It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Scientists in Tajikistan puzzled by expanding glacier
Scientists hope that if they can solve what lies behind the unusual expanding glacier on the "Roof of the World", gathered data might help in efforts to protect other glaciers that are melting. / Chen Zhao, cc-by-sa 2.0
Scientists in Tajikistan are puzzled by a glacier that is expanding.
With the world losing perhaps a thousand or so glaciers per year because of anthropogenic climate change, the discovery in the Pamir Mountains is highly unusual.
A study published by the journal Nature refers to the oddity that is the Kon-Chukurbashi high-altitude ice cap in a part of the Earth sometimes referred to as the “Roof of the World”.
At around 5,810 metres, or 19,000 feet, up in the Pamirs, an international team of scientists set out to understand the glacier’s unexpected resilience.
The scientists have already been in the headlines for removing two glacier ice core samples, one of which they transported to an underground sanctuary in Antarctica called the Ice Memory Foundation. The repository will serve as a source of climate information for centuries to come.
It turns out that the other core has been sent to the Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, where Yoshinori Iizuka, a professor at the university, will analyse the sample in an effort to understand the anomaly of the expanding ice cap.
“If we could learn the mechanism behind the increased volume of ice there, then we may be able to apply that to all the other glaciers around the world,” Iizuka told AFP. “That may be too ambitious a statement. But I hope our study will ultimately help people.”
Tajikistan’s glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate, with over one thousand already gone completely and dozens more under threat, according to an Atlas of Environmental Change published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) last September.
The findings underscore the urgency of regional cooperation as rising temperatures put unprecedented pressure on Central Asia’s water resources.
Some of the world’s last resilient glaciers are located in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains, but they are being destabilised by snowfall shortages, a study from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has found.
In October, a giant chunk broke away from a large glacier in the Pamirs, triggering warnings from scientists to mountain villages in the vicinity.
Saturday, January 10, 2026
Melting glaciers may release hidden antibiotic resistance into vital water sources
Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University
As climate change accelerates the melting of glaciers around the world, scientists are warning of a little-known risk flowing downstream with the meltwater: antibiotic resistance genes that have been locked in ice for thousands of years.
In a new review published in Biocontaminant, researchers report that glaciers act as long-term reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes, or ARGs, genetic elements that allow bacteria to survive exposure to antibiotics. Once released by glacier melt, these genes can enter rivers, lakes, and ecosystems that supply drinking water and support wildlife in polar and high-altitude regions.
“Glaciers have long been viewed as pristine and isolated environments,” said corresponding author Guannan Mao of Lanzhou University. “Our review shows that they are also genetic archives that store antibiotic resistance, and climate-driven melting is turning these archives into active sources.”
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing global public health challenges. While resistance is often linked to modern antibiotic use, many resistance genes are ancient and naturally occurring. Glaciers preserve microorganisms and their DNA under cold, low-nutrient conditions, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of years. As temperatures rise, these preserved microbes and genes are being released into downstream freshwater systems.
The authors synthesized findings from studies across Antarctica, the Arctic, the Tibetan Plateau, and other glacier regions. Although resistance levels in glaciers are generally lower than in heavily polluted environments, the review shows that a wide variety of resistance genes have been detected, including those linked to clinically important antibiotics.
“Glacier-fed rivers and lakes are essential water sources for millions of people,” Mao said. “Once resistance genes enter these connected systems, they can interact with modern bacteria, increasing the risk of spread through microbial communities.”
A key contribution of the study is the introduction of the “glacier continuum” concept. Rather than treating glaciers, rivers, and lakes as separate environments, the researchers argue they should be understood as a connected system through which resistance genes are transported, transformed, and potentially amplified.
As meltwater flows downstream, environmental conditions become more favorable for microbial growth and gene exchange. Rivers can act as mixing zones where resistance genes move between bacteria, while lakes may accumulate these genes and pass them through food webs, including into fish and other aquatic organisms.
“Most previous studies have looked at individual habitats in isolation,” said Mao. “That approach misses how resistance genes actually move through real landscapes. The glacier continuum allows us to understand where risks may increase and where intervention or monitoring is most needed.”
The review also highlights growing evidence that resistance genes can coexist with virulence factors, genetic traits that enable bacteria to cause disease. This combination raises concerns that glacier melt could contribute to the emergence of bacteria that are both drug resistant and potentially harmful.
Human activities further complicate the picture. Airborne pollutants, migratory birds, tourism, and scientific stations can introduce modern resistance genes into remote glacier environments. In some regions, such as the Arctic, resistance levels are significantly higher than in Antarctica, reflecting stronger human influence.
To address these risks, the authors call for coordinated monitoring programs using advanced genetic tools, such as metagenomic sequencing, to track resistance genes along the glacier continuum. They also emphasize the need for early-warning frameworks that assess ecological and health risks before resistance spreads widely.
“Climate change is reshaping microbial risks in ways we are only beginning to understand,” Mao said. “Recognizing glaciers as part of the global antibiotic resistance landscape is an important step toward protecting both environmental and human health.”
The findings underscore the importance of viewing antibiotic resistance through a One Health lens that connects environmental change, ecosystem integrity, and public health in a warming world.
===
Journal reference: Ying H, Zhang Y, Hu W, Wu W, Mao G. 2025. Glaciers as reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes: hidden risks to human and ecosystem health in a warming world. Biocontaminant 1: e021
About Biocontaminant: Biocontaminant (e-ISSN: 3070-359X) is a multidisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing fundamental and applied research on biological contaminants across diverse environments and systems. The journal serves as an innovative, efficient, and professional forum for global researchers to disseminate findings in this rapidly evolving field.
Glaciers as reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes: hidden risks to human and ecosystem health in a warming world
Friday, January 09, 2026
Why Greenland's melting ice cap threatens humanity, and could serve Trump
As the White House looks to take control of Greenland, US President Donald Trump is eyeing not just a strategic foothold in the Arctic but the territory's vast underground resources. While the melting of the island's glaciers could make land and minerals easier to exploit, it could also wipe hundreds of thousands of cities off the map.
Issued on: 08/01/2026 - RFI
An iceberg melting in Scoresby Fjord, eastern Greenland.
Greenland is vast, and highly coveted. Covering some 2 million square kilometres, it is almost four times the size of France.
Above all, it is the second-largest body of ice on Earth after Antarctica, at the opposite pole.
The ice mass is beginning to melt and could ultimately trigger a dramatic rise in sea levels. Unlike sea ice, which floats, Greenland’s ice sheet lies on land. And that makes all the difference.
"In Greenland, we are dealing with extremely large masses, enormous volumes, covering the entire island," says Glenn Yannic, a lecturer and researcher at Savoie Mont Blanc University. "We're talking about an ice sheet that can be several hundred metres thick. It is estimated that the complete melting of Greenland could raise sea levels by five, six or seven metres."
The melting of the ice sheet – rather than the summer thaw of Arctic sea ice – is what causes sea levels to rise, the Greenland specialist explains. "When sea ice melts, it's like putting an ice cube into a glass filled to the brim: the ice cube melts, but the water level does not rise," he tells RFI.
According to Copernicus – the Earth observation component of the European Union's Space programme – for every centimetre of sea level rise, around 6 million more people are exposed to coastal flooding.
A rise in sea levels of five to seven metres by the end of the century would lead to the disappearance of thousands of coastal cities worldwide, affecting millions of people.
Such a scenario is becoming increasingly plausible, because Greenland is one of the fastest-warming regions on the planet. Last spring, glaciers melted 17 times faster than average amid record temperatures.
New research, published by US scientists on 5 January in Nature Geoscience, has also alarmed the scientific community. Using ice core samples, researchers found that Greenland's ice dome last melted around 7,000 years ago, during the early Holocene period, when "temperatures were three to five degrees C higher than those currently observed", Yannic says.
"They showed that part of northern Greenland was ice-free. That's the whole significance of this study, and why it's had such an impact. Three to five degrees C – we are almost there, we are on the brink. By the end of the century, we can predict that all the ice currently covering Greenland will have melted."
On Sunday, he said that he needed Greenland "very badly" for reasons of "national security", given its strategic position between the US and Russia. But Trump is also eyeing resources such as hydrocarbons, minerals and even water – so pure it is said to be worth its weight in gold.
Access to Greenland's ice-capped resources has remained a challenge, but "the acceleration in the melting of the ice sheet will free up areas and make it easier to access certain mineral deposits", says Yannic.
If Trump were to succeed, the man who called climate change a "con job" could could end up benefitting from global warming.
“The issue of the search for minerals and hydrocarbons, and their exploitation, has already been put before the Greenland government, which decided several years ago to impose a moratorium on such activities,” Yannic says.
Prospecting was halted in order to protect the environment. For the moment, Greenland is holding firm – but for how long?
This article, adapted from the original in French by RFI's Florent Guinard, has been lightly edited for clarity.
Trump's grotesque Greenland fantasy ignores very real crisis bubbling under the surface
Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago, with Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
When President Donald Trump first started fantasizing about seizing Greenland for the US, it sounded farcical — a little Gilbert and Sullivan, or maybe The Mouse that Roared. In the wake of America’s attack on Caracas, however, it now seems as likely as not that we’ll soon be landing troops in Nuuk, a truly hideous prospect that we should all try to head off. Here’s my small effort:
First off, I think it’s a very real possibility. Here’s Stephen Miller on Monday, talking with Jake Tapper: TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?
MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATO.
TAPPER: So force is on the table?
MILLER: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland.
And here’s our leader himself, speaking to a press gaggle on Air Force One while a beaming Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-Obsequious) grinned by his side:
TRUMP: We need Greenland. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships.
REPORTER: What would the justification be for a claim to Greenland?
TRUMP: The EU needs us to have it.
None of this makes any actual sense — Greenland is not covered with Chinese and Russian ships, the EU does not want us to have it (European leaders united Tuesday to say, “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” which seems pretty clear), and Denmark asserts control over Greenland in pretty much the same way Washington asserts control over, say, Alaska or Vermont.
In fact, though, Denmark has been slowly loosening that control over the decades — not because it wants to sell it to America, but because it recognizes that the people who live there, most of whom are Inuit, should have the greatest say in how it’s managed. Greenlanders have exercised that say in ways that would be uncongenial to the White House: for instance, civil partnerships for gay people have been standard since 1996, and gay marriage legal since 2016 when the island’s parliament approved it by a 28-0 vote. Under the Kinguaassiorsinnaajunnaarsagaaneq pillugu inatsit law, sex changes have been allowed since 1976.
In other words, Trump’s claim that Greenlanders “want to be with us” is palpable nonsense — a poll last January found that 85 percent of the population opposed the idea.
Discerning Trump’s “real” reason for wanting Greenland is a pointless exercise; he’s a sad, ancient baby, and babies just want.
He seems to think that the point of a ruler is to acquire more territory, and that he more or less owns by divine right the land masses adjacent to our country. (MAGA bloggers this week were busily talking about “vassal states” across the hemisphere). There are minerals there, but hard to get at. Oh, and there’s petroleum in and around Greenland as well, and that usually sings a siren song to this child of the oil-driven 20th century.
Really, however, there’s only one truly vital strategic asset in Greenland, one thing that could change the world. And that’s the ice that covers almost all its landmass.
I’ve been up on this ice sheet — I’ve hiked up glaciers from the tideline, climbing and climbing till the sea disappears behind you and all you can see in every direction is white. It is uncannily beautiful.
I helped organize a trip there in 2018 so that two very fine poets could record a piece from atop this ice sheet. Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner came from her home in the Marshall Islands, which is already slipping under a rising sea (and which has long known about US imperialism; part of the atoll is still radioactive and off limits, thanks to US bomb testing in the 1950s); Aka Niviana is a native Greenlander whose home has begun to melt, a melt that if it continues will guarantee the submersion of Polynesia, and much else.
They stood there on that ice, in a chill summer wind, and recited their long and majestic poem for a camera; my job was to stand just outside its range with a pair of sleeping bags that they could wrap themselves in between takes. “Rise: From One Island to Another,” as their work was called, has won both prizes and large audiences on YouTube; it will, I think, be one of the documents of this global warming era that someday people will look at in a kind of outraged awe, one more proof that we knew exactly what was coming and did nothing about it.
We were camped above the Eagle Glacier — Jason Box, the American-born climatologist now living in Denmark who helped lead the trip, had named it that because of its shape when he first visited five years earlier, “but now the head and the wings of the bird have melted away. I don’t know what we should call it now, but the eagle is dead.” And that’s true of so much of the island; we watched as one iceberg after another came crashing off the head of glaciers, each one raising the level of the ocean by some infinitesimal amount.
Greenland holds 23 feet of sea-level rise, should we eventually melt it all. That will take a while, but we’re doing our best. It’s been losing mass steadily for the last quarter-century — it lost 105 billion tons of ice (billion with a b) in 2025, and the ice was melting well into September, unusual in a place where winter usually descends in late August. The people of Greenland, by the way, recognize all this: They passed a law in 2021 banning all new oil exploration and drilling — the government described it as “a natural step” because Greenland “takes the climate crisis seriously.” (More than two-thirds of their power comes from renewables, mostly hydro).
I found those Greenlanders I met to be hardy, thrifty people very much in tune with their place. I spent a memorable afternoon with Box planting trees outside the former American air base in Narsarsuaq in an effort to, among other things, soak up some carbon dioxide. And I spent an equally pleasant afternoon drinking beer with him and the rest of our party at a microbrewery in Saqqannguaq (one of several in the country) which brews “with the purest drinking water on Earth, coming from the Greenlandic ice cap” and hence “free of toxins, chemicals, and microplastics.” Highly recommend the IPA, reminder of yet another imperial adventure.
Obviously seizing Greenland would be a terrible idea because it would break up NATO and put America at loggerheads with the liberal democracies of Europe (though that may be the single biggest incentive for the administration). Obviously, it would be a gross example of modern colonization, obliterating the rights of the people who live there. Obviously, it would raise tensions around the world even higher, and send the strongest possible signal that Beijing should just go grab Taiwan. Lots of people are talking about those things, though there’s not the slightest sign that anyone in power is listening. (Miller’s wife has tweeted out a map of Greenland decked out in red and white stripes).
But in a rational world what we’d mostly be talking about is all that ice. That’s what, for the other 8 billion people on the planet, actually matters about this island. It could easily add a foot or more to the level of the ocean before the century is out, all by itself (the Antarctic, much bigger but slower to melt, will eventually add much more). A foot is a lot — on a typical beach on, say, the Jersey shore, which slopes up at about 1°, that brings the ocean about 90 feet inland.
And the fresh water pouring off Greenland seems already to be disrupting the great conveyor belt currents that bring warm water north from the equator, maintaining the climates of the surrounding continents. That too could raise—by significant amounts—the level of the sea, especially along the coast of the southeast US (and also plunge Europe into the deep freeze even as the rest of the planet warms).
The stakes are so enormous that they make the Trumpian greed for this land seem all the punier and more puerile. Here’s how Jetnil-Kijiner and Niviana put it in their poem:
We demand that the world see beyond SUVs, ACs, their pre-package convenience Their oil-slicked dreams, beyond the belief That tomorrow will never happen
And yet there’s a generosity to their witness — a recognition that whoever started the trouble, we’re now in it together.
Let me bring my home to yours Let’s watch as Miami, New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London Rio de Janeiro and Osaka Try to breathe underwater… None of us is immune. Life in all forms demands The same respect we all give to money… So each and every one of us Has to decide If we Will Rise
Monday, December 29, 2025
NOAA: Higher Temps and Less Ice in a Changing Arctic
[By Matthew Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman and Twila Moon]
The Arctic is transforming faster and with more far-reaching consequences than scientists expected just 20 years ago, when the first Arctic Report Card assessed the state of Earth’s far northern environment.
The snow season is dramatically shorter today, sea ice is thinning and melting earlier, and wildfire seasons are getting worse. Increasing ocean heat is reshaping ecosystems as non-Arctic marine species move northward. Thawing permafrost is releasing iron and other minerals into rivers, which degrades drinking water. And extreme storms fueled by warming seas are putting communities at risk.
The past water year, October 2024 through September 2025, brought the highest Arctic air temperatures since records began 125 years ago, including the warmest autumn ever measured and a winter and a summer that were among the warmest on record. Overall, the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the Earth as a whole.
For the 20th Arctic Report Card, we worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an international team of scientists and Indigenous partners from across the Arctic to track environmental changes in the North – from air and ocean temperatures to sea ice, snow, glaciers and ecosystems – and the impacts on communities.
Together, these vital signs reveal a striking and interconnected transformation underway that’s amplifying risks for people who live there.
A wetter Arctic with more extreme precipitation
Arctic warming is intensifying the region’s water cycle.
A warmer atmosphere increases evaporation, precipitation and meltwater from snow and ice, adding and moving more water through the climate system. That leads to more extreme rainstorms and snowstorms, changing river flows and altering ecosystems.
The Arctic region saw record-high precipitation for the entire 2025 water year and for spring, with the other seasons each among the top-five wettest since at least 1950. Extreme weather – particularly atmospheric rivers, which are long narrow “rivers in the sky” that transport large amounts of water vapor – played an outsized role.
These wetter conditions are reshaping snow cover across the region.
Snow and ice losses accelerate warming, hazards
Snow blankets the Arctic throughout much of the year, but that snow cover isn’t lasting as long. In 2025, snowpack was above average in the cold winter months, yet rapid spring melting left the area covered by snow far smaller than normal by June, continuing a six-decade decline. June snow cover in recent years has been half of what it was in the 1960s.
Losing late spring snow cover means losing a bright, reflective surface that helps keep the Arctic cool, allowing the land instead to be directly warmed by the sun, which raises the temperature.
Sea ice tells a similar story. The year’s maximum sea ice coverage, reached in March, was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. The minimum sea ice coverage, in September, was the 10th lowest.
Since the 1980s, the summer sea ice extent has shrunk by about 50%, while the area covered by the oldest, thickest sea ice – ice that has existed for longer than four years – has declined by more than 95%.
The thinner sea ice cover is more influenced by winds and currents, and less resilient against warming waters. This means greater variability in sea ice conditions, causing new risks for people living and working in the Arctic.
Arctic sea ice concentration in September 2025, during its annual minimum extent at the end of summer, was much smaller than the 1979-2004 median extent. The shades of blue reflect the concentration of sea ice. NOAA and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder.
The Greenland Ice Sheet continued to lose mass in 2025, as it has every year since the late 1990s. As the ice sheet melts and calves more icebergs into the surrounding seas, it adds to global sea-level rise.
Mountain glaciers are also losing ice at an extraordinary rate – the annual rate of glacier ice loss across the Arctic has tripled since the 1990s.
This poses immediate local hazards. Glacial lake outburst floods – when water that is dammed up by a glacier is suddenly released – are becoming more frequent. In Juneau, Alaska, recent outburst floods from Mendenhall Glacier have inundated homes and displaced residents with record-setting levels of floodwater.
Glacier retreat can also contribute to catastrophic landslide impacts. Following the retreat of South Sawyer Glacier, a landslide in southeast Alaska’s Tracy Arm in August 2025 generated a tsunami that swept across the narrow fjord and ran nearly 1,600 feet (nearly 490 meters) up the other side. Fortunately, the fjord was empty of the cruise ships that regularly visit.
Record-warm oceans drive storms, ecosystem shifts
Arctic Ocean surface waters are steadily warming, with August 2025 temperatures among the highest ever measured. In some Atlantic-sector regions, sea surface temperatures were as much as 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 Celsius) above the 1991-2020 average. Some parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas were cooler than normal.
Arctic sea surface temperatures are much warmer today than in past decades, as this map and chart of August 2025 sea surface temperatures shows. NOAA and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder.
Warm water in the Bering Sea set the stage for one of the year’s most devastating events: Ex-Typhoon Halong, which fed on unusually warm ocean temperatures before slamming into western Alaska with hurricane-force winds and catastrophic flooding. Some villages, including Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, were heavily damaged.
As seas warm, powerful Pacific cyclones, which draw energy from warm water, are reaching higher latitudes and maintaining strength longer. Alaska’s Arctic has seen four ex-typhoons since 1970, and three of them arrived in the past four years.
The village of Kipnuk, shown on Oct. 12, 2025, was devastated by ex-Typhoon Halong. The storm displaced at least 1,500 people from across western Alaska. Alaska National Guard
The Arctic is also seeing warmer, saltier Atlantic Ocean water intrude northward into the Arctic Ocean. This process, known as Atlantification, weakens the natural layering of water that once shielded sea ice from deeper ocean heat. It is already increasing sea ice loss and reshaping habitat for marine life, such as by changing the timing of phytoplankton production, which provides the base of the ocean food web, and increasing the likelihood of harmful algal blooms.
From ocean ‘borealization’ to tundra greening
Warming seas and declining sea ice are enabling southern, or boreal, marine species to move northward. In the northern Bering and Chukchi seas, Arctic species have declined sharply – by two-thirds and one-half, respectively – while the populations of boreal species expand.
On land, a similar “borealization” is underway. Satellite data shows that tundra vegetation productivity – known as tundra greenness – hit its third-highest level in the 26-year record in 2025, part of a trend driven by longer growing seasons and warmer temperatures. Yet greening is not universal – browning events caused by wildfires and extreme weather are also increasing.
Summer 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year with above-median wildfire area across northern North America. Nearly 1,600 square miles (over 4,000 square kilometers) burned in Alaska and over 5,000 square miles (over 13,600 square kilometers) burned in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Permafrost thaw is turning rivers orange
As permafrost – the frozen ground that underlies much of the Arctic – continues its long-term warming and thaw, one emerging consequence is the spread of rusting rivers.
As thawing soils release iron and other minerals, more than 200 watersheds across Arctic Alaska now show orange discoloration. These waters exhibit higher acidity and elevated levels of toxic metals, which can contaminate fish habitat and drinking water and impact subsistence livelihoods.
In Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska, a tributary to the Akillik River lost all its juvenile Dolly Varden and slimy sculpin fish after an abrupt increase in stream acidity when the stream turned orange.
Arctic communities lead new monitoring efforts
The rapid pace of change underscores the need for strong Arctic monitoring systems. Yet many government-funded observing networks face funding shortfalls and other vulnerabilities.
At the same time, Indigenous communities are leading new efforts.
The Arctic Report Card details how the people of St. Paul Island, in the Bering Sea, have spent over 20 years building and operating their own observation system, drawing on research partnerships with outside scientists while retaining control over monitoring, data and sharing of results. The Indigenous Sentinels Network tracks environmental conditions ranging from mercury in traditional foods to coastal erosion and fish habitat and is building local climate resilience in one of the most rapidly changing environments on the planet.
The Arctic is facing threats from more than the changing climate; it’s also a region where concerns of ecosystem health and pollutants come sharply into view. In this sense, the Arctic provides a vantage point for addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
The next 20 years will continue to reshape the Arctic, with changes felt by communities and economies across the planet.
Matthew L. Druckenmiller is Senior Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.
Rick Thoman is an Alaska Climate Specialist, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Twila A. Moon is Deputy Lead Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
Friday, December 26, 2025
As the planet warmed, politics wobbled: The defining climate moments of 2025
Copyright Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP
By Jeremy Wilks Published on 26/12/2025 - EURONEWS
Record warming met weak political resolve as climate pressures mounted this year.
2025 was a challenging year for climate politics, and a challenging one for our warming planet.
In the past 12 months, climate change has been impossible to ignore, whether we would like to or not. Euronews takes a look back at a year of record highs and lows.
The 11 warmest years on record
Let's start with some climate facts for 2025, which make for sober reading.
The World Meteorological Organisation has already said that the past 11 years were the warmest on record, and 2025 is most likely to be either the joint second or third warmest year on record.
The final tally in January is expected to show that the last three years all surpassed the 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels goal set out in the decade-old Paris Agreement, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Tourists use umbrellas to shelter from the heat as they line up for a tour of the Forum in Rome in July. AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia
So why is this happening? Greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record high in 2025. These gases are produced by human activities like the combustion of fossil fuels and from changes in land use linked to deforestation and industrial agriculture. The gases trap heat from the sun faster than the atmosphere radiates it back into space, creating global heating.
Trump calls climate change a 'con job'
The year started with Donald Trump in the White House, again, as Forrest Gump would say, and pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, again. It was a campaign promise to American voters, and he stuck to the script.
What was a little more off-script was Trump's speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, in which he said renewables were a “joke” that were “too expensive”. He captured headlines with one particular zinger, describing climate change as "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world".
Trump lifted the freeze on liquified natural gas (LNG) export approvals the day he came into office, and since then, US sales have soared.
LNG is a fossil fuel often promoted as a means to 'transition' to renewables, yet the associated production and transport of LNG make its emissions 33 per cent higher than coal. America supplied almost half of Europe's LNG this year.
President Donald Trump attends the national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedra. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
So, in the snakes and ladders game of emissions reduction, the US slid down a snake in 2025, while its rival China climbed a few ladders. Although it remains the world's biggest emitter, analysis from Carbon Brieffound that China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months.
Did China just peak? Possibly. The country saw dips in emissions from transport, steel and cement production, and the country's fossil fuel power plants should have their first annual drop in generation in a decade this year as a result of the massive expansion of renewables to meet rising demand.
In Brussels, the EU's climate and energy policy seemed more like a Christmas puzzle in 2025. Just recently, it wound back on plans to abolish the sale of internal combustion engine cars from 2035. This came only a few days after it finally sealed the deal on a legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2040. Are those two both technically and politically compatible?
Pieces of the Green Deal legislation were slid around the puzzle for months as part of the Omnibus I package, proposed in February 2025. Meant to 'simplify' rules, it was widely criticised for backsliding on standard-setting environmental laws, and offering critics of 'net zero' an easy chance to score points. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, due to come into force on New Year's Day 2026, was relentlessly pushed and shoved around by industries over exactly how it should be applied and who can claim to be exempt.
Amnesty International called Omnibus I a 'bonfire' of regulation, while BLOOM described Europe as entering 'democratic darkness'.
In November, the COP30 climate summit also saw a few fiery moments, not least when part of one pavilion actually caught ablaze. Hosted in Brazil, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, it has been praised for two things.
Firstly, after three previous COPs hosted in anti-democratic and authoritarian countries, the climate campaigners could at least make themselves seen and heard a little more easily this year. Secondly, in the absence of easy progress on the UNFCCC's Paris Agreement objectives, a series of coalitions between more climate-friendly countries began to emerge. It signals a fresh departure from the status quo that pits the eager and willing against the cranky and reticent.
Overall, COP30 wasn't viewed as a success, with the well-respected Climate Action Tracker describing it as 'disappointing', with 'little to no measurable progress in warming projections - for the fourth consecutive year'. They calculate we are currently on track for warming of 2.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages by 2100, and warming continues into the next century. Ice melting, seas rising, land roasting
Meanwhile, in the most remote parts of the planet, changes are accelerating, amid fears that irreversible planetary tipping points are being passed. If the politics of climate change in 2025 doesn't leave your head spinning, then the reality of the warming over land, across the cryosphere and in the oceans probably will.
Firstly, look up and enjoy the view of any icy peaks while you can, because they won't be around for long. A 2025 study from ETH Zürich found that we're about to enter a period they label 'peak glacier extinction'. Places like the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, the Caucasus, and the Andes will change forever.
The sun shines over the melting Rhone Glacier near Goms, Switzerland. AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File
This year, it was confirmed that Venezuela haslost its last glaciers. By 2100, Central Europe will have a mere three per cent of today's total number of glaciers following current warming trends. This has profound implications not only for beautiful tourist hotspots, but also for hydropower and farming communities that rely on meltwater in summer. The related dangers of glacier collapse were brought to the world's attention when the Swiss village of Blatten was crushed by a torrent of ice, mud and rock in May.
Elsewhere, astudy published in June 2025 turned heads as it simulated the collapse of the AMOC, the conveyor belt of heat from the equator that keeps northern Europe mild and wet. There's no timeline, but the modelling is extraordinary. In a moderate emissions scenario with a rapid slowdown of the ocean currents, there would be sea ice reaching Scotland and winter temperatures in London as low as -20 °C. Northern Europe would be the only part of the planet to get colder, rather than warmer.
In the Antarctic, researchers have also been watching the ice shelves destabilise. A team from the University of East Anglia in the UK, using the fabulously-named British research submarine Boaty McBoatface, carried outthe first ever survey of the 'grounding line' beneath the Dotson Ice Shelf, the spot where the glacier floats onto the sea. They found that the water deep inside the cavity was 'surprisingly warm', and they're now rushing to explain how it got there.
In Greenland, it was a long summer. Scientists from the Danish Meteorological Institute found that ice melt began in mid-May 2025 and continued into September. That means that summer arrived 12 days earlier than the 1981-2025 average, and the territory lost 105 billion tonnes of ice in the 2024-2025 season.
That melt is one of the factors contributing to the steady acceleration of sea level rise. We don't have figures for 2025 just yet, but in 2024 we saw a record 5.9 millimetres of sea level rise, and the 2014-2023 average is now 4.7 millimetres per year.
Coastal communities worldwide are now paying attention and demanding action, even in Trump's America. On the South Carolina coast, where Forrest Gump fished for shrimp, local people are coming together to document the high tides in a citizen science project organised by the South Carolina Aquarium. If you're into murky pictures of rising water, it's the place for you.
Looking back at the last 12 months, there's a long list of natural disasters amplified by climate change. Mexico and Sri Lanka experienced flooding and landslides, while exceptional rains in Indonesia and Malaysia left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Cuba and Jamaica were smashed by Hurricane Melissa.
A woman stands inside her flooded house in Pidie Jaya, Aceh province, Indonesia. AP Photo/Reza Saifullah, File
Five years of drought have turned the Fertile Crescent into a dustbowl. Iran, Iraq, and Syria are also facing severe and potentially catastrophic water shortages. Droughts have always occurred in these regions, but rapid analysis by the scientists at World Weather Attribution found that a year-long drought would only be expected every 50 to 100 years in a cooler, pre-industrial climate,and it's expected to return every 10 years today.
In Europe, there wererecord emissions from wildfires this summer, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Just under 13 gigatonnes of CO2 were released, and PM2.5 air pollution was above WHO guidelines across large parts of Spain and Portugal.
In terms of temperatures, there were fresh highs around the world this year. Although 2025 won't rank at the top, it was still an exceptionally warm year. Finland saw repeated temperatures above 30°C over a two-week heatwave, Türkiye hit a new national high of 50.5°C, while similar temperature readings were seen in Iran and Iraq. Station records were beaten in China, and Japan faced an extended summer, with 5 August 2025 hitting a new national temperature record of 41.8°C.
What does 2026 have in store?
In 2026, the UK's Met Office outlook suggests that we will experience one of the four warmest years on record.
Professor Adam Scaife, who leads the global forecast team, said: “The last three years are all likely to have exceeded 1.4°C and we expect 2026 will be the fourth year in succession to do this. Prior to this surge, the previous global temperature had not exceeded 1.3°C.”
Looking further ahead, anticipation is building around the first international conference on the 'Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels', due to take place in Colombia on 28th and 29th April, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands.
The event will be held in a major coal port, and the objective is to shift the needle on climate-friendly policy.
From historic rulings to the green energy boom: Here are the climate wins of 2025 worth celebrating
Copyright Jesse Schoff, Markus Spiske and Karsten Würth via Unsplash.
Despite the influx of climate doom and irreversible damage, 2025 scored some pretty big victories for the planet.
Climate change’s ubiquitous presence looms over the world like a grey cloud, pushing millions into a constant state of fear.
The internet is saturated with bad news, not all of it accurate. But the reality is extreme weather events are getting worse, planetary boundaries have been breached, and fossil fuel emissions are at an all-time high – despite the stark consequences of baking our planet.
These headlines often drown out the good news, meaning landmark progress and conservation efforts are pushed aside. So, to end the year with a much-needed silver lining, here are five of the biggest climate wins you may have missed in 2025.
The ICJ’s historic climate ruling
In July, the UN’s highest courtdelivered a historic opinion on climate change, outlining states’ responsibilities under international law. It was the largest case ever seen by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with more than 150 submissions from states, international organisations, and civil society groups.
In a 133-page advisory opinion, the ICJ affirmed that a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a human right, just like access to water, food and housing. Although not legally-binding, it has helped lay down the legal foundations to hold big polluters to account and empower communities that have been hit the hardest by climate change.
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It adds to the momentum built by the groundbreaking Urgenda case, which marked the first time a court anywhere in the world ordered a government to take stronger climate action. “We’ve never been in a better place to use the law to protect people and the planet from climate change,” says Dennis van Berkle, Legal Counsel at Urgenda.
2025 was a groundbreaking year for climate litigation, with several cases hitting the headlines. In November, the hearing between Belgian farmerHugues Falys and TotalEnergies finally began, almost two years after the case was filed.
Falys is taking the fossil-fuel giant to the commercial court of Tournai to seek compensation for damage to his farm that he says is directly caused by climate change.
The High Seas Treaty
The European Union and six of its member states formally ratified the United Nations treaty to protect the high seas back in May – a move described as a “historic step” towards conserving the world’s oceans.
Ratification means that the states have formally agreed to the treaty becoming binding international law. This often involves aligning national legislation with what the treaty outlines.
The High Seas Treatypaves the way for protecting marine life in areas outside of national maritime boundaries, which covers nearly two-thirds of the world's oceans. These regions are under growing threats from pollution, overexploitation, climate change and biodiversity loss.
It allows for the creation of marine protected areas and supports the global goal of safeguarding at least 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.
“EU leadership is essential in confronting the biodiversity and climate crises,” says Nathalie Rey of the High Seas Alliance. “This bold move sends a clear message that ocean protection is not optional – it’s a global priority.
A boom in renewable energies
Despite petro-states blockingCOP30from establishing a fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap, worldwide solar and wind power generation has outpaced electricity demand this year – and for the first time on record, renewable energies generated more power than coal.
A report by think tank Ember found that global solar generation grew by a record 31 per cent in the first half of the year, while wind generation also increased by 7.7 per cent. Together, the renewable energy forms grew by more than 400 terawatt hours, which was more than the overall global demand increase in the same period.
Solar energy shone the brightest in 2025, and was crowned the “key driver” in the world’s transition to clean energy due to its ultra-low cost. A study from the University of Surrey named solar the cheapest source of power, costing as little as €0.023 to produce one unit of power.
Due to the price of lithium-ion batteries falling by 89 per cent since 2010, the study also found that making solar-plus-storage systems is now equally as cost-effective as gas power plants.
It could help progress in moving away from fossil fuels at Colombia’s Global Fossil Fuel Phaseout conference, which will be co-hosted with the Netherlands in April next year.
Economies are growing - without emissions
The link between GDP and rising emissions is finally starting to shatter, as an increasing number of countries are growing their economies without harming the planet.
A recent report from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysed 113 countries using the latest 2025 Global Carbon budget data. Researchers found that 92 per cent of global GDP and 89 per cent of global emissions are in economies that have either relatively or absolutely decoupled. This is where emissions rise but more slowly than GDP, or when emissions fall alongside positive economic growth.
A majority of European countries were ranked as consistent decouplers, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, the UK, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden.
These results used consumption-based emissions to address concerns that advanced economies are “off-shoring” their emissions by outsourcing carbon-intensive production to developing nations.
“We’re sometimes told that the world can’t cut emissions without cutting growth,” says John Lang, one of the report authors and Net Zero Tracker Lead at ECIU.
“The opposite is happening. Decoupling is now the norm, not the exception, and the share of the global economy that is decoupling emissions in an absolute sense is steadily increasing.”
Endangered turtles make a rebound
2025 was a challenging year for wildlife, but decades of marine conservation are finally starting to pay off. In October, green sea turtles were officially reclassified from “endangered” to “least concern”.
Found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world, the global population of green sea turtles plummeted to concerning levels in the 1980s due to years of extensive hunting by humans. The species were slaughtered en masse to make soup and other culinary delicacies, while their eggs were commonly used for decoration in some cultures.
However, after spending more than 40 years on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list, the turtles have made a dramatic comeback. In fact, the global population of green sea turtles has increased by approximately 28 per cent since the 1970s.
The rebound has been attributed to efforts focused on protecting nesting females and their eggs on beaches, reducing unsustainable harvesting of turtles and their eggs for human consumption, and tackling accidental capture of turtles in fishing gear.
