In southeast Pennsylvania this summer, we experienced: high temperatures, breaking 100 on a few days (not an uncommon occurrence where I grew up in Tennessee, but Philadelphia is not built for that nonsense); intense storms (“microbursts”) that brought down large trees in many neighborhoods and caused flash flooding; despite flooding, the region remained in moderate drought until August due to low rainfall over the previous year; smoke from Canadian wildfires turning our Air Quality Index purple (Very Unhealthy; sorry, Canada!).
How to stay safe from the triple threat of wildfires, smoke and extreme heat (The Conversation, July 15, 2026)
North American summer always brings a spike in climate impacts–and probably also climate anxiety–but never forget there is always something we can do. Sometimes that means preparing and planning for climate impacts that are likely to affect our homes. Sometimes that means stewardship and volunteer work and outreach. And sometimes it means rescuing and remounting a public resource for climate information that was dismantled by the US government.
Ex-NOAA employees re-create a valuable climate data site shut down by Trump (NPR, June 26, 2026)
You can explore https://www.climate.us/ and celebrate that win!
What the White House is up to
Oh, the usual. Protecting the interests of the corporations and wealth accumulators over people….
Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against the maker of Roundup weedkiller (AP News, June 25, 2026)
The Trump Administration Wants to Change Public Engagement Rules for Polluters (Wired, July 23, 2026)
Trump Wants to Fast Track AI (Inside Climate News, July 6, 2026)
…curtailing research and innovation….
NSF plans cuts to core science programmes to fund White House initiative (Nature, July 10, 2026)
Quashed Cleantech Opportunities Are Costing Us Billions (Bloomberg, July 22, 2026)
…And continuing to lose battles for dominance in ways that cause ripples of harm across the planet.
Scientists warn of potential global marine invasive species event linked to idle ships in the Strait of Hormuz (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, July 22, 2026)
Climate impacts
Both the U.S. and Europe experienced deadly heatwaves over the summer.
Eight facts about air conditioning amid an overheated global debate (Carbon Brief, July 10, 2026)
NPR spent 2 years tracking deaths from heat. We found a staggering hidden toll (NPR, August 31, 2026)
High temperatures tend to exacerbate other phenomena.
Fires, floods and record heat: This is the summer of compounding disasters (CNN, July 20, 2026)
Climate ‘feedback loops’ could worsen global warming by 30%, study finds (The Guardian, September 10, 2026)
Like the devasting flood in Nepal….
How rising temperatures likely contributed to Nepal’s deadly flood (Grist, August 29, 2026)
The Meltdown (NPR, August 2026)
…wildfires…
These are human fires, not wildfires’: Dunwich reflects on the devastation (The Guardian, August 9, 2026)
…and drought.
2025 was among driest years on record for world’s rivers, study finds (The Guardian, September 17, 2026)
Climate change is caused by pollution, and climate impacts also intensify the harms of pollution.
Outgoing UN chief says polluters have treated atmosphere like an ‘open sewer’ (The Guardian, September 22, 2026)
Climate solutions
False Promises: Why carbon capture and storage won’t fix our climate crisis (Propublica, June 25, 2026)
Colorado River water conservation efforts get only halfway to a solution (The Conversation, August 20, 2026)
AI and climate
Google’s exponential path to climate-wrecking digital bloat (Ketan Joshi, July 1, 2026)
Elon Musk’s Memphis AI empire is the epicenter of the data center backlash (CNBC, July 16, 2026)
Tech
EPA exempts data center power plants from pollution limits seeking to prevent acid rain (The Hill, July 27, 2026)
It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal (Grist, July 29, 2026)
Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Entire Country (The New Republic, August 7, 2026)
Related: The Real Reason Data Center Gas Power Plants Are So Dirty (Wired, August 14, 2026)
A huge AI datacenter is planned near Mar-a-Lago. The Everglades could pay the price (The Guardian, August 12, 2026)
AI’s climate problem is worse than we thought (HEATED, August 12, 2026)
AI could help fossil fuel companies create more emissions (Grist, August 15, 2026)
The rush to power data centers is weakening the Clean Air Act (Grist, August 28, 2026)
The Data Center Backlash Should Also Be a Climate Reckoning. It Isn’t Yet (WIRED, September 27, 2026)
Science and research
Here’s Why Weather Forecasts Have Seemed So Inaccurate Lately (Gizmodo, June 30, 2026)
‘Starwashing’: How space companies use the greenwashing playbook while engaging in environmentally damaging practices (The Conversation, August 12, 2026)
What if our cities were designed for wildlife as well as people? (The Conversation, August 19, 2026)
We’re going to miss the 1.5 °C climate target. Now what? (Project Drawdown, September 15, 2026)
Climate reporting
How Should We Cover the Climate Story? (Columbia Journalism Review, September 23, 2026)
We Need to Stop Talking Like Climate Change Is Partisan (Time, September 21, 2026)
Art and the environment
Katherine Wolkoff Meditates on Absence in Her Tender Photos of Deer Beds (Colossal, July 2, 2026)
170 Years Later: Flowers return after lawn abandoned for film shoot (BBC, July 28, 2026)
Microscopic Universes Come Alive in Nikon’s Small World in Motion Contest (Colossal, September 22, 2026)
Some good news
Charles Darwin Theorized That These Plants Were Carnivorous 150 Years Ago. A New Study Proves Him Right (Smithsonian Magazine, August 6, 2026)
Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal (Nature, August 27, 2026)
The title sounds dire, but it’s actually about dam removal and revitalized waterways:
Death by a thousand dams (Biographic, September 22, 2026)
