandon some crops, a new scientific study has found that 122 major oil, gas, coal, and cement companies and state-owned operations are partially responsible. The study found that climate change from all climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions over the last 70 years has resulted in a 36% decline in annual average mountain snowpacks, the major source of surface water in Western states – and that about 40% of that decline is linked to the climate pollution caused by just 122 companies. The annual loss attributable to those 122 companies is equivalent to the amount of water held by Lake Mead, the nation’s...
Noteworthy storms, tropical and otherwise, continued to pepper the Eastern and Central Pacific and North Atlantic on Sunday. The big landfall threat is Hurricane Polo (see below), but several other systems were making news this weekend – including a lumbering coastal storm in the Northeast U.S. that’s been unusually prolonged. Former Category 5 Polo is still […]
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Volume 131, Issue 9, September 2026.
Atlantic storms will be short-lived, while powerful Pacific hurricanes persist and the Northeast battles a potent nor’easter.
Nolo threatens Hawaii with flooding rain and dangerous surf, while powerful Hurricane Polo could make another impact to México and more tropical systems take shape.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Volume 131, Issue 18, 28 September 2026.
Learn how a new microscope revealed living Antarctic fish cells in detail and why their protein-folding challenges could matter to the human brain.
Hurricane Polo exploded from a tropical storm into a powerful Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours on Tuesday.
Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 12, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The ice covered an estimated 1.78 million square miles (4.6 million square kilometers), tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record. […]
More extreme storms could increase the threat in mountainous areas where steep slopes already create hazards.
A new study blames 122 companies for contributing to severe drought in the region.
Nature, Published online: 22 September 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02995-3A global safety net for climate-risk intelligence is urgently needed
This is a re-post from World Weather Attribution A catastrophic rock-ice avalanche that transitioned into a debris flood in the Himalayas along the Nepal–China border on 26 August 2026 has caused widespread destruction across Nepal and neighbouring regions. In Nepal, at the time of writing (14 September 2026) the disaster has resulted in over 1,300 confirmed deaths, with only a small fraction of victims identified and returned to their families. Over 5,000 people remain missing, around 13,700 people have been rescued and more than 8,600 people have received medical treatment ( NDRRMA, 2026e ). About 3,400 people are currently sheltering in holding centres ( NDRRMA, 2026a ) and an estimated 84,270 people across 17 local levels in the six districts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading...
The glacial collapse that killed 1,400 people in Nepal in August highlighted one epicenter for such disasters — but there are other hotspots that experts are worried about.
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 13, 2026 thru Sat, September 19, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) A Super El Niño Is Building. Florida`s Most Vulnerable Homes Aren`t Ready. A strong El Niño is raising the odds of an active winter storm season—and the Floridians most likely to die in a tornado live in aging manufactured homes the state can’t even count. Inside Climate News, Kate Waxman, Sep 13, 2026. The Atmosphere Just Set a Water Vapor Record More water vapor means more rocket fuel for extreme rain — so this record is not good news The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler, Sep 14, 2026. ...
While the Atlantic remains historically quiet with no hurricanes so far, several systems are stirring in the Pacific, including one that could strengthen near Mexico next week.
The powerful low-pressure system formed over the North Atlantic out of the remnants of Hurricane Isaias.
Destined for Mars and beyond, NASA’s Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) Freedom will be humanity’s first fission-powered spacecraft to travel outside Earth’s orbit. Announced during NASA’s “Ignition” event, this mission will demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion in deep space, and progress is underway on its key element: the nuclear power module. To expedite development of the spacecraft, NASA […]
Storm Austen has been named by the Met Office with disruptive wind and rain for some from late Thursday and into Friday.
Learn how the environment of America’s Southwest transformed from pine forest to juniper within the space of a century.
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Earlier this summer I told a journalist that it was not beyond the realm of possibility that this year’s El Niño would end up the strongest in 500 or even 1,000 years. That was a strong claim at the time, and I’ve had a few people ask how I could possibly know what El Niño was doing in the year 1200. It is a fair question, and the answer is that we know more than you might think. This year’s El Niño event is already the strongest in the instrumental record based on Niño 3.4 region sea surface temperature anomalies. I’ve written in more detail about this year’s forecast here , and breaking the prior record over at Carbon Brief . Daily Niño 3.4 anomalies passed the prior record...
As climate change fuels extreme temperatures and makes severely hot days more frequent, doctors are concerned about the health impacts on pregnant people.
A review of 41 studies found that higher exposure to air pollution was linked to greater odds of glaucoma and cataracts, with PM2.5 pollution showing the clearest association.
Image: This image over part of West Antarctica was captured by Copernicus Sentinel-3 on 30 September 2026.
Due out in early 2027, it's the best climate change documentary I've ever seen. The producers need donations to finish it.
From the International Space Station’s unique position 250 miles above Earth, the Sun is a vital source of energy. Solar power supports the station’s life support systems, daily activities, and hundreds of research investigations that improve life on Earth and prepare humans for deep space exploration. Over the past five years, NASA augmented the station’s […]
A NASA Dynamic Aviation A200 aircraft will conduct low-flying research flights over farmland near Transit, Texas, from Thursday, Oct. 22, through Monday, Nov. 9. These flights will measure gaseous and particulate emissions from animal feeding operations. Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission will deploy […]
Open access notables Fingerprint Evidence for Human Effects on Climate: Advances After the 2009 Endangerment Finding , Santer et al., Earth s Future Here we briefly review key advances in the field of climate fingerprinting. Fingerprint studies rely on pattern information to identify human and natural influences on Earth's climate. Our focus is on advances after 2009—the date of the finding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that emissions of six different greenhouse gases affect Earth's climate and endanger human health and welfare. In contrast to the conclusions from a 2025 review of climate science issued by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), we demonstrate that post-2009 scientific advances have markedly increased confidence in the identification...
Analysis of tiny zircon crystals buried within the 10-mile-wide Ames crater in northwest Oklahoma suggests that the submerged structure dates back to 370 million years ago, during the Frasnian-Famennian mass extinction event.
Though it remained offshore, the storm lashed coastal areas with high winds and flooding—and produced remarkable rippling patterns in the upper atmosphere.
On 14 October 2026, the research icebreaker Polarstern is due to return to its home port of Bremerhaven from its final Arctic expedition of this summer. The ten-week PS156 (LAMEX 1) expedition took around 40 researchers from Germany, Norway, Italy, Argentina and the USA from Tromsø via north-east Greenland and the Fram Strait to the North Pole and the Lomonosov Ridge. In total, the ship covered a good 9,000 nautical miles (around 16,700 kilometres) to collect data on the geological past, which will enable better projections for our future.
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 4, 2026 thru Sat, October 10, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (5 items) Climate Fraud 101: Big Oil's Climate Deception Explained in 101 Documents, 1957-2026 The Center for Climate Integrity's 'Climate Fraud 101' documents seven decades of costly fossil fuel industry deception about human-caused climate change and climate change impacts. Center for Climate Integrity, Eva Carpenter, Davis Allen, Megan Matthews, Kert Davies, Sep 30, 2026. Trump Mocked Over 'Biggest Ice Cube' Claim During Texas Climate Rant The president did not specify which ice measurement he meant, while National...
The first major Atlantic hurricane of 2026 threatens the Gulf Coast with a storm surge of up to 9 feet, damaging winds, flooding, and tornadoes, with impacts spreading across the Southeast on Saturday. With the Tropical Storm Watch on the West Coast for Rachel, it's the first time the National Hurricane Center has issued watches/warnings simultaneously for both coasts.
Image: This image from Copernicus Sentinel-2, acquired on 5 April 2026, shows the Etosha National Park in northern Namibia.
As the Golden Age of deep-space exploration begins, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy are advancing the development of safe, reliable, next-generation nuclear technologies for space. Together, the agencies will supercharge civil space exploration, unlock bold scientific discovery, and solidify American leadership in space nuclear power and propulsion. “We are entering the ‘Nuclear NASA-era,’ […]
Open access notables Committed Antarctic Ice Sheet mass loss by the end of the twenty-first century , Lin et al., Nature Geoscience The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest source of uncertainty in sea-level rise projections, with uncertainties propagating through emissions scenarios, atmosphere–ocean general circulation models, ice-sheet dynamics and sea-level physics. In ice-sheet model intercomparison exercises, these uncertainties—typically attributed to intermodel differences—stem from modelling choices that may bias ensembles towards commonly adopted approaches regardless of observational consistency. Here we quantify how each individual physical assumption cascades into projection uncertainty using a machine-learning emulation framework, which also...
"Stranger Things" in the 2026 Arctic The continuation of cool and stormy conditions over the Arctic Ocean during September bookends the strange summer of 2026. While global air temperatures were at or near record highs for June, July, and August, the summer was cool and stormy over the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic sea ice minimum extent tied for tenth lowest on the satellite record with 2008, 2010, and 2025, with a loose ice pack on the Atlantic side extending to the pole. However, the post-minimum freeze up has been rapid. Antarctic sea ice extent, which reached its maximum on September 14, dropped sharply through September, hitting record low daily extents since October 2. Overview of conditions Arctic sea ice extent for September 2026 averaged 4.81 million square kilometers...
A tropical depression organizing in the record-breaking warm waters of the western Gulf of Mexico is predicted to arrive as Hurricane Isaias on Friday night.
A 10-step support program helps people acknowledge the severity of climate change, sit with uncertainty, and build the resilience to make a difference.
Nature, Published online: 06 October 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03174-0The Great Barrier Reef requires special attention in the developing super El Niño
Inspired by the Menominee Tribe and Reservation in Wisconsin, the game tasks players with responding to floods, fires, droughts, and other extreme weather events.
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 27, 2026 thru Sat, October 3, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (7 items) Midterm Battleground State Poll: Political Priorities & Opinions on the Clean Energy Transition The data relating to “climate hushing” is particularly revealing, showing that — by large margins — battleground state voters (a) want politicians to spend more time talking about climate change (not less), and (b) are more likely to vote for candidates who make transitioning away from fossil fuels a top priority if elected. Environmental Voter Project, EVP staff, Sep 22, 2026. Gavin Newsom condemns Democrats`...
The first people in the Americas arrived no earlier than 21,000 years ago, but 'there are huge gaps in our genetic dataset,' a new study reports.
Arctic sea ice minimum ties for tenth lowest On September 12, Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles). The 2026 minimum shares the tenth lowest spot in the nearly 48-year satellite record with 2008, 2010, and 2025. The last 20 years, from 2007 to 2026, are the lowest 20 sea ice extents in the satellite record. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent has been tracking near record low levels for most of the growth season, most likely reaching its maximum extent on September 14 at 17.59 million square kilometers (6.79 million square miles). If this maximum date holds, this will be the third lowest Antarctic sea ice maximum on record. It must be noted that large fluctuations...
Climate change is making glacial lake outbursts much more frequent.
A disturbance characterized by above-normal sea levels is spreading up the Pacific coast of Central and North America, and it could make the damage from predicted storms this winter much worse.
Moisture from Polo and ex-hurricane Odalys is helping spawn heavy rain and potential flooding from northwest Mexico into the southwest and central U.S.
Nature, Published online: 29 September 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02971-xResearchers quantify the economic damage caused by climate-change-related heat stress on the global workforce.
Polo aims for Baja California, Nolo flirts with Category 5 strength, and Rachel intensifies as the Pacific’s relentless late-September storm train rolls on. Meanwhile, Hanna is born in the Atlantic.
At the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, visitors learn about clean energy and glacier melt.
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, September 20, 2026 thru Sat, September 26, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 items) Interview with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: ''Call Out the Corruption Propelling the US Climate Retreat'' The Rhode Island senator, who could lead the Judiciary Committee if Democrats win in November, urges stronger messaging and a focus on Supreme Court reform. Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle, Sep 20, 2026. Whitehouse: Call Out the Corruption Propelling the US Climate Retreat The Rhode Island senator, who could lead the Judiciary Committee if Democrats win in November, urges stronger messaging and a focus on Supreme...
Author Will Hackman wants to connect with readers who aren’t already concerned about climate change.
Open access notables The Increasing Incidence of Boreal and Western U.S. Forest Wildfires and Its Causes: An Overview , Wallace et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society This overview of the voluminous wildfire literature addresses the following questions: “How seriously is the current spate of wildfires impacting the boreal forests and the forests of the western United States? Is the current rate of burning of these forests unprecedented? Has it been systematically increasing over the past few decades and, if so, is it in response to human-induced global warming?” The article contains diagrams and tables based on a suite of fire-related datasets: satellite measurements of burned area, fire-related carbon emissions, aerosol optical depth, dating back...
Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms and the interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission is jointly led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Colorado […]
Learn more about the 18,000-year-old mammoth ivory figurines that suggest Ice Age artists drew inspiration from the natural structure of mammoth tusks.
NASA-supported scientists have discovered an organism that lives at extreme temperatures previously thought impossible for complex life. High temperatures can cause the destruction of necessary cell components, which is a big problem for cells with complex parts like a nucleus encasing delicate genetic information. In the heated waters of California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, a […]
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 . Does wind power require backup from fossil fuels? Most power grids still combine fossil fuels with renewables, but some already run entirely on renewable energy and offer models others could follow. The majority of 100% renewable grids rely primarily on hydropower, though certain nations have significantly incorporated wind in their portfolios. Costa Rica and Uruguay have achieved 99-100% renewable power with around 17% and 35% coming from wind, respectively. Several U.S. municipalities meet electricity demands using diverse portfolios of renewables, including wind. Burlington, Vermont’s...
In a rare expression of forecast confidence, NHC predicted Polo would become a Cat 5 at a time when it was still a tropical storm.
Maps that account for rainfall and overwhelmed storm drains show greater risks than traditional flood plain maps.
While the sea ice melt season has lengthened dramatically in most of the satellite era, the trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010.
Abstract The Carmelitano catfish, Heptapterus carmelitanorum , is a freshwater species that occurs in southeastern Brazil. The need to evaluate the extinction risk of the species motivated new sampling efforts in different watercourses of the country. In addition to evaluating the extinction risk of the Carmelitano catfish, we collected several undescribed species; some of them were recently named. This experience allowed us to reflect on and question the situation in the Global South. Countries of this sociopolitical group, which are rich in biodiversity, but are yet relatively underfunded in terms of research investment (compared to countries in the Global North), must now be rapidly inventoried before dark extinctions occur. We highlight the urgent need for nations worldwide to invest more...
A century of development, rising seas, and climate change have made South Florida far more vulnerable to a catastrophic storm.
The impacts of climate change on health are becoming clearer. What can we do to respond?