Climate Change Blog 62 – Facts on the Ground
In mid-March, Hawaii was pounded for over a week by relentless storms with 10 to 14 inches of rain falling on Oahu unleashing severe flooding. The storm moved to Maui, prompting more flash flood warnings. The severe rainfall caused the largest flooding in Oahu in 20 years prompting the issuance of evacuation orders and the rescue of 196. The torrential rainfall filled the Wahiawa Reservoir, with just a few feet below the top of a dam in in northern Oahu, prompting local officials to declare the dam at “imminent risk of failure.” The cost of the damage caused by the storm was estimated to be over $1 billion in public and private property damage. 111,000 customers on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui were without electricity in mid-March.
The flash flooding threat came after another system delivered heavy rain, only days after a multiday storm brought over two feet of rain to some locations across Hawaii. The Waialua area, a residential area downstream from the Wahiawa Reservoir, recorded about 20” of rain within week due to persistent storms, with nearby mountains recording almost 30 inches of rain. “It is the worst flooding I’ve seen in my lifetime.”, Jake DiPaola, a resident of Oahu, said. Honolulu recorded over 10” of rain, far more than the city’s March average rainfall of 2.36”. Within a 24-hour period, Oahu’s wettest location recorded over 12” while in Maui over 23” was reported.
In mid-March, hundreds of firefighters from across Nebraska and neighboring states were combatting two major wildfires that had burned nearly 800,000 acres in western and central Nebraskawas. The Morrill fire was the largest in the state’s history. At least one person died in the Morrill fire. The Cottonwood fire burned about 130,000 acres southeast of the Morrill Fire. Gov. Pillen declared a state of emergency as the state mobilized the National Guard.
The month of March has long been notorious in meteorology circles as the volatile transition from winter to spring, bringing rapid shifts in temperature but last March was very severe and no part of the US was spared the chaotic weather. In Michigan, a tornado rated a 3 on the 5 point Enhanced Fujita scale, killed three people in early March. The tornado was the earliest in the calendar year that a tornado of such intensity. Along the East Coast, daily record highs were shattered as temperatures soared but in some places the reverse was the case, with Richmond, Va., setting a record for the fastest temperature drop in a day. In mid-March, a snowstorm dumped two feet of snow across the Upper Midwest making it one of the top 25 snowstorms on record there, with the same weather system producing damaging winds and tornadoes farther south. In Colorado, powerful winds caused highway closures. On the West Coast, a rare snowstorm hit Seattle, while Los Angeles set records for March heat. The Science of the ‘Waviness’: Picture the jet stream as a divider, “a boundary between colder air to the north and warmer air to the south,” Trent Ford, the state climatologist for Illinois, said. This contrast in temperatures creates a “waviness” where the jet stream sits, which dictates day-to-day changes. When that wave gets stuck or grows more extreme, wild swings will dominate the weather, as they did in March.
Scientists say that the warming atmosphere increases the likelihood and intensity of both heat waves and persistent droughts. While the winter of 2026 had been cold in the eastern US, the number of record high temperatures across the country was far outpacing the number of record lows, and the onset of warm weather would be coming earlier, Michael Rawlins, professor of climatology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said.
In mid-March, severe weather systems swept over parts of the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee valleys, spawning damaging winds of more than 60 mph which downed trees and damaged buildings, along with hail as large as tennis balls, with a tornado also reported in Arkansas. More than 12 million people were at risk from damaging winds and strong tornadoes across the Eastern US, including in Washington, D.C.
Tens of millions of people across the Southwest and along the California coast were urged to curtail outdoor activities in mid-March as high temperatures rarely seen this early in the year toppled records across those regions. Heat advisories and even extreme heat watches, unusual for March, were issued in many areas including San Francisco.
Record March heat wave shattered US and monthly records in over 180 cities across the US and in 17 states. It started in earnest with the first March heat records in the West in mid-March and continued in waves for 11 days to late March, eventually spreading its March records as far east as Pennsylvania and South Carolina. The hottest March temperature on record anywhere in the US in mid-Marach occurred at four reporting stations in the lower deserts of southeast California and southwest Arizona where temperatures reached 112F. Other state records set or tied include Texas: 108F; Nevada: 106F; Oklahoma: 106F; Kansas: 104F; and many others.
City March Records: Phoenix only had one day of triple digit heat on record in March prior to this March heat wave. The city reached at least 100F eight days in a row from mid-March to late March. Las Vegas tied or set its March record nine days in a row rising to 98F. Flagstaff tied or set its March record 10 days in a row. Other major cities that tied or set new March records include San Francisco's first March 90F high, Salt Lake City (84F), Boise (83F), Denver (87F) and Albuquerque (91F). Other Records: Lubbock, Texas (98F), Kansas City (93F), St. Louis (93F), and many more. The most outstanding record-breaking heat wave occurred in Nebraska in late March. Lincoln (97) and Omaha (96) shattered their March records. Several cities reached the 70s, 80s, 90s, or 100s for the first time in March in their recorded history, including Butte, Montana (first 70s), Cheyenne, Wyoming (first 80s), Fayetteville, Arkansas (first 90s) and more.
Climate Change Role: According to an analysis by Climate Central, the extremity of this March’s heat wave was made at least five times more likely by climate change. This March was America’s warmest March in 132 years of record keeping. The average temperature was 50.85F, which is 9.35F above the 20th century average and marks the first time any month's average has been more than 9F above that baseline. March also concludes a 12-month period that stands as the warmest 12 months ever recorded across the country.
A destructive storm ravaged Illinois and Indiana in early March producing about a dozen tornadoes in the Midwest and South, which killed at least two people, injured several people and destroyed many properties. At least four tornadoes ripped through Illinois and northwestern Indiana. A strip of road in Lake Village, Ind., was one of the hardest hit areas in the state, with entire homes gone and the area “decimated.” The storm system included strong wind gusts and hail in some areas, affected a vast swath of the central US. In Kankakee, Ill., one hailstone had a diameter of six inches, a state record. One part of the storm system stretched across Texas and Oklahoma, and another part over areas of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. The storm caused power outages for thousands. The severe weather in early March came just days after storms swept through Michigan and Oklahoma, killing at least six people. A tree care worker said he had done storm cleanup work for most of his career but said he had never seen destruction like this one. “The sound was deafening.”
Tornado watches covered a continuous line from South Texas to Southern Michigan in early March as a vast storm system dumped heavy rain and hail the size of baseballs across a huge section of the Central US. The stormy weather produced tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana and Texas. The NWS repeatedly issued its most urgent warnings, known as “particularly dangerous situation” alerts, as the storms spun off potentially destructive tornadoes.
A record-setting blizzard buried much of the Northeast and New England with a thick covering of snow in late February and almost a quarter million households lost power. The blizzard downed trees and power lines throughout the regions, with snowy streets complicating efforts to repair downed powerlines, and killed at least one person. In Massachusetts, hundreds of vehicles were stranded on icy roads and 214,000 utility customers were without power. About three feet of snow fell on parts of Rhode Island with the International Airport in Warwick, R.I. recording 37.9. “This appears to be the most historic blizzard we’ve received,” Josh Estrella, a spokesman for the City of Providence, said. More than 500,000 homes and businesses in the Northeast were without power. In NYC, almost 20” of snow fell in Central Park.
In early February, high winds combined with low temperatures produced record-breaking and dangerously cold conditions across the Northeast with temperatures as low as 30F below normal. The Arctic blast brought record low temperatures to NYC with 6F recorded at Kennedy Airport. A record low, of -3F was also set in DuBois, Pa. In northern NY, -34oF was recorded in Watertown, the lowest temperature for the US. Strong winds gust of about 50 mph pushed wind chill values down to –30oF in parts of New England. In NYC, wind chills were between -15oF and -20oF.
Judah Cohen, a research scientist at M.I.T. has been studying how global warming might also be causing colder winters in the eastern US. Dr. Cohen explained that a warming Arctic can cause a high-altitude ribbon of air called the polar vortex to stretch and wobble. That wobble can affect the flow of the jet stream that controls much of the atmospheric conditions over the US, causing waves of high and low pressure that affect our daily weather. The polar vortex stretched and wobbled in February 2021, causing a prolonged deep freeze that killed 248 people in Texas and knocked out power for millions. The same wobble reappeared in the winter of 2024-2025 and again in Feb. 2026, causing blizzard conditions across the East and an icy blast. “It’s weird what’s going on now in the stratosphere,” Dr. Cohen said. “These stretching events happen every winter, but just how the pattern is stuck is really remarkable.” Climate warming in the Arctic is causing this disruption of the polar vortex, Dr. Cohen said. With more snowfall in Siberia and melting sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas, just north of Norway and Russia, the ocean is feeding more heat into the atmosphere, setting up a weather pattern that leads to a burst of extreme cold in North America. A new analysis by Dr. Cohen and colleagues finds that a warming Arctic is also making the wobble in the polar vortex last longer. “This is very consistent with this winter,” he said.
Dr. Russell Blackport, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, said “These are interesting ideas,” “But I’m very skeptical. When I look at these papers, they’re often not that convincing.” Dr. Blackport said that the long-term temperature trends and climate models show the exact opposite, that extreme cold events are becoming less likely as the planet heats up from human-caused GHGs. The Earth has warmed on average by about 1.4C, or 2.52F, since the Industrial Age, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. That warming has been largely driven by the burning of oil, gas and coal. “Climate models have long predicted that we should see these extreme cold events less often, they should be less severe than they used to be, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing in these longer-term observations,” Dr. Blackport said. Amy Butler, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chemical sciences laboratory in Boulder, Colo., cautions that it’s difficult to link a given weather event, such as a cold spell, to climate change. “What the data shows is that these cold extremes are getting less extreme, and they will continue to get less extreme,” she said.
A deadly late February storm named “Winter Storm Hernando” or “Blizzard of 2026” was severe, record-setting and devastating causing significant damage and misery across Northeast. The storm dumped 1–2’ of snow across a large part of the region from Philadelphia to Boston, with up to 3’ in southeastern New England. The storm arose out of a shortwave trough that made landfall on the West Coast of the US in mid-February, and moved rapidly eastwards across the country, bringing blizzard conditions and very heavy snowfall to the Northeast corridor in late February. Seven states including NJ, NY and large parts of New England declared states of emergency.
Severe weather alerts were issued for most northeastern Mid-Atlantic states affecting over 40 million people, the first for NYC since March 2017. Travel bans were also in place for parts of the region, including NYC. About 6,000 flights in and out of the US were canceled, mostly in NY, NJ and Boston. The blizzard killed 30 people. Over 600,000 people were without power at the height of the storm due to strong winds of almost 100 mph. The total estimated cost of the damage caused by the storm was $500 million.
People on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia were clearing huge piles of snow in late January after several days of severe weather which produced the biggest snowfall the Kamchatka Peninsula has seen in almost 60 years. The mountains of snow buried cars, blocked entries to buildings and covered roofs, bringing life to a standstill in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia. Two people were killed by falling snow from rooftops. Almost five and a half feet of snow was recorded there.
More than 100 cars and trucks slid and crashed into each other and off a highway in a chain reaction after a lake-effect snowstorm struck Michigan in mid-January leaving many injured. The pileup prompted the closure of Interstate 196 in both directions between Hudsonville and Zeeland, southwest of Grand Rapids for almost eight hours.
A severe storm system, which caused at least two fatalities, battered Southern California with heavy rain in mid-November, bringing a risk of flash flooding and landslides and forcing evacuations in areas of Los Angeles County recently burned by wildfires. The storm system continued to dump rain in coastal areas between Orange and San Diego Counties and moved inland into southeastern California and southern Nevada. The storm pulled in a band of moisture known as an atmospheric river, bringing rain to Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. Santa Barbara County’s mountain regions recorded over 8” within a 24–48-hour period. Downtown Los Angeles recorded almost 2” of rain within 24-hours which surpassed the average monthly total of 0.78” for the entire month of November. At Garrapata State Beach along the Big Sur coastline, a father and his 5-year-old daughter were swept out to sea by huge waves estimated to be between 15 to 20’. In Sutter County, a man was killed after his vehicle was swept away by floodwaters.
About 24.2” of snow fell in Syracuse, NY in late December, the most in a single day in Syracuse since 1946. Syracuse is one of the snowiest cities in the US, with more than 120” of snow in a typical winter. Even for a place used to heavy snow, in early December, the city recorded 58.6” inches, twice as much as it normally gets in December.
In Vermont and NYS, officials warned residents to stay off the roads in late December as a severe winter weather system covered much of the Northeast with heavy sheets of ice and snow. Millions of people were under warnings or advisories that extended from the Great Lakes to New England and which forecasters said were connected to the same rapidly deepening low-pressure system that produced freezing rain, high winds, dense fog and blizzard conditions in parts of the Upper Midwest. The Vermont State Police warned residents to stay home and avoid travel with parts of Vermont and upstate NY covered by ice. In NY, 49,000 electricity customers were without power, 96,500 outages in Michigan and 39,000 in Pennsylvania.
The northern parts of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan experienced a double portion of wintry weather in December as the storm was accompanied by lake-effect snow on the back side of a system that caused blizzard conditions, with snowfall totals for a few locations reaching 24”. Part of Interstate 75 in Detroit was closed due to several automobile crashes. A wind advisory was in effect for the entire NYC area, NJ and Connecticut.
The storm that battered the Northeast in late December was a continuation of one that swept across parts of the Midwest a few days earlier, with several tornadoes striking Illinois, including one that damaged roofs and downed trees in Christian County. In Hilton, Monroe County, NY, 131 residents were evacuated from an assisted Living Community due to water leaks from heavy rain and melting snow. Governor Hochul declared a state of emergency for over half of the counties in NY after another winter storm system brought heavy snowfall, including the heaviest snow accumulation in NYC in nearly four years.
On Christmas eve, torrential rainfall flooded streets in Northern California, produced mudslides in the burn scars from wildfires in Southern California and dumped wet snow across the Sierra Nevada, with some residents in the mountain communities spending all of Christmas under evacuation orders and a flash flood warning was in effect in the Oxnard area, in Ventura County.
On Christmas day, a record-setting holiday rainstorm disrupted parts of California, swamping major highways, shutting down airport runways and prompting tornado warnings. Over 72,000 customers in California were without power, down from 160,000 at dawn on Christmas morning. The hardest-hit area in California was Wrightwood, in the mountains of San Bernardino County, which was pounded on Christmas eve by storms that sent a torrent of mud, rocks and debris crashing into homes and other buildings prompting the local power company to issue warnings to residents that an outage there would continue for a week. The deluge and ensuing debris inundated roadways in Wrightwood on Christmas Eve, with emergency crews evacuating people from their homes and vehicles. Helicopters landed on the roofs of houses to rescue stranded residents and horses from the flood waters and some homes filled with almost five feet of mud.
Two weeks of “atmospheric river” deluges took a severe toll on businesses in Leavenworth, Wash., and beyond, reminding the region that a warming planet has brought new uncertainty. For a city reliant on its seasonal trade for most of its income, 40% of Leavenworth’s annual sales take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and being closed for a few days in that window is devastating. “We have been told to expect climate change and weather changes to make things harder, to make things less predictable,” Mayor Carl Florea said.
A heavy band of rain that set off flash flooding in Northern California in late December killed at least one person, and travelled south drenching the San Francisco and Sacramento regions, with parts of Northern California under a flood watch and parts of Shasta County received as much as 6” of rain. “A significant amount of rain fell in a short period, overwhelming infrastructure and contributing to flooding across the city,” City officials said.
In mid-December, strong winds pounded several Western states where earlier flooding in December prompted tens of thousands of evacuations. Weather warnings for high winds were in place for millions of people across the West and the Midwest in mid-December, and wind speeds of 112 mph were recorded in North Bend, Wash. Over 200,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana were without power. Rainfall totals across the east Fraser Valley in British Columbia ranged from about 6-10”. In western Washington, 16” fell in the Cascade Range, with over 4-8” in the valleys spread between the mountains and Puget Sound. The water poured into the rivers, pushing many of them to record levels and caused devastating flooding.
A storm in early December drenched Washington State and British Columbia for four consecutive days prompting evacuations and road closures, as parts of the Pacific Northwest endured the region’s worst flooding in decades. Evacuation orders were issued for residents along the Skagit River, northeast of Seattle, and along the Puyallup River, southeast of Tacoma, and other areas as the deluge caused rivers to move with a force and swiftness never before recorded. Washington Governor, Gov. Ferguson declared a state of emergency and major highways were closed in British Columbia as the downpour triggered flooding and falling rocks.
East of Seattle, along the Snoqualmie river, emergency crews rescued several people stranded in cars by rising floodwaters, and a landslide closed parts of Interstate 90, with several people rescued by helicopter in Snohomish County, Seattle, after their homes were inundated by floodwaters. The deluge caused eight rivers in Western Washington to rise to “major flood stage”, which typically means widespread flooding threatening transportation, businesses and residences.
In Douala, Cameroon, in late November, record high temperatures for the hottest night were set with a minimum temperature of 79.16oF.
In late November, intense heat moved to New South Wales with temperatures above 98.6oF. A record nighttime temperature of 72.68F was recorded in Cessnock, and a historic high of 116.24F was recorded for Bedourie, setting a monthly record for November and the world’s highest temperature for November, with a nighttime high of 93.56oF making it the warmest spring night in Australia since 1965. Other record nighttime high temperatures for November were 77.72F for Blackwater and 79.52F Lochington, in Queensland.
US Virgin Islands had its hottest November day in history with 92oF recorded in Saint Thomas. All months of 2023, 2024 and 2025 have shattered heat records in the Virgin Islands for almost every day of every month.
In late November, Cyclone Ditwah came ashore in Sri Lanka and unleashed a wave of flooding and landslides across the country, submerging entire towns. In early December, the death toll from the cyclone rose to over 350, with hundreds missing and tens of thousands of people displaced. Sri Lanka’s President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, said that the cyclone was the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history.” The flooding and landslides affected over a million people and emergency responders were overwhelmed. Rescue teams, aided by personnel and aircraft from neighboring India struggled to reach areas that had become inaccessible. More than 15,000 homes were destroyed. All of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts were affected by the deluge with floods and landslides significantly impacting 22 districts. “The whole country is a disaster zone, except for a few places,” officials said. The estimated cost of the damage caused by the Cyclone was between $6-$7 billion dollars.
About one-third of Sri Lanka’s population makes a living from agriculture, and with over 137,000 acres of land destroyed by the floods, along with wrecked dams and canals, a heavy economic toll has been disproportionately imposed on low-income households, women, children and older persons, a few weeks after rice paddies had been planted, resulting in the loss of livelihoods.
In late November, Thailand’s military sent troops, helicopters and boats to rescue people inundated by floodwaters in the southern provinces. At least 33 people were killed and over two million people were displaced. In Hat Yai, Songkhla, roads were submerged several feet high in the murky deluge, and people were trapped on roofs and hung on to electrical wires to stay above the floodwaters waiting to be rescued. Thailand’s Prime Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, declared a state of emergency in Songkhla. Other Southeast Asian countries were hit with persistent monsoon rains that caused devastation in November. Dozens of people died from flooding and landslides in Vietnam, and deadly floods in Malaysia and Indonesia led to evacuations and rescues. The 2025 monsoon season was heavier than usual in Southeast Asia. Experts say that is partly a function of the La Niña climate phenomenon.
A late November record high of 83.12F was reported in Akthy in Russia’s highlands, 1,000 meters above sea level, making it the highest temperature ever recorded in Russia in late November. Also, a historic nighttime high of 62.6F was recorded. In Carsamba, Turkey, a historic November high of 76.82F, was set.
General
The big ticket items that set off five-alarm bells are global warming, which is melting the polar ice caps and sea ice, rising sea levels, loss of reflectivity of the snow and ice (Albedo effect), loss of equatorial rain forests, slowing oceanic currents and altered atmospheric jet streams all of which alters long-established weather patterns and leads to extreme weather including heat waves, floods, droughts and freezes. The impacts are rising human deaths and animals threatened with extinction, altered chemical composition of the oceans affecting the entire food chain including homo sapiens, reduced crop productivity, uninhabitable lands leading to millions of environmental refugees and the rise of nationalism. Numerous positive feedback loops that threaten runaway warming and work synergistically boosting all of the above.
New research published in late March found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. The big ticket items are clearly established by science but countless impacts are still being discovered. “Key impacts are exceeding what models predicted when it comes to extreme weather, the intensification of hurricanes, ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise,” said Michael Mann, a professor of environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Weird weather is one obvious manifestation. At the end of winter, the temperature in parts of California and the Southwest exceeded 100F and recent research has found that the duration and intensity of heat waves is accelerating. Also at this time, blizzard conditions struck the upper Midwest and severe thunderstorms moved east from Arkansas to the Gulf. “Things are getting really outside of what humans have ever seen,” said Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London. “Almost every part of the world is experiencing these extreme events.”
Global average temperatures have climbed nearly 1.5C above preindustrial levels, a threshold that is seen as crucial for avoiding the worst effects of climate change. A recent study found that the rate of global warming has accelerated since 2015. Atmospheric warming has warmed the seas, which have been showing signs of strain in recent years. Ocean temperatures are hitting record highs around the globe, resulting in mass coral bleaching from the Caribbean to Australia, a sharp decline in fish populations and SLR due to thermal expansion. The oceans have been absorbing more than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere and may be unable to continue to do so, in which case the planet could warm alarmingly faster and hotter than at present.
Ocean temperatures have set records for each of the past eight years with the rate of ocean warming roughly doubling over the past two decades compared with the longer-term trend. More than half of the world’s oceans have experienced marine heat waves in a typical year, according to NOAA. The fourth global coral bleaching event started in 2023, with reefs across the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans suffering extensive damage. It was still in progress in 2025.
The North and South poles have both experienced abnormal heat and in Antarctica, the Thwaites Glacier is melting at an alarming rate. If it breaks apart entirely, global sea levels could rise by two feet over the course of several decades, putting millions of people and all major coastal cities at risk. Antarctic sea ice is also plummeting, with the four lowest readings in the 47-year satellite record all occurring over the past four years.
“Sea ice loss in Antarctica is very concerning, because if it continues to melt, we risk self-perpetuating processes, whereby you expose more of the ocean, and that warms the surface of the ocean,” said Bethan Davies, a geologist at Newcastle University. “It’s a tipping point” and a positive (meaning, self-perpetuating) endless feedback loop. Human civilization, as we know it, might be unable to adapt to such changes.
In 2023 and 2024, all 58 of the main glaciers tracked by the World Glacier Monitoring Service across five continents suffered the greatest average ice loss in 55-years of records. The European Alps lost roughly 10% of their remaining glacier volume in just two years, while Venezuela became the first Andes nation to lose all its glaciers. Billions of people face less drinking and irrigation water and a dire threat to their accustomed lifestyles.
The warming atmosphere and melting glaciers contribute to SLR. The rate of SLR has more than doubled since satellite measurements began in 1993, leading to warnings about the fate of coastal cities from Miami to Jakarta. Millions of people and trillions of dollars in real estate and infrastructure are at risk far beyond anything insurance might cover.
In fact, researchers recently found that a majority of studies on coastal sea levels underestimated how high water levels are, and hundreds of millions of people are closer to peril than previously thought. The new study, published March 4 in the journal Nature, has found that coastal sea levels are, on average, eight inches to a foot higher than many maps and models of the world’s coastlines indicate. The discrepancies are much bigger in Southeast Asia and Pacific nations, particularly in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Maldives, where ocean dynamics are more complex. There, coastal sea levels are up to several meters higher than commonly estimated.
That matters as governments and policymakers turn to science to understand how much land, and how many people, may be affected as the world warms and oceans rise, said Katharina Seeger, who led the study while working toward her Ph.D. at the University of Cologne. “I didn’t expect the discrepancy to be so immense,” she said.
The vast majority of scientists are clear as to the cause of and solution to climate change: fossil fuel burning/cessation of same. Since the Industrial Revolution, emitting GHGs has led to global warming. The hottest year in recorded history was 2024, and each of the 10 warmest years on record have come in the past decade. In 1997 nearly 200 nations agreed to limit GHG emissions in the landmark Kyoto Protocol. Since then, humanity has released more GHGs than in all prior history. Humanity is failing to adequately address a clear and present danger to our future.
Like the oceans, forests and soils have been absorbing excess heat but they too may be maxed out. “Taken together, we see the first signs of a planet that is losing resilience, or losing strength to buffer heat stress,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “The consequence of such loss of resilience will be increased rate of warming” and all that results from it as noted above.
Another natural buffer against global warming is in danger. Snow and ice have cooled the planet for billions of years. Their reflective surface helps control how much energy enters and exits the planet, sending as much as 80% of the sun’s heat back into space. Millions of square miles of Arctic sea ice has been crucial in cooling seawater and helping to maintain a temperature conducive for marine life and that influences both oceanic currents and the jet stream, which move heat, weather and moisture across North America, Europe and Asia.
As the planet warms, snow and ice melt which disrupts the patterns of winter, and leaves humanity and the natural world, dangerously exposed to the sun’s heat. We are still learning of the many impacts from this exposure. The tundra in Arctic Canada and the Siberian steppe contains nine million square miles of frozen methane-rich permafrost. It is thawing and releasing methane which is raising the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and may radically increase global warming. This is another positive feedback loop that we may have triggered which we may not be able to stop.
Global warming is affecting nine million square miles in the northern reaches of the planet. Arctic permafrost isn’t thawing gradually, as scientists once predicted. It is thawing rapidly. As soils like the ones in eastern Siberia at Duvanny Yar thaw, they’re releasing vestiges of ancient life—and masses of carbon—that have been locked in frozen dirt for millennia. Entering the atmosphere as methane or CO2, the carbon accelerates climate change. Methane, a potent GHG, is bubbling from thawing ground under lakes across the Arctic. In winter, surface ice traps the gas.
New discoveries suggest that the faster the planet warms that faster the carbon will escape. Researchers suspect that for every 1C rise in Earth’s average temperature, permafrost may release the equivalent of four to six years’ worth of coal, oil, and natural gas emissions—double to triple what scientists thought a few years ago. Within a few decades, at current emissions rates, permafrost could be as big a source of GHGs as China, the world’s largest emitter today.
This immense carbon source has not been factored into climate change models. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has only recently incorporated this escaping methane into its projections. As this recent study reveals, the IPCC may well be underestimating this potentially devastating factor. If humanity has any hope to limit warming to 2C, as 195 nations agreed as the upper limit during the 2015 Paris talks, this research suggests we must speed up our emissions reductions by eight years sooner than current IPCC models suggest, to account for the increasing thawing.
Permafrost, ground that remains frozen year-round, is capped by a few feet of dirt and plant detritus. Called the active layer, this soil normally thaws each summer and refreezes in winter, protecting permafrost from rising heat above. But in the spring of 2018, workers found that dirt near the surface around Cherskiy in the extreme northeast of Siberia, had not iced up at all during the long dark polar night. That was unheard of: January in Siberia is brutally cold. Soil 30 inches down should have been frozen. Instead, it was mush. “Three years ago, the temperature in the ground above our permafrost was minus 3 degrees Celsius (27F),” Sergey Zimov, a Russian biologist, said. “Then it was minus 2. Then it was minus one. This year, the temperature was plus 2 degrees.”
Earth’s five warmest years since the late 19th century have come since 2014, and the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, as it loses the sea ice that helps chill it. In 2017 tundra in Greenland faced its worst known wildfire. In 2025, thermometers in Lakselv, Norway, 240 miles above the Arctic Circle, recorded a blistering 32C, or 90F.
Permafrost temperatures globally have been rising for half a century. On Alaska’s North Slope, they spiked 11F in 30 years. Localized thawing of permafrost, especially in villages where development disturbs the surface and allows heat to penetrate, has eroded shorelines, undermined roads and schools, cracked pipelines, and collapsed ice cellars where Arctic hunters store walrus meat and bowhead whale blubber. Warm summers are already warping life for Arctic residents.
The phenomenon wasn’t limited to Siberia. Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, had for years watched the active layer freeze completely by mid-January at some 180 research sites in Alaska. But there too, the freezing slipped first to February, then to March. In 2018, eight of Romanovsky’s sites near Fairbanks and a dozen on the Seward Peninsula, in western Alaska, never fully froze at all.
Globally, permafrost holds up to 1,600 gigatons of carbon, nearly twice what’s in the atmosphere. No one expects all or even most of that to thaw. Until recently, researchers presumed permafrost would lose at most 10% of its carbon. Even that, it was thought, could take as much as 80 years.
But when the active layer stops freezing in winter, things speed up. The added warmth lets microbes eat organic material in the soil—and emit CO2 or methane—year-round, instead of for just a few short months each summer. And the winter warmth spreads down into the permafrost itself, thawing it faster. “A lot of our assumptions are breaking down,” said Róisín Commane, an atmospheric chemist at Columbia University who tracks carbon emissions by airplane. She and her colleagues have discovered that the amount of CO2 coming off Alaska’s North Slope in early winter has increased by 73% since 1975. “We’ve been trying to understand what’s going on in the Arctic by relying on summer,” Commane said. “But after the sun goes down—that’s when the real story begins.”
“Abrupt thaw” changes the whole landscape. It triggers landslides; on Banks Island in Canada, scientists documented a 60-fold increase in massive ground slumps from 1984 to 2013. All permafrost thaw leads to GHG emissions but standing water accelerates the threat. The gas that bubbles from the oxygen-deprived mud under ponds and lakes is not only CO2 but also methane, which is 25 times as potent a GHG as CO2. Ecologist Katey Walter Anthony of the University of Alaska Fairbanks has been measuring the methane coming from Arctic lakes for two decades. Her latest calculations suggest that new lakes created by abrupt thaw could nearly triple the GHG emissions expected from permafrost.
It’s not clear how much of this message has reached policymakers. Last October the IPCC unveiled a new report on the more ambitious of two temperature goals adopted at the 2015 Paris conference. The planet already has warmed by about 1C (1.8F) since the 19th century. Capping global warming at 1.5C rather than two degrees, the report said, would expose 420 million fewer people to frequent extreme heat waves, and it would halve the number of plants and animals facing habitat loss. It also might save some coral reefs—and as much as 770,000 square miles of permafrost. But to achieve the 1.5C goal, according to the IPCC, the world would have to cut GHG emissions 45% by 2030, eliminate them completely by 2050, and develop technologies to suck huge quantities out of the atmosphere.
The 1.5C report was the first time the IPCC had taken permafrost emissions into account—but it didn’t include emissions from abrupt thaw. Climate models aren’t yet sophisticated enough to capture that kind of rapid landscape change. But scientists have estimated that we’d have to zero out fossil fuel emissions by 2044, six years ahead of the IPCC timetable. That gives us under two decades to completely transform the global energy system.
Global warming has melted so much ice in Greenland and Antarctica that Earth’s rotation has slowed and its axis has shifted. One of the ways scientists know this is that it has slightly altered the length of the day and has lessened the precision of satellite tracking, global positioning systems and timekeeping.
The infusion of immense amounts of fresh, melt-water impacts the chemical composition of the ocean and disrupts the food chain, it also is affecting the oceanic currents that regulate the planet’s climate. Scientists fear we are approaching the collapse of these currents which could lead to colder winters in Britain, stronger hurricanes in the Eastern US and, perhaps shifts in the rain belts that feed people across Africa, South America and Asia. This would cause incalculable disruption, upheaval and suffering. And that’s just the northern current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. There is a similar current flowing around the Antarctic and scientists fear it too is warming and contributing to the weird weather globally. AMOC flows from the tropics, up the east coast of north America toward Iceland and Greenland where the warm water meets cold air and releases some of its heat (warming Britain and northern Eurpose), becoming colder and denser. It then sinks and flows through the abyss past South America and around Antarctica before resurfacing centuries later, and begins its northerly flow again.
The Arctic melt-water dilutes the warm, salty currents that travel up from the tropics, causing them to sink less. It is this sinking that propels that warm water north. When one end of the flow slows, the other ends does so as well. Eventually, the whole flow could cease. Northern Europe could cool, dramatically, and more heat could remain near the Caribbean fueling extra powerful hurricanes and disrupting atmospheric weather patterns including rainfall distribution on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere. Again, the impacts are incalculable in terms of human suffering, economic disruption, displacement and conflict.
Geological evidence shows that oceanic currents have been slowed several times before, most recently around 12,800 years ago (when northern Europe suffered a severe and sudden cooling event called the Younger Dryas). There are signs that such a slowdown is underway, and scientists’ models predict it will continue for decades possibly resulting in a shutdown.
The Antarctic Overturning Circulation circulates around the Antarctic continent and poses a more imminent threat to humanity than AMOC. Global climate models consistently project a slowing or collapse of the AOC under a warming climate. AOC is a critical component of the global carbon cycle that amplified global climate changes over past glacial–interglacial cycles by altering the amount of CO2 stored in ocean and atmosphere reservoirs. Today, the complex interplay between carbon being released from upwelling deep water, and absorption and storage of carbon, results in a net drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere into the Southern Ocean. However, as the overturning circulation slows this balance may shift, reducing the Southern Ocean’s ability to sequester anthropogenic CO2 and generating an amplifying feedback that intensifies climate warming over multiple centuries. Other far-reaching consequences of AOC slowdown could enhance and speed up SLR.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is prone to tipping dynamics. The most vulnerable region is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A critical threshold for WAIS collapse is estimated around 2C global warming above pre-industrial temperatures, and a partial collapse could occur at lower temperatures. Its collapse may have begun as the warming ocean melts the ice sheet from below which releases the land-based ice to slide into the ocean.
Evidence from the Last Interglacial, a period with global temperatures about 1C warmer than pre-industrial conditions, suggests there was large-scale ice retreat in Antarctica contributing to global sea levels 6 metres or more above present. Recent SLR estimates are less but still imply Antarctic ice loss contributions could be devastating.
As the changes to the chemical composition of the ocean and its temperature have been abrupt, the resulting biological losses are potentially irreversible where they result in widespread and repeated breeding failures that increase extinction risks. For example, scientists fear the potential extinction of emperor penguins by 2100. Since 2016, satellite imagery has documented numerous colony-scale breeding failure events.
Antarctica’s sea ice comes and goes with the seasons, melting in spring and summer and forming in winter, with an annual peak in September. Lately, these peaks have been well below average. In 2025, the area around Antarctica that was covered by sea ice in September was the third lowest annual maximum since satellite-based records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Only 2023 and 2024 had less sea ice for that time of year. The recent record lows mark a big change for Antarctica, where for decades sea ice was either stable or above average. But since 2015, these figures consistently come in below average.
The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an alarming rate. If it breaks apart entirely, it could raise global sea levels by two feet over the course of several decades, affecting tens of millions worldwide. In Bangkok, 7 million people are w/in 2’ of high tide line with many already below HTL. In Shanghai, 4.7 million people are at risk; Kolkata, India 1.7 million; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 1.6 million; Tokyo 1.3 million; Lagos, Nigeria 530,000; Dhaka, Bangladesh 400,000; New Orleans 120,000; Miami 125,000.
These are just the minimum effects that Thwaites’s disintegration would be likely to have on the world’s coastlines. As the glacier breaks apart, global warming will raise sea levels even higher by melting the ice from Greenland and causing oceans to expand in volume. Thwaites acts as a plug, holding back many of the Antarctic glaciers on land around it. If it collapses, they could break apart and spill into the sea as well.
The costs of guarding against higher storm surges and more frequent flooding will be huge. One proposal from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect parts of NYC would cost more than $52 billion, a price tag that would be out of reach for much of the world. “We’ll defend the highest-value places that are defensible, but there will be other places that we don’t,” said Benjamin Strauss, Chief Scientist at Climate Central, a nonprofit science organization.
Not all places have the resources to protect themselves. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is expected to swell to over 50 million people by 2050 and will rely extensively on borrowed money to prepare for the worst. Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation, is experiencing more volatile monsoons and stronger cyclones as the planet warms. Villages have already been erased as the tides rise and rivers in the region change course. Saltwater tides have ruined farmland, driving rural residents to the already-crowded capital.
When the network of pumps and levees failed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the catastrophe killed 1,400 people and displaced more than a million. Recovery there has cost about $140 billion. Yet people and buildings continue to accumulate in harm’s way. Miami’s population and real estate values have exploded in recent years, even though the city is notoriously difficult to protect.
Clearer answers about if, and when, Thwaites could collapse may make all the difference in how well coastal areas are able to adapt. “The value of the information is grotesquely higher than what we’ve invested in it,” Dr. Alley Richard Alley, a professor of geosciences at Penn State, said. The Trump administration has abandoned research that could better forecast the effects of Antarctica’s melting ice. It has also promoted the use and burning of fossil fuels, adding to the GHG emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. That could speed up the glacier’s collapse. The fallout from decisions made today may not be felt immediately, Dr. Strauss said, but “this is what we’re signing up the future for.”
Greenland holds 23 feet of sea level rise, should we eventually melt it all. It’s been losing mass steadily for the past 29 years—it lost 105 billion tons of ice in 2025, and the ice was melting well into September, unusual in a place where winter usually begins in late August. It shrank by nearly 2,000 square miles from 1985 to 2022, according to a study published in Nature.
Additional positive feedback loops threaten. Just as the loss of reflective sea ice exposes darker sea water which absorbs more sun and heat which melts more sea ice, ect., so does the loss of snowfall and melting of snow and ice on land which exposes darker ground which absorbs solar radiation, substantially increasing warming which leads to more melting and more absorption, etc. This too may be underway and may continue to warm the planet and work synergistically with the other feedback loops that also may be underway and unstoppable.
According to a 2020 study, North America lost 46 metric gigatons of snow per decade in the past 39 years. (One metric gigaton of ice would cover Central Park in NYC 1,100 feet deep.) The length of winter at US ski resorts is projected to decline, in some locations by more than 50% by 2050 and by 80% by 2090, another study found. Spring snowpack in the American West declined by nearly 20% from 1955 to 2020. The climate is warming faster at higher elevations, at higher latitudes and in the winter.
The retreat of winter and the decline of mountain snowpacks across the US contribute to drying and dying forests, intensifying drought, increasing wildfire risk and diminishing water supplies for farms and reservoirs. We are only at the beginning of climate destabilization, in which winter weather grows more erratic and extreme, leading to increased melting, which leads to more warming.
Mountain glaciers act as the world’s water towers providing fresh water to farms, cities, forests, rivers and other habitats and to more than two billion people. Rapid melting in the Alps has diminished several of Europe’s major watersheds, with negative effects ranging from growing crops to hydroelectric generation to cooling nuclear power plants. A similar crisis is taking shape in Asia as glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau melt depleting rivers that provide more than one billion people with water.
So much glacial melt has occurred that the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal, has dropped more than 220 feet in 50 years. Satellites have found 19,300 high-altitude lakes in the Himalayas, each of which could threaten people, structures and farms below. In 2023 in northern India a half mile long segment of partially frozen earth collapsed into a lake, creating a 65-foot tsunami that tore down-slope killing dozens of people and destroying homes and a hydropower dam.
In a few decades winter blizzards could cease. Without deep reductions in GHG emissions in the US and elsewhere, winter as we know it could be gone by mid-century. Just 1C (1.8F) of average global warming melts the fragile crystals that blanket our mountains and backyards in winter. If we lose them, we lose the shield that has helped humanity thrive for the past 10,000 years.
The Amazonian rainforests play numerous crucial roles as a carbon sink, an oxygen supplier, and as habitat for biodiversity. A study published in Nature Communications on September 2 found that about 75% of the decrease in regional rainfall is directly linked to deforestation. The study also found that tree loss was partly responsible for increased heat across the Amazon. Since 1985, the hottest days in the Amazon have warmed by about 2C. About 16% of that increase was due to deforestation. The Amazon rainforest supplies the planet with 6-9% of our oxygen. It helps regulate the global climate by absorbing planet-warming CO2.
The Amazon affects regional weather patterns. Its trees pull water from the soil and via transpiration release moisture through their leaves. There are hundreds of billions of trees in the Amazon Basin and the water they collectively release into the air contributes to more than 40% of the region’s rainfall. Less rainfall doesn’t just mean less water for plants and animals. As the forest becomes drier, it becomes prone to burning, which eliminates more trees and releases more carbon. The region has been degraded by slash-and-burn agriculture which utilizes fires to clear huge tracts of land for ranching and farming. These fires often burn out of control.
In 2024, more than 40 million acres of the Amazon rainforest burned. And in the first half of 2025, deforestation was 27% higher than in the same period of 2024. It’s yet another feedback loop where deforestation releases carbon which raises heat which dries the forest which then burns and releases more carbon which results in less rainfall and more dryness and fire and more carbon emissions and more heat, etc. This loop could be curtailed with increased protection of the forest and less consumption of beef reducing pressure to deforest the Amazon for cattle grazing.
Brazil’s largest farms are adjacent to the remaining forest. Adequate rainfall for crops in these regions requires a healthy forest. Farmers in states like Mato Grosso have suffered crop losses due to drought. In 2024, the state had 150 days straight without rain. “If you don’t have rainfall, then you don’t have rain for farming in Brazil,” said Marco Franco, an assistant professor at the University of São. “This isn’t something for the future. This is already happening now.”
Less Big-Ticket impacts of climate change are still profoundly disruptive and transformative. For example, studies in the Arctic, in and around Svalbard, where warming is occuring as much as seven times as fast as the rest of the planet, the food chain is being upended. Underwater kelp forests are surging into once-frozen waters, replacing other native species. Reindeer, cut off from traditional foraging routes over vanishing sea ice, now graze on seaweed when they cannot reach more nutritious inland grasses and lichen.
Warming has reduced the snow and ice cover at sea which means more underwater kelp growth to the detriment of native vegetation. Less sea ice means less of a platform for polar bears to hunt seals, so they’ve turned to less satisfying meals of bird eggs and pursuing reindeer and raiding human settlements.
Scientists have measured this unrelenting feedback loop play out for decades. Collapsing ice has wide-ranging effects. Seals can’t dig breeding dens without snow cover, which means less food for polar bears and foxes. Indigenous communities in other areas of the Arctic lose the frozen highways they’ve long used for hunting and travel.
Vipindas Kavumbai, an Indian microbiologist found that as Arctic waters warm, cold-adapted bacteria are decreasing, replaced by faster-growing species better suited to rising temperatures. “When the sea ice melts and more heat comes, these organisms cannot survive,” he said. “Other organisms replace them.” The result, at the microscopic level, is called a “community shift.” Changes at the microscopic level produce changes up the food chain. Near the top, Polar bears now come ashore nearly a month earlier than they did in the 1990s. If they arrive before seabird eggs hatch, they can wipe out up to 90% of nests. On the other side of the Arctic, in Hudson Bay, polar bear populations are crashing. Longer ice-free seasons have pushed many toward starvation. “I think a lot of what we have today will be lost,” said Dr. Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Reports from groups like Carbon Tracker and studies cited by NPR, The Guardian, and the UN confirm that solar, wind, and battery systems possess the technical potential to meet global energy demand many times over, highlighting their immense resource availability, falling costs, and decreasing intermittency challenges. Key findings such as Carbon Tracker’s 2021 report stated that solar and wind potential exceeds global energy demand by over 100 times, calling it an "infinite energy reserve". They emphasize the economic shift, with renewables becoming the cheapest power in many regions, pushing out fossil fuels and can power grids 100% with storage, demonstrating feasibility for infinite energy supply, though policy and grid upgrades are needed for full realization.
NPR (citing Ember) reported in late 2025 that renewables surpassed coal for global electricity generation, with solar and wind exceeding demand growth, showing rapid progress toward full renewable power. The Guardian cited a 2018 study showing wind and solar could power the entire US, even with over-design for reliability, demonstrating grid viability.
The UN promotes renewables as the backbone for a safer, healthier future, noting they can power new demand (like AI centers), cut emissions, and improve health by reducing pollution from fossil fuels, with potential to decarbonize 90% of power by 2050.
In Jan. 2026, a court in The Hague ruled that the Dutch government violated the European Convention on Human Rights in failing to take sufficient action regarding climate change to protect the residents of Bonaire, an island off the coast of Venezuela that is a special municipality of the Netherlands. It's highly vulnerable to SLR, extreme heat, storms, and flooding. The court found the government had discriminated against Bonaire's residents in failing to treat them the same way as residents of the Netherlands. The court ordered the government to draft a detailed adaptation plan to be implemented within four years. The case was brought by eight residents of Bonaire and Greenpeace Netherlands.
This decision is a foretaste of more cases to come, where the general obligations of states are made more specific, and states are required to protect particular places or address particular kinds of impacts. It also shows that some domestic courts (not in the US), which have the power to issue binding orders, will pick up the guidance of international tribunals and turn them into more concrete actions.
Washington DC
In mid-March, a coalition of 24 states and a dozen cities and counties sued the Trump administration over the government’s alleged failure to fulfill its legal authority to fight climate change. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It may be consolidated with a case that environmental groups filed in February, which would make it one of the largest legal challenges to date against the Trump administration’s unraveling of federal climate policy.
The suit concerns the “endangerment finding.” Plaintiffs are arguing that EPA acted illegally when it rescinded the 2009 scientific conclusion that CO2 and other GHGs endanger public health and welfare. That determination is the legal basis for the agency to regulate emissions from automobile tailpipes, power plant smokestacks, oil and gas wells, and other sources. “The endangerment finding is critical for us to protect the health and well-being of our families, of our kids,” said Andrea Joy Campbell, the attorney general of Massachusetts, which is leading the lawsuit (with CA, NY, CT, AZ, CO, DE, HI, IL, ME, MD, MI, MN, NJ, NM, NV, NC, OR, RI, VT, VA, WA, WI, DC, and the governor of PA).
Plaintiffs also seek to reverse EPA’s repeal of limits on GHGs produced by motor vehicles. Transportation is the largest single source of GHGs in the US, accounting for more than a third of total climate pollution.
The Trump administration has begun its repeal of federal rules imposed by the Biden administration on cars and trucks, coal-fired power plants and other sources of climate pollution. Rescinding the endangerment finding is a frontal attack on climate regulations. If courts uphold the repeal, then EPA would lack legal authority to regulate GHGs and future presidents would be unable to simply restore limits through the federal rule-making process.
Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his cabinet secretaries have claimed the planet’s rapid warming is having little effect on humanity. But in support of its rescission, EPA argued that the Clean Air Act of 1970 only allows the government to limit pollution that causes direct harm to Americans. The agency asserted that GHGs, which collect in the atmosphere to form a blanket-like layer that traps heat from the Earth’s surface and carry global effects, do not meet that criteria.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument in the landmark 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA. Justices in that case found that GHGs are air pollutants under the CAA, and that the agency could regulate such emissions if EPA found GHGs endanger human health or the environment. Two years later, EPA made such a finding in its nearly 200-page scientific analysis.
On March 31, the Trump administration convened a “God Squad” with the power to override protections under the Endangered Species Act, in order to advance oil and gas projects in the Gulf of Mexico. The group is officially called the Endangered Species Committee. The members can decide that major economic factors outweigh obligations under the ESA if a federal action is deemed to be in the public interest and is nationally or regionally significant.
The Committee voted unanimously to exempt oil and gas projects in the Gulf of Mexico from ESA protections. The cabinet-level committee cited national security concerns regarding the war in Iran to accelerate drilling. The exemption request was submitted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, marking the first time the panel was called to consider national security for such an exemption.
In mid-Marach, the Trump administration sued California to block its strict limits on planet-warming pollution from cars, arguing that the restrictions would unlawfully force a rapid transition to EVs in the state. The Trump administration argued that California’s limits violate the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which directed the federal government to set “uniform” clean car rules that apply to all 50 states. About nine months earlier, the Republican-controlled Congress moved to block California from banning sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
The Trump administration has systematically moved to slash federal support for EVs, which do not emit any planet-warming pollution. EPA has erased limits on GHG emissions from vehicle tailpipes, and Trump signed a law in 2025 eliminating a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for new EV purchases.
California is one of the largest car markets in the world and it is suing the Trump administration in federal court to defend its authority to ban sales of gas cars. In the meantime, the California Air Resources Board has continued to enforce stringent limits on GHG emissions from vehicles in the state.
Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the US. Upon returning to the White House, Trump canceled it. The researchers completed it on their own and in early March they released a 868-page draft for public comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings are grim: Freshwater ecosystems across the country are in crisis, “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and invaded.” Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34% of plant species and 40% of animal species are at risk of extinction.
The report’s name changed from the National Nature Assessment to the Nature Record, to reflect that it is a new, independent effort, but it builds off work that was already underway and most of the authors remain the same. The report explores not only actions that harm nature, but also how people are affected by nature and its loss, with chapters on human health, the economy and national security.
The assessment’s charge was to synthesize existing research, and so its individual findings are not new. Rather, it is intended to provide a scientific consensus by which policymakers and the public can make informed decisions. Themes of equity and environmental justice, which were valued by Biden but derided by Trump, suffuse the report. The report is open for public comment until May 30. The final version is slated for publication in late fall.
A week before the 2024 election, and before the war in Iran, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. Trump canceled it. A key environmental review of Jackalope by the Interior Department stalled progress for months and the project is now effectively dead as the Idaho utility canceled its contracts with Jackalope Wind, citing “uncertainties related to the federal permitting process.”
More than 60 large wind and solar farms under development on federal lands are at risk of being stymied by a pause on renewable energy permitting. The administration is also holding up hundreds of wind and solar projects on private land that require federal consultations. Many projects are facing potentially fatal delays in contrast to actions by the administration to facilitate projects producing oil, coal, gas and nuclear power. Idaho Power is accelerating plans to install nine engines that burn natural gas. NextEra Energy, the company behind Jackalope, said that it was scrapping the wind farm altogether.
The efforts to delay renewable energy on land could prove even more consequential than the administration’s battles against offshore wind. The five wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean that Trump is trying to stop would collectively produce up to 5,800 megawatts, roughly enough to power 2.5 million homes. But 73,000 megawatts of solar projects on land are currently at risk from political interference, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, which called Trump’s policies a “blockade.” “
Most of the wind and solar projects affected by the permitting slowdown were expected to come online in 2027 or later. Without them, companies say, the country could face a shortage of power and ratepayers could see even higher electric bills at a time when affordability has become a national concern. “Demand from utilities is astronomical,” said Sandhya Ganapathy, chief executive of EDP Renewables North America, a leading wind and solar developer. “But now permitting is becoming much more difficult, which means many projects may never come online or take forever to come online.” “It’s going to mean higher energy prices,” Ms. Ganapathy said.
In January Trump said “My goal is to not let any windmill be built.” So, companies are pivoting to the fossil fuels preferred by Trump. NextEra is one of the country’s largest wind and solar developers. Its chief executive, John Ketchum, told investors recently that renewables remain “the lowest-cost and fastest solution to meet our customers’ immediate needs.” Still, NextEra expects to build less wind and solar over the next two years than it forecast a year ago. The company is expanding plans for natural gas plants to power data centers which is among the most expensive ways to generate electricity. It also creates more air pollution and health problems.
The crackdown on renewable power comes as America’s demand for electricity is surging for the first time in decades. That makes adding wind and solar power an important near-term option, proponents say, since there are long waits for natural gas turbines and new nuclear reactors are years away. “The cheapest electrons we can add to the supply side of that equation are stuck on Secretary Burgum’s desk,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico.
The DOE and DOI are following orders to shut down America’s entire energy transition. The Solar Energy Industries Association reports that 500 projects representing 116 gigawatts worth of power are now endangered. This represents half of all the proposed power projects in America. Analysts at Sky News project that America will soon have “a real energy emergency.”
Due to Trump’s attacks on renewable energy projects, solar power installations declined in the US in 2025, as per a report released in mid-March. Solar energy remains the largest source of new electricity generation added to the electric grid in the US, but the amount added was 14% lower than in 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm.
The Iran war has sharply driven up the prices of oil and natural gas and other countries have turned to renewables, especially solar and wind. But in the US, the administration continues to oppose such projects and companies are shying away from clashing with the administration.
In summer, 2025, the Energy Department announced plans to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from federal renewable energy and efficiency programs, largely targeting solar and wind power. Other government departments and agencies have stalled environmental and other reviews of wind and solar projects. Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, is a frequent critic of renewable energy, calling it inadequate and unreliable while praising and directing more federal funding to coal, natural gas and nuclear projects.
But compelling economics tells a different story. The Energy Information Administration, a division of the Energy Department, still projects that solar power will account for over half of all new power projects in 2026. More than half of those new installations are expected in Texas, Arizona, California and Michigan. Wood Mackenzie expects global solar additions to triple by 2035, with countries like India and Saudi Arabia leading the way.
The greater use of solar panels is pushing the energy industry to produce a lot of batteries which can store excess electricity generated during the day for use at other times. In 2025, US energy storage installations grew 30% above the previous record, set in 2024, and were four times what the industry installed just three years ago.
Solar and batteries help individuals and businesses reduce electricity costs and support the electric grid which is struggling with rising energy demand. Utilities need to upgrade and repair aging equipment and prepare for extreme weather. Solar and batteries have proven the most cost effective, readily available answer. “Deployment is rising fast, but without a course correction from federal actions targeting the industry, Americans will face higher electricity prices and a less resilient energy system,” said Darren Van’t Hof, interim president and chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
In late March 2026, the Trump administration agreed to pay approximately $1 billion to French energy firm TotalEnergies to cancel two major offshore wind projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The deal involved refunding the company for its leases to stop the projects and pivot the investment toward fossil fuel projects. The canceled deals include the Attentive Energy project (off New York/New Jersey, 54 miles south of Jones Beach, NY) and the Carolina Long Bay project (off North Carolina, 22 miles south of Bald Head Island, NC). The projects were expected to power about 1.5 million homes. TotalEnergies forfeited its leases and agreed to invest the funds in oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas facility in Texas. To promote the growth of fossil fuels, the administration has announced plans to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest remaining tracts of pristine wilderness in the US.
Trump declared the first-ever national energy emergency on his first day back in office in January 2025. Experts said at the time that the US had abundant energy reserves, the war in the Middle East caused oil and gas prices to soar, adding to concerns about energy supplies. Still, Trump ordered the Interior Department in Dec. 2025 to halt all work on five other offshore wind farms.
In early Feb. 2026, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down the Interior Department’s order to halt work on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of NY, the fifth time the courts have ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail the country’s offshore wind industry. The Judge issued a preliminary injunction which allows the developer of the NY project, known as Sunrise Wind, to restart construction while the broader legal battle unfolds. The court did not accept the Interior Department’s claim that work must stop in the interests of national security. Judge Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, was unpersuaded by the government’s claims about national security after reviewing a classified report by the Defense Department under seal.
The previous four rulings allowed work to continue on Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, Empire Wind off New York, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind an $11.2 billion project off Virginia (which could be the nation's largest wind farm and was 70% complete; it will ultimately consist of 176 turbines with 2.6 gigawatts of electrical capacity, enough to power 660,000 homes) and Vineyard Wind off Massachusetts.
Sunrise Wind is in federal waters about 30 miles east of Montauk Point, N.Y. The project was 45% complete in Feb., with 44 out of 84 turbine foundations installed on the ocean floor. The project is expected to power nearly 600,000 homes in NY. In mid-March, Revolution Wind, off the coast of Rhode Island, began delivering power to New England’s electric grid. And Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts, said that it had completed construction, with workers installing the last of 62 turbines.
The Trump administration has also worked to stifle the growth of solar power. EPA revoked a $62.5 million Solar for All grant, which halted plans to deploy 21 megawatts of solar generation and 55 megawatt-hours of battery storage across the Virgin Islands.
In preparation for its frontal assault on the foundation for rules regulating GHG, Energy Secretary Chris Wrignt had handpicked five researchers, known as the Climate Working Group. who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming. Lee Zeldin, EPA’s administrator, then cited the report to justify the plan to repeal the endangerment finding. In late Jan., a federal judge ruled the Energy Department violated the law in selecting such a group, in failing to hold any public meetings, and in failing to make records available to the public.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. Erin Murphy, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, which brought the lawsuit together with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ruling should undercut the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate climate regulations.
The members of the Climate Working Group were Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist; Judith Curry, a climatologist; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor. All of them have questioned the scientific consensus that climate change poses severe risks to the planet and to human health.
As noted, Trump is boosting fossil fuel production and nuclear power while working to curtail the growth of wind and solar energy and not just in the US. The administration has pressured other countries to abandon their efforts to fight global warming and pursue renewable energy. He has used his tariffs and threats towards the European Union, South Korea and Japan which have pledged to buy or invest billions of dollars in US oil and liquefied natural gas.
In Trump’s first year, EPA has moved to delay, ease or eliminate more than a dozen regulations governing air pollution and planet-warming GHG emissions. Major EPA rollbacks include: a proposed rule issued June 11 to repeal air emissions including limits on mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fueled power plants; an Aug. 25, 2025 proposed rule to overrule California's emissions limits for trucks registered out of state; Sept. 9, 2025 Guidance to allow more kinds of construction activities without getting permits under the Clean Air Act; a Dec. 3, 2025 Final rule extending deadlines for iron and steel mills to reduce hazardous air pollutants; a June 11, 2025 proposed rule repealing limits on GHG emissions at coal- and gas-fueled power plants; the July 29, 2025 proposed rule rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding on GHGs and the resulting limits on emissions from cars; a Nov. 26, 2025 final rule delaying requirements for oil and gas companies to cut methane emissions; a Sept. 12, 2025 proposed rule ending requirements for polluting facilities to disclose their annual GHG emissions; a Sept. 30, 2025 proposed rule relaxing rules on climate super-pollutants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFC; and much more.
Trump promised to unleash US energy production and lower prices by promoting fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, while throttling renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. To that end, he has opened over one billion acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling. EPA revoked regulations that would have made it more difficult to build natural gas-fired power plants. The Energy Department has intervened to stop aging coal plants from retiring. Nuclear safety regulators have been ordered to more quickly approve reactors.
Trump and Congressional Republicans have repealed subsidies for solar panels, wind turbines and EVs, while agencies have slowed or stopped federal approvals for new wind and solar projects. The administration has also repealed or blocked vehicle efficiency standards that would have forced automakers to shift away from gasoline-burning cars. All told, companies canceled more than $32 billion in planned clean energy investments in 2025. Tech companies and utilities have backed away from their climate goals and ordering gigawatts worth of new plants that will burn natural gas to produce electricity needed for enormous data centers. Some AI companies, like Nvidia, have praised Trump’s energy policies for helping their industry expand.
Exports of liquefied natural gas are also soaring to record levels, while coal consumption, which had been in steep decline, has seen a modest rebound the past year. Trump promised to “drill, baby, drill” and has offered companies favorable tax and regulatory policies. To date, however, US oil production is still only slightly above the record levels set by the Biden administration, as companies have also faced countervailing headwinds from the sagging price of crude oil worldwide and Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war.
Still, most new power plants coming online this year will be wind, solar and batteries — in part because those projects were well underway under Biden. But analysts expect that in the future, the US will produce less renewable energy than previously expected and more CO2.
With rising gas prices due to the Iran war, the administration is facing backlash. Trump had also pledged to cut the price of electricity in half within 18 months of taking office, but prices are rising. Electricity prices nationwide increased 5% earlier in the year, faster than inflation. Experts say they are poised to jump again next year and have warned that efforts to stifle wind and solar power could hike prices further.
Global average temperatures are rising fast, but Trump has defunded climate research, government scientists have left government service, scientific data has been scrubbed from government websites and federal agencies have been instructed to remove terms like “climate change” from their websites. Trump has closed the independent research arm of EPA. It has proposed to erase money for climate science in next year’s budget of NOAA, while eliminating climate laboratories and severe storm research. He slashed funding and staffing for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the country and produced the above-noted report authored by selected climate skeptics.
Trump intends to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, a world-leading Earth science research institution and one of the world’s leading climate and weather laboratories. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, called it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” The Center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in understanding weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters. Scientists say the move to dismantle the center would weaken research that is crucial to understanding the atmosphere, space and oceans, air pollution and climate change. It would leave emergency officials and planners less prepared for extreme weather events. The center also operates a massive supercomputer, known as Derecho, in Cheyenne, Wyo., that scientists use to predict the behavior of wildfires, space weather, hurricanes and other complex weather patterns.
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote that the institution is “quite literally our global mother ship.” She said nearly everyone who researches climate and weather around the world has worked at or with NCAR. It “supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes — the largest community climate model in the world,” she wrote.
The Trump administration is also shutting down NASA’s space science lab, and NOAA’s CO2 monitoring station on Mauna Loa (an essential scientific instrument) as well as the three other such stations the US maintains around the world. The Trump administration is literally trashing the scientific equipment needed for this work.
Trump has effectuated the withdrawal of the US from the Paris climate agreement, a voluntary pact among nearly 200 countries to curb GHGs and keep global warming to 2C or less. Based on current pledges, the world is headed for global warming of around 2.7C, or 4.9F. While that may sound like a small difference from 2C, scientists have said that every fraction of a degree brings greater risks from heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction. Human civilization would be unrecognizable in a world warmed 2.7C. Trump also pulled the US from the top UN climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well the International Renewable Energy Association, which represents global clean energy interests, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
He helped scuttle a deal that over 100 nations were set to approve to slash pollution from cargo ships. He sided with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran to block part of a UN report about the state of the planet because it called for phasing out fossil fuels and the use of plastics. He approved a new national security strategy “restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear)” as “a top strategic priority,” which states “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.”
For the past 30 years, EPA, and other federal agencies, have set a value to human life to justify costs imposed on industry for protecting human health and the environment. That value has been around $11.7 million per human life. Now, for the first time ever, EPA has set the value at zero. EPA is no longer estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone. The agency now is only considering the costs to companies complying with pollution regulations. The change likely will result in looser controls on pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial sites across the country, resulting in dirtier air and an increase in human fatalities and illnesses.
The value of a statistical life that agencies have used for decades in the cost-benefit analyses justifying new regulations is out. The calculus EPA has used in support of rules saving human lives by clean-air rules dwarfed the costs of compliance by over 30-to-1. The statistical life value is credited with preventing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, which kills more Americans each year than vehicle crashes.
Michael Greenstone, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, said the change could result in dirtier air, undercutting the gains made since Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1970. Steep reductions in PM2.5 pollution have added 1.4 years to the average American’s life expectancy since 1970, according to research by the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index project. “Clean air is one of the great success stories of government policy in the last half-century,” Dr. Greenstone said. “And at the heart of the Clean Air Act is the idea that when you allow people to lead longer and healthier lives, that has value that can be measured in dollars.”
Dr. Viscusi said that if other agencies followed EPA’s latest approach, they would leave Americans more vulnerable to a range of threats to their lives and livelihoods. “Whether it’s highway safety, job safety or consumer product safety, the biggest benefits of regulations are from saving lives,” he said. “If saving lives is made irrelevant, it will undermine the justification for all forms of protective policies.”