Topic
Long-term shift in global temperature and weather patterns, driven mainly by human greenhouse gas emissions, altering ecosystems and extreme weather.
A Nature reassessment of 892 reef-building coral species classifies 340 of the 774 assessable ones, 44%, as threatened under IUCN Red List criteria. The findings predate the fourth global bleaching event of 2023-2025, as the authors themselves note.
Reality
Arctic sea ice hit its 2026 minimum on September 12 at about 4.6 million square kilometers, tied for 10th lowest on record. NASA Earth Observatory says the remaining ice is thinner and younger, and scientists still warn of a nearly ice-free summer before 2050.
Reality
PNAS review reports the contiguous US lost about 300 of its 1,450-plus mid-century glaciers and 35% of glacier area. Rockies survivors persist in shaded niches, and the author writes that shrinkage continues, perhaps faster.
Reality
Oregon State scientists leading an international coalition report in BioScience that seven of the 16 climate indicators they track are at record extremes. Its authors frame the destabilization as a diagnosis, with renewables and battery storage advancing alongside it.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishersReality
Tropical Storm Rachel is due ashore near the California-Mexico border early Sunday under only the second tropical storm watch ever issued in California. Its swell is already damaging homes and flooding streets along the coast, days before the center arrives.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific's Niño 3.4 region passed 30 degrees Celsius for the first time, preliminary data released Oct. 5 show. On the anomaly measures that remove global ocean warming, the event is already close to the strongest El Niño on record, Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia told Live Science.
Reality
El Niño now building in the Pacific is on track to be the strongest recorded, with central Pacific seas forecast up to 3.6C above normal this summer. Past strong events point to cooler New Zealand seas, though the same record includes a long, damaging marine heatwave.
Reality
Contiguous U.S. temperatures averaged 57.98 degrees F from January to August 2026, the hottest such stretch since records began in 1895, NOAA data show. Only a cooler-than-normal fall would keep 2026 from an annual record, Zeke Hausfather says.
Reality
Copernicus, the EU's atmosphere monitor, says 34% of the world's population breathed "extremely poor" ozone air from January 1 to September 15. Its report partly blames heat and wildfires and finds ozone flat even where emission rules have cut other pollutants.
Reality
More than 60 scientists, in the Potsdam Institute's 2026 Planetary Health Check, find seven of nine planetary boundaries crossed and still worsening. Six of the seven are boundaries other than climate change, and three of those share its red danger zone.
Reality
Google DeepMind's WeatherNext Cyclones gives hurricane forecasters about an extra day of accuracy on average, according to a Nature study of past storms. So far it has one live season on record, and that season is what forecasters will lean on when the next storm strengthens fast.
Reality
Recently burned Alaskan forest reburns 1 to 3 orders of magnitude less often than older forest, Gaglioti and colleagues find in 1984-2020 fire data. Extreme fire weather weakens that barrier most in young stands, so a scar's value as a firebreak depends on its age and the weather.
Reality
The authors' example is a Red Sea seagrass that reached dominance in Caribbean shallows Hurricane Maria had scoured. Their numbers, covering 30 species, show climate change rarely promoting an invader's spread.
Reality