El Niño expected to develop in coming months, bringing hotter and drier weather to eastern Australia
The BoM says models indicate the forecast El Niño will be at least moderate in strength, with a strong event possible. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/Reuters View image in fullscreen The BoM says models indicate the forecast El Niño will be at least moderate in strength, with a strong event possible. Prepare for imminent return of El Niño, UN warns El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso), one of the key drivers affecting global climate. During an El Niño, sea surface temperatures in a central region of the equatorial Pacific become warmer than average, resulting in a shift in atmospheric circulation. However, Gamble emphasised that the strength of an El Niño does not “necessarily correlate exactly with the strength of the impacts in Australia”, as there were other climate patterns that influenced weather locally, such as the Indian Ocean dipole and the southern annular mode. In Australia, El Niño has has tended to result in warmer-than-average temperatures across most of the south of the country, and been linked with an increased risk of drought, heatwaves, bushfires and coral bleaching. For eastern Australia, nine of the 10 driest winter-spring periods on record have occurred during El Niño years. “An El Niño doesn’t necessarily mean we switch overnight into drought conditions and that we suddenly see increased fire risk – it’s a more nuanced story,” Gamble said. “You’ve got to really take into account some of those recent conditions that we’ve had in recent months.” The influence of the El Niño in Australia was strongest during winter and spring, and “does tend to back right off in summer” – different to La Niña, Gamble said. Dr Andrew Watkins, a Climate Councillor and former head of climate prediction at the BoM, said: “Climate change and El Niño are a very dangerous double act. “Climate change is already pushing us to more time in drought, more bushfire weather and extreme heat. Climate pollution is reinforcing some of these impacts from El Niño.” He said the strength of the El Niño – assessed – did “not automatically mean impacts in Australia will follow suit. For some countries closer to the equator, yes, but for Australia it’s a mixed bag. “But the reality is that each time we see an El Niño event, it has led to periods of hotter and drier conditions.” Watkins said climate change was tending to “pump up” existing variability, so that periods of dry became exceptionally dry, and when conditions were good for rainfall this delivered downpours.
Dismay as Trump officials to dismantle key ocean monitoring system
Staff from the Ocean Observatories Initiative deploy a glider. Photograph: Sheri N White/WHOI View image in fullscreen Staff from the Ocean Observatories Initiative deploy a glider. Photograph: Sheri N White/WHOI Dismay as Trump officials to dismantle key ocean monitoring system Ocean Observatories Initiative, $368m network that has provided crucial climate data, latest victim of Trump cuts The Trump administration plans to dismantle a $368m deep-sea observation system that has for more than a decade provided crucial data on ocean systems and climate change. In a notice, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it had “initiated descoping of the Ocean Observatories Initiative” (OOI), a vast ocean observation network comprising more than 900 instruments that collect data on ocean health, including current patterns, climate variability and marine biodiversity. The notice, issued on 21 May, came just days after Trump fired all members of the independent board that oversees the NSF. It outlined plans to remove all in-water infrastructure from observation sites off the coasts of North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, as well as from the Irminger Sea, a marginal sea between Greenland and Iceland. Some scientists expressed dismay at the plan, while Democratic lawmakers said they would fight it, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, who called it a “shortsighted move” that would “end up costing American taxpayers more not less”, the New York Times reported. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on X: “Fossil fuel is heating our oceans , so Trump’s corrupt fossil fuel stooges want to turn off the monitors.” Following the announcement, the OOI’s principal investigator, Jim Edson, said the NSF’s plan involves a phased recovery and infrastructure removal process expected to take place over the next 15 months. “As infrastructure is recovered from each array, the associated real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end,” Edson said. The move will bring to an end more than a decade of continuous ocean monitoring after the system first became operational in June 2016. Describing the network as having “delivered the world’s most advanced continuously operating ocean observing systems”, Edson added: “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.” The dismantling of the OOI marks another step in the Trump administration’s rollback of science and climate initiatives.
Heat Is a Growing Threat to the Hajj—Even in Spring
More than 1.7 million people participated last week in the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia—consistently one of the world’s largest mass gatherings. Muslims are expected to perform Hajj at least once in their lives, but an increasingly perilous threat looms over the holy journey: heat. When the Hajj took place in mid-June during 2024, more than 1,300 people died, many succumbing to heat-related illnesses as temperatures topped 125 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity hit unusually high levels. The pilgrimage’s timing changes each year based on the Islamic lunar calendar, so this year—and the next roughly two decades—fall in cooler seasons, a slight relief for pilgrims and officials helping manage the pilgrimage. However, a new analysis suggests that the window for heat-safe Hajj pilgrimages is dwindling as climate change ratchets up the temperature during historically cooler months. Research shows that the region’s growing suite of heat-mitigation strategies for the pilgrimage significantly reduces health issues. But experts say worsening heat may outpace these efforts and the key to tackling this issue is addressing the source of the problem—carbon emissions. A Sizzling Holy Journey One of the five pillars of Islam, the Hajj is considered a mandatory religious duty for Muslims who are physically and financially able to complete it. The five- to six-day pilgrimage can cover dozens of miles through parts of the Saudi Arabian desert region, with visits to holy sites along the way. The majority of participants are traveling to the country from other parts of the world, and many are older than 65—factors that can make them particularly vulnerable to heat stress. Visitors exposed to much higher temperatures than they’re used to are not adequately acclimatized. A 2024 study analyzing heat and health during the Hajj over 40 years found that heat-mitigation strategies helped significantly reduce cases of heat stress and exhaustion. But not everyone has access to these measures, an issue made abundantly clear in 2024, experts say. According to the Saudi government, the vast majority of pilgrims who died during that year’s Hajj were not registered for the pilgrimage. Without permits, they were not allowed to tap into certain cooling resources, The New York Times reported. It can be difficult to secure a Hajj permit due to high demand, quotas and costs. And even for permitted participants, heat plans may not cut it much longer. The 2024 study analyzing decades of data suggests that “the intensifying heat may be outpacing current mitigation efforts, signalling a need to recalibrate existing approaches.” Summer in Spring Though this year’s Hajj was held in spring, it was still a scorcher.
Young South Africans take up sustainable agriculture for food security
Share: X (Twitter) Facebook LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Print In a school in South Africa, a group of students stare at a row of small plants growing in a greenhouse. Each one is involved in the lesson, caring for the growing crops. But this is no ordinary classroom setting. These children are learning about aquaponics, a method of growing plants and fish in a mutually beneficial water system. This ancient technique of food production is now being taught to millions of schoolchildren after being introduced . Laerskool Kempton Park on the edge of Johannesburg was one of the first schools to introduce the subject with the aim of improving food security. This is a serious challenge in a country where an estimated 19.7 million people, or around 30% of the population, experience moderate levels of food insecurity, meaning that they struggle to afford enough food for a healthy, balanced diet. Bringing the farm to school Aquaponics is a way of supporting communities to access food in a sustainable and efficient way. The solution is simple: fish waste is turned into available nutrients . Plants absorb these nutrients and the cleaned water is returned to the fish tank. There are multiple benefits to this approach. The system doesn’t require chemical fertilisers, soil or large tracts of land. It is also highly efficient, with recirculated water being used over and over again. This is an important feature in areas of South Africa that experience drought or unpredictable weather. Agricultural subsidies can be repurposed for a just and sustainable rural transition Aquaponics can offer a range of benefits depending on the local context. In South Africa, townships in major cities such as Johannesburg don’t always have the space to produce their own food, while in other places, such as the Northern Cape, extreme weather is making agriculture much harder. Learners participating in a practical aquaponics lesson in Kempton Park. Image: INMED Learners participating in a practical aquaponics lesson in Kempton Park. Image: INMED Schoolchildren observing fish grown in an aquaponics system. Image: INMED Schoolchildren observing fish grown in an aquaponics system. Image: INMED At Laerskool Kempton Park, the students have benefited from the innovative work of INMED, a non-profit organisation that supports vulnerable children and families in the country. INMED has trained hundreds of teachers and over 7,000 children on the benefits of aquaponics. With the help of funding from the Adaptation Fund through the UNDP-Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA), the organisation was able to develop its own aquaponics system to be used in schools.
Colorado River Faces ‘Devastating Consequences’ If Another Dry Winter Lands, Experts Warn
Another warm, arid winter could leave Colorado River reservoirs nearly dry. That is one of the projections a group of Colorado River experts released Monday, building on a previous report released last September assessing the future of the waterway’s federally managed dams under different hydrological scenarios. The new report forecasted the impacts of another dry winter and a wetter one, which it found would not provide enough water to extricate the basin from the depths of a climate change-fueled drought. “Both scenarios demonstrate the need to adopt significant additional measures to permanently decrease consumptive uses across the entire Basin,” the authors wrote. The Colorado River and its tributaries serve 40 million people across seven Western states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. S., the Colorado River Basin is split into an upper basin containing Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and a lower basin comprising Arizona, California and Nevada. Water use in the basins, between 11 and 13 million acre feet recently, has consistently outstripped what nature provides, leading to some reductions in usage but an imminent need for much steeper cuts. ICN Weekly Saturdays Our #1 delivers the week’s climate and energy news – our original stories and top headlines from around the web. Get ICN Weekly Inside Clean Energy Thursdays Dan Gearino’s habit-forming weekly take on how to understand the energy transformation reshaping our world. Get Inside Clean Energy Today’s Climate Tuesdays A once-a-week digest of the most pressing climate-, written . Get Today’s Climate Don’t miss a beat. Get a daily email of our original, groundbreaking stories written -winning reporters. Get ICN Sunday Morning Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and ICN reporters as they discuss one of the week’s top stories. Get ICN Sunday Morning Justice & Health A digest of stories on the inequalities that worsen the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities. But the new report finds the supply-and-demand imbalance is likely to persist under a range of weather and usage scenarios. If water year 2027, measured from the beginning of October 2026 to the end of the following September, is similar to water year 2025, one of the five driest since 2000, and human consumption is on par with the lowest levels this century, the U. S. would overconsume the natural flow of the river by 2.59 million acre feet (one acre foot of water can serve between 1 and 3 households depending on the climate). Such a drain would “risk a crash of the Basin’s water storage system,” the authors found. Lakes Mead and Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the U.
Next El Niño could be strongest in decades
A new phase of the natural El Niño weather pattern could begin in a matter of weeks, the UN has warned, boosting temperatures on a planet already under strain from climate change.
Q&A: The current state of ‘carbon dioxide removal’ around the world
Negative emissions: Scientists debate role of CO2 removal in tackling climate change Nine key takeaways about the ‘state of CO2 removal’ in 2024 CO2 removal ‘gap’ shows countries ‘lack progress’ for 1.5C warming limit Get a round-up of all the important articles and papers selected . Find out more about our newsletters here. Get a round-up of all the important articles and papers selected . Find out more about our newsletters here.
New ways to remove CO2 from atmosphere must grow much faster, report says
Direct air capture fans on the roof of a garbage incinerator in Hinwil outside Zurich. Photograph: Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy View image in fullscreen Direct air capture fans on the roof of a garbage incinerator in Hinwil outside Zurich. Photograph: Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy New ways to remove CO2 from atmosphere must grow much faster, report says Novel forms of CO2 removal must expand at ‘highly ambitious rates’ if world is to limit global heating to 1.5C, says study Humanity must suck carbon out of the atmosphere with new technologies even faster than the breakneck speed with which it has deployed solar panels if it is to limit global heating to 1.5C, a report has found. Novel forms of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) must grow at “highly ambitious rates” to bridge the gap between what governments have pledged to clean up and what is needed to comply with the Paris climate agreement, according to researchers. They said the next five years were critical to establishing the technologies’ role in limiting climate damages. Machines that suck carbon straight from the air and chemical techniques such as the production of biochar make up just 0.1% of the 2.2bn tonnes of CO2 that are removed globally each year, according to the report published on Tuesday. The rest comes from land-based actions such as planting trees, which are limited by space. The report found novel forms of CDR have grown at a rate of 40% a year but start from such a small base that they would need to reach growth rates between that of solar panels and electric vehicles, which have grown faster than any other climate technologies. It found only one-fifth of the planned capacity in recent years has been delivered. “Countries have pledged around 2.7bn tonnes of carbon removal by 2035 and about 3.6bn by 2050, but climate pathways require much more, especially in the long term,” said William Lamb, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the report. “This leaves a gap that grows significantly over time.” CDR is a small but key component of roadmaps to stop the planet heating. It can offset the warming from hard-to-avoid emissions and bring temperatures back down to 1.5C after an “overshoot” period that scientists see as inevitable. Scientists have compared carbon removal to cleaning up a rubbish-strewn beach: the cheapest solution is to not throw things away and to put any waste in bins, but litter-pickers can clean up pollution that washes up on the shore and remediate the damage done .
Prepare for imminent return of El Niño, UN warns
El Niño typically brings drier conditions to Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of south Asia. Photograph: Kevin Herbian/NurPhoto/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen El Niño typically brings drier conditions to Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of south Asia. Photograph: Kevin Herbian/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Prepare for imminent return of El Niño, UN warns UN agency predicts phenomenon that supercharges weather extremes has 80% chance of forming before September The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Niño and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned. The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday. It found most models projected the return of the cyclical phenomenon in the ocean and atmosphere to be “at least moderate” in strength, and possibly strong. Scientists have previously warned that it could be the strongest this century. The WMO said unusually high temperatures were forecast in nearly all parts of the planet for the next three months, and warned of a greater probability of extreme rain and drought. Although each El Niño event is unique, scientists usually associate them with heavier rain in parts of South America, the southern US, the Horn of Africa and central Asia. Drier conditions typically hit Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Indonesia and parts of south Asia. The warm waters can fuel hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean but hinder their formation in the Atlantic basin. View image in fullscreen Torrential rains linked to El Niño in April 2024 caused flooding and landslides in Tanzania. Photograph: Diego Menjibar/EPAThe finding comes as western Europe emerges from an unusually hot May in which temperature records for the month were broken in the UK and Ireland. Last week, the WMO and the UK Met Office warned that a record-breaking hot year for the globe was almost certain before the end of the decade, with the expected return of El Niño likely to make that come as soon as 2027. Gareth Redmond-King, from the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, a British thinktank, said the findings were bad news for food supplies as they were already under strain from climate breakdown and the restriction of fertiliser flows from the Iran war. “The havoc El Niño will wreak as it likely delivers another hottest year, in 2027, will be devastating for many farmers, and a question of life or death for far too many people,” he said.
'Killer fungus' could be good news for habitats decimated by invasive moss
'Killer fungus' could be good news for habitats decimated 3 days agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on Google Georgina RannardClimate and science reporter Gwyndaf Hughes/BBC The heath-star moss has spread quickly through the UK and Europe A new species of "killer fungus" has been discovered in Britain that destroys an aggressively invasive plant, raising hopes that decimated native habitats could be restored. It infects the heath-star moss that is damaging UK environments . Scientists say it could represent a rare fightback . The scientist tracking the spread of the moss die-back fungus across the UK took BBC News to see its "fairy rings of death" in south Wales. Dr George Greiff, 30, made the discovery while walking in the Isle of Wight four years ago. He spotted dead invasive mosses on a cliffside and took samples, but couldn't work out the killer. Gwyndaf Hughes/BBC Dr George Greiff, 30, discovered the moss die-back fungus But he kept seeing more cases of decaying moss. Working with scientists in the UK and France, he has now managed to piece together the puzzle. The culprit was a potent fungus never seen before by scientists, now named moss die-back. We often think of fungus as bad but consider this one to be a "goodie". Its victim, the heath-star moss, is all over Britain. Look on hillsides, sand dunes, or a simple garden fence. "It's aggressive. I've even seen it growing in tarmac," says Greiff. "It is a pretty-looking thing," he concedes, plucking fragments off a clump torn from a carpet of green moss. "But it's caused a lot of problems," he says. George Greiff The brown patches are dead heath-moss - killed -back fungus Around 2,000 non-native plants and animals have been brought to Britain from all over the world by people, accidentally or sometimes deliberately. Some end up dominating the environment. The most famous is probably the North American grey squirrel, which has nearly wiped out our native red squirrel populations. In the plant world, amongst the biggest offenders are the invasive Japanese knotweed which damages people's homes, or rhododendron that leaves toxins in soils. But not a lot is known about the heath-star moss. Scientists think it arrived on British soil in the 1940s from somewhere in the southern hemisphere. By 1990 it was everywhere. "This moss has just exploded. In the 1930s, native mosses would have been growing here instead," Greiff explains. There are more than 1,000 types of moss in the UK.