This weekly round-up brings you key climate news from the past seven days, including declining climate coverage in the US and the return of a warming weather pattern known as the El Niño later this year.
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1. Trump Administration Targeted Key Climate Research Lab As Retribution Against Colorado Officials, Lawsuit Claims
The Trump administration broke up a key climate research center in Boulder, Colorado as retribution against the state’s governor, a new lawsuit filed on Monday alleges.
The lawsuit, filed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), challenges the Trump administration’s decision to shut the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). UCAR, a non-profit research group made up of colleges and universities that operates the center, alleges that the administration is waging a “widespread and coordinated campaign of punishment and coercion” against Colorado, which started last August over tensions between President Donald Trump and Jared Polis, the state’s Democratic governor.
The Trump administration announced plans to shut the Colorado-headquartered lab last December, calling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and a stronghold for left-wing climate activism.
Founded in 1960 and funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, the NCAR’s laboratories provide critical data on air quality and tools to improve aircraft safety and wildfire mitigation as well as forecasts of droughts, extreme precipitation events and tropical cyclones. Around 830 people are employed there.
Full story here.
2. El Niño Set to Return in 2026, Bringing Erratic Global Weather Shifts and Unusual Heat
El Niño, a climate phenomenon related to the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central-east equatorial Pacific, is set to return in 2026, throwing weather patterns worldwide out of whack, scientists have warned.
According to an advisory issued last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), El Niño is likely to form during the summer months and persist through the end of 2026 and potentially longer, with a 1-in-3 chance of becoming “strong” in the winter months. It marks a notable revision upwards from previous forecasts that suggested a modest El Niño might develop.
During an El Niño event, the east-to-west trade winds die, keeping warmer than the normal air in the eastern and central parts of the tropical Pacific. The associated warming in the central and eastern tropical Pacific leads to increased temperatures and opposing weather patterns around the world, such as severe droughts in places like Australia and Southeast Asia and heavy floods in parts of the US and East Africa.
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, according to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather.
Full story here.
3. Climate Coverage on Major US Commercial Broadcast TV Networks Down 35% in 2025
American corporate broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 8 hours and 25 minutes of climate coverage across 201 segments in 2025, according to a transcript analysis of the networks’ morning, evening, and weekend shows by liberal watchdog Media Matters. This represents a 35% decline from the year prior, and a significant decrease from the 23 hours of reporting the networks collectively achieved in 2022.
CBS accounted for 48% of total broadcast minutes in 2025, followed by NBC at 39% and ABC at just 13%. The analysis also revealed that most climate mentions were tied to single events such as the Los Angeles wildfires in January or October’s Hurricane Melissa, rather than the root causes of the crisis – fossil fuels – or its long-term, systemic impacts on global communities.
Since taking office in January 2025, US President Donald Trump has altered the nation’s role in the global fight against climate change, a crisis he himself has dismissed as a “con job”. But the consequentiality of the administration’s actions, from policy rollbacks and funding cuts to new regulations favoring planet-warming fossil fuels, went largely underreported, the analysis also found.
In all, the three major US networks referenced federal climate actions in just 15% of their total climate coverage.
Full story here.
4. Exposure to Life-Limiting Heat Is on the Rise Around the World, Research Shows
Extreme heat is no longer just uncomfortable – it is increasingly making everyday activities unsafe in many parts of the world, according to new research.
Scientists from The Nature Conservancy, a US-headquartered global environmental organization, set out to determine where in the world temperature and humidity are already too high for people to sustain physical activity in a safe manner – a threshold they define as “livability”. They combined more than seven decades of global climate data with a model accounting for how the human body responds to conditions at different stages of life.
They found that around 35% of the global population now lives in areas where heat severely limits safe activity even for younger adults, with the percentage rising to 78% when accounting for the impacts of heat and humidity on older adults (over 65).
Scientists also found that the average younger adult now experiences some 50 hours of severe heat-related livability limitations per year, or about 900 hours – more than a month – per year for the average older adult. In 1950, these figures were 25 and 600, respectively.
Full story here.
5. Ruling in Belgian Farmer’s Climate Lawsuit Against TotalEnergies Postponed to September
A Belgian court on Wednesday postponed its ruling in a groundbreaking climate case between a Belgian farmer and one of the world’s biggest oil companies.
The Commercial Court of Tournai was expected to hand down the verdict at 1 p.m. local time in Belgium’s first climate lawsuit targeting a multinational corporation. But the verdict was postponed until September 9.
Hugues Falys sued TotalEnergies two years ago to seek compensation for the damage that numerous extreme weather events, which he says are a direct result of the company’s activities, caused to his farm. Falys, who was backed by FIAN, Greenpeace, and the Belgian League of Human Rights, a member organisation of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), asked the court to order TotalEnergies to ensure compliance with the Paris Agreement and to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels.
TotalEnergies is one of the world’s top six “supermajor” oil companies and one of the 20 largest historical emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
Full story here.
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