Earth:2026 in climate change

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This article documents notable events, research findings, scientific and technological advances, and human actions to measure, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the effects of global warming and climate change—during the year 2026.

Summaries

Measurements and statistics

  • "Vital Signs of the Planet" as presented by NASA at the end of 2025 / beginning of 2026[1]
    "Vital Signs of the Planet" as presented by NASA at the end of 2025 / beginning of 2026[1]
  • 9 January: a report published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences said that ocean heat content in 2025 had reached a new record for nine consecutive years.[2]
  • 9 January (reported): an Oxfam report concluded that the richest 1% exhausted their annual carbon budget in ten days.[3] (Carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted while keeping the planet within 1.5 °C of global warming.)
  • 22 January: Ember's European Electricity Review 2026 reported that in 2025, wind and solar energy provided 30% of EU electricity, surpassing fossil power (29%) for the first time, and generating more power than fossil sources in 14 of 27 EU countries.[4]
  • 6 March: a study published in Geophysical Research Letters removed estimated influence of three natural variability factors and concluded with over 98% confidence that global warming from 2015 to 2025 accelerated more than during any previous decade.[5]
  • 6 March: a study published in Science Advances concluded that compound drought-heatwave events (CDHEs) have increased nearly eightfold since the early 2000s, from 1.6 to 13.1% per degree Celsius, with considerable regional variation.[6]
  • 10 March: a study published in Environmental Research: Health reported extensive statistics on present and projected worsening of heat- and humidity-related livability limitations.[7]
  • 25 March: a study published in Nature estimated that, from 1990 through 2020, carbon dioxide emissions in the US caused $10.2 trillion in cumulative damages by 2020, with about 30% occurring within the US itself.[8] Damages from China were estimated at $8.7 trillion, and from the EU, $6.42 trillion.[8] The researchers said that future damages from past emissions are at least an order of magnitude larger than historical damages from the same emissions.[8]

Natural events and phenomena

  • 4 February: a study published in Science Advances concluded that wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was responsible for ~24,100 all-cause deaths per year in the contiguous United States.[9]
  • 12 February: a study published in Nature Geoscience estimated that the contribution associated with a La Niña-to-El Niño transition explains about 75% of the 2022-2023 extreme increase in Earth's energy uptake, contributing to the record global surface temperatures and widespread climate extremes observed in 2023–2024.[10]
  • 25 February: a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution stated that long-term global warming was associated with an annual fish biomass decline of up to 19.8% between 1993 and 2021 in major Northern Hemisphere basins.[11]
  • 25 February: a study published in PLOS One reported that between 1794 and 2024, there was an average absolute shift in flowering of tropical plants of 2.04 days per decade (range: 0.037–14.10), comparable to changes seen in temperate, boreal and alpine desert plants, and severe enough to cause interspecific misalignment between pollinators and seed dispersers.[12]
  • 9 March: a study published in Atmospheric Science Letters estimated that, in the 3 May 2025 hailstorm in Western Europe, a 30% increase in probability of larger hail stones and a  2 cm (0.79 in) increase in hailstone size could be attributed to climate change.[13]
  • 10 March: a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research considered continental-ocean mass redistribution due to melting of polar ice sheets and global glaciers and changes in Earth's hydrology, and said that 21st century climate change may be increasing the length of Earth's days at a rate among the highest in 3.6 million years.[14]
  • March: the World Meteorological Organization's State of the Global Climate 2025 introduced a new indicator of the Earth's energy balance and concluded that Earth’s energy budget is more out of balance than at any previous time in the observational record.[15]
  • 25 March: a study published in Nature concluded that extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate (2 °C) global warming.[16]

Actions, and goal statements

Science and technology

  • January (reported): a Chinese company launched the first megawatt-level airborne wind turbine—a 60x40x40 m (197x131x131 ft) helium-filled aerostat—providing electricity through a tether cable from 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) above the ground.[17]
  • 14 January: at Concordia Station, Antarctica, the Ice Memory Foundation inaugurated a global repository of mountain ice cores, to ensure that future generations will be able to study past climate conditions.[18]
  • 15 January: a study published in Nature Climate Change estimated the 2020 ocean-based social cost of carbon (SCC) to be almost double that of prior SCC estimates that didn't consider ocean-related impacts.[19]
  • 12 February: anomalous increases in tropical sea surface temperatures have caused NOAA to revise the threshold distinguishing La Niña and El Niño (ENSO) events from each other.[20] The new method replaces a dependency on a 30-year climate base period with the Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI): a comparison of the ENSO region to the global tropics.[20]
  • 4 March: a study published in Nature concluded that sea level measurements that have been based on geoid models rather than actual sea level measurements have underestimated the degree of sea level rise.[21]

Political, economic, legal, and cultural actions

Threat to global stability and prosperity
     Let's tell it like it is: The world's addiction to fossil fuels is one of the greatest threats to global stability and prosperity. Three fourths of humanity lives in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels; dependent on energy they do not control at prices they cannot predict; watching development budgets siphoned into fuel bills; at the constant mercy of geopolitical turmoil and supply disruptions.

—UN Secretary General António Guterres
18 January 2026[22]

  • 7 January: US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and 65 other international organizations—alleging the treaties "no longer serve American interests".[23] The UNFCC was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1992 and signed by then President George H. W. Bush.[24]
  • 7 January: US President Donald Trump's Office of Management and Budget received a proposed final rule reversing the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which stated that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare by driving climate change. The Endangerment Finding had enabled federal government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.[25]
  • 8 January: US President Donald Trump's administration announced that the country would be withdrawing from the Green Climate Fund, which since 2010 has provided funds to help poorer nations deal with the effects of climate change.[26]
  • 27 January: the United States completed its second formal withdrawal from the 2015 Paris agreement—one year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin the withdrawal process.[24] This second withdrawal reversed Trump's predecessor Joe Biden's re-entry into the agreement after Trump's 2017 first withdrawal.[24]
  • 28 January: The Hague District Court ruled that the Dutch government had discriminated against the inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Bonaire, by not taking timely and appropriate measures to protect them against the consequences of climate change. The court ordered the Dutch government to set legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, as well as making a climate adaptation plan for Bonaire.[27][28]
  • 30 January: a US federal judge ruled that the Trump administration's Department of Energy violated the law with its "Climate Working Group" of five handpicked climate change skeptics who reject the scientific consensus on climate change.[29] The group's July 2025 A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate supported the administration's attack on the 2009 Endangerment Finding that underpins the US federal government's legal authority to combat climate change.[29]
  • 6 February: the US Federal Judicial Center informed[30] Republican attorneys general that the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence—relied on by federal judges in complex cases involving science—had been removed, per the AGs' urging eight days earlier.[31]
  • 12 February: the US Environmental Protection Agency formally rescinded the Endangerment Finding, which had enabled US federal government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.[32] On 19 March, 24 states filed a Petition for review of the EPA's action.[33]

Mitigation goal statements

Adaptation goal statements

Consensus

  • 8 January: a summary of surveys of 70,337 participants in 17 countries, published in Nature Sustainability, reported that, for both extreme weather-related hazards and general climate change-related risks, survey participants perceived their own personal risks were lower than other people's risks.[34]

Projections

  • 28 January: a study published in Nature forecast that climate change could lead to 123 million additional malaria cases and 532,000 additional deaths in Africa between 2024 and 2050 under current malaria control levels.[35] Extreme weather events are thought to cause 79% of additional cases and 93% of additional deaths.[35]

Significant publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Climate change / Vital signs". NASA. 31 December 2025. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/. 
  2. ↑ Pan, Y., Cheng, L., Abraham, J. et al. "Ocean Heat Content Sets Another Record in 2025". Advances in Atmospheric Sciences: 6737. 9 January 2026. doi:10.1007/s00376-026-5876-0. 
  3. ↑ "Richest 1% have blown through their fair share of carbon emissions for 2026 in just 10 days, says Oxfam". Oxfam. 9 January 2026. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-have-blown-through-their-fair-share-carbon-emissions-2026-just-10-days. 
  4. ↑ "European Electricity Review 2026". Ember. 22 January 2026. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/01/EMBER-Report-European-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf. 
  5. ↑ Foster, G.; Rahmstorf, S. (6 March 2026). "Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly". Geophysical Research Letters 53 (5). doi:10.1029/2025GL118804. 
  6. ↑ Kim, Yong-Jun; Yeh, Sang-Wook; Ng, Benjamin (6 March 2026). "Nonlinear increase of compound drought-heatwave events since the early 2000s". Science Advances 12 (10): eaea3038. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea3038. 
  7. ↑ Parsons, L. A.; Baldwin, J. W.; Guzman-Echavarria, G.; Jay, O; Kalmus, P.; Staudmyer, H.; Vanos, J. K.; Wolff, N. H. (10 March 2026). "Intensifying global heat threatens livability for younger and older adults". Environmental Research: Health 4: 015013. doi:10.1088/2752-5309/ae3c3a. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Burke, Marshall; Zahid, Mustafa; Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Hsiang, Solomon (25 March 2026). "Quantifying climate loss and damage consistent with a social cost of carbon". Nature 651: 959-966. doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10272-6. 
  9. ↑ Zhang, Min; Castro, Edgar; Shtein, Alexandra; Peralta, Adjani A. et al. (4 February 2026). "Wildfire smoke PM2.5 and mortality rate in the contiguous United States: A causal modeling study". Science Advances 12 (6). doi:10.1126/sciadv.adw5890. 
  10. ↑ Tsuchida, Ko; Kosaka, Yu; Minobe, Shoshiro (12 February 2026). "Multi-year La Niña–El Niño transition influenced Earth's extreme energy uptake in 2022–2023". Nature Geoscience. doi:10.1038/s41561-026-01921-6. 
  11. ↑ Chaikin, Shahar; Bonzalez-Trujillo, Juan David; Araujo, Miguel B. (25 February 2026). "Long-term warming reduces fish biomass, but heatwaves shift it". Nature Ecology & Evolution. doi:10.1038/s41559-026-03013-5. 
  12. ↑ Graves, Skylar; Manzitto-Tripp, Erin A. (25 February 2026). "Observing shifts in phenology of tropical flowering plants". PLoS One 21 (2). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0342105. 
  13. ↑ Faranda, Davide; Alberti, Tommaso (9 March 2026). "Investigating the Role of Climate Change in the 3 May 2025 Western Europe Hailstorm Using Atmospheric Analogs". Atmospheric Science Letters 27 (3). doi:10.1002/asl2.70016. 
  14. ↑ Shahvandi, Mostafa Kiani; Soja, Benedikt (10 March 2026). "Climate-Induced Length of Day Variations Since the Late Pliocene". Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 131 (3). doi:10.1029/2025JB032161. 
  15. ↑ (in en) (PDF) State of the Global Climate 2025 (Flagship annual climate report). State of the Global Climate (1 ed.). Geneva: World Meteorological Organization. 2026. pp. 46. doi:10.59327/WMO/S/CRI/SOC1. ISBN 978-92-63-11391-7. https://library.wmo.int/records/item/69807-state-of-the-global-climate-2025. Retrieved 24 March 2026. 
  16. ↑ Bevacqua, Emanuele; Fischer, Erich; Sillman, Jana; Zscheischler, Jakob (25 March 2026). "Moderate global warming does not rule out extreme global climate outcomes". Nature 651: 946-953. 
  17. ↑ Sinha, Sujita (13 January 2026). "China's world-first megawatt-level 'windmill' airship rises 6,560 ft, feeds grid". Interesting Engineering. https://interestingengineering.com/energy/worlds-first-megawatt-airship-rises-6560-ft. 
  18. ↑ Winfield, Nicole; Santalucia, Paulo (14 January 2026). "A novel sanctuary in Antarctica is preserving ice samples from rapidly melting glaciers". AP News. https://apnews.com/article/italy-climate-global-warming-glacier-ice-antarctica-25c45a3a1e6375a1f241c825e5e63e5c. 
  19. ↑ Bastien-Olvera, Bernardo A.; Aburto-Oropeza, Octavio; Brander, Luke M.; Cheung, William W. L.; Emmerling, Johannes; Free, christopher M.; Granella, Francesco; Tavoni, Massimo et al. (15 January 2026). "Accounting for ocean impacts nearly doubles the social cost of carbon". Nature Climate Change. doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02533-5. 
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 "CPC adopts Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI) for reliable, responsive monitoring and tracking of ENSO". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 12 February 2026. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/roni/announcement.php. 
  21. ↑ Seegeer, Katharina; Minderhoud, Philip S. J. (4 March 2026). "Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments". Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10196-1. 
  22. ↑ Guterres, António (18 February 2026). "At International Energy Agency Ministerial Meeting, Secretary-General Calls for 'Honest Dialogue', Global Platform to Phase Out Fossil Fuels". United Nations. https://press.un.org/en/2026/sgsm23021.doc.htm. 
  23. ↑ Sengupta, Somini; Friedman, Lisa (7 January 2025). "Trump Pulls Out of Global Climate Treaty". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/climate/trump-un-climate-treaty.html. 
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 Friedman, Lisa (27 January 2026). "America Officially Leaves the Paris Climate Agreement. For the Second Time.". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/climate/paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal.html. 
  25. ↑ Ahmed, Issam (16 January 2026). "US To Repeal The Basis For Its Climate Rules: What To Know". Barron's. https://www.barrons.com/news/us-to-repeal-the-basis-for-its-climate-rules-what-to-know-90d122c5. 
  26. ↑ Schonhardt, Sara (8 January 2026). "US ditches world's biggest climate fund, a day after spurning landmark treaty". Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/08/us-ditches-worlds-biggest-climate-fund-in-storm-of-departures-by-trump-green-fund-00716136. 
  27. ↑ Corder, Mike (28 January 2026). "Dutch government is ordered to protect residents on Caribbean island of Bonaire from climate change". AP News. https://apnews.com/article/climate-bonaire-netherlands-court-greenpeace-caribbean-island-c793ba6d63dd30a6dfb9c5cfa9f8452d. 
  28. ↑ Kaminski, Isabella (28 January 2026). "Dutch government discriminated against Bonaire islanders over climate adaptation, court rules". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/28/netherlands-government-discriminated-bonaire-islanders-caribbean-climate-crisis-adaptation. 
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Friedman, Lisa (30 January 2026). "A Secret Panel to Question Climate Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/climate/energy-department-climate-ruling.html. 
  30. ↑ Rosenberg, Robin L. (6 February 2026). "(letter:) Dear Attorney General McCuskey,". Federal Judicial Center. https://ago.wv.gov/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026.02.06%20--%20Federal%20Judicial%20Center%20Letter%20Chapter%20Withdrawal.pdf. 
  31. ↑ Gross, Liza (3 March 2026). "Scientists, Engineers and Legal Experts Condemn Partisan Attack on Scientific Reference Manual for Judges". Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03032026/scientific-reference-manual-for-judges-erased/. 
  32. ↑ Spring, Jake; Wojahn, Ambrosia; Dennis, Brady (12 February 2026). "Trump repeals U.S. government's power to regulate climate". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/02/12/endangerment-finding-repeal/. 
  33. ↑ "Petition for Review". The New York Times. 19 March 2026. https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/158b1f1c8d49362e/76ef57f7-full.pdf.  (Times copy of court document)
  34. ↑ Sandlund, Isak; Bjälkebring, Pär; Bergquist, Magnus (8 January 2026). "Meta-analytical evidence of a self–other discrepancy in climate change-related risk perceptions". Nature Sustainability. doi:10.1038/s41893-025-01717-3. 
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Symons, Tasmin L.; Moran, Alexander; Balzarolo, Ann; Vargas, Camilo et al. (28 January 2026). "Projected impacts of climate change on malaria in Africa". Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-10015-z. 

Organizations

Surveys, summaries and report lists



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