In the southwest, the mild weather has turned into outright spring heat, with temperatures worthy of May. Temperatures, already high for this season, are climbing further between Tuesday and Wednesday, with readings exceeding 25C at multiple stations.
Next year will bring heat more than 1.4C above preindustrial levels, meteorologists project, as fossil fuel pollution continues to bake the Earth and fuel extreme weather. The UK Met Office's central forecast is slightly cooler than the 1.55C reached in 2024, the warmest year on record, but 2026 is set to be among the four hottest years dating back to 1850. A blanket of carbon smothering the Earth has begun to jeopardise the stable conditions in which humanity has thrived, worsening weather extremes and increasing the risk of catastrophic tipping points.
Don't get me wrong. I pretty much only see downsides to global warming. I also see that we need to stop it and limit the damage already done. But alongside the avalanche of threats and warnings, global warming also offers an opportunity. A small opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless: an opportunity to fundamentally rethink our relationship to our planet. Global warming is a motivation to adjust our perspective on our planet, to become ambassadors for planet Earth, and to recruit new ambassadors.
In 1995, when the first conference of the parties (Cop) of the UN's climate change convention met in Berlin, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was approximately 360.67 parts per million. The then German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, gave a passionate speech about how greenhouse gases must be reduced to save the planet from overheating. There was a relatively unknown East German woman, the environment minister, Angela Merkel, chairing the conference. She was red hot at keeping order.
The International Energy Agency predicts global demand for oil and gas will rise well beyond 2030, marking a sharp departure from the agency's previous forecasts that demand for oil would peak by 2030. In a new report, the IEA says low gas prices, growing concerns over energy security and a global lack of ambitious climate policies will delay the peak of the fossil fuel era until at least 2050.
Back in 2016 an article in the New York Times referred to Iceland as a mosquito-free island paradise. While nearby countries host mosquito populations during warmer times of the year, one of the going theories was that Iceland's propensity for harsh swings between thawing and freezing helped keep the bloodsuckers from getting a foothold. But that same Times piece warned that this skeeter-free status could be in peril.
"Glaciers tend to suppress the volume of eruptions from the volcanoes beneath them," said University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student and lead author Pablo Moreno-Yaeger in a statement. "But as glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively."
Extreme heat reduces dairy cows' ability to produce milk by 10%. Just one hour of wet-bulb temperature above 26C can reduce a cow's daily milk production by 0.5%. Exposure to high temperatures also has a prolonged effect, with milk production still lower than typical levels up to 10 days after the initial hot day.
