"A natural warming cycle called El Niño is sizzling Pacific Ocean waters, leaking moisture into the air that can fuel passing storms. Such El Niño events can happen irregularly every couple of years, but scientists say the latest iteration is particularly extreme — and it’s just getting started, with impacts expected for several more months."
As the public and news media alike tally the outcomes of this week’s U.S. midterm elections, it is the costs of energy — to the economy and the environment, today and into the future — that will continue to grow to dominate global discourse. A Backgrounder Analysis looks at how environmental journalists must seek the fuller story of this vast energy beat.
"At the height of the Los Angeles fires in 2025, millions of residents were exposed in a 24-hour period to toxic lead levels from smoke that were 80 times higher than the typical background level, according to a new study."
"Sweeping cuts to the premier US climate agency under Donald Trump have severely hampered the country’s capacity to forecast, research and respond to extreme weather events, former government officials and scientists have warned, as the US faces a cascade of hazards fueled by a potentially historic El Niño this winter."
"About a month after three Florida counties declared states of emergency over what officials described as a “wildly unusual” dengue outbreak, infections of the mosquito-borne disease have continued to climb."
"Halley Froehlich was sure she’d spend her scientific career in the United States. Her family has been in America since the 1700s. But over the past two years, delayed federal grants and fears about the future motivated her to pack her life into boxes. She moved to Finland with her husband and daughter and is continuing her research — studying how fish, shellfish and seaweed that humans eat are responding to climate change — at the University of Helsinki."
"If climate change continues apace, 96 percent of shallow coral reef ecosystems may collapse within 50 years, including in Australia’s Great Barrier reef."
"Ancient plants reveal that the vestiges of the North American ice sheet started expanding a few thousand years ago, but that climate change caused it to reverse course."
"After the Trump administration dismissed scientists behind a key national climate report last year, some of them decided they’d keep working on it — but from outside the government."
As a veteran of reporting on the marine environment, David Helvarg is encouraged by recent improvements in the quality of ocean journalism, but sees a pressing need for more hands on deck. Offering inspiration from his own career, he notes that the world’s rapidly changing oceans hold an abundance of stories and urges others to dive in and explore them.
