May continued the streak of extreme global warmth seen in recent months, with December, January, and February each ranking as the fifth-warmest for their respective months, March as the fourth-warmest March globally, and April as the third-warmest April on record.

—

By Martina Igini

Last month was the joint second-warmest May on record, with temperatures 1.42C above pre-industrial levels, the European Union’s Earth Observation program Copernicus has said.

An exceptionally strong heatwave scorched much of Western Europe in the second half of May after cooler-than-average conditions affected the continent in the middle of the month. It was “one of the most intense heatwaves ever observed this early in the year” in the region, the forecaster said in its monthly bulletin.

A ClimaMeter study attributed the unusual heat baking Western Europe to human-driven climate change. Researchers described the meteorological conditions behind the heatwave as a “rare” occurrence once mainly associated with autumn months but now also occurring in late spring.

May continued the streak of extreme global warmth seen in recent months, with December, January, and February each ranking as the fifth-warmest for their respective months, March as the fourth-warmest March globally, and April as the third-warmest April on record. Amid this sustained global heat, scientists say it is “virtually certain” that 2026 will rank among the 10 warmest years ever recorded, with the year also on pace to finish among the top five warmest on record.

Sea surface temperatures were at their second-highest level globally and “exceptionally high” in the tropical Pacific, the forecaster also said. High sea surface temperatures are fueling El Niño, a global climatic phenomenon typically raising global temperatures and bringing erratic weather patterns. Last week, the World Meteorological Organization warned that El Niño could arrive as early as this month.

The past two such events – in 2014-16 and 2023-24 – brought record heat around the world that fueled further global temperature increase. 2024 went down as the hottest year on record due to a combination of long-term human-caused climate change and a strong El Niño weather pattern.

In a video statement published Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to treat El Niño “as the urgent climate warning it is.”

“Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed,” Guterres said as he called on countries to accelerate the shift toward clean energy sources, protect the most vulnerable, and deliver early warning systems for all.

Featured image: Kyle Lam/hongkongfp.com

Construction of the resort, which is backed by investor Jared Kushner and will include up to 10,000 hotel rooms and villas, began in April after the government fast-tracked its approval and updated environmental laws to allow five-star hotels in protected zones.

—

By Martina Igini

Protests continued in Albania on Monday against an elite tourism project backed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a protected wildlide zone.

Every day for more than a week, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Tirana and on the southern coast, where the resort has been proposed. Protesters are calling on the government to halt work on the $1.6 billion government-approved development project, which incorporates protected wetlands and coastal habitats as well as the uninhabited island of Sazan in the Mediterranean, opposite the heel of Italy.

The coastal area and surrounding waters provide crucial habitats to over 200 bird species and over 70 endangered species such as the Mediterranean monk seal – one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals, the sea turtle, and the flamingo. Pink flamingos have become the symbol of the protests, leading some to nickname it the “Flamingo Revolution.” The area also sits on the Adriatic Flyway, making it a crucial stopover site for millions of migrating birds between Europe and Africa each year.

“Yet, forests, dunes, and coastal habitats are being cleared by heavy machinery—without transparency, proper consultation, or accessible environmental permits,” WWF said in a statement.

Construction of the resort, which will include up to 10,000 hotel rooms and villas, began in April after the government fast-tracked its approval and updated its Law on Protected Areas to allow five-star hotels in protected zones. Prime Minister Edi Rama has repeatedly defended the development, describing it as a milestone in the country’s trajectory from a communist state to high-end holiday destination and saying protesters are “well-meaning” but “misinformed” about the potential environmental impact.

“There is absolutely no chance that the investment will stop as long as I am here,” Rama said.

In a letter to the European Commission, BirdLife Europe and Central Asia highlighted the risk of irreversible ecological damage and transboundary impacts on shared biodiversity and called on the Commission to “make clear that destroying a protected habitat, repressing peaceful protest, and providing false information to parliament are incompatible with EU membership.” Albania applied for EU membership in 2009, and has since 2014 been an official candidate for accession. It is expected to achieve full membership by 2030.

“Nature belongs to everyone, not a handful of investors. The horrendous situation in Vjosa–Narte shows why laws are crucial to protect both people and nature. But those protections mean little if governments fail to uphold them,” said Anouk Puymartin, Head of Policy at BirdLife Europe and Central Asia.

The Commission last week warned Albania to refrain from actions that could put it on a collision course with the European Union’s strict environmental safeguards. “In the EU accession process, as part of the closing benchmarks for negotiating Chapter 27 on environment and climate change, Albania is expected to align fully with EU legislation in this area, including the Birds and the Habitats Directives,” a European Commission’s spokesperson told POLITICO last week, calling on the government to repeal the changes to the Law on Protected Areas and “terminate” the law on strategic investments.

But environmental groups fear that it may be too late to reverse the damage inflicted on the protected ecosystem. “By the time the law on protected areas is brought back in line with EU standards, we fear that very little will remain to be protected,” said Aleksandr Trajçe, Director of the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania, BirdLife International’s Partner in Albania.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

If treated as a country, data centers could rank sixth globally for electricity consumption by 2030. They would also require an amount of water equivalent to the annual needs of 1.3 billion people.

—

By Martina Igini

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding at breakneck speed, used by hundreds of millions of users and processing billions of queries each day. AI is now one of the most significant drivers of that data center growth. But this growth comes at an unfathomable environmental toll that is at the center of a new United Nations report.

The report, compiled by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and published on Wednesday, used primary data from a range of sources to quantify the carbon, water and land footprints of AI’s electricity use across the globe. The numbers are staggering.

The AI market is expected to grow 25-fold in the coming decade, from $189 billion in 2023 to nearly $5 trillion by 2033. Generative AI – the subfield of AI that autonomously generates text, images, video, audio and code in response to user prompts – already accounts for about 20% of the global market share; by 2030, it is expected to reach 40%.

To function, generative AI needs massive training datasets to learn from. Training these models is an extremely resource-intensive process, but nothing compared to what it takes for them to process billions of interactions each day – not just in terms of the electricity needed to run these centers, but also in terms of the amount of water needed to keep them cool and generate power as well as the land footprint from energy infrastructure and supply chains, including data centers, chips, cooling systems, land occupation, and eventual e-waste.

The report estimates that global data centers consumed some 448 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, with AI accounting for a fifth of the total. This would make them the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer, if they were a country. This amount of electricity would also be enough to supply the annual residential electricity needs of the 1.3 billion people living in Sub-Saharan Africa for 2.6 years.

This amount of electricity consumption carries an enormous carbon footprint – 189 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which only 3.2 billion tree seedlings grown over 10 years would be able to offset.

In terms of water, data centers last year consumed enough to fill 1.8 million Olympic-sized pools – enough to cover the annual basic domestic water needs of over 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In terms of land, data centers’ electricity demand covered an area nearly 4.5 times the size of Greater London.

“The public debate still often treats AI as software, but AI is also physical infrastructure: data centres, electricity generation, cooling systems, transmission networks, chips, minerals, ​land and water,” said Kaveh Madani, the institute’s Director and lead author of the report.

But these staggering numbers are nothing compared to a scenario where AI’s share of data center electricity consumption indeed rises to 40% by 2030.

If that happens, the technology’s electricity consumption would make the AI industry one of largest consumers of electricity globally, accounting for 3% of the world’s electricity. AI-related water consumption would hit 9.3 trillion liters – enough to cover the annual basic domestic water needs of over 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa for a full year. And the AI-related land footprint of data centers would be about twice that of the Jakarta metropolitan area, the most populous metropolitan area in the world, home to over 32 million people.

On top of that, the report also estimates e-waste from AI hardware to reach 2.5 million metric tons by the end of the decade – like discarding 250 Eiffel Towers every year.

“What we are showing here is probably just the tip of the iceberg,” Madani told AFP. “We need to require more transparency. We need the providers to provide that information.”

The report also calls on governments to require AI providers to disclose their environmental footprint and on users, organizations and public institutions to use AI intelligently by opting for low-footprint tasks – such as text generation over image or video – and conventional search tools.

Other more sustainable approaches to using generative AI tools include keeping prompts and outputs concise, batching related tasks, reusing previous results, and avoiding unnecessart iterations, according to the report. Meanwhile, AI providers should be transparent with users and inform them when their choices – such as asking for an image or video – can result in intensive energy demand.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

Under a deal disclosed in March, the Interior Department agreed to reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the sum the multinational paid the Biden administration for leases in federal waters to build offshore wind farms off New York and North Carolina.

—

Seven Democratic-led US states are suing the Trump administration over its $1 billion deal with a French oil giant to end an offshore wind project.

Under the deal announced in March, the Interior Department would reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the sum the multinational paid the Biden administration for leases in federal waters to build offshore wind farms off New York and North Carolina. TotalEnergies, one of the world’s top six “supermajor” oil companies and one of the 20 largest historical emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases, promised in turn to reinvest that money in oil and gas projects in the Texas and elsewhere in the US.

New York Attorney General Letitia James was joined by state attorneys general from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont in challenging the cancellation of the New York offshort farm, the largest of the two. They argue the deal is “illegal” and would result in higher energy costs for their states.

“This administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead,” James said in a statement. “We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy.”

The New York project was estimated to deliver $25.6 billion in economic benefits to the state over its 25-year life, including $10 billion in savings on New Yorkers’ energy bills, according to the statement. It was also expected to create an estimated 1,716 new jobs in New York.

The TotalEnergies deal was just one of the many attempts by the Trump administration to to eliminate wind energy development in the country. The administration cited undisclosed national security concerns when it ordered five other wind farms along the East Coast to halt construction in December. Federal judges have since weighed in, dismissing the administration’s national security claims and ordering construction to resume. One judge called the suspension “arbitrary and capricious.”

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

In a statement, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) encouraged scientists, researchers and educators to continue using its datasets in proposals, publications, and presentations. “Continued engagement demonstrates the scientific impact and wide-ranging applications enabled by the OOI and its data, underscoring its importance as a resource for the oceanographic community,” it said.

—

The Trump administration is dismantling a decade-old, deep-ocean observation network that scientists have used to track changes in the ocean and monitor marine heatwaves and coastal flooding.

On May 21, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) announced that the recovery of over 900 in-water instruments at four of five operating arrays – the Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Endurance and Pioneer Arrays – has already begun and will take approximately 15 months. All previously collected data will remain accessible through the OOI Data Center while the Regional Cabled Array will continue operating, it added.

The network encouraged scientists, researchers and educators to continue using its datasets in proposals, publications, and presentations. “Continued engagement demonstrates the scientific impact and wide-ranging applications enabled by the OOI and its data, underscoring its importance as a resource for the oceanographic community,” it said.

In a statement issued a day later, Jim Edson, the initiative’s Principal Investigator, thanked those involved in making the project possible. “Over more than a decade, OOI has delivered the world’s most advanced continuously operating ocean observing systems, supporting science, engineering, education, and workforce development across the ocean sciences community. We are profoundly grateful for the extraordinary efforts of the scientists, engineers, operators, educators, students, and partners who made this facility possible and who continue to advance its legacy through the use of its data,” Edson said.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the network was designed to collect physical, chemical, geological, and biological ocean data for up to 30 years. Scientists used the data collected by more than 900 instruments at five arrays in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to monitor and understand marine heatwaves and coastal flooding, assess ocean acidification, measuring carbon sequestration and studying deep-ocean ecosystems

The data also helped monitor changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, better known as AMOC, a key component in global climate regulation. The system is part of a global pattern called thermohaline circulation, or what scientists refer to as the “great ocean conveyor belt”, a constantly moving system of deep-ocean water driven by differences in temperature and salinity. This natural process of global ocean current circulation helps ensure the Earth’s oceans remain continually mixed and that heat and energy are evenly distributed.

Scientists have repeatedly warned that the AMOC is nearing a tipping point as the planet heats up. Without this constant flow of current circulation, regional temperatures would become more extreme – intense heat near the equator and freezing in the poles – making less land on Earth habitable. 

Part of a Broader Pattern

The move marks another escalation in the Trump administration’s broader campaign to erase federal climate science and research.

Since taking office, President Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers from agencies such as the US Agency for International Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Many of these employees were engaged in vital climate-related research and conservation work, as well as providing essential services like weather forecasting and wildlife monitoring.

The National Science Foundation was also affected, losing an estimated 40% of its members to cuts by the administration between January 2025 and February 2026. In April, the administration fired all board members of the National Science Foundation without providing an explanation for the decision.

Trump is also seeking to dismantle key research centers, including the Colorado-headquartered National Center for Atmospheric Research, which provides critical data on air quality, tools to improve aircraft safety, wildfire mitigation strategies, and forecasts for droughts, extreme precipitation events, and tropical cyclones. Another target is NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, which has been collecting essential data on climate change, atmospheric composition, and air quality since the 1950s.

The White House also terminated funding for the US Global Change Research Program, the federal body responsible for producing the nation’s most comprehensive climate reports on the impacts of rising global temperatures. It shut down climate.gov, NOAA’s primary public-facing website for climate science, and axed NOAA’s Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset, which provided vital information for first responders, the insurance industry and researchers to plan recovery efforts and assess weather-related risks.

The cuts extended to international climate efforts as well. In February, the administration pulled the US out of global discussions regarding an upcoming global climate change assessment carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Trump also ordered federal scientists at NOAA and the US Global Change Research Program to cease all work related to IPCC climate assessments, effectively ending US involvement in one of the world’s most critical climate evaluations.

Craig McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist during the first Trump term, said the with the move, the adminitration is pushing the US “back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.”

Featured image: Andrew Reed/WHOI via Ocean Observatories Initiative.

The World Meteorological Organization is now forecasting an 80% likelihood of an El Niño event developing between now and August.

—

A weather pattern fueled by warming ocean waters and typically associated with increased global temperatures and erratic weather patterns could arrive as early as this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned.

The UN agency is now forecasting an 80% likelihood of an El Niño event developing between now and August, with a 90% likelihood that it will persist until at least November.

The global climatic phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years on average, is fueled by warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Temperatures in the tropical Pacific are currently exceeding 6C above average, according to the WMO.

When this oceanic warming takes place, the traditional east-to-west trade winds weaken or collapse entirely. This atmospheric shift traps a massive reservoir of warm water and air in the central and eastern Pacific, temporarily disrupting global weather patterns and raising global average temperatures.

The powerful shifts in Pacific winds and water temperatures can transform global weather patterns, increasing the likelihood of severe droughts in places like Australia and Southeast Asia and heavy floods in parts of the US and East Africa.

When this natural cycle collides with long-term, human-caused climate change, the combined effect also frequently pushes global temperatures to record-breaking highs.

The past two such events – in 2014-16 and 2023-24 – brought record heat around the world that fueled further global temperature increase. 2024 went down as the hottest year on record due to a combination of long-term human-caused climate change and a strong El Niño weather pattern. Now, its return increases the chances of another record warm year – likely to be 2027.

In a video statement published Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to treat El Niño “as the urgent climate warning it is.”

“Impacts will hit even harder, travel even farther, and cross borders with devastating speed,” Guterres said as he called on countries to accelerate the shift toward clean energy sources, protect the most vulnerable, and deliver early warning systems for all.

Above-Average Hurricane Season in Eastern and Central Pacific

El Niño also influence the formation of hurricanes, which are fueled and made more destructive by higher sea surface temperatures. Sea surface temperatures have been rising 4.5 times faster since 2019 than they were at the end of the 1980s.

For the central and eastern Pacific, El Niño conditions means higher chances of above-average hurricane activity. In its yearly bulletin published last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put the likelihood of an above-average season at 70%. In the Atlantic, however, El Niño typically suppresses hurricane development. For this reason, NOAA forecasts a 55% chance of below-average Atlantic hurricane activity this year.

“Although El Niño’s impact in the Atlantic Basin can often suppress hurricane development, there is still uncertainty in how each season will unfold,” said NOAA’s National Weather Service Director Ken Graham.

Featured image: UN Women Asia and the Pacific/Flickr.

The World Meteorological Organization says there is a 91% chance that global average temperatures will exceed 1.5C above the 1850-1900 average levels for at least one year between 2026 and 2030.

—

The Earth is on track to keep warming at or near record levels in the five years as chances of keeping global temperatures below the Paris Agreement 1.5C goal fade.

The latest edition of an annual report on the state of the climate by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts global yearly mean near-surface temperatures to be between 1.3C and 1.9C higher than the average for the 1850-1900 period, or pre-industrial period, between now and 2030. The global mean near-surface temperature refers to the combined average of air temperatures near the Earth’s surface and sea-surface temperatures.

The UN agency also said there is a 91% chance that global average temperatures will exceed 1.5C above the 1850-1900 average levels for at least one year between 2026 and 2030.

While this does not signal a permanent breach of the critical limit, which scientists say is measured over decades, it sends a clear warning to humanity that we are approaching the point of no return much faster than expected.

Beyond 1.5C of global warming, experts warn that critical tipping points will be breached, leading to devastating and potentially irreversible consequences for several vital Earth systems that sustain a hospitable planet, such as rising sea levels, more intense heatwaves, stronger storms, and disruptions to ecosystems and biodiversity.

The report, wihch was produced by the UK’s Met Office, also said there is an 86% chance that at least one of the next five years will eclipse modern records to become the hottest year in history. Currently, 2024 holds the top spot, while the entire past decade accounts for all ten of the warmest years ever recorded.

The return of El Niño conditions this summer is increasing the chances that 2027 will be the next record-breaking year, scientists have said.

The global climatic phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years on average, is associated with the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. When this happens, the east-to-west trade winds die, keeping warmer than the normal air in the eastern and central parts of the tropical Pacific, which temporarily raises global average temperatures. When combined with long-term human-caused climate change, these weather patterns frequently push global temperatures to record-breaking highs.

The powerful shifts in Pacific winds and water temperatures can also transform global weather patterns, increasing the likelihood of severe droughts in places like Australia and Southeast Asia and heavy floods in parts of the US and East Africa. 

Featured image: Kyle Lam/hongkongfp.com

“The UK was built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come,” the Climate Change Committee, the UK’s independent climate change adviser, said in a new major report.

—

British homes will need air conditioning to survive predicted levels of global warming, a major report has warned.

An estimated 4 million homes in the country now have air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, the Guardian recently reported. But that is not enough to protect people from rapidly rising temperatures and what are becoming more frequent and intense heatwaves, the Climate Change Committee, the UK’s independent climate change adviser, said in the report.

The Committee estimated that some 92% of existing homes are likely to overheat during a heatwave, disproportionately threatening those most vulnerable to heat. Among them are children, the elderly, pregnant women, as well as those living in inadequate or poorly ventilated housing. “The UK was built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come,” it said, as it urged the country to prepare for warming levels 2C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century. The world is currently on track for 2.6-3.1C of warming over the course of this century, according to UN estimates.

Keeping people safe and lowering heat-related mortality rates requires stepping up cooling in buildings through both active measures, such as installing air conditioning, as well as passive cooling measures, like natural shading, according to the report. This is especially true for people’s homes, care homes, and hospitals.

The Committee called on the government to install air conditioning in all care homes and hospitals within the next decade, and in all schools within the next 25 years. It also advised creating at least one cool room in at least the 30% most vulnerable urban households.

Because air conditioning systems come with a heavy environmental footprint, heat pumps, which provide both low-carbon heating and cooling, should be considered especially in new builds, the report added. But heat pumps are rarely installed in the UK for reasons including high upfront installation costs despite government subsidies; high electricity prices relative to gas, which increases running costs; and lack of the necessary insulation required for these systems to run efficiently, especially in older homes.

People without access to air conditioning – a huge proportion of the world’s population – are particularly at risk during extreme heat events. While about 90% of households in the US and 60% in China have some sort of air conditioning system, the number is worryingly lower in rapidly warming places like Europe (10%) and India (8%), the most populous country in the world. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the number is even lower.

‘Astonishing’ Heat

The UK is currently experiencing an exceptionally early heatwave that is shattering records. The country set a new daily heat record for May on Monday and again on Tuesday, when temperatures reached 35.1C in London. The record for the highest daily minimum temperature in May was also provisionally broken for a third night in a row on Wednesday, the Met Office said.

Climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency of extreme high temperatures in the UK, according to the national forecaster. Peaks of 30C used to be a rare occurrence in the country, and exceptionally rare in May – reached only a handful of times since 1900. In December, the Met Office warned that 2026 will likely be among the country’s four warmest years on record.

“This record-breaking heat has the fingerprints of climate change all over it,” said Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science, Imperial College London. “Seeing 35C in the UK during spring is absolutely astonishing, but the science is very clear – climate change makes these heatwaves hotter, longer, and far more frequent,” Otto added, pointing out that such high temperatures “were once exceptional even at the height of summer.”

Heat is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis, with every heatwave in the world now stronger and more likely to happen because of human-caused climate change. 

—

Several western European countries are baking under record-breaking heat this week that is highly unusual this time of year.

The heatwave is the result of a phenomenon known as a heat dome – where warm air from Northern Africa is trapped under a high-pressure system over Western Europe, lingering for days. It works like a lid on a pot, trapping hot air underneath.

The UK set a new daily heat record for May on Monday and again on Tuesday, when temperatures reached 35.1C in London. Temperature records for the month were also broken in Wales, where the mercury hit 32.9C on Monday, and in County Clare in Ireland, which recorded a maximum temperature of 30C, the BBC reported. Three tenagers reportedly died in the UK in separate drowning incidents.

Climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency of extreme high temperatures in the UK, according to the UK’s Met Office. Peaks of 30C used to be a rare occurrence in the country, and exceptionally rare in May – reached only a handful of times since 1900. In December, the forecaster warned that 2026 will likely be among the country’s four warmest years on record.

“This record-breaking heat has the fingerprints of climate change all over it,” said Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science, Imperial College London. “Seeing 35C in the UK during spring is absolutely astonishing, but the science is very clear – climate change makes these heatwaves hotter, longer, and far more frequent,” Otto added, pointing out that such high temperatures “were once exceptional even at the height of summer.”

France is also baking in record-breaking heat, with 36C recorded in the country’s southwest on Monday and 35.8C in Vendée in western France on Tuesday. Temperatures there climbed as much as 13C above seasonal norms over the weekend. Meteo-France, the national weather agency, called the early, intense, and prolonged heatwave “remarkable” as it warned of potential peaks of 38C or even 39C on Thursday.

Nighttime heat was also at an “unprecedented level of mildness” in recent days, the agency said.

High nighttime temperatures are detrimental to human health, as they prevent the body from recovering from daytime heat. This not only disrupts sleep, which can negatively affect physical and mental health, cognitive function, and life expectancy, but it also increases the risk of illness and mortality. A 2020 study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that five consecutive “hot nights,” defined as when temperatures rise above 28C (82F), would raise the risk of death by 6.66%.

Spain, parts of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria are also grappling with record-breaking heat.

Heat is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Every heatwave in the world is now stronger and more likely to happen because of human-caused climate change, which is primarily driven by greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. This raises Earth’s surface temperature, leading to longer and hotter heatwaves. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that any additional warming will further increase their frequency and intensity.

A ClimaMeter study published Tuesday attributed the unusual heat baking Western Europe to human-driven climate change. Researchers described the meteorological conditions behind the heatwave as a “rare” occurrence once mainly associated with autumn months but now also occurring in late spring.

Heatwaves are also one of the deadliest types of extreme weather event. In Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, heat-related mortality has already increased by around 30% in the past two decades. Experts say the continent could see three times as many heat-related deaths by the end of the century unless ambitious adaptation measures are implemented continent-wide.

More on the topic: Record Heat, Vanishing Ice: New Report Charts the Accelerating Climate Crisis Across Europe

Sports Event Organizers Reminded to Exercise Caution

At least seven people reportedly died in France for reasons directly or indirectly linked to the heat, “including at least five from drowning, as well as deaths related to extreme heat during sports events,” French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon confirmed on Tuesday. Two deaths involved athletes participating in separate sporting events, prompting France’s Minister of Sports, Marina Ferrari, to call on athletes, event organizers and sports federations to exercise extreme caution, keep hydrated, pay particular attention to those most vulnerable to extreme heat, and reschedule events wherever possible.

The French Open, a major tennis tournament, kicked off last weekend amid sweltering conditions in Paris. The tournament has guidelines in place to prevent athletes from overheating if temperatures reach a certain level, such as 10-minute breaks or even match suspensions. Norwegian player Casper Ruud was the first athlete to be visibly affected by the heat since the tournament kicked off on Sunday. He experienced cramping, had medical timeouts and used ice towels and water to cool himself down, the BBC reported.

“It felt like it was a bit of a kind of heatstroke feeling,” Ruud said, recalling a similar feeling he once experienced while playing in Washington DC. “That’s the only time I had that same feeling as I had today in the fourth set where I felt at times really dizzy, really tired and walking around like a zombie almost,” he said.

Featured image: Kyle Lam/hongkongfp.com

You might also like: 1 in 4 World Cup Matches Could Take Place in Dangerous Heat Conditions, Analysis Finds

Meanwhile, the US agency forecast a below-average season in the Atlantic basin as El Niño typically suppresses hurricane development there.

—

The central and eastern Pacific is likely to see above-average hurricane activity this year owing to the development of El Niño conditions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said last week.

The US agency released its Atlantic and eastern and central Pacific hurricane season outlooks on Thursday, predicting a 55% chance of below-average hurricane activity in the former and a 70% chance of above-average activity in the latter.

In March, weather forecasters, including NOAA, predicted a high chance of an El Niño event developing later this year. The global climatic phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years on average, is associated with the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. When this happens, the east-to-west trade winds die, keeping warmer than the normal air in the eastern and central parts of the tropical Pacific.

The powerful shifts in Pacific winds and water temperatures can transform global weather patterns, increasing the likelihood of severe droughts in places like Australia and Southeast Asia and heavy floods in parts of the US and East Africa. 

They also influence the formation of hurricanes, which are fueled and made more destructive by higher sea surface temperatures. Sea surface temperatures are on the rise globally as El Niño looms. Last month, they neared record levels in the Pacific and the extra-polar oceans.

In the eastern and central Pacific, strong El Niño conditions are typically associated with "dramatically elevated levels" of hurricane activity, NOAA said. In the Atlantic basin, meanwhile, El Niño typically suppresses hurricane development.

“Although El Niño’s impact in the Atlantic Basin can often suppress hurricane development, there is still uncertainty in how each season will unfold,” said NOAA’s National Weather Service Director Ken Graham.

El Niño conditions also typically boost hurricane in the northwestern Pacific – known as typhoons in this part of the world. Typhoons take longer tracks over water during El Niño years, according to Yale Climate Connections. This is because warmer ocean waters are displaced toward the Central Pacific, causing tropical storms to form much farther to the east than usual. This elongated path provides more time for the storms to absorb heat and moisture, drastically increasing their odds of developing into major, catastrophic storms.

The northwestern Pacific lacks a defined typhoon season as typhoons can occur throughout the year, although they tend to peak between September and November.

Featured image: NOAA Satellites/Flickr.

You may also like: Tropical Cyclone Forecasting Is Getting More Challenging. Can AI Offer Solutions?