#climate-tipping-points

#climate-tipping-points

"A stellarator is a thing that is objectively very difficult to design, objectively very difficult to build, but if it works, it can control the burning hot plasma better than a tokamak."

Minden Hills has been under a state of emergency since Tuesday, with flooding affecting homes and roads, and the local arena being converted into an evacuation center.

California's Sierra snowpack peaked at only 73% of average on February 25, 2026, and has since diminished. The Northern Sierra recorded just 10% of normal snow levels by mid-April.

The study highlights how rapid Arctic warming increases the frequency of extreme weather events, particularly concurrent heatwaves across Europe and eastern Asia.

When scientists applied a new model of human survivability that takes into account the body's ability to function and stay cool depending on age, they found all six events had seen non-survivable periods for older people who could not find shade.

Rising temperatures are projected to increase the prevalence of physical inactivity, translating into additional premature deaths and productivity losses, especially in tropical regions. Prioritising heat-adaptive urban design, subsidised climate-controlled exercise facilities, and targeted heat-risk communication is essential to mitigate these emerging health and economic burdens, in addition to ambitious emissions reductions.

At a young age, I learned quickly how oil wealth and power could burn the land while people struggled. I saw heat rise off the streets, the Nile strained, and the air thickened with injustice. In my teenage years, through Aotearoa, being on the edge of the Pacific, I felt the ocean breathing heavy, swallowing the shores of islands that have done the least to cause this harm.

He had flown in from Mar-a-Lago and, he told me, was there to observe. The next day, he watched as Åsa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies polar regions, sat onstage with European foreign ministers and spoke out against cuts to U.S. science funding. "A leading US Arctic scientist is on stage absolutely ripping her country to the delight of the audience," Dans wrote on X. "Embarassing." He punctuated his post with an American-flag emoji.

"So whenever people think about hot weather, they always talk about the temperature," he says. "There's two issues with that. First of all, most people don't realise that the temperature is measured in the shade. So if you're in direct solar radiation, the amount of heat stress you're exposed to is much greater as it will stress your body out a lot more."

Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the United States. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat.

Ice-sheet retreat lined up with low algae growth over the past ~500,000 years, implying less CO₂ uptake in parts of the Southern Ocean during warm periods. The study points to iceberg-delivered, iron-rich sediments from West Antarctica during warm intervals, not windblown dust. The iron-bearing minerals in these sediments were highly weathered and not readily bioavailable to marine algae. If WAIS keeps shrinking, similar sediment delivery could weaken Southern Ocean carbon uptake, creating feedback that could amplify climate change.

Changes in the Antarctic do not stay in the Antarctic. Though Antarctica is far away, changes here will impact the rest of the world through changes in sea level, oceanic and atmospheric connections and circulation changes.

Originally due to be published in the autumn, the review appears to have had some sections removed. An earlier version is reported to have included warnings about the risks of eco-terrorism and the growing likelihood of war between China, India and Pakistan due to competition over a shrinking water supply from the Himalayas.