UN agency predicts phenomenon that supercharges weather extremes has 80% chance of forming before September

The world must prepare for the imminent return of El Niño and the supercharged weather extremes it brings, the UN has warned.

The powerful natural weather pattern, which raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall, has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

Scientists warn of ‘new reality’ of heat extremes that claim three times more lives than car crashes and 16 times as many as murderers

Malcolm Mistry knew it was going to get “very warm, very quickly” on Monday morning but a slow start out of bed delayed his plans for an early game of cricket with his son. It was already 10am by the time the pair arrived at the sun-soaked nets of their local club in south-west London, and to the embarrassment of the 48-year-old scientist, who played cricket in his youth, his body was struggling after just half an hour of bowling.

Had he continued for another hour, Mistry reckons he would have probably suffered from heatstroke. Had he and his son stayed until noon, they would have found themselves straining their bodies in direct sunlight while a nearby weather station logged the UK’s hottest May temperature since records began.

Scientists say record-breaking heat is a reminder of how climate crisis is affecting lives

The fierce heat sweeping across Europe over the bank holiday weekend has beaten the UK’s all-time temperature record for May, with scorching highs of close to 35C.

A temperature of 33.5C was recorded at Heathrow airport on Monday lunchtime, according to provisional data from the Met Office, beating the previous May record that was set in 1922 and reached again in 1944. Later in the afternoon a temperature of 34.8C was recorded at London’s Kew Gardens.

Findings come after third-hottest April on record globally and amid fears of more brutal European summer weather

Economic inequality adds more than 100,000 deaths to the vast toll from heat and cold in Europe each year, research has found.

Cutting levels of inequality to match that of Europe’s most equal region, Slovenia, as measured by the Gini index, would reduce temperature-related mortality by as much as 30%, equating to 109,866 people, the study found.

More than 33GW of battery capacity approved for Turkish grid since 2022 compared with 12-13GW in Germany

Turkey has given the green light to more batteries to buffer its electricity grid than any EU member state, a report has found, in a further sign of rich countries losing steam in the race to a clean economy.

More than 33GW of battery capacity have been approved in Turkey since 2022, according to the climate thinktank Ember, while the total planned and operational capacity in European frontrunners that started deploying them earlier, such as Germany and Italy, is 12-13GW.

The argument for transitioning to renewables seems stronger than ever – and yet, attacks mount on the carbon price scheme that underpins the EU’s success at cutting pollution

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On the one hand, experts say, Europe is better prepared for this energy crisis than the last. On the other, it is still waging a culture war against the most obvious path out.

Fuel prices have soared to ruinous levels since the Iran war left ships of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) stranded in the Gulf. The pain is most acute in Asia, but high energy prices are already causing panic in Europe. Shortages could hit the continent this month, oil company Shell warned last week. Donald Trump’s “go get your own oil” comments on Tuesday sent prices to their highest level since the start of the US-Israel attack on Iran. They briefly dipped below $100-a-barrel on Wednesday amid hopes that the war may soon end.

Driving fast is in ‘the German DNA’, say lovers of the speed-limit free Autobahn, but support in the country for a restriction is growing

Death-defying thrills are not what draws Lutz Leif Linden to zip down the Autobahn faster than a plane taking off. Instead, the feeling of freedom and an appreciation of technological mastery play a part in his “almost loving relationship” with driving cars faster than most people can imagine.

The top speed he has reached on the road in Germany, the world’s only democracy without a blanket speed limit on motorways, is 400km/h (249mph). “It’s like an airplane,” said Linden, the president of the Automobile Club of Germany (AvD). “You are faster than an Airbus at start.”

The EU’s reluctance to replace petrol cars and gas boilers keep it hooked on foreign fuels, say industry groups

Europe has made “staggering progress” in producing clean power but neglected efforts to phase out fuel-burning machines, the head of an industry group said as the global oil crisis deepens.

Adrian Hiel, director of the Electrification Alliance, said the EU has “radically transformed” its power supply and must now focus on getting “more electricity into the stuff we use every day”.

Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño

Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found.

Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures.

Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn among port cities more choked by sulphur oxides from ferries, analysis shows

Fume-belching ferries spew more sulphur pollution than cars in several EU capitals, analysis has found.

Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn are among 13 of Europe’s 15 biggest port cities choked more by sulphur oxides (SOx) from ferries than road vehicles, data shared exclusively with the Guardian shows.

Fish levels fall by 7.2% with as little as 0.1C of warming per decade, northern hemisphere research shows

Chronic ocean heating is fuelling a “staggering and deeply concerning” loss of marine life, a study has found, with fish levels falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade.

Researchers examined the year-to-year change of 33,000 populations in the northern hemisphere between 1993 and 2021, and isolated the effect of the decadal rate of seabed warming from short shifts such as marine heatwaves. They found the drop in biomass from chronic heating to be as high as 19.8% in a single year.

Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets

Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a report has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.

Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to meat-heavy diets that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.

Aftermath of Storm Nils causes chaos across country with flooding under way or expected on Garonne, Maine and Loire rivers

France has issued red alerts for flooding in three départements as the aftermath of Storm Nils causes chaos across the country.

Flood waters have inundated homes and isolated villages after the Garonne River overflowed its banks, with hydrologists warning that rain is falling on soils that have hit record-breaking levels of saturation.

Toxicity from farm chemicals increased for most species groups between 2013 and 2019, with insects worst affected

Ecological harm from pesticides is growing globally, a study has found, with bugs, fish, pollinators and land-based plants among six species groups hit hardest.

Insects suffered the greatest increase in harm from synthetic farm chemicals between 2013 and 2019, the study shows, with “applied” toxicity rising by 42.9%, followed by soil organisms, which faced an increase of 30.8%.

Netherlands expected to join Ireland in prohibiting most consumer fireworks as other EU countries debate crackdown

Window-rattling explosions turned Yara Basta-Bos’s street into a “war zone” last week, but she was spared from the worst of the new year chaos she had seen in the past. A few years ago, the emergency doctor in Amsterdam had to treat a patient clutching their own eyeball after a firework blew it out of its socket.

“It feels like such a waste,” said Basta-Bos, president of the Dutch society of emergency physicians, adding that last week’s revelry resulted in more than 1,200 injuries – one-third of whom ended up in hospital – and two deaths. “Of course, fireworks are nice to look at. But the level of damage it’s causing in the Netherlands right now is just unbelievable.”

Forecast is slightly cooler than the record 1.55C reached in 2024, but 2026 set to be among four hottest years since 1850

Next year will bring heat more than 1.4C above preindustrial levels, meteorologists project, as fossil fuel pollution continues to bake the Earth and fuel extreme weather.

The UK Met Office’s central forecast is slightly cooler than the 1.55C reached in 2024, the warmest year on record, but 2026 is set to be among the four hottest years dating back to 1850.

Copernicus deputy director says three-year average for 2023 to 2025 on track to exceed 1.5C of heating for first time

This year is “virtually certain” to end as the second- or third-hottest year on record, EU scientists have found, as climate breakdown continues to push the planet away from the stable conditions in which humanity evolved.

Global temperatures from January to November were on average 1.48C higher than preindustrial levels, according to the Copernicus, the EU’s earth observation programme. It found the anomalies were so far identical to those recorded in 2023, which is the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

Governments across the continent have attacked green rules with increasing ferocity – all while professing their commitment to existing climate targets

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To little fanfare and few international headlines, Denmark just announced one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets.

The unusually wind-powered and cycle-friendly Nordic nation – whose ruling Social Democrats suffered a setback in elections on Tuesday – promised on Monday to cut planet-heating pollution by at least 82% by 2035 from 1990 levels. The goal inches past the UK’s landmark 81% target for that year and races ahead of the EU’s rather wide goal of 66.3% to 72.5%.

While still on track to meet net zero commitments, climate groups say country’s toughest hurdles are yet to come