Fewer than half of the national targets countries set to protect plants, animals and ecosystems are on track, the United Nations said in a report launched in Yerevan, Armenia, as the COP17 biodiversity conference convened. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal framework committed nearly 200 countries to halt nature loss by 2030, including protecting 30% of land and sea. Even if current commitments are met, only 26% of land and 12% of the ocean would be protected, the report found. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war on nature has not ended. Finance, data and economic incentives are all lagging. Talks run for two weeks and are meant to agree a way to review progress and fund protection in poorer countries.
Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are 6.1F above normal, the highest on record for this point in the year, and NOAA puts the chance of a very strong El Niño at 90% for this autumn and winter. The agency gives a 75% chance the event becomes the largest since 1950. UNICEF says 347 million children in nearly 100 countries live in areas likely to see drier or wetter conditions. Researchers at the University of Chicago estimate the pattern could cause 451,000 excess heat deaths worldwide. The Atlantic hurricane season has been quiet while storms raced across the Pacific. Aid agencies are pre-positioning supplies while the pattern is still building.
The UN Environment Programme's Emissions Gap report says the world will pass 1.5C within a few years, the first edition to call the miss imminent and unavoidable. It reframes the goal as limiting overshoot to 1.7C-1.8C before returning to 1.5C by 2100. That path needs emissions cuts of 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040 against 2025 levels, plus a tripling of renewable capacity and a coal phase-out by 2040. Existing pledges deliver only 5-8% by 2030, pointing to peak warming near 2.6C. COP31 opens in Turkey next month.
Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the Reuters Sustainability Europe conference that global warming is accelerating and that damage to coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest is close to irreversible. He said parts of the Atlantic circulation, including the current that keeps Western Europe mild, are near collapse. The world is on course to exceed 1.5C of warming within a few years, ahead of the COP31 talks that begin on November 9.
A study in Nature Communications finds that Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could add up to 30 millimetres to global sea level by 2100, roughly twice earlier estimates, even without additional warming. The revised figure accounts for warm seawater reaching several kilometres inland beneath the glacier's floating front, a process most ice-sheet models left out. Thwaites already loses more ice each year than snowfall replaces, and its bed deepens inland. The finding changes flood frequency estimates for coastal cities, ports and roads built near present high tide lines.
NASA satellites have recorded a sharp rise in fires and smoke across the central and eastern Amazon since September 2026, with burning from around Manaus and Santarem east towards the mouth of the river. On October 12 the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite captured large smoke plumes on both sides of the Amazon. Fine particle pollution in Manaus passed 135 micrograms per cubic metre, schools closed and public events were cancelled. NASA scientist Douglas Morton describes a cascade in which El Nino drought ignites peat fires in Indonesia first, then spreads to the Amazon, with the risk that burning continues into 2027.
A moderate-to-strong Santa Ana wind event brought several wildfires to Southern California this week, forcing evacuation warnings and closing roads. The Bryson Fire near Malibu grew to roughly 100 acres with no containment, the Henderson Fire at Camp Pendleton reached about 1,404 acres, and the Peak Fire near Azusa was 41% contained. A red flag warning covered most valleys and coasts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Saturday evening. No structures were reported threatened and no injuries were reported.
The 2026 El Nino has tied the all-time record for daily strength, with the Nino 3.4 anomaly reaching 3.07 degrees Celsius above average in October, and forecasts point to a monthly peak near 4.2 degrees in December. A coastally trapped Kelvin wave generated by the pattern is pushing sea levels about a foot above normal along Southern California and moving north, raising the risk of coastal flooding and erosion. Scientists say much of the global temperature effect will arrive in 2027, and Indonesia's fire emissions are on track to match this century's record.
Smoke from Indonesia's worst wildfire season in 11 years pushed Singapore's one-hour PM2.5 reading to 284 micrograms per cubic metre in the west of the island, the highest this year and the first entry into the top very high band of the current haze period. East Timor suspended face-to-face schooling for three days from 15 October, and several Malaysian states also closed schools. Indonesia blames El Nino-linked dry weather, while experts point to slash-and-burn land clearing.
About 294,000 people in Nepal live in areas at extreme risk of flooding from rivers that drain the country's high mountain basins, according to a study published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. Roughly 108,000 of them live downstream of glacial lakes that could suddenly release water. The research follows the August disaster on the Bhote Koshi river, when a rock and ice avalanche sent a debris flow about 120 miles downstream, killing at least 1,455 people. Researchers say early warning systems and land use zoning need to improve fast, because the number of people exposed will keep growing if construction near river channels continues.