Spain wildfires are ‘clear warning’ of climate emergency, minister says. Environment minister says blazes, in which two people have died, are proof of country’s vulnerability to global heating

A firefighter battles a wildfire in the village of Parafita, Galicia region, Spain, on Tuesday. Photograph: Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

by  Sam Jones in Madrid, Helena Smith in Athens and agencies

 The heatwave-fuelled wildfires that have killed two people in Spain over recent days, devouring thousands of hectares of land and forcing thousands of people from their homes, are a “clear warning” of the impact of the climate emergency, the country’s environment minister has said.

 

Speaking on Wednesday morning, as firefighters in Spain, Greece and other Mediterranean countries continued to battle dozens of blazes, Sara Aagesen said the 14 wildfires still burning across seven Spanish regions were further proof of the country’s particular vulnerability to global heating.

Aagesen said that while some of the fires appeared to have been started deliberately, the deadly blazes were a clear indicator of the climate emergency and of the need for better preparation and prevention.

“The fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention,” she told Cadena Ser radio.

“Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalise those resources.”

Firefighters on the outskirts of Abejera de Tábara, Zamora, Spain. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

Aagesen’s comments came a day after temperatures in parts of southern Spain surged past 45C (113F). The state meteorological office, Aemet, said there were no recorded precedents for the temperatures experienced between 1 August and 20 August.

A 35-year-old volunteer firefighter died on Tuesday in the north-western Spanish region of Castilla y León, where fires have prompted the evacuation of more than 8,000 residents, and where seven people are being treated in hospital for serious burns. Four are in a critical condition.

The firefighter’s death came hours after that of a 50-year-old man who suffered 98% burns while trying to save horses from a burning stable near Madrid on Monday night.

By Wednesday morning, the Madrid fire had been brought under control, but blazes in the far north-western region Galicia had consumed 11,500 hectares (30,000 acres) of land by the end of the day.

“Emergency teams are continuing to fight fires across our country,” the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said in a post on X on Wednesday. “The fire situation remains serious and extreme caution is essential. My thanks, once again, to all of you who are working tirelessly to fight the flames.”

A helicopter flies over the town of Vilar near Chandrexa de Queixa in Galicia, Spain, on Tuesday. Photograph: Brais Lorenzo/EPA

Neighbouring Portugal deployed more than 2,100 firefighters and 20 aircraft against five big blazes, with efforts focused on a fire in the central municipality of Trancoso that has raged since Saturday.

Strong gusts of wind had rekindled flames overnight and threatened nearby villages, where television images showed local people volunteering to help firefighters under a thick cloud of smoke.

In Greece, which requested EU aerial assistance on Tuesday, close to 5,000 firefighters were battling blazes fanned by gale-force winds nationwide. Authorities said emergency workers were waging a “a titanic battle” to douse flames still raging through the western Peloponnese, in Epirus farther north, and on the islands of Zakynthos, Kefalonia and Chios, where thousands of residents and tourists have been evacuated from homes and hotels.

Local media reported the wildfires had decimated houses, farms and factories and forced people to flee. Fifteen firefighters and two volunteers had suffered burns and other injuries including “symptoms of heatstroke”, the fire service said.

A man moves goats during a wildfire in Vounteni, on the outskirts of Patras, Greece, on Wednesday. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

Around midnight a huge blaze erupted on Chios, devouring land that had only begun to recover from devastating wildfires in June. As the flames reached the shores, the coastguard rushed to remove people on boats to safety.

On the other side of Greece, outside the western city of Patras, volunteers with the Hellenic Red Cross struggled to contain infernos barrelling towards villages and towns. By lunchtime on Wednesday, media footage showed flames on the outskirts of Patras, Greece’s third-largest city. Municipal authorities announced a shelter had been set up to provide refuge, food and water for those in need.

Officials evacuated a children’s hospital and a retirement home in the city as a precaution, and local media footage showed the roof of a 17th-century monastery outside the city on fire.

Seventeen settlements around Preveza, where fires broke out Tuesday, were reported to be without electricity or water.

“Today is also expected to be very difficult as in most areas of the country a very high risk of fire is forecast,” a fire service spokesperson, Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis, said in a televised address. “By order of the head of the fire brigade, all services nationwide, including civil protection forces, will be in a state of alert.”

Firefighters take a quick rest in Izmir, Turkey, on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

At first light, 33 water-dumping planes and helicopters scrambled to extinguish fires, he said.

Temperatures exceeding 35C (95F) are predicted, according to some meteorologists, to rise further later this week, the height of the summer for Greeks. Record heat and prolonged drought have already turned much of the country tinder-dry, producing conditions ripe for forest fires.

A forestry worker was killed on Wednesday while responding to a wildfire in southern Turkey, officials said. The forestry ministry said the worker died in an accident involving a fire truck that left four others injured.

Turkey has been battling severe wildfires since late June. A total of 18 people have been killed, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers who died in July.

In southern Albania a wildfire caused explosions after detonating buried second world war-era artillery shells. Officials said on Wednesday an 80-year-old man had died in one blaze south of the capital, Tirana.

The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Thousands evacuated in Spain as deadly heatwave fans Mediterranean wildfires. Boy, four, dies of heatstroke in Rome as scientists say high temperatures and fires are reminder of climate emergency

 by Sam Jones in Madrid and Helena Smith in Athens

 

The deadly heatwave fanning wildfires across the Mediterranean region has claimed at least three lives and forced thousands of people from their homes.

Firefighters continued to battle blazes on Tuesday and authorities braced for further damage as temperatures in some areas surged well past 40C. In Spain, a Romanian man in his 50s died after suffering 98% burns while trying to rescue horses from a burning stable near Madrid on Monday night.

A four-year-old boy who was found unconscious in his family’s car in Sardinia died in Rome on Monday after suffering irreversible brain damage caused by heatstroke. And in Montenegro, one soldier died and another was seriously injured when their water tanker overturned while fighting wildfires in the hills north of the capital, Podgorica, on Tuesday.

Scientist have warned that the heat currently affecting large parts of Europe is creating perfect conditions for wildfires and serving as another reminder of the climate emergency.

 

“Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading’s meteorology department told Agence France-Presse, adding that “many still underestimate the danger”.

The fire in Tres Cantos, near Madrid – which had been fuelled by winds of 70km/h (45mph) and which has devoured 1,000 hectares of land – was still not under control on Tuesday evening, when further strong gusts were expected. The regional government said it had recovered 150 dead sheep and 18 dead horses from the area.

More than 3,700 people were evacuated from 16 municipalities amid dozens of reported blazes in the north-western region of Castilla y León, including one that damaged the Unesco world heritage-listed Roman-era mining site at Les Médulas.

Authorities in neighbouring Galicia said the largest wildfire of the year had burned through 3,000 hectares of land in Ourense province. In the southern town of Tarifa, firefighters on the ground and in planes battled a fire that broke out on Monday, with 2,000 people evacuated.

The blazes have led the interior ministry to declare a “pre-emergency phase” to help coordinate emergency resources.

Firefighters work to extinguish a forest fire in Lamas de Olo, in the Alvao natural park, Portugal. Photograph: Pedro Sarmento Costa/EPA

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, offered his condolences to the family of the man who died after the Tres Cantos fire, and thanked the emergency services for their “tireless efforts”.

He urged people to recognise the seriousness of the situation. “We’re at extreme risk of forest fires,” he said in a message on X on Tuesday. “Let’s be very careful.”

In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters were battling three large wildfires in the centre and north of the country.

Authorities in Greece requested EU help as fires, fuelled by gale force winds, ripped across vast swathes of the western Peloponnese and emergency services ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Firefighters were also trying to contain blazes on the popular Ionian tourist islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia. With gusts hampering firefighting efforts, emergency services ordered all hotels in the region of Agala and Keri on Zakynthos to temporarily close, forcing suitcase-wielding holidaymakers to flee and relocate to other areas.

A house burning during a wildfire that erupted in a forest near the village of Agalas on Zakynthos. Photograph: Costas Synetos/EPA

 

By late Tuesday, dozens of firefighters, supported by 15 fire trucks and eight water-bombing planes and helicopters, were still trying to douse the fast-moving flames.

“Everything that civil protection can offer is here but there are very strong winds and the fires are out of control,” said the island’s mayor, Giorgos Stasinopoulos. “We need a lot more air support, it’s vital.”

The fire service said it was also dealing with blazes farther north in Epirus, around Preveza and in the central region of Aetolia-Acarnania.

Despite temperatures nudging 43C in some parts of the Peloponnese region of southern Greece on Tuesday – and the prolonged drought, which has produced highly flammable conditions on tinder-dry soil – officials described the outbreak of so many fires as “suspiciously high”.

Faced with an estimated 63 blazes erupting and firefighters confronting flames on 106 fronts, fire officers dispatched specialist teams to several of the stricken regions to investigate possible arson.

In Albania, hundreds of firefighters and troops had subdued most of the nearly 40 fires that flared up in the past 24 hours, the defence ministry said, but more than a dozen were still active.

Since the start of July, nearly 34,000 hectares have been scorched nationwide, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. Police say many of the blazes were deliberate, with more than 20 people arrested.

The aftermath of the blaze in Çanakkale, Turkey, on Tuesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

In Croatia, about 150 firefighters spent Monday night defending homes near the port city of Split.

In the north-western Turkish province of Çanakkale, more than 2,000 people were evacuated and 77 people treated in hospital for smoke inhalation after fires broke out near the tourist village of Güzelyalı, authorities said.

Images on Turkish media showed homes and cars ablaze, while more than 760 firefighters, 10 planes, nine helicopters and more than 200 vehicles were deployed to battle the flames. Turkey this year experienced its hottest July since records began 55 years ago.

In southern France, where temperature records were broken in at least four weather stations, the government called for vigilance.

The south-western city of Bordeaux hit a record 41.6C on Monday, while all-time records were broken at meteorological stations in Bergerac, Cognac and Saint Girons, according to the national weather service, Météo France.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Wildfires close Mount Vesuvius trails while fierce blazes continue in France. French officials says heatwave in southern Europe complicates efforts to contain biggest wildfire since 1949

 

Tackling the Vesuvius wildfire

by Angela Giuffrida in Rome

 

Tourist trails have been closed on Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy as firefighters tackle a huge blaze on the volcano’s slopes, while officials warned of another “challenging day” for those working to contain France’s biggest wildfire since 1949.

The wildfire on Mount Vesuvius, close to Naples, broke out a few days ago and by Saturday afternoon had stretched to about 3km (1.9 miles) wide, destroying hundreds of hectares of woodland and killing wild animals. Thick smoke could be seen from Pompeii and Naples.

Six Canadair firefighting planes have been dispatched from the state fleet and teams made up of firefighters, soldiers, forestry corps, police and civil protection volunteers from across Italy are working on the ground.

Flames and smoke rise from a wildfire at the Vesuvius national park in Terzigno on Saturday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Drones were being used to monitor the spread of the fire, the national fire service said. The operation has been complicated by the latest heatwave.

Vesuvius national park authorities said the volcano’s trail network had been closed for safety reasons and to facilitate firefighting and clean-up operations in the areas affected. Pompeii’s archaeological park remains open to the public.

The fire has mainly affected the Terzigno pine forest as well as woodlands close to the small towns of Trecase, Ercolano and Ottaviano at the foot of the volcano.

Francesco Ranieri, the mayor of Terzigno, told Italian media the situation on Saturday night was “very critical” although the efforts of firefighters ensured the flames did not reach any homes.

The cause of the fire has not been identified although there are strong suspicions that it was arson, with Ranieri suggesting there may be “a criminal hand” behind it.

The fires have charred and destroyed the landscape in Jonquières, France. Photograph: Getty Images

Firefighters in France’s southern Aude region, meanwhile, have managed to contain a massive wildfire, which killed one person and injured several others, although authorities warned that work on Sunday would be complicated by intense heat and a hot, dry wind.

“It’s a challenging day, given that we are likely to be on red alert for heatwave from 6pm, which will not make things any easier,” said Christian Pouget, the prefect of the Aude department.

Europe is far from alone in suffering frequent wildfires. The weather conditions in which they flourish, marked by heat, drought and strong winds, is increasing in some parts of all continents.

A vintage Citreon car burnt by a wildfire in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, France. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

Human-caused climate breakdown is responsible for a higher likelihood of fire and bigger burned areas in southern Europe, northern Eurasia, the US and Australia, with some scientific evidence of increases in southern China.

Climate breakdown has increased the wildfire season by about two weeks on average across the globe.

Earth’s underground network of fungi needs urgent protection, say researchers. Study finds that only 9.5% of fungal biodiversity hotspots fell within existing protected areas

The researchers used machine-learning techniques containing 2.8bn samples from more than 130 countries to create the biodiversity maps. Photograph: Justin Long/Alamy

 by Taro Kaneko

 

The underground network of fungi that underpins the planet’s ecosystems needs urgent conservation action by politicians, a research organisation has said.

Scientists from the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (Spun) have created the first high-resolution biodiversity maps of Earth’s underground mycorrhizal fungal ecosystems.

The research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that 90% of the biodiverse hotspots of mycorrhizal fungi were in unprotected ecosystems. Loss of the ecosystems could lead to reductions in carbon drawdown, crop productivity and ecosystem resilience to climate extremes.

Mycorrhizal fungi have “remained in the dark, despite the extraordinary ways they sustain life on land”, said Dr Toby Kiers, the executive director of Spun.

 

“They cycle nutrients, store carbon, support plant health, and make soil. When we disrupt these critical ecosystem engineers, forest regeneration slows, crops fail and biodiversity above ground begins to unravel … 450m years ago, there were no plants on Earth and it was because of the mycorrhizal fungal network that plants colonised the planet and began supporting human life.

“If we have a healthy fungal network, then we will have greater agricultural productivity, bigger and beautiful flowers, and can protect plants against pathogens.”

Mycorrhizal fungi are found on the roots of plants and help regulate Earth’s climate and ecosystems. Its underground networks provide plants with essential nutrients, while drawing more than 13bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into soils – equivalent to roughly one-third of global emissions from fossil fuels.

Spun launched the initiative in 2021 alongside organisations including GlobalFungi, Fungi Foundation, the Global Soil Mycobiome consortium and researchers from around the world to map out the under-researched network of mycorrhizal fungal.

Using machine-learning techniques on a dataset containing more than 2.8bn fungal samples from 130 countries, scientists were able to predict mycorrhizal diversity at a 1km² scale across the planet.

They discovered that only 9.5% of these fungal biodiversity hotspots fell within existing protected areas, revealing huge conservation gaps. The coast of Ghana was found to be a global hotspot for fungi, but with the country’s coastline eroding at a rate of 2 metres a year, scientists fear this crucial biodiversity will be washed into the sea.

This research marks the first large-scale scientific application of the global mapping initiative, which “are more than scientific tools – they can help guide the future of conservation”, said the study’s lead author, Dr Michael Van Nuland. “Given the impact of these fungal symbioses on the health and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems, continuing to ignore them could be a hugely missed opportunity.”

Nuland said the fungi respond negatively to human stressors, and without addressing the possible loss of these vital fungus, we could lose our ability to develop novel natural climate solutions.

Land use is a significant cause of mycorrhizal fungal degradation, and it is “frustrating that no action has been taken to prioritise conservation of it”, said Kiers. “The fungi is needed for agricultural productivity and human health.”

 

These fungal ecosystems were largely invisible in law and policy, said César Rodríguez-Garavito, a professor of law and the faculty director of the More-Than-Human Life (Moth) programme at NYU’s School of Law. “[The data is] incredibly important in strengthening law and policy on climate change and biodiversity loss across all of Earth’s underground ecosystems.”

The findings are accessible through Spun’s underground atlas interactive tool for conservation groups, researchers and policymakers to identify hotspots that require intervention.

With more than 400 scientists and 96 underground explorers from 79 countries, Spun’s international team is sampling the Earth’s most hard-to-access, remote underground ecosystems including in Mongolia, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Ukraine.

Spun is seeking new collaborators and funding to scale its mycorrhizal fungal maps, which cover only 0.001% of the Earth’s surface. The expansion of its fungal maps would guide decision-makers to start leveraging mycorrhizal systems.

The preservation and protection of mycorrhizal fungi could help to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges – biodiversity decline, climate change, and declining food productivity, said Dr Rebecca Shaw, the chief scientist at the World Wide Fund for Nature, who added that it had a direct benefit to people.

 

The West’s Megadrought Might Not Let Up for Decades, Study Suggests. Clues from another dry spell 6,000 years ago are helping scientists understand what’s driving the latest one, and why it’s been so unrelenting.

 

Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona, where July water levels are only at a third of capacity.Credit...Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

 

By Raymond Zhong

 

 

A megadrought has sapped water supplies, ravaged farms and ranches, and fueled wildfires across the American Southwest for going on 25 years. Not in 12 centuries has the region been so dry for so long.

Now comes worse news: Relief might still be decades away.

According to new findings published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the dry spell is no mere bout of bad luck, no rough patch that could end anytime soon.

Instead, it seems to be the result of a pattern of Pacific Ocean temperatures that is “stuck” because of global warming, said Victoria Todd, a doctoral student in paleoclimatology at the University of Texas at Austin who led the new research.

That means the drought could continue through 2050, perhaps even 2100 and beyond — effectively, Ms. Todd said, for as long as humans keep heating up the planet.

 Even in the arid Southwest, the long, chronic deficit of moisture since the turn of the millennium has exacted a heavy toll. The possibility of more parched decades ahead raises big concerns in a fast-growing region where agriculture and other industries, including computer-chip manufacturing, use lots of water.

 In their study, Ms. Todd and her colleagues set out to understand a different dry period in the region’s deep past. For clues, they looked to mud from the bottoms of two lakes in the Rocky Mountains: Stewart Bog in New Mexico and Hunters Lake in Colorado.

 

The waxy coating on a plant’s leaves preserves a chemical signature of the rain and snow that the plant absorbs. So by analyzing the vegetal remains that had accumulated on the lake beds and become entombed in layers of sediment, Ms. Todd and her colleagues reconstructed how wet the Rockies had been over the past 14 millenniums. They found that winters were dry for thousands of years in the middle of this period.

Scientists have long known that those were warm years for the planet. Earth’s orbit was in a phase that caused more solar radiation to reach the Northern Hemisphere in summer. The radiation melted Arctic sea ice and caused vegetation to flourish in Siberia and the Sahara. These changes darkened the planet’s surface and caused it to absorb more sun, raising temperatures further.

Ms. Todd and her colleagues ran computer simulations of the prehistoric climate during this warm time to see what might have led to such a severe drought in the Southwest. They found that the extra heat gave rise to something striking in the Pacific: a giant blob of warm water extending east from Japan and surrounded on three sides by cool water, including along the West Coast of the United States. The warm blob shifted the band of winds known as the jet stream and deflected storms away from the Southwest.

This kind of pattern isn’t unusual in and of itself: Today, it emerges in the northern Pacific every few decades, alternating with a cold blob that has the opposite effect, namely making the Southwest wetter.

But in the warm world of 6,000 years ago, the blob didn’t alternate, according to Ms. Todd and her colleagues’ simulations. It stayed put, drying out the Southwest for thousands of years.

And, when Ms. Todd and her colleagues ran simulations of the present-day climate, they found that the blob might be stuck in place again — only this time, it appears to be because humans are changing the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas.

A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who researches water in the West, called the new study “thorough” and “convincing.” Still, he noted that researchers’ computer models underestimated how badly the warm blob — or, as scientists prefer to call it, the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — can dry out the Southwest. That means projections of future drought risk in the region are probably underestimates as well, Dr. Williams said.

Human-caused warming is creating conditions that can worsen droughts in many parts of the globe. The warmer air pulls more water out of the soil and vegetation. It causes more precipitation to fall as rain rather than accumulate in the mountains as snow. In the American Southwest, these factors come on top of natural climate fluctuations that have long shaped water availability.

Even so, events like the megadrought raise the possibility that greenhouse warming is starting to overpower certain well-established rhythms and patterns in nature, said Pedro DiNezio, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder who contributed to the new study.

For instance, El Niño, the cyclical temperature pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean, typically leads to wetter winters in the Southwest. But that wasn’t the case during the most recent El Niño, from 2023 to last year.

“All these trends are starting to emerge recently that are very unlikely within our understanding of the climate system,” Dr. DiNezio said. These trends start to make sense, he said, only once you account for how much humans are now influencing the climate.

 

Today’s newsletter focuses on Britain’s hot, stinking water mess — from water shortages to sewage problems.

 

The bed of Woodhead Reservoir partially revealed by a falling water level, near Glossop, northern England in May. Photographer: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

 

The messy details

By Joe Wertz and Priscila Azevedo Rocha While England is often associated with rain, the country has managed to end up with short supply of water thanks in part to climate change. The problem was on full display this week: Reservoir levels across England fell far below the norm during the driest spring in more than a century. Reservoirs were 77% full at the end of May compared with the long-term average of 93%, the UK’s Environment Agency said. This spring was the UK’s sunniest and warmest on record, and England’s driest March-May period since 1893, the agency said. While wetter conditions have since provided some relief, it’s unlikely to plug the deficit as extreme heat and more dry weather looms.

The hot, dry spring has been fueled by an unusual rise in high-pressure patterns that scientists say have amplified long-term global warming. The news comes at time when water mismanagement was already grabbing headlines across Britain.  Things have been particularly bad at Thames Water, which supplies about a quarter of the UK population, and has been on a long downward financial slope. It came close to running out of money several times before finally unlocking an emergency loan in March. There was hope for a turnaround when alternative asset manager KKR & Co. made a bid to invest £4 billion ($5.4 billion) in Thames Water earlier this year. Only this week the US infrastructure giant realized there was little upside to a deal and withdrew its offer, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Read More: KKR Quit Thames Bid After It Saw Little Upside to a Rescue The crisis follows decades of poor regulatory oversight that allowed water company owners to pay themselves billions of pounds in dividends instead of using the money to maintain the infrastructure.  Meanwhile, regulator Ofwat flexed new powers today when it banned six water companies from paying bonuses to senior executives who haven’t done enough to tackle pollution.   Water companies are facing widespread public anger over sewage leaks into rivers and lakes throughout Britain. Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images   Ofwat’s authority to stop “unjustified” payments for poor environmental and customer performance is part of new legislation that comes into come into force today. Bosses at Thames Water, Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water, Wessex Water, United Utilities and Southern Water are not permitted to receive bonuses with immediate effect, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.  Stopping bonuses is meant to address the public perception that company bosses are rewarded even if a firm is pumping waste into waterways illegally. Public anger has been further fueled by bill increases of as much as 47% in April while water companies have awarded over £112 million in bonuses and incentives over the last decade, according to government figures. --With assistance from Claire Ruckin and Giulia Morpurgo

It’s Not Just Poor Rains Causing Drought. The Atmosphere Is ‘Thirstier.’

Center-pivot irrigation in Eureka County, Nev.Credit...Kim Raff for The New York Times

 

 Higher temperatures caused by climate change are driving complex processes that make droughts bigger and more severe, new research shows.

 

 By Rebecca Dzombak

 

 

Look down from a plane at farms in the Great Plains and the West and you’ll see green circles dotting the countryside, a kind of agricultural pointillism.

They’re from center-pivot irrigation systems. But some farmers are finding older versions, many built 10, 15 or even 20 years ago, aren’t keeping up with today’s hotter reality, said Meetpal Kukal, an agricultural hydrologist at the University of Idaho. “There’s a gap between how much water you can apply and what the crop demands are,” he said.

By the time the sprinkler’s arm swings back around to its starting point, the soil has nearly dried out. The main culprit? Atmospheric thirst.

“A hotter world is a thirstier one,” said Solomon Gebrechorkos, a hydroclimatologist at the University of Oxford. He led a new study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, which found that atmospheric thirst, a factor that fills in some of the blanks in our understanding of drought, over the last four decades has made droughts more frequent, more intense and has caused them cover larger areas.

 

In general, droughts happen when there’s an imbalance between water supply and demand.

Rain delivers water to the surface. The atmosphere removes water from the surface through evaporation, with temperature, wind, humidity and radiation from the sun controlling how much water is evaporated. It’s a complicated physical process that is hard to capture in models and, for a long time, studies of global droughts only focused on precipitation.

“It just really wasn’t detailed enough,” Dr. Gebrechorkos said, likening it to trying to balance a checkbook while only looking at income and leaving out expenses.

 

The new study aimed to figure out how atmospheric thirst has changed over more than one hundred years, including how to best model it and how it can improve monitoring and predictions of drought.

Dr. Gebrechorkos and his co-authors used multiple precipitation data sets, climate models and ways of calculating drought from 1901 to 2022 to assess how to capture atmospheric thirst and how it has been affecting droughts.

They found that it played an even bigger role than previously thought, drying out historically arid and wet regions alike.

 

Drought has been spreading and getting more intense since the 1980s almost everywhere around the world except for southeastern Asia, the study found. Atmospheric thirst, a direct result of global warming, made those droughts about 40 percent more severe, the study found.

The Western United States, large areas of Africa and South America, Australia and Central Asia are particularly prone to drought because of increased atmospheric thirst, the study found.

“We were very much shocked when we saw the results,” Dr. Gebrechorkos said. A sharp increase in drought activity in the last five years of the study, from 2018 to 2022, particularly alarmed him.

The area affected by droughts during that time was on average 74 percent larger than in the previous four decades. The drought area in the Western United States more than doubled during this time, as well as in Australia and southern South America. Atmospheric thirst was to blame.

And 2022 was striking. About one-third of the world experienced moderate or extreme drought at some point. Lake Mead, an important reservoir on the Colorado River, nearly dried up. Europe saw a record-breaking combination of drought and extreme heat that led to limits on water use. Millions of people faced food insecurity in the Horn of Africa.

 

Mike Hobbins, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences who was not involved in the study, said the findings were in line with his expectations.

“But I think it’s very important to quantify,” Dr. Hobbins said. “The demand side of drought has been ignored for so long, and we don’t have to ignore it any more. We can get it right.”

This year, Dr. Hobbins and Dr. Kukal added a new term to the weather dictionary: thirstwaves, for when evaporative demand is exceptionally high for at least three days, putting crops at risk.

The study’s broader results matched up with Dr. Kukal’s experience working with farmers in the West, as well as national patterns in irrigation.

“There’s a huge shift,” Dr. Kukal said. Some farmers in the west are giving up on irrigation, while more farmers in the upper Midwest and eastern United States are beginning to invest in expensive irrigation systems as atmospheric thirst causes more and more flash droughts.

 

“All this, we see because of warming,” Dr. Gebrechorkos said. “Looking ahead, unfortunately, the trend is set to continue.”

The study ends in 2022, but the following years brought record heat. The summer of 2024 was the warmest on record in the Northern Hemisphere; 2023 was second. And as warming continues, atmospheric thirst will grow, as will droughts. Landscapes that experience droughts again and again struggle to recover, creating a vicious cycle of desiccation.

Better models of atmospheric thirst should improve predictions for drinking water, irrigation and hydropower, allowing better adaptation to an increasingly drought-stricken world. The study used a six-month average; future work could focus on shorter time scales that are more helpful for farmers and water managers, Dr. Kukal said.

 

 

Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn. Rising oceans will force millions away from coasts even if global temperature rise remains below 1.5C, analysis finds

 

The loss of ice from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s. Photograph: Bernhard Staehli/Shutterstock

Damian Carrington 

Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future.

The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.

The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new analysis found that even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly slashed to meet it, sea levels would be rising by 1cm a year by the end of the century, faster than the speed at which nations could build coastal defences.

The world is on track for 2.5C-2.9C of global heating, which would almost certainly be beyond tipping points for the collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. The melting of those ice sheets would lead to a “really dire” 12 metres of sea level rise.

Today, about 230 million people live within 1 metre above current sea level, and 1 billion live within 10 metres above sea level. Even just 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would lead to global flood damages of at least $1tn a year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities and huge impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods.

However, the scientists emphasised that every fraction of a degree of global heating avoided by climate action still matters, because it slows sea level rise and gives more time to prepare, reducing human suffering.

 

Sea level rise is the biggest long-term impact of the climate crisis, and research in recent years has shown it is occurring far faster than previously estimated. The 1.5C limit was seen as a way to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, but the new research shows this is not the case for sea level rise.

The researchers said the “safe limit” temperature for ice sheets was hard to estimate but was likely to be 1C or lower. Sea level rise of at least 1-2 metres was now inevitable, the scientists said. In the UK, just 1 metre of sea level rise would see large parts of the Fens and Humberside below sea level.

“What we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1cm a year of sea level rise,” said Prof Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the UK. “If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you’re going to see massive land migration on scales that we’ve never witnessed in modern civilisation.” Developing countries such as Bangladesh would fare far worse than rich ones with experience of holding back the waves, such as the Netherlands, he said.

Durham University’s Prof Chris Stokes, lead author of the study, said: “We’re starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out almost in front of us. At current warming of 1.2C, sea level rise is accelerating at rates that, if they continue, would become almost unmanageable before the end of this century, [which is] within the lifetime of our young people.”

The average global temperature hit 1.5C for the first time in 2024. But the international target is measured as the average over 20 years, so is not considered to have been broken yet.

 

The new study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, combined data from studies of warm periods up to 3m years ago; observations of ice melting and sea level rise in recent decades; and climate models. It concluded: “Continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations.”

Prof Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was part of the study team, said: “Evidence recovered from past warm periods suggests that several metres of sea level rise – or more – can be expected when global mean temperature reaches 1.5C or higher.”

At the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago, sea level was rising at 10 times the rate today, driven by self-reinforcing feedbacks that may have been triggered by only a small increase in temperature. The last time CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were as high as today, about 3m years ago, sea level rise was 10-20 metres higher.

Even if humanity can bring the planet back to its preindustrial temperature by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, it will still take hundreds to thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover, the researchers said. That means land lost to sea level rise will remain lost for a long time, perhaps until the Earth enters the next ice age.

Belize moved its capital inland in 1970 after a devastating hurricane, but its largest city is still on the coast and will be inundated with only 1 metre of sea level rise, Carlos Fuller, Belize’s longtime climate negotiator, said: “Findings such as these only sharpen the need to remain within the 1.5C Paris agreement limit, or as close as possible, so we can return to lower temperatures and protect our coastal cities.”

 

India and Pakistan already sweltering in ‘new normal’ heatwave conditions. Temperatures south Asians dread each year arrive early as experts talk of ever shorter transition to summer-like heat

 

A volunteer sprays water on a passerby's face to cool him off on an unusually hot April day in Karachi, Pakistan. Photograph: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images

 Penelope MacRae in Delhi

 

 The summer conditions south Asian countries dread each year have arrived alarmingly early, and it’s only April. Much of India and Pakistan is already sweltering in heatwave conditions, in what scientists say is fast becoming the “new normal”.

Temperatures in the region typically climb through May, peaking in June before the monsoon brings relief. But this year, the heat has come early. “As far as Asia and the Indian subcontinent are concerned, there was a quick transition from a short window of spring conditions to summer-like heat,” said GP Sharma, the meteorology president of Skymet, India’s leading private forecaster.

South Asia, home to 1.9 billion people, is particularly vulnerable. Many live in areas highly exposed to extreme heat and lack access to basic cooling, healthcare or water.

 

In Delhi, where spring usually offers a short spell of mild temperatures, thermometers have risen past 40C in April – “up to 5C above the seasonal average” – according to a report by ClimaMeter, a platform that tracks extreme weather events.

“Human-driven climate change” is to blame for the “dangerous” kind of heat seen in recent weeks, it said.

“These spring heatwaves are not anomalies. They’re signals. We need to move beyond awareness into action,” said Gianmarco Mengaldo, a climate expert at the National University of Singapore and co-author of the report.

Delhi authorities urged schools to cancel afternoon assemblies on Tuesday and issued emergency guidelines to ensure water breaks and stocks of oral rehydration salts in first aid kits, and to treat any signs of heat stress immediately.

Delhi commuters on their way to work on an unusually hot April day. Photograph: Harish Tyagi/EPA

Temperatures in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, hit 44C, triggering heatstroke reports among construction workers and farmers. Other states are also grappling with intense heat.

The Indian Meteorological Department has reported an “above-normal number of heatwave days”. Temperatures are expected to climb steadily across the subcontinent, with the highest readings forecast for Wednesday and Thursday.

Pakistan is also reeling. In the city of Shaheed Benazirabad in Sindh province, the mercury has soared to 50C – nearly 8.5C above the April average. In other parts of the country, temperatures have hovered in the high 40s.

“What was once considered rare has become alarmingly common, as climate change accelerates the frequency and severity of such events,” said an editorial in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. The country “remains woefully unprepared for the escalating climate crisis”, it said.

Urban heat is making things worse. Data comparing 1950–1986 with 1987–2023 shows that cities such as Delhi and Islamabad are now up to 3C hotter on average than nearby rural areas.

Children cool off in water from a leaking pipeline in Hyderabad, Pakistan. Photograph: Akram Shahid/AFP/Getty Images

“When it comes to heatwaves, the question is no longer if they are linked to climate change, but what kind of thresholds we are reaching,” said Mengaldo. “Preparedness is essential. But right now, our infrastructure is not well adapted.”

Natural climate variability such as the El Niño cycle can affect regional weather, but it is now in a neutral phase.

ClimaMeter said: “Compared to pre-1986 levels, similar meteorological conditions now produce temperatures up to 4C higher – almost entirely due to human-driven climate change.”

 

South Asia is not alone. “In the northern hemisphere spring months, we are already seeing conditions in parts of the Middle East that are incompatible with human life,” said Mengaldo.

“This is very serious for the populations … we also expect summer temperatures in Spain and France to reach unprecedented levels in the next few years,” he said. “Many of the events predicted for 2050 or 2070 are already happening. We underestimated the speed of change. What we’re seeing now is an acceleration – a failure of our predictive models.”

David Faranda, a senior climate scientist with the French National Centre for Scientific Research and co-author of the report, said: “The only sustainable solution is to stop burning fossil fuels and reduce emissions. Without drastically reducing emissions and building climate resilience through better insulation, use of green energy, and other moves, the implications are alarming.”

“Even if we act now, the climate system will take decades – sometimes over a century – to cool down,” Mengaldo added. “The sea level rise is already locked in for hundreds of years.”

Both researchers stressed economic inequality and infrastructure played a critical role in determining who survives extreme heat. “There are different temperature thresholds – actual temperature, [humidity index] and others,” said Mengaldo. “Economic levels play a huge role in how people can cope and sustain themselves.”

Delhi has updated its heat action plan, focusing on vulnerable groups such as elderly people, construction workers, and street vendors. But implementation is inconsistent.

Faranda said adaptation was increasingly unaffordable for many heat-prone countries, with electricity grids buckling and causing widespread power cuts. “When multiple events occur, there’s often no escape,” he said.

Mengaldo highlighted the need for innovation: “We need better-insulated housing, materials that prevent energy loss, and architectural designs that promote natural cooling. These can significantly reduce energy demand during extreme heat.”

Faranda also said people must change their lifestyles. “Energy demand keeps increasing. If we want to survive the coming decades, we must not only build more renewables but also reduce energy consumption overall: through lifestyle changes, efficient architecture, and better materials.”

Global Sea Ice Hits a New Low. The data comes after researchers reported that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record.

 

Ice floes off Nuuk, Greenland, this month.Credit...Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

 

By Austyn Gaffney

 

Earth is missing a lot of sea ice this year. Enough to cover the entire United States east of the Mississippi.

That was announced by researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center on Thursday, who said the amount of sea ice on the planet had reached the lowest level ever recorded in March.

The record comes days after the World Meteorological Organization reported that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record, with 2024 the hottest year. The global rise in temperatures is tied to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

“Warming temperatures drive melting ice across the globe, and because we’re seeing such high temperatures, it’s not surprising that this year we’re seeing the least amount of ice coverage,” said Linette Boisvert, an ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

 

The center has been compiling data for almost 50 years, primarily through a Department of Defense satellite program. The global sea ice extent includes measurements taken in both the Southern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere, which experience opposite seasons.

Dr. Boisvert compared the freezing and melting of sea ice between winter and summer to the heartbeat of the planet. The pulses between the winter maximum and summer minimum used to be shorter. But with more sea ice melting away, the distance between pulses has grown larger.

“It’s like the heartbeat of the planet is slowing down,” Dr. Boisvert said. “It’s not good.”

 

Sea ice plays many important roles for the global climate: Its white surface can reflect energy back into space, helping the planet cool. It also acts like a blanket for the ocean, insulating it and preventing ocean heat from reaching the atmosphere. Less sea ice means more heat goes in Earth’s systems, warming the atmosphere and the oceans.

The extent of sea ice isn’t the only measurement scientists are tracking. The thickness of the ice also matters and, since the 1980s, Arctic sea ice has become thinner.

 

While thicker sea ice tends to survive the summer melt, nowadays most of the sea ice completely melts during the summer, preventing it from thickening year after year. More open ocean means more dark surfaces to absorb more heat from the sun, which in turn melts more ice. The melting becomes its own positive feedback loop.

Changes in remote polar regions affect the rest of the globe, including changes to ocean currents and weather patterns.

“It’s really important to have scientists’ eyes on the data,” Dr. Boisvert said. “It would be really detrimental not to have funding for this type of work.”

Melting sea ice also has negative implications for marine life, tourism in polar regions and global shipping. It’s important for military activities, Indigenous communities in Alaska and the fishing industry, according to Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a research organization at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The trend of decreasing sea ice in the Arctic is an increasingly clear indicator of global warming, he said.

“We’re seeing something that’s pretty unprecedented, at least on scales of human society for thousands of years,” Dr. Meier said.

 

Under the Trump administration, scientific agencies monitoring weather and climate data have been under threat. In March, NASA fired its chief scientist and eliminated more than a dozen other senior positions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which collects global climate data, fired hundreds of probationary employees in February and officials said officials they had plans to shrink its work force by nearly 20 percent. Projects focused on polar regions lost managers who oversee research when the National Science Foundation laid off about a tenth of its work force.

When asked about the cuts, Dr. Meier noted that groups in Europe and Japan also monitor global sea ice.

“It’s not like there’s not going to be any knowledge of what’s going on in the Arctic, regardless of what happens in the U.S.,” he said

“But I, and I think all of us here at N.S.I.D.C., are focused on the data and our research and doing our best to serve the public by keeping people informed on what’s happening in the polar regions.”