Scientists dig into the data to see if the world's climate could change dramatically without external drivers and how the system stays stable...

The year 2015 was the hottest on the modern record. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The world’s hottest year on record has prompted much media coverage. But there haven’t been enough charts and graphs...

Average SST anomaly for Jan. 22-23, 2016 relative to the long-term average from 1981 to present. Courtesy of Vincent Saba, NOAA.

New research published Monday adds to a body of evidence suggesting that a warming climate may have particularly marked effects for some citizens of the country most responsible for global warming in the first place — namely, U.S. East Coasters...

A sunny January day at Mudeford Sandbanks in Dorset. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex/Shutterstock

Long-range forecast predicts generally upward temperature trend, possibly interrupted by La Niña event in 2017...

Hillary Clinton keeps adopting his positions, but not this one...

A woman walks through a flooded street that was caused by the combination of the lunar orbit which caused seasonal high tides and what many believe is the rising sea levels due to climate change, in September in Miami Beach, Florida. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Ted Cruz has presented ‘misleading’ information in the Senate, scientists say, while Marco Rubio rejects ‘destroying our economy’ – despite pleas for action coming from officials in his own state...

This file photo taken on December 12, 2015 shows French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal (L), French President Francois Hollande (2ndL), French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (C) and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (2ndR) applauding after a statement at the COP21 Climate Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris. Some scientists worry that the agreement focused on short-term climate change. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Two scientists take the long view on climate change...

There’s a myopia in the climate discourse today.

A parade of El Niño-fueled storms has marched over California in the last few weeks, bringing bouts of much needed rain and snow to the parched state. But maps of drought conditions there have barely budged, with nearly two-thirds of the state still in the worst two categories of drought.

So what gives?

 Jan. 30, 2016

In 2006, then-President George Bush told the nation "we have a serious problem ... America is addicted to oil." Here's what's happened since:

The KV Svalbard, a Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker. (Source: L. Karsten via Wikimedia Commons )

Shrinking Arctic sea ice — now at record-low levels — has implications for ecosystems, climate, weather, and people...

Two young boys walk along the boardwalk in the village of Newtok, Alaska in October of 2004.

In the small town of Newtok, Alaska, a Yupik village of about 350 people, children once played on endless fields of frozen permafrost. Now, they splash in salt water pools and teeter on boardwalks as the permafrost below thaws and the Ninglick River chips away at the community. Soon even the boards will be swallowed by the rising tides...

James Inhofe, infamous for tossing a snowball across the Senate floor to demonstrate ‘the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people’, says Pope Francis should ‘stay with his job’ during a pitch to fellow unbelievers...

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) Children play as they cool down in a fountain beside the Manzanares river in Madrid, Spain.

Since the turn of the century, most of Europe has experienced record-hot summer months that at times were deadly.

First in a three-part series, parts 2&3 at end of part 1

WILMINGTON – There’s an old saying, “You don’t miss your water until the well runs dry.”

The porcupine is among the animals that thrive beneath winter snows. (Doug Lindstrand/Design Pics/Corbis)

How do animals survive under the snow? We're only beginning to understand—just as climate change may rewrite everything...

Ethiopia, one fragile dryland nation, is in the grip of its worst drought in 50 years. Photo: Jay Court

The health of the world's soils hinges on the abundance and diversity of the microbes and fungi they contain, and environmental changes including from global warming will undermine their ability to support humans and other species, according to two new studies...

In November, the International Energy Agency quietly dropped this bombshell projection: “Driven by continued policy support, renewables account for half of additional global generation, overtaking coal around 2030 to become the largest power source.”

A gas facility in Qatar: The Middle Eastern nation has the world’s highest energy subsidies per capita (photo: Olivier Polet/Corbis)

IMF Survey

July 17, 2015

Energy subsidies are projected at US$5.3 trillion in 2015, or 6.5 percent of global GDP, according to a recent IMF study. Most of this arises from countries setting energy taxes below levels that fully reflect the environmental damage associated with energy consumption...

(Photo: Samuel Aranda/Getty Images)

Locust swarms can be devastating to farmers and, potentially, the food supply...

Weirdly like Minecraft. (Kyocera/YouTube)

Space is a big problem in Japan. The small, mountainous island nation has limited flat ground for building, and what there is comes at a premium...

Floodwaters that washed icy brine into streets and homes along the eastern seaboard during Saturday’s blizzard reached heights in some places not experienced since Hurricane Sandy. “I just hope it isn’t a sign of things to come,” Pam Bross told a local newspaper as she mopped up the market she operates on a New Jersey street not normally reached by storm surges...

Power lines run by wind turbines operating at a wind farm near Milford, Utah. (Photo: George Frey/Reuters)

A new study shows that the nation could shutter coal-fired power plants by 2030, maintain a steady power supply, and save billions of dollars...

Questions pile up with big snow, so here are some answers to questions people may have about the storm hitting the eastern U.S. Wind is the key difference between regular snowstorms and blizzards...

Cars make their way down Electric Road in southwest Roanoke County past Tanglewood Mall on Friday morning, Jan. 22, 2016, near Roanoke, Va.

What makes this blizzard to end all blizzards tick? The factors making it so formidable are also helping it to deliver upwards of two feet of snow on the nation's capital, where a big storm is usually defined in inches (not feet), yet nearly entirely miss southern New England, which has been a blizzard magnet in recent years...

The amount of toxic waste generated by U.S. companies, and what happens to it, is hiding in plain sight...

Pilot and UC Davis scientist Stephen Conley points out the air intakes on his pollution-detecting plane that measure methane emissions from the Aliso Canyon leak. (Joe Proudman / UC Davis)

Stephen Conley has flown pollution-detecting airplanes over some of the largest oil and gas fields in the nation. But never before has the UC Davis scientist encountered as much methane in the air as in recent months over suburban Los Angeles...

In 2013, Greensburg, KS — a town of less than 800 residents about 100 miles from Wichita — became the first city in the United States to go 100 percent renewable, powering their homes, businesses, and municipal buildings via wind power...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Leonardo DiCaprio to tone down his "inflammatory rhetoric" on climate change saying it was not helping those who have lost their oil-industry jobs...

When he's not fighting off bears or trying to win an Oscar, Leonardo DiCaprio is busy saving the environment.

 Poorer countries like many in Africa will have their food supply threatened most by climate change. Credit: Reuters

Global warming's threat to the global food supply gets worse the more the world warms, researchers tell federal regulators...

Nonprofit that takes anonymous donations behind ads touting Democratic candidate

2015 was hot.
2016 will likely be hotter.

It wasn't even close.

Not as funny as it sounds...

Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign blasted out a statement after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA reported that 2015 was the hottest year on record. | Getty

Open cut hard rock mining (Kalgoorlie, Western Australia) author Stephen Codrington source Wikimedia

President Obama has just announced a 3 year moratorium on leasing federal land for new coal mines, pending a review of the impact of coal on the global climate...

Two people paddleboard at sunset along the beach as a heatwave begins to subside in Cardiff, California August 17, 2015. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The amount of man-made heat energy absorbed by the seas has doubled since 1997, a study released Monday showed.

"We estimate that half of the total global ocean heat uptake since 1865 has accumulated since 1997," a team of scientists led by Peter Gleckler of the Laurence Livermore National Laboratory in California reported (AFP Photo/Bas Czerwinski)

Paris (AFP) - The oceans have soaked up as much heat from global warming over the last two decades as during the preceding 130 years, according to a study published Monday...

Marine Life Can’t Keep Up With Climate Change

If you want an idea of what oceans around the world may be like in the not-too-distant future, look to the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of the United States....

Blistering heat blanketed the Earth last year like never before, making 2015 by far the hottest year in modern times and raising new concerns about the accelerating pace of climate change...

Flooding, like the current Mississippi River overflow in places like St. Louis, creates the most damage of all natural disasters in the U.S. Credit: Reuters.

It flew under the radar, but the approval of a new flood standard for federal projects means the federal government took a big step...

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. from a Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

2015 was almost certainly the hottest on record for the planet as a whole (AFP Photo/Antony Dickson)

Paris (AFP) - When future generations write the history of humanity's faltering quest to repair Earth's climate system, 2015 will have its own chapter...

With little more than an audio recorder, Devi Lockwood has been traveling on a green touring bike, covered in stickers with a jaunty yellow flag flying off the back, across the Southern Hemisphere for more than one year...

The Aliso Canyon breach is accidental, but thousands of other sites are flaring off methane intentionally, as waste...

Closing Ceremony of COP21, Paris. Copyright United Nations Photo

“I look at the room. I see that the reaction is positive. I don’t hear any objections.”

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

A team of scientists in Belgium has discovered a somewhat counterintuitive reason the Greenland ice sheet is melting at night...

Refugees and migrants jump off a boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos, in this November 26, 2015 file photo. To match DAVOS-MEETING/RISKS Reuters/Giorgos Moutafis/Files

We live in an increasingly dangerous world, with political, economic and environmental threats piling up, according to experts polled by the World Economic Forum...

Full rail cars outside Cloud Peak Energy’s Antelope Coal loading terminal in Rawlins, Wyo. About 40 percent of the nation’s coal is mined on public land in the state. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced on Friday a halt to new coal mining leases on public lands as it considers an overhaul of the program that could lead to increased costs for energy companies and a slowdown in extraction...

Few issues have as much impact on the future as climate change. Sadly, the issue of climate change has taken a backseat to economic policy, divisive cultural issues, and the threat of terrorism. The main reason for this is the media coverage of these issues...

Pay special attention to #2...

There is a lot at stake with the TPP agreement.

It’s no wonder the Obama administration tried to keep this secret—the corporate-friendly trade agreement, decoded...

Not only is the planet undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and Chris Field report that it's on pace to occur at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period. Without intervention, this extreme pace could lead to a 5-6 degree Celsius spike in annual temperatures by the end of the century...

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now.

Global temperature anomaly for 2015 compared to the 1951-1980 average. Image: Berkeley Earth

During the next week, the official climate agencies around the world that are responsible for tracking the planet's average temperatures will almost certainly come to the same conclusion: 2015 was the warmest year on record. This would mean that 2015 would beat the previous warmest year, which occurred in 2014 — remember that?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday said he would seek changes in the way U.S. oil and coal resources are managed, prompting a flood of reaction from environmental groups pushing him to do more to limit fossil fuel production - and producers anxious about regulatory changes...

President Barack Obama delivers his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2016. Credit: REUTERS/Evan Vuccil

President pushes for changes in how government manages public-land fossil fuels, but overall his address does not outline plans for bold action this year...

The White House said further details on the ‘transition to a low-carbon economy’ would come in the next few weeks. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Pledge comes amid collapse in coal price but president says management of oil and coal should ‘better reflect the costs they impose’ on taxpayers and planet...