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Residents transport drinking water from Humaita to the Paraizinho community, along a dry part of the Madeira River, a tributary of the Amazon River, amid a drought, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sep. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)

Report reveals severe impact of last year’s drought on Amazonian communities

Aimee Gabay 31 Jul 2025
Hamid Moradi. Photo courtesy of the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.

Hamid Moradi, died on July 25th after battling a forest fire in Iranian Kurdistan, aged 36

Rhett Ayers Butler 29 Jul 2025
Joseph Vargas and Wilma Abanil in their home

As gas giants move in, Philippine fishers fight for their seas and survival

Nick Aspinwall 29 Jul 2025
Person standing in front of a fallen tree.

Global warming is altering storms lightning, impacting tropical forests

Sean Mowbray 28 Jul 2025
A forest gardener waters vegetables in his forest garden in Kaffrine, Senegal.

A forest garden project attempts to expand into the Sahel

Victoria Schneider 28 Jul 2025
A Dayak Ngaju tribe man tries to extinguish fire on burning peatland in Mantangai, Central Kalimantan.

Indonesian palm oil company sues experts who helped secure $18m pollution ruling

Hans Nicholas Jong 24 Jul 2025

Challenges persist in TMC’s bid to mine the deep sea, even after boost from Trump

Elizabeth Claire Alberts 24 Jul 2025

A look at megafires as an Oregon wildfire approaches the 100,000-acre mark

Associated Press 23 Jul 2025
Banner image of a heavy downpour after Tropical Storm Wipha caused intensified monsoon rains in Quezon City, Philippines, on July 21. Image by AP Photo/Aaron Favila.

Tropical Storm Wipha rampages through several Asian countries

Kristine Sabillo 22 Jul 2025
Heavy rainfall in Colombia and Venezuela caused deadly landslides and widespread flooding in June. A new analysis now points to rapid urbanization, deforestation, mining and overgrazing as having reduced the region’s climate resilience. 
 “The rapid growth of population and informal settlements in areas prone to landslides, particularly in Colombia, puts people and infrastructure at risk,” the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of scientists evaluating extreme weather events, said in its latest rapid analysis. It said the informal communities are growing as people seek livelihoods in cities or are displaced due to conflict. Roop Singh, report co-author from the Netherlands-based Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at a media briefing that pasture- and agriculture-driven deforestation rose over the past two decades, increasing “the risk of landslides because tree roots are no longer binding and anchoring the soils.”
 The heavy rains during the last week of June triggered widespread flooding and damage in Colombia; a landslide in Antioquia department killed 27 people. In Venezuela, rivers overflowed, and smaller landslides cut off rural communities. WWA said in its report that rains in these regions had persisted since April, and that the June rain fell on already saturated ground where the deadly landslide occurred, and in rivers with already high levels of water. The scientists examined the total rainfall from April-June this year over the Magdalena River catchment in Colombia and the Falcón and Maracaibo basins in Venezuela. They also studied data on the accumulated rainfall from June 20-24 in the affected states in the Venezuelan Llanos, a grassland plain. “Neither events were particularly extreme,” Mariam Zachariah, co-author and research associate at Imperial College London, said at the briefing. The WWA analysis showed the heavy rain that fell in June is common, expected every 10 years in Colombia and every three years in Venezuela. The scientists also used climate models to understand the influence of human-induced climate change on the rains, but the findings were inconclusive. Instead, the models projected a drying trend for Colombia and mixed results for Venezuela. Friederike Otto, co-author and climate science professor at Imperial College London, said not being able to show clear linkages to climate change doesn’t mean there’s no influence. The researchers attributed some of the uncertainty to a lack of long-term observational weather data and weather stations in the region. “Unfortunately, extreme weather is not well understood in northern South America,” Paola A. Arias, a professor at the University of Antioquia, said in a statement. “We urgently need more investment in climate science to understand shifting risks and prepare for what’s ahead. More science will save lives." Zachariah said Colombia and Venezuela must prepare for both rainfall and drought, and build resilience to extreme weather. Banner image: People look at their destroyed home after a deadly landslide was triggered by heavy rain in Colombia’s Antioquia department on June 25, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Fredy Amariles.

Deadly landslide and flooding in Colombia and Venezuela linked to rapid urbanization

Kristine Sabillo 18 Jul 2025
Sunset at Joshua Tree National Park

In a warming world, can California save its Joshua trees?

Maya L. Kapoor 17 Jul 2025
A waste site near Mombasa, Kenya. Separating plastic waste from growing mountains of domestic trash is a huge hurdle facing the world’s communities.

Open burning of plastic is an escalating public health threat, say experts

Sean Mowbray 17 Jul 2025
Palmeiras' Vitor Roque sits on the side of the pitch in a cooling mist after being substituted during the Club World Cup round of 16 soccer match between Palmeiras and Botafogo in Philadelphia, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

How climate change could force FIFA to rethink the World Cup calendar

Associated Press 17 Jul 2025
Area of burned forest in ​​the city of Apuí, Amazonas state. Image by Bruno Kelly/Amazônia Real via Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Amazon deforestation spikes as Brazil blames criminal fires

Lucas Berti 16 Jul 2025
Amanda L. Cordeiro (left), a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Minnesota and Daniela F. Cusack, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University at one of their research sites to investigate how root systems react to climatic changes.

Tropical forest roots show strain as changes aboveground filter below

Petro Kotzé 15 Jul 2025

Wildfire along Grand Canyon’s North Rim destroys historic lodge and is spreading rapidly

Associated Press 14 Jul 2025

The world’s children suffer brunt of wildfire smoke health impacts

Anna Dulisse 14 Jul 2025
A man fans himself on a hot day in Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain, on June 28, 2025. Image © Paul White/AP.

Extreme heat kills at least 2,300 in European cities, study estimates

Shanna Hanbury 14 Jul 2025
Most of the lightning strike victims tend to be farmers and fishers.

Study links surge in lightning disasters in Bangladesh to transboundary air pollution

Mahadi Al Hasnat 11 Jul 2025
The Andean cat is a rare and endangered species highly specialized to life in the high Andes. It’s estimated that around 2,000 mature individuals, living in fragmented populations, are spread very thinly over a vast alpine expanse in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.

Endangered Andean cat is imperiled by climate change and its solutions

Sean Mowbray 10 Jul 2025
Some Amazonian communities have reported harvests declining by up to 80% due to El Niño.

Iconic Brazil nut crop plunges after extreme drought, skyrocketing prices

Fernanda Wenzel, Karla Mendes 10 Jul 2025
Using the law to save the planet | Against All Odds

Youth and women find success in taking climate cases to court

Mongabay.com 9 Jul 2025
People watch the damage caused by flooding on the Bhotekoshi River 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (Nepal Army via AP)

Rescuers search for 19 missing and recover 9 bodies after flooding in Nepal

Associated Press 9 Jul 2025
Latex collected from the trees is pressed and formed into blocks, which are easier to transport from the territory.

Indigenous rubber bounces back for Amazon conservation and higher income

Sarah Brown 8 Jul 2025
Drought in Bangladesh.

Droughts are a ‘slow-moving global catastrophe,’ report finds

Liz Kimbrough 7 Jul 2025
Banner image of a flare stack by Yerevan Malarerva via Pexels.

UN rapporteur calls for ban on fossil fuel ads and criminalizing of disinformation

Kristine Sabillo 7 Jul 2025
Tourist with umbrellas wait outside the Acropolis of Athens, on Monday , July 7, 2025 while authorities in Greece have imposed mandatory work stoppages in parts of the country where temperatures are expected to exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greece imposes work breaks as a heat wave grips the country

Associated Press 7 Jul 2025
Riding through a locust swarm in Lekiji, Samburu County, Kenya.

Agencies race to prevent new food crisis as locusts return to northern Africa

Stephanie Achieng’ 3 Jul 2025

California wood pellet plants canceled amid market decline & public pushback

Bobby Bascomb 2 Jul 2025
Smokestacks image by Pixabay via Pexels (Public domain).

Catholic bishops from Global South call for ambitious climate action ahead of COP30

Kristine Sabillo 2 Jul 2025
In this photo released by Agents Rurals de Catalunya, uncontrolled fire rages across the grasslands in the Segarra region, in the rural province of Lleida, Spain, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/ Agents Rurals de Catalunya, HO)

Wildfire kills 2 people in Spain as parts of Europe bake in heat wave

Associated Press 2 Jul 2025
The abandoned village of Samjung, with ancient caves carved in the cliffs in the background, is seen in the Mustang region, 462 kilometers west of Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Ancient Himalayan village relocates as climate shifts reshape daily life

Associated Press 1 Jul 2025

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