The core contains sediments spanning roughly 500,000 years and four glacial cycles. It was recovered in 2001 from nearly 5,000 meters water depth at 116 degrees west and 62 degrees south, south of the Antarctic Polar Front between South America and New Zealand. This region forms part of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean, a key area for global ocean circulation and carbon exchange with the atmosphere.

In the Southern Ocean, iron is generally thought to act as a fertiliser that promotes phytoplankton growth and enhances the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Earlier work suggested that during glacial periods strong winds transported iron-rich dust from continents to the ocean surface, stimulating algae growth north of the Polar Front. That process likely helped draw down atmospheric CO2 and reinforced global cooling at the onset of ice ages.

Analyses of the new core show a different pattern south of the Polar Front. Here, iron input was highest during warmer intervals rather than during peak glacial conditions. Grain size and composition indicate that the material arrived mainly via icebergs rather than wind-blown dust, and its geochemical signature points to a source in West Antarctica, the sector of the continent west of the Antarctic Peninsula where much of the ice sheet rests on bedrock below sea level and is therefore considered unstable.

The findings support other lines of evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated on a large scale during the last interglacial period about 130,000 years ago, when global temperatures were similar to those of today. As the ice sheet, which is several kilometers thick in places, broke up, it produced large numbers of icebergs that scraped sediments from the underlying bedrock and transported them into the South Pacific. According to the core data, iceberg discharge was especially strong near the ends of glacial periods and at the peaks of interglacials.

However, the elevated iron supply during these warm phases did not translate into a corresponding surge in algae growth. "The growth of phytoplankton - microalgae found in the light-flooded upper layers of the ocean - was either not stimulated or only weakly stimulated. This led to a sharp reduction in CO2 absorption," explains Dr Frank Lamy, a palaeoclimatologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and co-author of the study. Laboratory analyses showed that the sediments were highly weathered and that the iron they contained was in a less soluble form that organisms can only use to a limited extent.

The researchers infer that beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet there is probably a layer of geologically ancient, strongly weathered rock. Whenever the ice sheet shrank during past interglacial periods and large numbers of icebergs calved, these ice masses carried weathered mineral grains into the adjacent South Pacific, yet phytoplankton productivity stayed relatively low. In this part of the Southern Ocean, total iron input was therefore not the controlling factor for algae growth; instead, the bioavailability and chemical form of the iron determined its fertilising effect.

This mechanism challenges the assumption that increased iron delivery to the Southern Ocean automatically enhances biological carbon uptake. The study shows that additional iron can fail to boost CO2 drawdown if it is delivered in a chemically unfavourable state, even when fluxes are high. In the Pacific sector south of the Antarctic Polar Front, high loads of poorly soluble iron from iceberg-borne sediments can coincide with reduced oceanic carbon uptake.

Looking ahead, the team warns that ongoing global warming and continued thinning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could create conditions similar to those of the last interglacial. Further retreat of the ice and intensified erosion of weathered bedrock by glaciers and icebergs may increase the supply of low-bioavailability iron to the Southern Ocean. This would likely weaken the regional carbon sink and act as a positive feedback that amplifies climate change rather than damping it.

To assess the strength and wider relevance of this feedback, Struve and colleagues call for more detailed work on additional sediment cores from across the South Pacific. Such records could clarify how broadly this process operates, how it varies over glacial-interglacial cycles and how it interacts with other factors such as ocean circulation changes, sea-ice dynamics and fluctuations in atmospheric dust transport.

Research Report:South Pacific carbon uptake controlled by West Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Geneva (AFP) Feb 2, 2026 - A UN expert took Norway to task Monday over "punitive and repressive" sanctions slapped on four activists who threw paint on sculptures and a government ministry to protest oil exploration.

Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, described as "highly troubling" the Norwegian supreme court rulings in December, which handed the protesters prison time and steep fines.

Forst is an independent expert appointed to monitor compliance with the UN's Aarhus Convention, which provides for justice in environmental matters.

He warned in a statement that imposing harsh sentences for the offence of "aggravated damage" violated the convention.

The two judgements "may demonstrate a lack of understanding of Norway's obligations under ... the Aarhus Convention in relation to the protection of persons engaging in peaceful environmental protest", he said.

Two of the activists, Anne Klenge and Joachim Skahjem, had sought in November 2022 to highlight Norway's failures in reducing carbon emissions and its ongoing oil exploration policy with an action in Oslo's Vigeland Sculpture Park.

Forst said they had thrown "washable water-based paint" on the Monolith, which towers over the park, as well as several other nearby sculptures.

A year later, Esther Hjerrild and Fridtjof Klareng Dale "sprayed washable water-based paint" on the exterior of Norway's climate and environment ministry.

All four activists were ultimately sentenced to prison terms of up to 50 days, while Hjerrild and Klareng Dale received a particularly steep compensation claim of nearly 1.2 million kroner ($120,000), which they were ordered to pay within two weeks of the verdict.

"In a highly troubling development, the supreme court decided to impose even harsher sentences on the environmental defenders than the lower courts had done," Forst said.

The expert, who does not speak on behalf of the UN, stressed that Norway as a party to the Aarhus Convention had a "specific obligation to ensure the protection of environmental defenders".

And "while law-breaking during a peaceful environmental protest may be sanctioned", he added, it must be "reasonable, proportional and pursue a legitimate public purpose".

Forst said the sanctions instead appeared to be "punitive and repressive", warning that the "criminalisation of persons engaged in peaceful environmental protest and civil disobedience is a major threat to democracy".

"This must sound the alarm for any member of the public in Norway who cares about the environment and maintaining a safe civic space," he said.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Berlin, Germany (SPX) Feb 03, 2026 - Wetlands do not need to be fully submerged to deliver major climate benefits, according to new research from the University of Copenhagen. The study shows that keeping the water table slightly below the soil surface can limit methane releases while still slowing carbon dioxide emissions from peat soils.

Wetlands cover only around six percent of Earths land area but hold about 30 percent of the terrestrial organic carbon pool. In Denmark, authorities plan to rewet 140,000 hectares of low-lying land, including bogs and meadows, under the Green Tripartite Agreement to keep carbon locked in the soil instead of releasing it as CO2.

Flooding peatlands slows the decomposition of organic matter and has been seen as an efficient way to cut CO2 emissions. The new study, published in Communications Earth and Environment, finds that permanently saturated soils can instead create ideal conditions for methane generation, a greenhouse gas up to 30 times more powerful than CO2 over a 100 year period.

Lead author Professor Bo Elberling from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management explains that large scale permanent flooding of Danish low-lying soils is not a good idea. He says that by keeping the water level slightly below the surface, some of the methane produced in deeper, wetter layers can be converted to CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere, reducing the overall climate impact.

The work focuses on Maglemosen, a peat rich wetland about 20 kilometers north of Copenhagen that has remained undisturbed for more than a century. The site is considered representative of typical Danish peat wetlands and provided a natural laboratory to test how greenhouse gas emissions respond to water table changes.

Researchers monitored Maglemosen over many years, continuously measuring soil CO2 and methane emissions. They also tracked water levels, plant communities and soil and air temperatures. Using this extensive dataset, they modelled a 16 year period from 2007 to 2023 to explore how different water table positions affect combined CO2 and methane fluxes.

The modelling indicates that the most climate friendly water level at Maglemosen is about 10 centimeters below the soil surface. At this depth, the team found the best overall balance between methane and CO2 emissions, with methane production limited and enough oxygen present in upper soil layers to support methane consuming microbes.

A key factor is the activity of methane oxidizing microorganisms in the aerated upper soil. These microbes use oxygen to convert methane rising from deeper waterlogged layers into CO2, preventing some methane from reaching the atmosphere. When the surface soil is flooded, it quickly becomes oxygen free and this methane filter effectively switches off.

The authors stress that the optimal water depth will differ among wetlands depending on local conditions, but is likely to fall between 5 and 20 centimeters below ground level in many cases. The central message is that a stable water table below the surface, rather than full inundation, will almost always provide the greatest climate benefit.

Achieving this balance will require active water management. Elberling notes that ensuring a stable water level in new Danish wetlands is an engineering challenge, since conditions must be wet but not fully saturated. Managing dry summers and heavy autumn rains will demand infrastructure and continuous monitoring to avoid large fluctuations.

The study points to the Netherlands as an example of how to maintain a constant water table in low lying landscapes. The country relies on a network of pumps and canals to keep large areas from flooding, and similar approaches powered by green energy such as solar systems could help stabilize water levels in restored Danish peatlands.

Vegetation changes in rewetted lowlands add another layer of complexity. In Maglemosen, Canary grass dominates and, like rice, can transport oxygen down into the soil and methane up through its tissues. The researchers estimate that about 80 percent of methane at the site is released via plants, and they expect Canary grass to become more common in future lowland restorations.

Greater dominance of such species could increase direct methane transport from soil to air, leaving less time for microbial oxidation in the upper layers. This makes fine control of the water table even more important so that methane consuming microbes have a chance to act before gases escape through plant stems.

The water level also strongly influences nitrous oxide emissions, another potent greenhouse gas around 300 times more powerful than CO2 over a century. If water tables in rewetted areas are allowed to rise and fall freely with weather, nitrous oxide pulses could reduce or even negate the intended climate benefits.

Elberling warns that simply flooding lowlands and walking away is not enough. Without careful regulation of water levels, methane and nitrous oxide emissions could undermine gains from reduced CO2 release. He argues that successful peatland restoration must treat hydrology as an active management task, not a one time intervention.

The research was carried out by scientists from the University of Copenhagen, Lund University and Aarhus University. Co authors include Bingqian Zhao, Wenxin Zhang, Peiyan Wang, Adrian Gustafson and Christian J. Jorgensen, who together combined long term field measurements with process based modelling to refine wetland rewetting strategies.

Their paper, titled Optimized wetland rewetting strategies can control methane, carbon dioxide, and oxygen responses to water table fluctuations, provides guidance for policymakers designing large scale peatland restoration projects. The work suggests that targeting specific subsurface water levels and stabilizing them over time can maximize climate benefits.

The findings are particularly relevant as countries look to land based carbon solutions to meet climate targets. In Denmark and beyond, the authors argue that wetlands can play a significant role in climate mitigation, but only if rewetting projects are designed to manage the trade offs between different greenhouse gases over decades.

Research Report:Optimized wetland rewetting strategies can control methane, carbon dioxide, and oxygen responses to water table fluctuations

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Windsor, United Kingdom (AFP) Jan 28, 2026 - King Charles III has warned the world is "rapidly going backwards" in curbing climate change and biodiversity loss, in an Amazon Prime documentary getting a Windsor Castle premiere Wednesday.

The British monarch, a lifelong environmentalist who has rallied global leaders and institutions to the cause, called for greater mitigation efforts "as fast as we can".

"It's rapidly going backwards," the king said of the current situation, in the feature-length film "Finding Harmony: A King's Vision".

"I've said that for the last 40 years but anyway, there we are," a visibly frustrated Charles noted, adding "I can only do what I can do, which is not very much".

"People don't seem to understand it's not just climate that's the problem it's also biodiversity loss," he continued.

"We're actually destroying our means of survival, all the time. To put that back together again is possible, but we should have been doing it long ago. We've got to do it as fast as we can now."

The king and his wife Queen Camilla were to attend a Windsor Castle screening of the documentary on Wednesday ahead of its worldwide release on Amazon Prime on February 6.

- 'Done my utmost' -

Media were given a preview of the film, which is narrated by British Hollywood star Kate Winslet and billed as revealing the king "as never before".

Filmed over seven months last year and across four continents, it charts Charles' environmentalism down the decades, alongside a history of global efforts to tackle climate change and ecological destruction.

Utilising 75 years of archive footage, the documentary spotlights his charity, the King's Foundation, and its work around sustainability at Dumfries House, Scotland, which has inspired similar projects worldwide.

The foundation made the film in collaboration with production companies Amazon MGM Studios and Passion Planet.

It focuses on Charles's environmental "harmony" philosophy and his view that "we are actually nature ourselves, we are a part of it, not apart from it".

As well as interviewing experts, campaigners, political leaders and the monarch, the filmmakers were given candid access to his Highgrove home in southwest England, among other places.

They captured the king feeding his chickens, collecting eggs and walking the grounds, as well as hosting a summit with indigenous leaders in July.

Among the more poignant moments, Charles laments the loss of wildlife at Highgrove, noting when he first moved in there nearly five decades ago he would hear cuckoos and see grasshoppers.

Climate change 'significantly' worsened southern Africa floods: study
Johannesburg (AFP) Jan 29, 2026 - Areas of southern Africa received a year's worth of rainfall in just 10 days in January as climate change made devastating floods "significantly more intense", scientists said Thursday.

Torrential downpours since December have left large swathes of Mozambique underwater, affecting more than half a million people and claiming dozens of lives, with damage and losses also reported in neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe.

"Extreme 10-day rainfall events in the region have become significantly more intense due to human-induced climate change," researchers for the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists said in a report.

The international group assesses the role of climate change in extreme weather events.

Between January 10 and 19, areas of southern Mozambique -- including the severely affected Gaza province -- received upwards of 500 millimetres (20 inches) of rain, the report said.

This was equivalent to more than the usual rainfall for an entire year, it said.

"Human-induced climate change has increased the intensity of such extreme rainfall by about 40 percent," said climatologist Izidine Pinto from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

"The combination of very intense rain over a short period, together with high vulnerability and exposure, led to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 25 years," Pinto said in a press briefing ahead of the report's launch.

The cooling weather phenomenon known as La Nina -- which tends to "produce above-normal rainfall conditions over Southern Africa" -- was in turn responsible for about 22 percent of the rainfall's intensity.

Nearly 140 people have died in Mozambique's floods since October 1, according to its National Disasters Management Institute (INGD), and some areas remain inaccessible by road after rivers burst their banks.

Floodwaters also claimed more than 30 lives in South Africa's Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, causing millions of dollars in damages including in the famed Kruger National Park.

The natural disaster was "a textbook case of climate injustice", said climate science professor Friederike Otto from London's Imperial College.

"The people of South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini have not contributed to climate change, nor are they profiting from using or selling fossil fuels," she said.

"Yet they are the ones losing their lives, homes and livelihoods."

Court orders Dutch to protect Caribbean island from climate change
The Hague (AFP) Jan 28, 2026 - The Netherlands "insufficiently" protects the tiny Caribbean territory of Bonaire from climate change, a Dutch court said Wednesday, in what Greenpeace hailed as a "huge breakthrough" for environmental justice.

Residents of the Dutch territory off the coast of Venezuela had teamed up with Greenpeace to sue the Dutch government, demanding "concrete measures" to shield the island from rising waters.

The District Court in The Hague ruled that Bonaire residents were "treated differently from the inhabitants of the European part of the Netherlands without good reason", calling it a violation of their human rights.

It ordered the Netherlands to set binding interim targets within 18 months "for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy".

"The judges really listened to us, and I'm extremely happy about that," Jackie Bernabela, a co-claimant who travelled from Bonaire to be in court, told AFP.

She said islanders had felt like they were being treated like "second-class citizens".

The ruling follows an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice that countries violating their climate obligations were committing an "unlawful" act.

Greenpeace said before the ruling that it regarded Bonaire as the first major test case following the ICJ's opinion.

The campaign group's Netherlands director Marieke Vellekoop described Wednesday's ruling as a "huge breakthrough".

"This is a truly historic victory," she said.

"People on Bonaire are finally getting recognition that the government is discriminating against them and must protect them from extreme heat and rising sea levels."

- 'Unbearable' heat -

The low-lying Netherlands is famous for its protective measures against rising waters, mainly based on an extensive system of barriers and dykes.

But campaigners argued that it was not providing the same protection for its overseas territories such as Bonaire.

They had called for a plan for Bonaire by April 2027 and for the Netherlands to reduce CO2 emissions to zero by 2040 rather than 2050 as agreed at EU level.

The government had argued it was an "autonomous task" of the local authorities to develop a plan to counter the ravages of climate change.

Following the judgment, a spokesperson for the infrastructure ministry said the state was taking the ruling "very seriously" and would study it closely.

"After that, we can say more about the measures the state will take," the spokesperson said.

Campaigners pointed to a survey by Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit showing the sea could swallow as much as a fifth of Bonaire by the end of the century.

Bonaire, a former Dutch colony, became one of three so-called special municipalities of the Netherlands in 2010 along with Saba and St Eustatius.

During court hearings last year, some of the island's 27,000 residents shared their experiences battling rising seas and temperatures.

Bonaire farmer Onnie Emerenciana told judges: "Where we used to work, play, walk, or fish during the day, the heat is now often unbearable."

After the ruling, she said the state could "no longer look away".

"Our lives, our culture and our country are being taken seriously," she said in the statement provided by Greenpeace.

- Equal treatment -

The judges pointed out that Europe and the Caribbean had different climates.

"There is no good reason why measures for the inhabitants of Bonaire, who will be affected by climate change sooner and more severely, should be taken later and less systematically than for the European part of the Netherlands," it added.

The use of courts and other legal avenues to pursue climate litigation has grown rapidly over the past decade, with most lawsuits targeting governments.

Claimants argue a relatively small number of major polluters bear a historic liability for losses caused by droughts, storms and other climate-fuelled extremes.

The ICJ opinion, requested by the United Nations, aimed to clarify international law as it relates to climate change.

In what was largely seen as a win for environmental campaigners, the judges said polluters could be liable for reparations to countries suffering from climate damage.

Greenpeace's Vellekoop said Wednesday's Dutch ruling would have a huge impact on future cases.

"With this ruling in hand, communities have a powerful new asset to hold governments to account," she said.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jan 15, 2026 - The number of wildland fires burning in the Arctic is on the rise, according to NASA researchers. Moreover, these blazes are burning larger, hotter, and longer than they did in previous decades.

These trends are closely tied to the region's rapidly changing climate. The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, a shift that directly impacts rain and snow in the region and decreases soil moisture, both of which make the landscape more flammable. Lightning, the primary ignition source of Arctic fires, is also occurring farther north. These findings are detailed in a report published in 2025 by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), a working group of the Arctic Council.

"Fire has always been a part of boreal and Arctic landscapes, but now it's starting to act in more extreme ways that mimic what we've seen in the temperate and the tropical areas," said Jessica McCarty, Deputy Earth Science Division Chief at NASA's Ames Research Center and an Arctic fire specialist. McCarty, the report's lead author, worked as part of an international team for AMAP.

But it's not just the number of fires that concerns scientists; it's how hot they burn.

"It's the intensity that worries us the most because it has the most profound impact on how ecosystems are changing," said Tatiana Loboda, chair of the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland.

Arctic ecosystems: How are there fires in the Arctic?

Officially, the Arctic refers to the region north of 66.5 degrees north, though many Arctic researchers study 60 degrees north and above. While much of the area is covered in snow and ice, the Arctic also boasts a diverse range of ecosystems that change as they extend toward the pole.

It begins with boreal forests, which are primarily made up of coniferous trees like spruce, fir, and pine. As these forests thin to the north, they give way to shrublands, then to grassland tundra, and eventually to rock, ice, and polar bears.

Much of the vegetation is covered in snow during the winter, which thaws in the spring. Exposed, the vegetation dries out in the sunlight. When given an ignition source like a lightning strike, it can quickly become fuel for a fire.

What is changing?

"There is variability year to year, but across the decades we are averaging about double the burned area in the North American Arctic compared to the mid-20th century," said Brendan Rogers, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Low-intensity fires, which the Arctic is accustomed to, leave most of the forest standing, which allows the understory and upper soil layers to recover quickly.

In contrast, intense fires kill off trees and can trigger a process known as secondary succession, in which new species replace those that died. These fires also burn deep into the carbon-rich soil, change the area's hydrology, and accelerate snowmelt. In addition, the smoke and habitat damage from massive, hot fires pose significant health risks to human communities and local wildlife.

The mid-2010s ushered in a novel fire regime. For instance, Greenland saw significant wildfires in 2015, 2017, and in 2019. Researchers also began observing fires consistently springing up in the Arctic as early as late March, much earlier in the year than historical records show, and burning well after the first snow. "It's concerning how frequently these fires burn the same place," Loboda said. "A lot of areas now burn two, three, or even five times during a very short period. It's an immense impact: It's happening across the tundra and the boreal regions, and these areas can't recover."

In summer 2016, Tatiana Loboda rafted through the North American Arctic to collect samples across tundra sites. The work, part of NASA's Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), investigates how repeat fires impact the ecosystem over short and long timescales.

Peat, permafrost, and zombie fires

Peat is old-thousands and thousands of years old.

When glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age, they left behind deposits of old trees, grasses, and other organic matter that have partially decomposed to form carbon-rich soil. Over time, layers of deposits built up into peat, which is now a primary ingredient in soil across the Arctic.

When intense fires burn into deep peat deposits, they can create a phenomenon called a holdover fire, more commonly known as a zombie fire, in which remnants of fire stay alive throughout the winter. These fires appear extinguished on the surface but continue to smolder underground through the winter, bursting back to life when spring brings drier conditions.

Thawing permafrost reshapes the surface across ecosystems. Thawing permafrost in a boreal forest causes the surface to cave in, tilting and toppling trees into a "drunken forest." Thawing permafrost in the tundra creates scalloped pond edges, as pockets of ice melt and water moves through the soil to pool on the surface.

Permafrost-ground that remains frozen year-round-can be even older. Some permafrost predates the human species, Homo sapiens, remaining continuously frozen for more than 400,000 years. This age is what makes these frozen layers so significant: They've been storing ancient organic matter, and the carbon within it, for millennia.

When organisms die and decompose, that process naturally releases carbon dioxide and methane. In the Arctic, permafrost keeps these organisms literally frozen, which effectively freezes them in time.

NASA scientist and permafrost expert Clayton Elder describes seeing this effect in the Permafrost Tunnel in Fairbanks, Alaska. "You can walk into the tunnel and see grass embedded in the wall," Elder said. "It's still green, but when you carbon date it, it's 40,000 years old."

But as the Arctic warms, thaws, and burns, the carbon stored in peat and permafrost releases into the atmosphere. That matters, because what's locked below the surface is enormous. Together, Arctic peat and permafrost store twice as much carbon as the entirety of Earth's atmosphere.

According to McCarty, this thawing will lead to global change.

"This is old ice- ice that is part of our hydrologic system and formed a homeostasis of climate that we as a species grew up in," McCarty said. "There will be changes that we can't predict: humanity has not experienced the climate the planet is heading towards. It will be interesting to model; there are so many different ways it could go."

What's next?

"NASA satellites form the real backbone of what we understand," said Rogers. "These satellites have given us a 25-year record of wildfire data, which is invaluable. They are critical for our understanding of how these fire regimes are changing and for thinking through anything in the solution space."

New satellites and artificial intelligence developments are advancing understanding of ignition sources, fuel availability and flammability, and fire behavior. All of these data are important for monitoring fires and modeling future fire behavior, as well as evaluating the vulnerability of boreal and Arctic ecosystems to increasing levels of fire.

"One of our conclusions is that the observations need to be more targeted," McCarty said. "We know some of what is happening, but we need to better understand why, and how to monitor these isolated areas. This means we'll need satellites and field campaigns that are thinking about this more complex fire landscape. What happens in the Arctic will impact the rest of the planet."

Research Report:AMAP Arctic Climate Change Update 2024: Key Trends and Impacts

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Washington, United States (AFP) Jan 14, 2026 - Don't say the c-word.

Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump's push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.

That marks a sharp break from last year's communications, issued under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: "This global warming has been caused by human activities" and has led to intensifying "heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall and coastal flooding."

Last year's materials also featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year's release only runs through a few key facts and figures, and totals six paragraphs.

"The press release and publicly available data provide the official agency analysis," the US space agency said in response to a request for comment about the shift in tone.

According to NASA, Earth's global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than in 2023 -- albeit within a margin of error -- making it effectively tied as the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

Other global agencies, including the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which use different methodologies and modeling, say 2025 ranked as the third-hottest.

"The US government is now, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, a petrostate under Trump and Republican rule, and the actions of all of its agencies and departments can be understood in terms of the agenda of the polluters that are running the show," University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann told AFP.

"It is therefore entirely unsurprising that NASA administrators are attempting to bury findings of its own agency that conflict with its climate denial agenda."

Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, added: "I'm just happy they were allowed to put out a press release."

"Pretty much all federal scientists working on climate in the US have had to self-censor and leave out reference to human influences on climate change, unfortunately," he told AFP. "Thankfully much of the underlying science is still occurring, even if they cannot talk about it."

NASA's analysis found that average temperatures for 2025 were 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (1.19 degrees Celsius) above the 1951-1980 average.

It was based on data from more than 25,000 meteorological stations worldwide, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research stations, with the data analyzed and corrected for changing distributions of temperature stations and urban heating effects that could skew the results.

2025 was third hottest year on record: climate monitors
Brussels, Belgium (AFP) Jan 14, 2026 - The planet logged its third hottest year on record in 2025, extending a run of unprecedented heat, with no relief expected in 2026, global climate monitors said Wednesday.

The last 11 years have now been the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 topping the podium and 2023 in second place, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organisation.

For the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times on average over the last three years, Copernicus said in its annual report.

"The warming spike observed from 2023-2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth's warming," Berkeley Earth said in a separate report.

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement commits the world to limiting warming to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to hold it at 1.5C -- a long-term target scientists say would help avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned in October that breaching 1.5C was "inevitable" but the world could limit this period of overshoot by cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

Copernicus said the 1.5C limit "could be reached by the end of this decade -- over a decade earlier than predicted".

But efforts to contain global warming were dealt another setback last week as President Donald Trump said he would pull the United States -- the world's second-biggest polluter after China -- out of the bedrock UN climate treaty.

Temperatures were 1.47C above pre-industrial times in 2025 -- just a fraction cooler than in 2023 -- following 1.6C in 2024, according to Copernicus.

The World Meteorological Organization, the UN's weather and climate agency, said two of eight datasets it analysed showed 2025 was the second warmest year, but the other six datasets ranked it third.

The WMO put the 2023-2025 average at 1.48C but with a margin of uncertainty of plus-minus 0.13C.

Despite the cooling La Nina weather phenomenon, 2025 "was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere", WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement.

Some 770 million people experienced record-warm annual conditions where they live, while no record-cold annual average was logged anywhere, according to Berkeley Earth.

The Antarctic experienced its warmest year on record while it was the second hottest in the Arctic, Copernicus said.

An AFP analysis of Copernicus data last month found that Central Asia, the Sahel region and northern Europe experienced their hottest year on record in 2025.

- 2026: Fourth-warmest? -

Berkeley and Copernicus both warned that 2026 would not break the trend.

If the warming El Nino weather phenomenon appears this year, "this could make 2026 another record-breaking year", Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP.

"Temperatures are going up. So we are bound to see new records. Whether it will be 2026, 2027, 2028 doesn't matter too much. The direction of travel is very, very clear," Buontempo said.

Berkeley Earth said it expected this year to be similar to 2025, "with the most likely outcome being approximately the fourth-warmest year since 1850".

- Emissions fight -

The reports come as efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions -- the main driver of climate change -- are stalling in developed countries.

Emissions rose in the United States last year, snapping a two-year streak of declines, as bitter winters and the AI boom fuelled demand for energy, the Rhodium Group think tank said Tuesday.

The pace of reductions of greenhouse gas emissions slowed in Germany and France.

"While greenhouse gas emissions remain the dominant driver of global warming, the magnitude of this recent spike suggests additional factors have amplified recent warming beyond what we would expect from greenhouse gases and natural variability alone," said Berkeley Earth chief scientist Robert Rohde.

The organisation said international rules cutting sulphur in ship fuel since 2020 may have actually added to warming by reducing sulphur dioxide emissions, which form aerosols that reflect sunlight away from Earth.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 13, 2026 - When audiences watched the film The Day After Tomorrow, they saw an exaggerated Hollywood depiction of abrupt climate disruption, but the underlying concept that Earth's climate can shift rapidly has a firm scientific basis. During the last Ice Age, Greenland temperatures jumped by as much as 16 degrees Celsius within decades and repeated surges of icebergs disrupted the North Atlantic, events known as Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events.

These rapid transitions, classed as millennial-scale climate events, show that Earth's climate system can reorganize much faster than the slow orbital cycles that pace long-term climate change. Until now, most explanations have linked such millennial-scale variability to the dynamics of large ice sheets, leaving open the puzzle of how similar behavior could arise during warm greenhouse periods when continental ice was absent.

An international team led by Professor Chengshan Wang at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing now proposes a solution that does not rely on ice sheets. Working with colleagues from Belgium, Austria and China, the team demonstrates that Earth's precession cycles, the slow wobbles of its rotational axis, can naturally generate abrupt millennial-scale climate fluctuations even under ice-free conditions.

The researchers anchored their work in a high-resolution record from sediment cores drilled in China's Songliao Basin, laid down about 83 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous, a classic greenhouse interval with high atmospheric carbon dioxide and no major ice sheets. These cores were obtained through the Cretaceous Continental Scientific Drilling Project, an international initiative launched in 2006 under Prof. Wang's leadership.

In astronomical terms, Earth's spin axis slowly traces a wobble like a spinning top, a motion known as axial precession that completes one full cycle in roughly 26,000 years. When this axial precession interacts with the gradual rotation of Earth's elliptical orbit, it produces two main climatic precession cycles of about 19,000 and 23,000 years that modulate how solar energy is distributed seasonally between the hemispheres.

Because Earth's rotation axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane, regions outside the tropics experience a single annual peak in solar radiation, near the local summer solstice. By contrast, tropical latitudes see two annual maxima in solar radiation near the equinoxes and two minima near the solstices, creating a distinct double-maximum pattern in daily insolation.

This geometry means that in the tropics, the contrast in solar radiation between seasons shows four peaks within a single year. Over the course of a full precession cycle, that structure yields four distinct climatic responses to precession-driven insolation forcing and produces a characteristic quarter-precession periodicity of around 5,000 years.

The new Songliao Basin record supports this theoretical picture. By integrating geochemical data, mineralogical indicators and bioturbation simulations, the team reconstructed Late Cretaceous climates that alternated between humid and arid states with strong 4,000 to 5,000 year periodicities superimposed on longer trends.

The amplitude of these humid-arid oscillations was not constant but waxed and waned in step with cycles of roughly 100,000 years, which correspond to variations in Earth's orbital eccentricity. This pattern indicates that eccentricity acted as a modulator, strengthening or weakening the imprint of precession on climate over time.

According to the authors, the reconstructed Cretaceous climate cycles match the expected theoretical pattern of equatorial insolation response to precession. The close fit suggests that variations in equatorial insolation alone can exert a powerful influence on global climate, helping to spontaneously trigger millennial-scale cycles without requiring feedbacks from large ice sheets.

Spectral analyses of the proxy records further show that the approximately 5,000-year insolation cycles can, through nonlinear climate processes, generate even faster swings lasting from about 1,800 to 4,000 years. These faster variations may represent internal reorganizations of the climate system responding to the regular precession forcing.

Taken together, the Late Cretaceous reconstructions and the theoretical calculations indicate that even under warm, ice-free conditions Earth's climate was far from stable. Instead, it repeatedly oscillated between arid and humid regimes, with precession-related changes in solar forcing acting as the primary pacemaker.

"During the Late Cretaceous, atmospheric CO2 levels reached about 1,000 parts per million, comparable to projections for the end of this century," says Prof. Michael Wagreich, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Vienna. "This makes the Cretaceous greenhouse climate a meaningful analogue for understanding Earth's future."

"Because Earth's orbital configuration will remain stable for billions of years, the unveiled close link we identified between astronomical precession and millennial-scale climate cycles implies that high-frequency climate oscillations, like those seen in the Cretaceous, could also emerge in a warmer future, potentially in ways that are more predictable than previously thought," says first author Zhifeng Zhang.

Research Report:Precession-induced millennial climate cycles in greenhouse Cretaceous

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Washington, United States (AFP) Jan 8, 2026 - President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from a foundational climate treaty as part of a sweeping exit from collective global action, the White House announced Wednesday.

A total of 66 global organizations and treaties -- roughly half affiliated with the United Nations -- were listed in a White House memorandum as "contrary to the interests of the United States."

Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements.

Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, deriding climate science as a "hoax."

The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved later that year by the US Senate during George H.W. Bush's presidency.

The US Constitution allows presidents to enter treaties "provided two thirds of Senators present concur," but it is silent on the process for withdrawing from them -- a legal ambiguity that could invite court challenges.

Trump has already withdrawn from the landmark Paris climate accord since returning to office, just as he did during his first term from 2017-2021 in a move later reversed by his successor, Democratic president Joe Biden.

Exiting the underlying treaty could introduce additional legal uncertainty around any future US effort to rejoin.

But Jean Su, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP: "Pulling out of the UNFCCC is a whole order of magnitude different from pulling out of the Paris Agreement."

"It's our contention that it's illegal for the President to unilaterally pull out of a treaty that required two thirds of the Senate vote," she continued. "We are looking at legal options to pursue that line of argument."

"The US withdrawal from the UN climate framework is a heavy blow to global climate action, fracturing hard-won consensus," Li Shuo of the Asia Society Policy Institute told AFP.

- 'Progressive ideology' -

Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists called the decision a "new low and yet another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people's well-being and destabilize global cooperation."

The memo also directs the United States to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, alongside other climate-related organizations including the International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Oceans and UN Water.

As in his first term, Trump has also withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement and from UNESCO -- the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- which Washington had rejoined under Biden.

Trump has likewise pulled the US out of the World Health Organization and sharply reduced foreign aid, slashing funding for numerous UN agencies and forcing them to scale back operations on the ground, including the High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme.

Other prominent bodies named in the memo include the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN Women, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement the organizations were driven by "progressive ideology" and were actively seeking to "constrain American sovereignty."

"From DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) mandates to 'gender equity' campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project," he said.

Speaking before the General Assembly in September, Trump delivered a scathing broadside against the world body founded in 1945 to promote global peace and cooperation in the wake of the Second World War.

"What is the purpose of the United Nations?" asked Trump in a wide-ranging speech, whose litany of complaints extended even to a broken escalator and teleprompter at the UN's New York headquarters.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST Frankfurt, Germany (AFP) Jan 7, 2026 - Germany's greenhouse gas emission cuts slowed sharply in 2025 as the North Sea experienced its warmest year on record, piling pressure Wednesday on the conservative-led government to boost climate protection efforts.

Emissions in Europe's largest economy fell by just 1.5 percent from the previous year, according to a study by climate think tank Agora Energiewende, lower than the three-percent drop in 2024 and 10 percent the year before that.

If the current trend continues, Germany risks failing to hit its medium-term goal of cutting emissions by 65 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030, said Julia Blaesius, the think tank's Germany director.

"Germany is losing ground on climate protection," Blaesius told a press conference. "The 2030 target is still achievable, but it's subject to major uncertainties."

When burnt, fossil fuels emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that trap heat near the Earth's surface, driving climate change and global temperature rises.

Highlighting the worsening picture, Germany's BSH maritime affairs agency reported Wednesday that the North Sea had experienced its warmest year on record in 2025.

"The North Sea reached an average temperature of 11.6C, the highest value in the BSH's data series since 1969," Tim Kruschke, head of the agency's climate team, said in a statement.

- Merz criticized on climate -

The news might pile pressure on conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose government was already facing criticism that it is not committed to the climate change fight.

His coalition has championed policies that critics argue damage these efforts, but which Merz insists are needed to reduce the burden on the struggling economy.

He led criticism of an EU plan to ban new combustion-engine car sales from 2035, which the bloc is moving to water down, and his coalition has agreed to scrap an unpopular law requiring newly installed heating systems to run for the most part on renewable energy.

His economy minister, a former energy executive, has proposed scrapping some solar energy subsidies and building new gas-fired power stations.

It comes against a backdrop of the European Union moving to weaken new environmental rules as it seeks to boost competitiveness and following complaints from business.

The environment ministry declined to comment directly on the Agora study but conceded that further measures were needed "in order to stay on course for 2030".

"We are working on a climate protection program," said ministry spokesman Bastian Zimmermann, adding it would be as "well-founded and comprehensive as possible", to keep climate goals on track.

- 'Need more speed' -

Blaesius stressed that 2025 was a transition year with "relatively few clear decisions" in Germany given the change of government.

But the emissions trend "makes it clear that we need more speed", and upcoming overhauls of legislation regarding renewable energy and heating would be "crucial", she said.

Last year's emissions cuts were driven by falls in energy-intensive industries, many of which have struggled as the economy stagnates, as well as record solar power generation, according to Agora.

But transport and building emissions rose again in 2025, noted the study, criticising "years of insufficient progress" in the shift to electric vehicles and heat pumps.

Germany's 2025 emissions totalled 640 million tonnes overall, a reduction of nine million tonnes from the previous year, according to the think tank.

National emissions are down 49 percent from 1990 levels. Germany is aiming for greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045.

There were some signs of positive momentum in 2025.

Around 300,000 more environmentally friendly heat pumps were sold last year, passing gas boilers for the first time, while the share of EVs sold jumped sharply, accounting for about a fifth of all new cars registered in Germany.

Nevertheless, Blaesius said that debates on issues such as the combustion-engine car ban "certainly don't help".

"These debates don't help the businesses that need to move ahead with e-mobility. And they don't help consumers either," she said.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:19:54 AEST La Jolla CA (SPX) Jan 01, 2026 - A new study from a team of researchers that includes faculty from the University of California San Diego and Princeton University shows how a mix of subsidies for clean energy and taxes on pollution can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

While these kinds of policy mixes are widely used in the real world, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, is the first to show how the combination of such policies can be simulated in economic models that are the backbone of nearly all climate policy discussions - including the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil held Nov. 10-21.

The results reveal that financial incentives can spark rapid adoption of cleaner technologies in the near term, but without policies that also punish polluters it will not be possible to stop climate change.

"This work helps make our climate models more realistic about how governments actually behave," said the study's coauthor David Victor, professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-director of UC San Diego's Deep Decarbonization Initiative (D2I). "For years, models have told us what is economically efficient - but not what is politically possible. Our goal is to bridge that gap so policymakers can craft strategies that survive real-world politics."

The research provides a rigorous, data-driven look at how policy design and political timing affect the nation's ability to decarbonize its energy system.

The study comes out at a pivotal time for U.S. and global climate policy. The transition to a new U.S. administration in 2025 has cast uncertainty on many clean energy incentives enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). At the same time, the federal government has never implemented a meaningful tax on warming pollution, although some states have adopted small tax-like policies.

"In the United States, we are removing the reward policies designed to accelerate decarbonization and it is unlikely this administration will introduce any policies that punish larger emitters," Victor said. "Meanwhile, other countries are taking different paths - China is adding new incentives and some penalties and Europe is leaning heavily on policies that make emissions more expensive. You are seeing a global experiment in real time."

He notes that the paper, while focusing on the U.S., can serve as a "road test" for other nations around the world about which mix of policies will have the biggest impacts reducing fossil fuels.

The paper's modeling also explores what happens when climate policies are added, delayed, or repealed over time. To test how such policy choices shape long-term progress, Victor and coauthors used a multisector, state-level energy systems model (GCAM-USA) to simulate how different approaches affect emissions, technology costs and clean energy adoption across all 50 U.S. states through 2050.

Using real data from federal and state programs, the researchers compared scenarios such as incentives only - long-term subsidies that make renewable energy and electric vehicles more affordable; penalties only - economy-wide carbon pricing that makes fossil fuels more expensive; combined approaches - starting with incentives, followed by penalties after 10 or 20 years; and inconsistent policies - reflecting political instability, with incentives that start, stop and restart over time.

In simpler terms, the researchers created a set of "what-if" policy simulations. Using the "carrot and stick" metaphor that refers to the set of policies of rewards and punishments to encourage decarbonization, the authors describe what happens in a world with "no stick, more carrot," versus "more stick, less carrot," or policies that change mid-course.

"As 'carrots' make it cheaper for companies and consumers to adopt green technologies, those technologies see greater uptake," they write. "Introducing 'sticks' is essential to reach deep decarbonization goals in the long run."

The researchers were surprised by how effective incentives can be at accelerating the clean energy transition in the near term. These policies include tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable power, government grants and loans for clean manufacturing and rebates that help homeowners install heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and energy-saving upgrades.

The study also finds that political consistency - keeping incentive programs stable and reliable - is just as important as the size of the subsidies or the stringency of future penalties. When incentives are applied consistently, the researchers found the economy can reach an 80% reduction in energy-related carbon emissions by mid-century. When those incentives are withdrawn or delayed, investment slows and later emissions cuts become more expensive.

"When policy is unpredictable, companies delay investment," Victor said. "That delay can make it politically and economically harder to act later."

Victor describes the study as part of a broader research agenda at UC San Diego's Deep Decarbonization Initiative to make climate models more attuned to real-world politics and human behavior. This extension of the initiative involves scholars from around the country, many of whom served as coauthors on this paper.

"For years, analysts and reality have been drifting apart," he said. "This work is part of a larger mission to make studies of climate policy much more realistic about what happens in the real world - how government policies affect investments and emissions."

The authors hope the research can be used as a guide for key decision makers around the globe. They conclude, "Understanding what works - and when - is key to reaching global climate goals."

The lead author is Huilin Luo of Princeton University and the corresponding author is Wei Peng also of Princeton University. Additional coauthors include Allen Fawcett and Gokul Iyer of the University of Maryland; Jessica Green of the University of Toronto; Jonas Meckling of the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University; and Jonas Nahm of Johns Hopkins University.

Research Report:Modelling the impacts of policy sequencing on energy decarbonization

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