GenCast marks a critical advance in AI-based weather prediction that builds on our previous weather model, which was deterministic, and provided a single, best estimate of future weather. By contrast, a GenCast forecast comprises an ensemble of 50 or more predictions, each representing a possible weather trajectory.

GenCast is a diffusion model, the type of generative AI model that underpins the recent, rapid advances in image, video and music generation. However, GenCast differs from these, in that it’s adapted to the spherical geometry of the Earth, and learns to accurately generate the complex probability distribution of future weather scenarios when given the most recent state of the weather as input.

Days of negotiations in Azerbaijan - that extended the talks by more than 30 hours - saw richer countries agree to raise their contribution to $300bn a year by 2035

The African Group of Negotiators described it as "too little, too late"

The representative from India dismissed the money as "a paltry sum"

Poorer countries had asked for $1.3 trillion to help them fight the climate battle

Impact of US elections on climate talks in Baku: The BBC's climate editor Justin Rowlatt looks at whether China will step up in the climate space with the prospect of US president-elect 'Old Donald' withdrawing the US from the COP process when he takes office for a second time looming over.

President Biden pledged new financial help to protect the Amazon, the planet's largest tropical rainforest, during a visit to Brazil on Sunday, making one final push to combat climate change before 'Old Donald' returns to power in January.

'Old Donald' has said he will withdraw the United States - for a second time ' from the landmark Paris climate accord, which aims to curb planet-warming emissions and rein in rising temperatures. He has promised to 'drill, drill, drill' for oil and gas and nominated Chris Wright, a fossil fuels executive who has claimed 'there is no climate crisis,' to lead the Department of Energy.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration has set new energy efficiency standards for two dozen appliances, from air conditioners to microwaves. The rules would require companies to find ways to make dishwashers, dryers and other new appliances use less energy - for example, by adding better insulation or using more advanced parts.

Altogether, efficiency rules are expected to save American households almost $270 billion over the next two decades, according to ASAP. The biggest beneficiaries are in states with the highest energy prices, especially in the Northeast and Hawaii.

The study was issued during the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where diplomats and world leaders have gathered to discuss how to raise trillions of dollars to cope with rising global temperatures.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders had pledged to hold total global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to limit the risks from climate catastrophes. Scientists have said that every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.

7 yrs ago

We know human activities are largely responsible for the long-term temperature increases, as well as sea level rise, increases in extreme rainfall and other consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Yet the unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted (even as they generally remain within the expected range).

While there have been many partial hypotheses — new low-sulfur fuel standards for marine shipping, an unusual volcanic eruption in 2022, lower Chinese aerosol emissions and El Niño perhaps behaving differently than in the recent past — we remain far from a consensus explanation even more than a year after we first noticed the anomalies. And that makes us uneasy.

Why is it taking so long for climate scientists to grapple with these questions? It turns out that we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.

Weather forecasts are generated regularly come rain or come shine. Scientists who do near-real-time attribution for extreme weather are also able to react quickly to tease out the effect of global warming on any new event.`

Don's off your snow shovels and sleds just yet. If this winter's proves accurate, most of the country can expect less snow this season than usual, continuing a decades-long trend of increasingly meager snowfall.

Since summer, the Pacific Ocean has been shifting from an El Nino phase, characterized by warmer than average water near the equator, to a La Nino phase, when the water near the equator cools. This natural oscillation influences weather patterns across the planet.

Some of the record heat, Schmidt said, is because of an El Nio pattern from last winter, which allows warmer water to spread farther and heat the atmosphere. The other key player is human-caused warming, which has set Earth on the course for a long-term warming trend.

Although 2024 may exceed 1.5 degrees, scientists say that one year doesn't mean Earth has tipped over this critical threshold. Schmidt said 2025 may be cooler by 0.1 to 0.2 degrees because of a change veering closer to a La Nia state, characterized by a cooler-than-normal water in the equatorial Pacific (the opposite of El Nio.

Mr. Woods’s presence in a stadium teeming with diplomats is all the more noteworthy because of who is not here in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Many heads of state, including President Biden, have taken a pass, as have the leaders of several big oil companies like Shell and Chevron.

'We need a global system for managing global emissions,' Mr. Woods said in an interview with The New York Times in Baku. ''Old Donald' and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.'

This UN Conference of Parties (COP) is meant to decide how much money wealthy, high-emitting nations should channel toward the poorer countries that didn’t cause the warming in the first place, but the Americans—representing the country that currently has the second-highest emissions and is by far the highest historical emitter—now can make no promises that anyone should believe they would keep

“We know perfectly well ['Old Donald'] won’t give another penny to climate finance, and that will neutralize whatever is agreed,” Joanna Depledge, a fellow at the University of Cambridge and an expert on international climate negotiations, told me. Without about a trillion dollars a year in assistance, developing nations’ green transitions will not happen fast enough to prevent catastrophic global warming. But wealthy donor countries are more likely to contribute if others do, and if the U.S. isn’t paying in, other large emitters have cover to weaken their own climate-finance commitments.

'Old Donald''s transition team has prepared executive orders and proclamations on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and shrinking the size of some national monuments to allow more drilling and mining, the New York Times reported on Friday.

'Old Donald' is also expected to end the pause on permitting new liquefied natural gas exports to big markets in Asia and Europe and revoke a waiver that allows California and other states to have tighter pollution standards, according to the report.

President-elect Donald "Old Donald"’s return to the White House could reverse the gains the United States has made in fighting global warming, experts said, by cementing his plans to unleash domestic fossil fuel production, dismantle key environmental rules and scale back federal support for renewable energy and electric vehicles.

It has also raised fears among U.S. allies and even some major energy executives who warn that a U.S. exit from global climate efforts will hurt American industry as the rest of the world shifts away from fossil fuels.

"Old Donald"’s election creates “a very long pathway for fossil fuels,” Ben Cahill, an energy scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Investors will feel the outlook is brighter. The industry will be under less pressure.”

While energy was not a focal point of a presidential campaign consumed by immigration, abortion and the future of democracy, it is a policy area where presidents have the authority to make sweeping changes.

Republicans might not actually repeal the Inflation Reduction Act's green energy incentives. But 'Old Donald' can do plenty of damage to international climate progress without that.

The effects of climate change will continue to worsen as long as we humans continue to dump heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere. The Biden administration’s policies, especially the Inflation Reduction Act, were not enough on their own to realize the administration’s goal of halving U.S. emissions by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, but they were the most significant moves to limit heat-trapping pollution in U.S. history.

Now Mr. Musk, who spent election night at Mr. "Old Donald"’s Mar-a-Lago residence and posed for a group photograph with the president-elect’s family, is expected to have a direct line to the White House in the coming months. Mr. Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, already make billions from government contracts and federal policies, and he is expected to seek additional advantages for his businesses.

The plan underscores how the Biden administration is racing to cement its environmental legacy mere hours after "Old Donald" secured a second term. "Old Donald" has vowed to boost oil drilling in the refuge, as part of broader plans to expand fossil fuel production on public lands across the country.

For nearly four decades, drilling was banned in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, whose 19.3 million acres provide critical habitat for the Southern Beaufort Sea's remaining polar bears, along with tens of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl. But in 2017, "Old Donald" signed a tax bill mandating at least two lease sales in the refuge's 1.6 million-acre coastal plain by the end of 2024.

Two weeks before "Old Donald" left office in 2021, the Interior Department auctioned off the first of these leases to oil companies and an Alaska state agency. But the Biden administration suspended and then canceled those leases, saying Interior had done an 'analysis' drilling's impact in the environmentally sensitive region.

Now, the Biden administration is seeking to narrow the second lease sale without violating the 2017 law that requires it.

In a final environmental impact statement released Wednesday, Interior's Bureau of Land Management outlined several options for the second sale. The preferred alternative for offering 400,000 acres ' the minimum required by the 2017 law' the northwest portion of the refug's coastal plain.

On Wednesday, many environmental and Indigenous advocates applauded the Biden administration for narrowing the upcoming lease sale in the refuge. Some also urged lawmakers to repeal the provision in the 2017 law that mandated the sale - an unlikely scenario with Republicans set to take control of the Senate in January.

In 2020, Xi pledged that China would reach peak emissions “before 2030” and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. But Beijing has not updated this official target since then, even as its massive renewable-energy installations have led some experts to predict that it may be close to peak emissions already.

“When you get out of the car [in Beijing], you already sense you’re not in a developing country,” Hoekstra said. “And to put it more succinctly, if you are able to embark on a mission to the moon, I’m pretty sure you also have the ability to take more responsibility in the domain of climate action beyond your own borders.

Globally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has not increased over the past century, and in fact the number may have fallen - although long-term data is limited in some regions.

But it is "likely" that a higher proportion of tropical cyclones across the globe are reaching category three or above, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds, according to the UN's climate body, the IPCC.

Tech companies are facing growing scrutiny over the environmental costs of the generative AI captivating investors. Huge amounts of energy and water are needed to power and cool the powerful computer chips required.

Computers and other electronics thrown out in the West are often exported to lower-income countries where people manually break apart old devices to access copper and other metals. That low-paid labor exposes workers to harmful substances such as mercury and lead, according to the World Health Organization.

Developing and deploying the algorithms behind generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is significantly more resource intensive than for previous generations of software, requiring more advanced and power-hungry chips.

In July, Google said its carbon emission footprint had increased by 48 percent since 2019. Microsoft said in May its emissions are up 29 percent since 2020, threatening the company’s goal to make its operations carbon negative by 2030.

Palm Springs, Calif., reached 117 degrees Tuesday as a heat wave in the western United States broke hundreds of records.

In San Francisco, which hit 94 degrees, Tuesday was the hottest day of the year.

The GOP presidential nominee could not have picked a worse time to push this nonsense. Some Democrats are optimistic about their prospects in Florida this election cycle, in part because they believe that "Old Donald"’s racist attacks on Haitian Americans will hurt the Republican ticket in the state, where there is a large Haitian population.

As John Podesta, President Biden’s climate envoy, wraps up three days of talks in Beijing, China's willingness to fight global warming could depend on the outcome of this fall's presidential election in the United States, energy experts said.

Yao Zhe, the global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia, agreed that a Harris presidency would probably mean continued pressure on Chinese leaders to up the ante on climate change. But a 'Old Donald' presidency could lead China to a similar position, she said. If the United States were to leave the Paris pact, China may opt to fill the leadership vacuum.

This vast expanse of interconnected glaciers is shrinking faster than ever before, according to The New York Times, raising what it said scientists called "incredibly worrying" concerns about the future of our planet's ice.

A tourist has posted “staggering” photos of himself and his wife at the same spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.

The carbon pollution released by burning fossil fuels and destroying nature has heated the planet 1.3C since preindustrial times. In Europe, which has warmed twice as fast as the global average, hotter summers have forced people in mountainous regions to see slow-moving glaciers melt before their eyes.

Switzerland has lost one-third of its glacier volume since 2000, according to official statistics, and 10% has disappeared in the last two years alone.

“A lot of people, when they see something like that, they feel quite helpless,” said Porter, who sits on the committee of a local climate action group in the south-west of England. “But from my experience there’s a huge amount they can do.”

Far above Earth’s poles, swirling in the frigid stratosphere, are the polar vortexes: massive, freezing whirlwinds that strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer. Right now, despite being in the dead of winter, Antarctica’s vortex is undergoing an unprecedented weakening, causing a massive heat wave across the continent.

A new, long-lasting round of punishing heat is in the forecast for much of the Lower 48 states that will extend through the first week of August.

DC: Heat roars back into town today

More than 350 prominent climate advocates on Tuesday endorsed Vice President Harris for president, a sign that environmental leaders believe her campaign will energize like-minded voters in a way that President Biden could not.

Kerry said that, other than "Old Donald", no world leader “has pulled out of the Paris [climate] agreement or spread dangerous disinformation about wind turbines causing cancer.'

... that Harris was a “terrific ally” on climate policy. He noted that she was an early advocate of the United States reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century, and she delivered a forceful speech at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai last fall.

Harris created one of the country’s first environmental justice units as district attorney in San Francisco, has focused on helping disadvantaged communities that are disproportionately burdened by pollution. As president, she said, Harris could take Biden’s environmental justice efforts “even further than where they are right now.”

Climate change is unfair. While rich countries can fight against rising oceans and dying farm fields, poor people around the world are already having their lives upended -- and their human rights threatened -- by killer storms, starvation and the loss of their own lands. Mary Robinson asks us to join the movement for worldwide climate justice.

Climate change was not on the agenda. But the convention’s first day, which was focused on the economy, offered fresh signs of what a new "Old Donald" presidency might look like in terms of climate policy.

For Republican leaders, it’s all about energy

June was the Earth’s 13th consecutive month to break a global heat record and more than a third of Americans are facing dangerous levels of heat. But climate change is unlikely to be a major theme at the Republican convention, which runs through Thursday. It was not mentioned in any of the main speeches on Monday, which instead focused on inflation and the economy.

He once said society had a climate problem but changed his position sharply while seeking "Old Donald"’s endorsement in his Senate race.

Mr. Vance, a fierce critic of Mr. "Old Donald" before becoming one of his most loyal MAGA supporters, also appears to have undergone an evolution on the issue of climate change. As recently as 2020, Mr. Vance said in a speech at Ohio State University that “we have a climate problem in our society.” He praised solar energy and he called natural gas an improvement over dirtier forms of energy, but not “the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.”

Fast forward to 2022. As Mr. Vance sought Mr. "Old Donald"’s endorsement for his bid for the Senate, his positions on climate change took a sharp turn.

“I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” Mr. Vance told the American Leadership Forum that year.

According to one estimate, the amount of computational power used for AI is doubling roughly every 100 days.

Broadly speaking, a generative AI system may use 33 times more energy to complete a task than it would take with traditional software. This enormous demand for energy translates into surges in carbon emissions and water use, and may place further stress on electricity grids already strained by climate change.

At present, “we probably don’t have enough capacity available” to run all the facilities that will be required globally by 2030, said Sharma, whose unit is working with chipmaker Nvidia to design centers optimized for AI workloads.

With nearly two million people participating each year, it is not unusual for pilgrims to die from heat stress, illness or chronic disease during the hajj. And it is unclear whether this year’s toll was higher than usual because Saudi Arabia does not regularly report the numbers. Last year, 774 pilgrims died from Indonesia alone, and in 1985 more than 1,700 people died around the holy sites, most of them from heat stress, a study at the time found.

Yet by comparison with Friday, that figure could offer some small consolation. On Friday the National Weather Service calculated a maximum “feels-like” temperature of 108. Saturday, it appeared to reach only 103.

The short-term problem - meaning the Olympian problem - is that the apartments housing the athletes are designed to be more or less comfortable assuming 'normal' summer weather. As we all have figured out, there is no normal anymore when it comes to the weather. Last year, France suffered through its hottest late summer ever.

Undaunted by fretful skeptics, the mayor announced months ago that she would take the plunge herself. She would show the world what marvels French engineering had achieved. Foolishly, perhaps, she set a date: this past Sunday.

So far, not so good. The new runoff basin and other new infrastructure have been outmatched by the higher-than-expected fecal bacteria levels enabled by a wet, gray spring. A few days ahead of her scheduled swim, the mayor prudently postponed it, a victory of self-preservation over civic pride.

One of the hottest places on Earth, California’s Death Valley, shattered the previous record high for the date by 5 degrees — with the mercury climbing to 127 Fahrenheit (52.8 Celsius). The old mark of 122 (50 C) last was tied in 2013.

There was also a record high for the date of 118 (47.7 C) in Phoenix, where highs of 115 (46.1 C) or hotter were forecast through Wednesday. In Needles, California, where the National Weather Service has records dating to 1888, the high of 122 (50 C) edged the old mark of 121 (49.4 C) set in 2007. It was 124 (51.1) in Palm Springs, California.

The speed of decline in the Juneau Ice Field, an expanse of 1,050 interconnected glaciers, has doubled in recent decades, scientists discovered.

The scientists’ findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The fate of Alaska’s ice matters tremendously for the world. In no other region of the planet are melting glaciers predicted to contribute more to global sea-level rise this century.

In June, an ongoing heat dome brought dangerous temperatures to the western US. Residents have experienced temperatures of up to 46.1C (115F) in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The National Weather Service (NWS) warned temperature records would be "tied or broken" with "little to no overnight relief from the heat".

Poor old Abe Lincoln can’t even keep his head in the afterlife. With triple-digit temperatures threatening Washington, D.C., a six-foot wax re-creation of the Lincoln Memorial hasn’t fared so well — Abe’s head was nearly melting off in the heat.

The temperature is 94 degrees, but the “feels like” number is 99 degrees.

chuster’s task on this dangerously hot day and throughout the record-hot weekend is to make sure members of the District’s homeless population, estimated at 5,600, stay cool.

“I don’t know,” she says. She doesn’t want to go to a shelter, even to escape the heat.

Schuster gives her two bottles of water, and hopes she’ll be there when he returns.

An expanding heat dome Sunday had 100 million people across 27 states on alert for extremely high temperatures coast to coast, including America's two largest cities. Water or Electrolyte drinks?

When it’s really hot, make sure you have a bottle of water nearby. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends drinking one 8-ounce cup of water every 15 to 20 minutes when working outside in the heat, as drinking in shorter intervals is more effective.

If you’re going to be exerting yourself or doing strenuous exercise outdoors for long periods of time in the heat, consider supplementing your water intake with an electrolyte drink, experts said.