Not only will temperatures break March monthly records, but this heatwave will even break April records. Over the next week, around 800 high temperature records are forecast to be neared, tied or broken at 165 locations in Western and Central states - some by more than 10 degrees - with unusual warmth set to linger into late March.
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.
Even though the evidence is still early, this could be a very significant event in 2026 and lingering into 2027. Its function in the global earth system is to release heat from the deeper oceans that has been temporarily stored there. El Nino allows that subducted heat to be unearthed.
Last year the JIC produced a hard-hitting report which found the collapse of globally important ecosystems around the world including the potential shift of the Amazon from rainforest to savannah, the demise of coral reefs, and the loss of glaciers would threaten the UK's national security, through food shortages at home and the potential for conflict overseas.
The powerful March storms that drenched Hawaii produced more than 2 trillion gallons of rain and pushed precipitation levels to as much as 3,000% above normal in a 14-day period for this time of year.
After a majority of EU leaders gave the green light last week to the free-trade deal that was 25 years in the making, von der Leyen said it would "create more business opportunities" and "give [European] companies better access to critical raw materials." Once approved by the European Parliament and ratified by both the EU and Mercosur, the massive accord often dubbed a "cows-for-cars" trade deal will open up markets on both continents to almost all goods, including cars, machinery and chemicals from Europe.
That seemingly paradoxical dynamic results from several factors. Foremost among them is the rebound of land beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, a mile-thick body of glacial ice that covers 80 percent of the island and is being lost to melting at a rate of roughly 200 billion tons each year. As the ice sheet loses mass, the land beneath rises.
An extraordinarily warm and mostly sunny January has left the snowpack across California's Sierra Nevada far smaller than usual - 59% of average for this time of year, state water officials announced Friday as they held the season's second snow survey. "We are now about halfway through the typically wettest part of the year," said Andy Reising, manager of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources.
The past 11 years are now the warmest 11 years in the 176-year history of temperature records. What is especially concerning about 2025 is that it occurred during La Niña, a natural Pacific cooling pattern that usually brings lower temperatures. This time, it did not help. Climate scientist James Hansen reports that global warming is now speeding up by 0.31°C per decade, and he predicts we will pass the +1.7°C mark by 2027.
Climate change which U.S. President Donald Trump calls the greatest con job ever perpetrated in the world is precisely what is driving the push to gain control of Greenland, an ambition openly declared by Trump. Human-caused global warming is reaching record levels in the Arctic region. This triggers ice melt, opening new shipping routes that major powers want to control, as well as theoretically easier access to the island's resources minerals and fossil fuels.