Study Suggests Climate Crisis Is Supercharging ‘Godzilla’ El Niños

“We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños, and the one we have now is consistent with that trend,” said the lead author. “That is bad news for climate hazards and for people.”


A study published August 27, 2026 in the journal Science concludes that fossil fuel-driven global warming has intensified the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the Pacific Ocean.
(Photo by Julia Cole/Science)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 27, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As the flooding disaster in Tibet and Nepal demonstrates the deadly consequences of the climate emergency, experts wrote Thursday in the journal Science that fossil fuel-driven global heating has intensified the warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has a warm phase, called El Niño, as well as a neutral phase and a cold one, La Niña. In June, scientists declared the start of a warm event nicknamed “Godzilla,” which helped push last month’s average global ocean surface temperature to the hottest ever recorded in July.

The current event is expected to become not only a super El Niño, but the most intense one on record—and it could contribute to 2027 possibly being the hottest year humanity has ever endured.

While ENSO is a naturally occurring phenomenon, the scientists behind the new paper studied coral skeletons from the Galápagos Islands and concluded that global warming—tied to humans continuing to burn fossil fuels—has intensified El Niño phases.

“Our findings suggest El Niño can supercharge global warming, but also global warming can supercharge El Niño—that is what we are seeing,” said lead author Julia Cole, who chairs the University of Michigan’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The scientist also spoke with Inside Climate News, which noted that “the first documented super El Niño in 1982-83 killed about 95% of the shallow-water corals around the Galápagos Islands, right around the time Cole began her research career.”

Based on the team’s analysis, “after the El Niño in 1982, we start seeing much more variability; it’s a lot more extreme and looks like nothing in the previous 1,000 years,” Cole told The Guardian. “What surprised me was how consistent it was. There is just such a large, distinct difference between what has been happening in the last 40 years compared to preindustrial times.”

As Inside Climate News reported:
When Cole visited the islands in 1989, many of the large mapped corals that could have served as sample material were gone, wiped out by the El Niño early in the decade and then decomposed quickly by organisms in the biologically active waters. But in 2006, her team discovered fossil coral remnants, often perched as boulders near remote east-facing coastlines, tossed inland by large waves or tsunamis.

Cole said the signal of El Niños intensified by human-caused warming would have been even stronger if the study had included the most recent occurrences. All the events categorized as super El Niños have occurred since the 1980s and have triggered flooding in East Africa, led to disease outbreaks, and intensified tropical storms. This year’s El Niño is intensifying drought in Indonesia, fueling widespread fires that are sending smoke and hazardous air pollution across Southeast Asia, Cole said. Her team is currently analyzing corals to show the changes from the El Niños in 2015-16 and 2023-24, she added.

“We are seeing a trend of stronger El Niños, and the one we have now is consistent with that trend—it’s not a fluke. We are seeing a shift where El Niño doesn’t look like what it did prior to industrial times,” Cole said. “That is bad news for climate hazards and for people, particularly those who are badly impacted and yet have done little to cause climate change.”

According to the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, consequences of El Niño include “increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Peru, which has caused destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia.”

Dalhousie University marine scientist Boris Worm wasn’t involved with the new study but told The Associated Press on Thursday that “El Niño is the most violent aspect of climate variability worldwide, with effects ranging from local fisheries collapse, to widespread coral die-offs to severe droughts, and food shortages around the world.”

Experts are already worried about the latest El Niño’s impact on food security and prices, with the United Nations World Food Program projecting earlier this month that almost 50 million more people worldwide face the prospect of acute hunger.

Pointing to late climate scientist Wallace Broecker’s warning that “the climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks,” Worm said that “human emissions are the stick, and El Niño is [one] of the ‘angry’ outbursts that can be so threatening to our collective safety.”

Interview 

Backlash Against Anti-Racism Is a Constant Force Shaping US Politics

Philosopher George Yancy analyzes the contemporary expression of what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “entrails of whiteness.”

By Josh Friedberg ,

Truthout

August 26, 2026

Blank walls and empty brackets mark the spots where National Park signs memorializing historical facts about slavery were once mounted, before they were removed by the Trump administration, March 14, 2026, at the Independence National Historical Park in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images
Blank walls and empty brackets mark the spots where National Park signs memorializing historical facts about slavery were once mounted, before they were removed by the Trump administration, March 14, 2026, at the Independence National Historical Park in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images

In the United States, the presidential administration is actively working to erase past gains in civil rights and environmental justice. This tendency is manifesting in many ways, including curtailing voting rights, whitewashing U.S. history teaching materials, and rolling back social services that disproportionately affect people of color. In this context, one of the most important books I’ve read from the last decade is George Yancy’s Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America. I strongly believe that every white person needs to read and reckon with the ideas in Yancy’s book. Backlash is a tougher but more necessary book than most popular books on race, especially in the context of 2026 being the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence. At a time when many cling to the myth of this nation as fair and equal while white supremacy continues to dominate national and global politics, Backlash is a stern yet compassionate reminder of the importance of defining racism in terms of power. Within this context, I conducted this exclusive interview with George Yancy, who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University, a frequent contributor to Truthout, and the author, editor, and coeditor of over 25 books.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Josh Friedberg: Let’s start with the letter you wrote in 2015, “Dear White America.” What motivated you to write it?

George Yancy: In terms of context, the letter itself was my essay contribution to a series of popular interviews that I conducted with philosophers on race for The New York Times philosophy series, “The Stone.” The motivation had to do with the desire to find a critical discursive format for addressing the issue of whiteness. How does one speak to white people about something that is so familiar to them, like water is to fish, so normative and yet opaque, and thereby invisible? Indeed, how does one deploy a mode of address that attempts to speak the truth about their whiteness without resulting in forms of irrational defensiveness on their part? I wanted to communicate something about whiteness that critiqued its normative structure and how it falsely equates itself with humanity per se.

In his book Performing Purity (2003), whiteness scholar John T. Warren argues that “like layers of sand constituting a rock, the repeated enactments of [white] identity become sedimented and seemingly fixed, as if they had always been there.” I wanted to communicate to white people that their identity as white — along with the tropes of whiteness as “superior,” “virtuous,” and “pure” — was historically constructed, and that it is through their complicity that whiteness is sustained as a process of racial privilege, domination, and oppression. And I wanted them to own this hard truth. I thought that through my own show of vulnerability — where I talk honestly about my own sexism — I could perhaps touch the souls of white readers. I wanted to get them to use my capacity to expose my own complicity with sexism as a bridge that encouraged their own capacity to be honest about their whiteness and its link to anti-Blackness.


Trump Relies on Centuries-Old Notions of Whiteness to Activate His MAGA Base
Whiteness is baked into the US’s DNA. Can it be structurally dismantled?
By George Yancy , Truthout April 4, 2026

I saw the letter as one grounded in love. Like James Baldwin, I wanted to demonstrate a form of love “not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” I was asking for nothing short of self-confrontation. As you know, the invitation was met with hatred and denial. I was called by the n-word more times than I would like to remember. Being called that word, and so many other despicable words, lends credence to my pessimism vis-à-vis white America’s honesty with itself and its history of anti-Black violence. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, I possess “a hope not hopeless, but unhopeful.”

You later wrote a booktitled Backlash about the responses you received to your letter. In my blog, I related your book to America 250 and our current incarnation of white supremacy in the U.S. Do you think Donald Trump’s presidency has affected the presence of racism in the U.S.? In other words, is racism worse with him in office or is it more of the “same old, same old?”

Writing Backlash was cathartic for me. I’ve been told that the book is hard to read — not because of its philosophical jargon, but because I don’t withhold sharing the raw vitriol that was directed at me by so many white readers. The responses were vile projections spewed from the historical formation of the white imagination — an imagination imbued with myths of “white purity.” Racialized xenophobia and white fear and resentment were unambiguous:

“He should f*** off to Africa if he doesn’t like living in a white country.”

“You’re going back to Africaaaaaa!”

“Deport him to Africa to ponder racism there.”

The irony is that I never asked white people to bring me here, to take me from Africa, to enslave me, to brutalize me, to lynch me, to make me the object of white anti-Black fantasies and desires. It was never about me, about Black people. It was about whiteness and the historical fact that white people created a fictionalized conception of Blackness to conceal their own lack. Whiteness is a structural lie that underwrites and perpetuates its delusions of ontological supremacy.

Linking Backlash to the U.S.’s 250th birthday and to Donald Trump’s presidency (2.0) is important as neither one speaks to the eradication of the toxicity of whiteness. This country’s founding is predicated on the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the denigration of Black people. Those realities speak to the ontological binary structure of whiteness. In short, whiteness creates conditions of ontological apartheid.

For me, whiteness is not anti-Black or racially xenophobic because it has gone awry; whiteness is anti-Black because its very being is anti-Black; this is how it thrives. Racism is not “worse” because of Trump. He is just its latest manifestation, the latest conduit through which the ugliness of white supremacy expresses itself shamelessly. The U.S. is either a white supremacist state, or it isn’t. There is no in-between.

For Black people, this doesn’t mean that juridically there has not been any progress. But what is juridical progress when one remains part of a white state — that reinforces collective white psychic life — that needs you to remain abject? Let’s face it. Trump’s white nationalist xenophobia and anti-Blackness — from his discourse about Black “shithole countries,” to his expressed desire for the U.S. to accept more immigrants from Norway, to his false claim that there is genocide against white South Africans, and to his claim that Haitian immigrants are eating the cats and dogs of their neighbors — is unashamed. I can easily imagine Trump saying to me: If Yancy doesn’t like America, which is the greatest country the likes of which we’ve never seen before, then he should take his woke and radical left ideas to one of those shithole countries. In short, for me, contemporary white supremacy is more of the same old, same old.

Something that struck me in your book was your compassion and empathy, as well as tough-mindedness, for whites, as you acknowledged your own sexism as a man. You see racism as being about power and privilege, not value — your approach is not,“This person is a racist and is therefore a bad person.” Can you expand on that, addressing the tension between the compassion and the toughness in your writing?

Sure. My position is grounded in the prophetic love of James Baldwin when it comes to critiquing whiteness. This doesn’t mean that I love white people because of their whiteness. That is part of the lie and seduction of whiteness, that somehow BIPOC people are expected to love whiteness, its symbolism, its aesthetics, its tropes of “greatness.” I refuse to be a consumer of that poison, to wear a white mask and forget the fact that I’m seen as a “problem” by the white state. That seduction — that act of mask-wearing — can cost me my life.

Baldwin didn’t forget that he was Black. Rather, he resisted the derogatory definitions that white people imposed upon him. So, I would say that the compassion or empathy that you’re talking about is, for me, a manifestation of Baldwinian love that will, as he says in The Fire Next Time, “force [white people] to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” That is Socratic to the core. When white people begin to truly interrogate their whiteness, this will place them within a state of danger. Why danger? Because this will or should generate a powerful form of disenchantment with themselves and the world that has come to accept the lie that whiteness is innocent.

I have had BIPOC students ask me, “Why do you spend so much time talking to white people about their whiteness, when you should be talking to Black people and people of color?” Well, I can do both. More importantly, I talk to white people — I place the ethical burden upon them — because they must take responsibility for the violence of whiteness and its structural binary, its us-versus-them mentality. To get white people to face the lie of their white innocence is to — perhaps — save the lives of Black people.

Also, I would add that it is too easy to say that to be racist is to be a bad person, but white people must, because of their complicity with white supremacy, carry the weight of how their whiteness denigrates me and how they are thereby positioned within a network of social relations that holds them collectively responsible. In this way, white people don’t escape the unethical dimensions of whiteness.

With the current controversies around ethnic studies and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), how do you think the ideas in Backlash have held up since its publication? Is there anything you would change or add to them now?

I think that Backlash captured the unmitigated aspirations that white people possess when it comes to desiring “white purity” and evading the reality of structural white anti-Blackness. Hence, since its publication, I’m reminded that whiteness will do anything to survive, especially through the deployment of the social, political, and existential chimera of being a target of “anti-white racism.”

In his book Ethnic Studies at the Crossroads (2026), George Lipsitz — writing about the fiction of reverse racism — writes: “Once affirmative action was invalidated by the Supreme Court and [critical race theory] lost its luster as privileged villain, it quickly became supplanted by opposition to DEI programs. Beneath the surface, this succession of moral panics about an imaginary ‘reverse racism’ entails opposition to the project of ethnic studies and indeed to any visible manifestation of larger antiracist social formations.” Lipsitz goes on to mark the difference between what I would call a form of political patchwork vis-à-vis racism as opposed to something far more substantive: “It is not that nothing ever changes in history, but that when it comes to racism the changes are often more cosmetic than substantive. W.E.B. Du Bois compared white supremacy in the U.S. to a crack in a plate that was once broken but had been patched up. Whenever the plate was dropped again, it broke along the lines of the patched-up crack because the weakness was structural, not surface.” If I was to add anything different, I would make explicit the insights of historian Jeanelle K. Hope regarding the historical and contemporary ways in which U.S. whiteness and U.S. fascism are inextricably linked.

Does your work in Backlash relate to any current or upcoming projects you are working on? Are there any parts of it that you’d like to see other thinkers and scholars reckon with?

I am currently editing a book under contract with Temple University Press that explores how Black and white philosophers and public intellectuals interpret James Baldwin’s view that white America invented the N*****. So, I continue to explore and expose what W.E.B. Du Bois, in “The Souls of White Folk,” called the entrails of whiteness. In terms of other scholars, I would especially like to see more white philosophers come to terms with their structural positionality as white and how their whiteness manifests as anti-Black. Perhaps how I write — bringing the pain and suffering close — might inspire that kind of deep psychic work, the work of lived experience, that is courageous and honest without resulting in white “innocence” framing race/racism as a distant conceptual object, buried in arcane philosophical works written by Anglo-American and European philosophers of the past.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Josh Friedberg
Josh Friedberg is an author, TEDx speaker, storyteller, and music historian. He has over 100 articles published, including as a staff writer at the web magazine PopMatters. He has won many awards from Illinois and national communications contests since 2017. He holds a master’s degree in English from Northeastern Illinois University and lives in Chicago, where he tutors college students in writing.

INTERVIEW

Trapped for 115 days, cargo ship captain recounts ordeal in Strait of Hormuz

In late January 2026, the Banglar Joyjatra, a Bangladeshi bulk carrier, entered the Persian Gulf on what should have been a routine commercial voyage before continuing to South Africa. Instead, Captain Mohammad Shafiqul Islam and his crew became trapped for 115 days as conflict engulfed the Strait of Hormuz. He told RFI how the voyage turned into a fight to get his ship and crew safely out.


Issued on: 29/08/2026 -  RFI

The Banglar Joyjatra, the Bangladeshi bulk carrier whose crew endured 115 days caught up in the Gulf conflict before finally escaping through the Strait of Hormuz in June 2026. © Bangladesh Shipping Corporation

On Saturday 31 January, Iran announced live-fire naval exercises simulating a complete blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. From the bridge of the Banglar Joyjatra, Islam watched as ships piled up at anchor and maritime traffic ground to a halt.

Two days later, the vessel crossed the strait. For Islam and his 31 crew members, however, the passage marked the beginning of an ordeal that would last nearly four months.

The vessel spent the following weeks loading and unloading cargo, including steel, at ports in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. On 26 February, it reached Jebel Ali in the UAE, the region’s main logistics hub and one of the world’s largest container ports.

War reaches Jebel Ali

“Up to that point, everything was going well,” Islam told RFI.

The Banglar Joyjatra was waiting to begin cargo-handling operations when war suddenly came frighteningly close.

“During the night of 28 February to 1 March, I heard a huge explosion. I went out in my pyjamas and saw a massive blaze – so big that it took six tugs 24 hours to put out the fire.”

An oil depot around 200 metres from the ship had been struck by an Iranian missile, hours after Israeli-US strikes against Iran began.

“Panic seized the crew,” Islam said. “Some wanted to leave the ship to take refuge in a hotel. At the time of the explosion, there were around 200 ships in the port area. Within a few days, the port had been deserted. There wasn’t a soul to be seen!”

The Banglar Joyjatra was also ordered to leave, but Islam refused.

“I disobeyed the order because, in the event of war, if I left the port area and was hit by a missile, no one would come to my rescue.”

His company and the Bangladeshi government later authorised him to abandon the vessel, but he remained on board.

“I told them I was responsible for the ship, worth 40 million dollars, not to mention the cargo of over 39,000 tonnes of steel coils we’d loaded in Qatar, estimated to be worth 8.2 million dollars.”

In a video filmed from the ship, flames can be seen after an Iranian missile strike at Jebel Ali during the night of 28 February to 1 March.

Missiles overhead

After several days, the ship took advantage of a lull to unload its cargo. What followed were 11 days of anxiety as Iranian missiles and Emirati air defence interceptions lit up the skies, particularly at night.

“Missiles were constantly flying overhead. Every night, I wondered if it would be my last.”

Iranian strikes on Jebel Ali also disrupted fuel supplies by hitting bunkering facilities, Islam said.

On 11 March, vessels were again ordered to leave. The Banglar Joyjatra was told to head either towards Kuwait or Mumbai.

With Kuwait itself under attack, Islam chose Mumbai – but that meant passing through the Strait of Hormuz again.

A pilot warned him against attempting the crossing, saying four ships had already been hit by Iranian missiles near the strait.

The dangers went beyond missiles and drones. The waters around Hormuz were also mined, while electronic warfare disrupted GPS navigation, radio frequencies and satellite communications, forcing ships to navigate by more traditional methods.

“As my satellite navigation systems were out of action and ship-to-shore communications were cut off, I bought a local SIM card and, by following the coastal route, I was able to stay connected to the network,” Islam said.

His first attempt to cross came on 12 March.

“I arrived very early, but the Emirati coastguard forced me to turn back because the situation was very bad,” Islam said. “I then made contact with the Revolutionary Guards, who refused to grant me permission to pass. So we went and anchored in the port of Hamriyah, in the emirate of Sharjah.”

There, north-east of Dubai, the crew remained exposed to the fighting.

The sailors witnessed a strike around 12 nautical miles – 22 kilometres – away. Another ship was sunk by debris from an intercepted missile, while a drone later hit an oil tanker close to the Banglar Joyjatra.


Two months stranded

Islam also had to manage the psychological strain on his crew.

“I’ve been a captain for 18 years; I know a thing or two about psychology and I know how to manage my crew,” Islam said. “I’ve managed to keep their spirits up, thank God.”

Fresh water and food became increasingly difficult and expensive to obtain. Daily water consumption was cut from 20 tonnes to five.

Regular contact with relatives helped sustain morale, as did extensive coverage of the crew’s plight in the Bangladeshi media. The charterer provided extra funds for better meals, while the sailors passed the time with online games, prayer and other activities.

Islam was also told that if danger became imminent, the crew could abandon the ship and make for the nearest coast.

Photo taken from a video of some of the crew sent to the Bangladeshi media to reassure their families. In the front row, third from the left, is Captain Islam. © Avec l'aimable du capitaine Islam

In late April, the vessel was sent to Ras Al Khair in Saudi Arabia to load 37,400 tonnes of fertiliser bound for Durban, South Africa.

The operation brought another challenge.

“You had to be very experienced because everything rested on my shoulders,” Islam said. “In Ras Al Khair, when entering or leaving the port, I couldn’t count on any assistance from the pilot. The manoeuvre was very risky; I had to follow the marked channel.”

By mid-May, rumours were circulating that the Strait of Hormuz might reopen.

Islam repeatedly contacted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seeking permission to cross, but was refused.

Bangladesh then intensified diplomatic efforts with Tehran.

“Our Foreign Minister has contacted the Iranian Foreign Minister, as have the deputy ministers of both countries,” Islam said. “Discussions have also taken place between the ambassadors in Iran and Bangladesh. We have made repeated requests through all government channels.”

The South African consignee also intervened, arguing that the fertiliser was important for food production in Africa. But the diplomatic efforts initially came to nothing.

After another 23 attempts to cross the strait, Islam said Iran’s message remained clear – if the ship proceeded without permission, it could be attacked.

“If I had disobeyed, I would be dead,” Islam said. “They struck so many ships right in front of us; I saw it with my own eyes.”

Final escape

By 20 June, however, the situation was beginning to change.

Two days earlier, the United States and Iran had electronically signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at establishing a 60-day ceasefire and ending direct hostilities.

Some maritime traffic began moving through Hormuz again, although Iran continued to restrict passage. The Banglar Joyjatra remained at anchor.

Then, on 21 June, Islam received a call from his employer.

“He said: ‘Captain, you’re in luck because other ships are currently passing through.’”

The vessel immediately headed for the strait. As it approached the Iranian checkpoint, Islam contacted the Revolutionary Guards.

There was no reply.

His manager advised him to seize the opportunity. Islam decided to follow the merchant vessels ahead of him.

In the early hours of 23 June, the Banglar Joyjatra finally emerged into the Gulf of Oman.

After 115 days of missiles, electronic jamming, shortages, repeated refusals and diplomatic manoeuvring, the ordeal was over.

The Strait of Hormuz nevertheless remains heavily restricted, with commercial traffic well below pre-crisis levels.

Iran is making a full reopening conditional on demands including an end to the US naval blockade, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, the lifting of the oil embargo and an end to military operations on all fronts.

Washington has rejected those conditions, leaving the Strait of Hormuz only partially open and under Iranian control.

This has been adapted from an original article in French by RFI's Jelena Tomic

MTG-I2 satellite launches on Ariane 6, completing Europe's new weather satellite constellation

The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2 (MTG-I2) on its Ariane 6 rocket on the launch pad

 at the European Spaceport in French Guiana. ESA–M. Pédoussaut

By Maria Muñoz Morillo

Published on 28/08/2026 - EURONEWS

The launch of MTG-I2 from French Guiana completes the first trio of Meteosat Third Generation satellites, delivering high-resolution data and images every 2.5 minutes to transform weather forecasting and early warnings of extreme events.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has reached a historic milestone in Earth observation and meteorological science, amid the climate crisis and meteorological disasters. The MTG-I2 ("Meteosat Third Generation Imager-2") satellite has been successfully launched aboard the Ariane 6 rocket from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

With this mission, ESA completes the first trio in the Meteosat Third Generation constellation (MTG). MTG-I2, successfully launched on 27 July, is the second imaging satellite in this fleet and joins the first Imager (launched in 2022) and the Sounder (launched in 2025). Once its commissioning phase is complete, the constellation will begin operating at full capacity.

Relate

Revolution in forecasting extreme weather events

Located at an altitude of 36,000 kilometres in geostationary orbit, MTG-I2 will maintain a fixed position, acting as a watchful eye over the Earth's surface. Its main instrument, the Flexible Combined Imager, will provide a rapid-scan service over Europe, delivering high-resolution observations every 2.5 minutes.

This very high refresh rate represents a change of paradigm for nowcasting, improving short-term weather forecasts and proving vital for the monitoring of disasters such as floods or wildfires. The technology will make it possible to track atmospheric fronts in real time, anticipate the formation of severe storms or DANA events and improve the monitoring of fires and air pollution across Europe, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean and North Africa.

In addition, the satellite includes the Lightning Imager, a sensor capable of detecting and mapping individual lightning discharges both day and night. Integrating these satellites will make it possible to build the "weather cube", a three-dimensional representation of lightning, winds, cloud dynamics and greenhouse gases.

The MTG-I2 provides advanced satellite technology that will improve weather monitoring and forecasts across Europe, delivering real benefits to citizens and communities throughout the continent

 Simonetta Cheli 

Director of ESA's Earth Observation Programmes.

A milestone for the Ariane 6 rocket and the next operational steps

The launch marked the ninth mission of Ariane 6 (source in Spanish) and the first time the European heavy-lift rocket has carried a satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). To reach the furthest distance achieved by this launcher to date, it flew in a configuration with two P120C solid-fuel boosters.

After satellite separation, contact with the spacecraft was successfully established. Ground teams are now overseeing the deployment of the solar panels and the gradual ignition of its propulsion system to raise the perigee and fine-tune its trajectory towards its final geostationary orbit. Once it has been repointed towards Earth, the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) will end and scientific calibration can begin.

European industrial cooperation and the future of the programme

Development of the MTG family has been led by ESA together with a European industrial consortium headed by Thales Alenia Space, with support from OHB System and Leonardo. Once the calibration phase is complete, responsibility for operating the satellites and distributing data to the international scientific community will pass to Eumetsat.

This fleet guarantees continuity of the observations begun by the Meteosat Second Generation series (operational between 2002 and 2015). From 2033, a second family of MTG satellites is expected to be launched in stages, ensuring the continuity of the service beyond 2040.

 

ESA signs first major European Launcher Challenge contract with Spain's PLD Space

Copyright PLD

By Cristian Caraballo

Published on 27/08/2026 - EURONEWS

ESA has signed its first contract with PLD Space under the European Launcher Challenge, worth 158.9 million euros, to boost MIURA 5 launches and new orbital capabilities.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun signing the first contracts for its European Launcher Challenge (ELC), the programme with which Europe is trying to end its reliance on foreign launchers to place satellites in orbit. Among the companies selected is PLD Space, the Elche-based firm that in 2023 launched its MIURA 1 demonstrator rocket on a suborbital flight.

The contract, worth 158.9 million euros and funded mainly by Spain with a German contribution, positions the company as one of the central pieces of the future European launcher ecosystem.

The agreement is split into two components. The first aims to consolidate the commercial service of MIURA 5 and gradually ramp up its launch rate through to 2030, at a time when the company says it is already seeing growing commercial interest in the rocket in international markets.

The second, focused on what PLD Space describes as "enhanced orbital capability", will fund upgrades to MIURA 5 so that it can carry heavier payloads and reach more distant orbits, as well as incorporating propulsive landing, the first step towards reusing the rocket.

'Euronews' has spoken to Lucía Linares in French Guiana ahead of the launch of the next Meteosat. Linares is Head of Strategy and Institutional Launches at ESA and told us that companies such as PLD Space, Rocket Factory, Asbury, Maia Space and Isar Aerospace have been chosen by ESA under the Boost programme to receive co-funding: "What we do is no longer to set technical requirements for them as we do with Ariane or Vega, but simply to see how they develop their launch service and to verify that there is also private financing and that they meet certain technical objectives, of course, but without imposing anything on them."

Lucía Linares, ESA, 27 August 2026 'Euronews'

Linares also confirmed to 'Euronews' that they have already signed with PLD Space: "I have to say that we have already signed that contract with PLD Space and for me this is a source of great excitement, not only to attend the launch they will carry out, which I have been following for many years, but also to be able to see here in French Guiana how the construction work on PLD Space's infrastructure is progressing; it will launch from French Guiana, the European Spaceport."

The road to MIURA Next

According to the Spanish company, many of the subsystems developed under this orbital-improvement programme will not stay on MIURA 5: they are designed to be transferred directly to MIURA Next, the future family of heavy launchers with which PLD Space wants to scale up. The idea is that each technical improvement certified now will shorten timelines and reduce risks when it is time for the larger launcher.

"ESA's selection of PLD Space confirms the maturity of the roadmap we have been building for years," summarised Ezequiel Sánchez, the company's executive chairman, who places the contract within a trajectory that began with MIURA 1 and which, he says, should end by transferring critical technology to the heavy launcher.

As Lucía Linares told us, the PLD Space contract is not the only one ESA has signed in this round. Germany's Rocket Factory Augsburg has been awarded 186.9 million euros for its RFA One, which will operate from the SaxaVord base in Scotland, and Isar Aerospace has secured 197.8 million for its Spectrum. The three were part of a group of five finalists, completed by MaiaSpace and Orbex, which ESA shortlisted in July 2025 after receiving twelve proposals from across Europe.

ELC was created in 2023 with the aim, among others, of having before 2030 a European successor to Ariane 6 that does not depend on a single operator, and at the ministerial meeting in Bremen in November 2025 the member states stepped up their funding commitment to 900 million euros.

For PLD Space, the contract comes on top of the 42 million it had already received from CDTI through the Aerospace PERTE and arrives in the final development phase of MIURA 5, the orbital rocket that is due to succeed MIURA 1.

Climate change leaves 560 million children facing extra heat stress every year, study finds

Copyright AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris

By Marta Iraola Iribarren

Published on 28/08/2026 - EURONEWS

As many as 560 million children are already living through at least one extra month of dangerous heat every year because of climate change, a threat that puts them at serious health risk.

Children today are exposed to significantly more heat stress days per year than previous generations — a burden that is expected to increase, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel found that younger populations face disproportionate health risks, including direct physiological strain and indirect threats like food and water insecurity.

The findings, published in the Science Advances journal, showed that up to 560 million children aged 0-9 years old are living through at least one additional month of heat stress every year due to human-induced climate change.

“Climate change is already causing hundreds of millions of children to suffer from dangerous heat worldwide, posing severe risks to their health,” said Rosa Pietroiusti, lead author of the study.

“At the same time, poverty, inadequate housing, limited access to cooling, and overstretched healthcare systems leave many children with few ways to protect themselves from the heat.”

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• Two-thirds of children exposed to extreme temperatures in Europe

Children are more vulnerable

Vulnerability to heat stress varies with age, the researchers noted, with older adults, newborns and young children being particularly at risk.

“Children are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts and will face intensifying effects of climate change during their lifetimes,” the authors wrote.

The study found that children’s exposure outpaces that of any other age group, nearly tripling the 190 million people aged 60-69 who experience this additional health threat.

Excessive heat is dangerous for the body as it hinders its ability to thermoregulate, aggravates existing health conditions and increases the risk of heatstroke, kidney failure and lung damage.

In children, the impact is even greater when they are undergoing physical development and have lower capacity for body temperature regulation. They sweat less per kilogram of body weight and have a higher metabolic rate, causing them to heat up more quickly during periods of extreme heat.

According to the researchers, there are multiple factors that increase children’s exposure to dangerous heat.

The largest increases in humid heat caused by climate change are occurring in tropical regions and poorer countries with younger populations — South Asia, Southeast Asia and West Africa — which have the highest number of children exposed to dangerous heat stress today.

They also noted that children in the worst-affected areas are likely to be more socioeconomically vulnerable, and affected by heat through both direct pathways such as heat strain and indirect pathways, including the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, disrupted child feeding practices and complications at birth.

Related

• Nearly all children are exposed to the lasting health impacts of climate change, UNICEF says

A worrying picture for the future

According to temperature projections, the researchers found that children will remain disproportionately exposed to heat stress, even as global populations age.

In a scenario in which the world is 1.5°C warmer, an estimated 620 million children aged 0-9 would experience at least one additional month of heat stress per year, and 390 million are projected to experience at least five total months of heat stress.

If the temperature increases reach 2.0°C, estimates project 650 million children facing

one additional month of heat stress per year, and 420 million at least five total months of heat stress.

Ceuta warns it is 'on the brink of collapse' as Spain seeks Frontex and Europol help

Copyright AP Photo

By Gavin Blackburn

Published on 28/08/2026 - EURONEWS

Meanwhile, Spain's interior minister called for calm after Ceuta residents clashed with police during protests against migrants who have remained in the enclave following a mass influx.

Spain has asked the European Commission (EC) for the support from Frontex and Europol to assist with the screening of migrants who are staying irregularly in Ceuta, according to several Spanish media outlets.

Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has asked the EC for Frontex, Europol and the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) to "reinforce the device set up to address the management of the triage and subsequent processing of the personal files of the immigrants who still remain in Ceuta irregularly."

The Interior Ministry also demanded the extension of Operation Minerva, a joint initiative of the Spanish police and the EU border protection agency Frontex.

Madrid ask that that operation run until 2 September until "the situation created in the autonomous city is resolved."

Madrid also asked for the " assistance of the European Union Agency for Asylum in conducting interviews and providing interpreters" in order to triage migrants.

Due to space limitations in Ceuta, this process is expected to be carried out electronically.

Migrants who crossed from Morocco into Spain return to a beach after being expelled from the area the previous day, 21 August, 2026 AP Photo

The Interior Ministry announced on Friday that Ceuta's border would be reinforced with a package of "extraordinary" measures such as extending the Tarajal and Benzú breakwaters, a permanent system of maritime containment buoys, aerial surveillance with drones, light intervention vessels and remotely operated underwater devices.

At the same time, Ceuta's Assembly unanimously called on the central government on Friday to act "immediately and without further delay" arguing that the city is in an "extreme situation, on the verge of collapse."

The Board of Spokespersons, together with the non-affiliated MPs, unanimously approved on Friday an institutional declaration calling on the government to adopt urgent measures one month after the mass entry of at least 72,000 migrants from Morocco.

"Ceuta has lost its way of life and its calm. We do not have much time to avert disaster," Ceuta's President Juan Vivas warned.

The declaration calls for a return to their countries, "in accordance with the law" of those who took part in the mass entry and are still in Ceuta. It also backs citizens' right to demonstrate, as long as it is done "peacefully and in an orderly manner," and condemns violent incidents recorded in recent days.

"No one can or should take the law into their own hands. The defence of Ceuta and the interests of its people can only be pursued through legality," Vivas said.

Migrants who crossed from Morocco into Spain are escorted by Spanish police to temporary shelters after being cleared from a beach in Ceuta, 20 August, 2026 AP Photo

Appeal for calm

Meanwhile, Spain's interior minister called for calm on Friday after residents of Ceuta clashed with police during protests against migrants who have remained in the North African enclave following a mass influx.

Tensions have been high in the territory of 80,000 people since at least 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta over several days in July, triggering a Europe-wide migrant alert.

Spain's leftist government says most have since left the enclave of 18.5 square kilometres but thousands remain wandering the streets and sleeping on beaches.

Demonstrations have intensified in recent days, with some protesters clashing with police on Thursday at a beach where migrants have been sleeping. Some of their belongings were burned.


Migrants who crossed from Morocco into Spain are escorted by Spanish police to temporary shelters after being cleared from a beach in Ceuta, 21 August, 2026 Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A soldier was injured in a separate incident on Thursday when migrants threw stones at troops, while 12 Moroccan migrants were arrested.

Two more arrests were made after migrants attacked a police officer, sources said.

"Violence is not the answer," Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told parliament on Friday.

"I call for calm and an end to any form of violence, because...violence is not the way to resolve any problem with the complexity" of that facing Ceuta, he added.

Right-wing and far-right parties have demanded that all the migrants be rounded up and sent back to their home countries.

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Grande-Marlaska accused them of "inciting hatred and confrontation" in Ceuta.

The government has warned that each individual must be identified to determine whether they are entitled to asylum or subject to deportation, while unaccompanied migrant children require special protection.

Ceuta and Melilla, another small Spanish territory in North Africa, form Europe's only land border with Africa.