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As we move into the next phase of the summer season, things have started to slow down. Birds are beginning to molt their feathers, juveniles are practicing their flying skills, and many species are...

On Wednesday, Free Press called out Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for engaging in a political crusade against broadcaster ABC that not only violates free speech rights but distorts and weaponizes existing agency rules and procedures in service of a censorial president.

In a filing in the FCC docket regarding early license reviews of eight ABC affiliated and owned stations, Free Press called the proceeding “an arbitrary and capricious abuse of power, ordered by Brendan Carr to exact the revenge Donald Trump demands against ABC for exercising its First Amendment rights.”

In June, Free Press stated in a similar filing on the contents of the show The View that the agency’s proceeding against ABC stations “never should have been opened.” It condemned the politicized campaign from the White House and FCC to silence the voices of people who disagree with or challenge the president and his views.

Chairman Carr has insisted that this bogus proceeding is an investigation into allegations that Disney engaged in “invidious discrimination.” But the agency has not identified any specific allegations of discrimination by Disney, ABC or its local stations, reads Free Press latest filing. “That Chairman Carr is willing to place Disney’s entire local broadcasting operation in jeopardy without a single specific allegation of unlawful behavior is further evidence of the corruption that undergirds this proceeding and Carr’s reign at the Commission,” Free Press adds.

Matt Wood, Free Press’ vice president of policy and coauthor of the filing, said:

“The only just ending to Carr’s circus, and the only way for him to stop trampling the First Amendment freedoms he swore to uphold, is to to close this proceeding now and rescind the trumped-up charges that started it.

“The ridiculous notion expressed by the Trump FCC is that this extraordinary proceeding allows the FCC to conduct an ongoing investigation into Disney’s supposed violations of agency rules. But there’s absolutely nothing about the process of early renewal that would aid that supposed investigation. That inquiry is just a rotten fig leaf to provide cover for Brendan Carr using the FCC’s investigatory powers to harass, intimidate, and punish ABC for its speech.

“If the FCC were acting in good faith, it would have conducted and completed a full and fair investigation of Disney’s compliance with existing rules and the law first. But giving Disney due process under the law and respecting its First Amendment rights would not deliver Donald Trump the revenge he seeks, hence the existence of this corrupt, arbitrary and capricious early renewal proceeding.

“Even if Disney had engaged in some kind of discrimination, there’s no reason and no precedent for threatening its broadcast licenses over such behavior. The partisan nature of this whole endeavor couldn’t be clearer. Brendan Carr says not a word about a conservative broadcaster like Sinclair, approving its acquisition of more stations even as that company settles employment discrimination suits with the Trump EEOC. Yet for ABC, Carr’s embarrassing himself again by concocting this utterly shameful censorship campaign on behalf of a petty president.

“This kind of capricious law enforcement has no place in a legitimate democracy. The law and U.S. Constitution do not permit Brendan Carr and the FCC to violate Disney’s and the public’s rights because the President’s ego demands it. In its haste to please Trump, the agency has chilled the speech of every licensee, and placed Disney in a lose-lose situation. Even if the FCC does nothing following this pleading cycle, the order for an early license renewal will continue to be a threat to Disney’s licenses, and will undoubtedly alter how broadcasters exercise their First Amendment-protected right to free speech and freedom of the press.

“At some level, Carr must know that his claims against ABC are bogus. But legal and statutory integrity aren’t the point with this chairman. Carr is more than happy to browbeat and jawbone broadcasters into silence though his claims have zero legal merit.”

In response to the Senate Judiciary Committee postponing its vote on Trump's unqualified personal lawyer Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, MoveOn Political Action Chief Communications Officer Joel Payne released the following statement:

“Todd Blanche’s nomination is stalled because his record is corrupt and indefensible. He has spent his career proving that there is no legal principle he will not bend and no institution he will not compromise in service of Donald Trump. His blind loyalty, willingness to use the justice system to protect the president, and role in a sweetheart settlement benefiting Trump make him completely unfit to serve as attorney general.

“Senate Republicans may be trying to put some distance between themselves and this toxic nomination, but moving the vote does not change the facts. Blanche is still Trump’s fixer, still disqualified, and still a threat to the rule of law. The Senate should stop dragging this out and kill the nomination.”

MoveOn continues to mobilize its millions of members and run digital ads to put pressure on Congress to reject Blanche’s nomination.

Five nonprofit organizations working to build a more just food system filed suit today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to challenge unlawful terms and conditions that USDA is imposing on new grants. These terms and conditions substantially restrict grantees’ speech and programming in support of diversity and equity, bar using grant funding on whatever the administration says is “promoting gender ideology,” and limit grantees’ work in support of immigrants.

The plaintiffs - Agroecology Commons, Oregon Farm Corps, Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA), Third Sector New England, and the Washington Farmland Trust - are represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Earthjustice, and FarmSTAND.

The new terms and conditions require USDA grantees to agree that they will not promote “unlawful DEI” or “gender ideology,” or use grant funding to create “incentives for illegal immigration by demonstrating the availability of public benefits.” The terms even attempt to control the grantees’ work and speech unrelated to the grant, demanding they not “operate any programs that advance or promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

These terms put the plaintiffs in this case in a high-stakes bind: They either must agree to substantial restrictions on their speech and programing, or they must give up on the critical federal funding that has allowed them to effectively serve their communities. If the Trump Administration deems them to have violated the terms and conditions – despite the vagueness and otherwise unlawfulness of the terms – they will lose future payments of the grant. The new terms threaten civil and criminal liability for making supposed false claims.

These terms have already forced the plaintiff organizations to substantially reorient their work. Two of the plaintiffs have decided that they cannot accept any funds from USDA unless the court blocks these terms and conditions from being applied to them, as they fear serious consequences if the Trump Administration decides that they are not complying with grant terms. The effects of that decision are substantial: Plaintiff Washington Farmland Trust, for instance, will have to decline $676,000 in funding that could be going to critical support for farmers unless the court blocks these terms and conditions from being applied to them.

“Farmers need land in order to grow and raise our food. Washington Farmland Trust's Farm to Farmer program helps farmers access the land, resources, and capital they need to be successful,” said Melissa Campbell, Executive Director of Washington Farmland Trust. “This grant would have allowed us to grow the infrastructure of this critical program to serve more farmers. Instead, we’re faced with the impossible choice of pulling back from our mission-critical work or losing out on catalytic funding that would help us better serve our communities. If the court blocks the USDA's problematic terms, farmers will be able to receive the essential support they need to continue to grow food for us all.”

“Organizations like the plaintiffs do essential work to fight hunger, protect the environment, and ensure that communities across the country have access to healthy, local food,” said Stephanie Garlock, attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “They should not have to choose between continuing that work and submitting to the Trump Administration's ideological speech code on issues of public policy."

“The First Amendment rights of these plaintiffs are at stake in this case, and so is the future of critical work to build a fair food system that works for everyone,” said David Muraskin, Managing Director of Litigation at FarmSTAND. “The court must block these unlawful, unprecedented terms and conditions. If it doesn’t, the Trump Administration’s enforcement of them will force USDA grantees to abandon important work in support of the next generation of farmers, for fear of serious consequences for violating the new terms.”

“USDA’s new terms and conditions for grants are yet another example of this administration’s unlawful politicization of programs designed by Congress to support farmers and rural communities,” said Carrie Apfel, Deputy Managing Attorney of the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice. “USDA should stop claiming to help farmers when instead it is undermining the very food and farming communities these programs were created to serve. This sort of illegal gamesmanship should not be tolerated.”

Article written by Montezuma Audubon Center intern Ay-Zoh Shaw.From observing ugly-cute hatchlings to helping band scraggly, incessantly-chirping fledglings, monitoring and caring for Purple Martin...

California could soon force diaper makers to reveal what’s in their products Monica Amarelo July 30, 2026

Lawmakers in California are on the verge of forcing diaper manufacturers to strip away the secrecy over what goes into one of the products babies use most.

Assembly Bill 1901, by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), would require manufacturers of children’s diapers sold, distributed or manufactured in California to fully disclose all intentionally added ingredients, both on product packaging and online. It would empower parents and caregivers in making safer diaper shopping decisions.

EWG is co-sponsoring the bill, along with Consumer Reports, the Center for Environmental Health and Children Now.

AB 1901 already passed the California Assembly and Senate Environmental Quality Committee with bipartisan votes. It’s now in the Senate Appropriations Committee awaiting a vote that could send it to the Senate floor.

Today, manufacturers can hide dozens of chemicals behind umbrella terms like “fragrance” or “colors. These are potentially toxic mystery cocktails that prevent parents from knowing what’s in the products they use on their children every day. 

The bill would, if enacted, give parents meaningful and easily accessible ingredient transparency. It would also replace catch-all labels with specific ingredient names.

AB 1901 would not require diaper makers to disclose other information about how they create their products, so they can still protect other details that make their products unique.

Why transparency matters

Babies spend much of the first two to three years of their lives in diapers. Yet unlike many other consumer products, disposable diapers are exempt by the federal government from carrying ingredient labels of any kind. And diaper manufacturers do not have to inform regulators about the chemicals they use to create the products.

That means parents often have no way of knowing what chemicals their baby’s skin is swaddled in day after day.

Babies’ skin is thinner, more permeable and still developing, making them more vulnerable to chemical exposures than adults. Without full ingredient disclosure, families are left to trust manufacturers without having the information they need to make informed choices.

EWG created the Guide to Safer Diapers to help fill that information gap. It explains common diaper materials, identifying chemicals of concern and highlighting products that meet higher standards for health and transparency.

Diaper chemicals parents should know about

Phthalates

Studies have detected phthalates in some disposable diapers, and research has linked certain phthalates to hormone disruption, as well as reproductive and developmental harms. Because phthalates are only loosely bound to plastics, they can migrate out of products over time. 

Fragrances

Many diapers contain added fragrance, but the only way to confirm it is if manufacturers disclose ingredients on the packaging or online. The term ”fragrance” can represent hundreds – or even thousands – of different chemicals. 

Undisclosed fragrances can also contain phthalates as a solvent or stabilizer in the mixture, but lack of regulation doesn't require them to be disclosed.

Some fragrance ingredients have been linked to allergies and skin irritation, but parents have no way of knowing which chemicals are present in the products they buy. 

AB 1901 would give families the ingredient information they need to make informed decisions based on their child's individual needs and sensitivities.

Quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats

Quats are antimicrobial chemicals commonly used in disinfectants and other consumer products. Some quats are used in diapers to indicate wetness. 

Research has linked certain quats to reproductive and developmental effects, skin irritation and respiratory problems, including asthma.

Dyes and bleaching chemicals

Colorful prints and decorative designs on diapers mean added dyes and inks, which may cause allergic reactions or be contaminated with heavy metals. Some diapers also use chlorine-based bleaching processes with unwanted byproducts.

Choosing plain, undyed diapers made with unbleached or totally chlorine-free pulp can help reduce unnecessary exposure to harmful chemicals.

How to choose a safer diaper

While California lawmakers work to improve transparency, parents can take steps today to reduce their family's exposure to potentially harmful chemicals.

Consider diapers that have earned the EWG Verified® mark, which certifies products meeting EWG's strict standards for ingredient transparency and health. 

Parents have a right to know

AB 1901 would give families accessible information they deserve, whether in buying diapers at a store or letting them compare ingredient details online.

California has an opportunity to set a new standard for transparency and empower parents to make informed decisions for their families.

If you live in California, contact your state senator, assemblymember and Gov. Gavin Newsom and urge them to support Assembly Bill 1901.

Areas of Focus Household & Consumer Products Family Health Children’s Health Phthalates California Guest Authors Luz Fontana-Mansilla, Communications intern July 30, 2026

Open access notables

Observed Multi-Decadal Acceleration of Globally Averaged Abyssal Ocean Warming, Johnson, Geophysical Research Letters

Given sparse historical data in the deep and abyssal ocean, previously only multi-decadal temperature trends have been estimated from observations there on a global scale. Full-depth CTD sampling started circa 1970, with the first decadal global ship-based survey occupied in the 1990s, and the first regional pilot array of Deep Argo floats started circa 2016. Here we fit second-order polynomial functions versus time to all available full-depth CTD profile temperature data in local spatial bins to estimate changes in the rates of these multi-decadal temperature trends. We find a statistically significant increase of the heating rate of the abyssal (4,000–6,000 dbar) ocean, from 5.4 (±4.9) TW in 1988 to 20.2 (±3.9) TW in 2018. In contrast, we find no statistically significant change in the heating rate of the deep ocean, estimated at 29.4 (±22.1) TW in 1988 and 25.0 (±17.5) TW in 2018.

High-resolution simulations reveal positive global warming feedback from Pacific low clouds, Chammas et al., Science Advances

Uncertainty in marine low-level cloud feedbacks limits accurate climate projections. Using 7083 high-resolution simulations of tropical Pacific low clouds, we separated the impacts of sea surface warming from direct carbon dioxide (CO2) effects. Surface warming alone drives a positive low-cloud feedback of 0.14Wm-2K-1. While this changes little with doubled CO2, the total cloud radiative response strengthens markedly to 0.43Wm-2K-1 under quadrupled CO2, revealing a strong nonlinear interaction. Surface warming alone modifies the boundary layer through increased inversion strength and weakened subsidence, which buffers clouds by promoting higher liquid water content while cloud fraction decreases. Rapid adjustments to high CO2 concentrations counteract this protective cloud thickening. Consequently, a pronounced reduction in cloud fraction is no longer offset by an increase in cloud brightness, markedly strengthening the total radiative response under quadrupled CO2. Ultimately, our results suggest that climate sensitivity is more state-dependent than often assumed.

Canopy-mediated climate feedbacks in the boreal continuous permafrost zone, Stuenzi et al., Nature Climate Change

Boreal forests, covering approximately a quarter of the continuous permafrost zone, store relatively modest aboveground carbon, but thermally protect vast soil organic carbon (SOC) pools. Here, using a process-based model to compare seasonal thaw depths under forested and bare-ground scenarios, we quantify distinct canopy thermal insulation capacities of deciduous needleleaf, evergreen needleleaf and deciduous broadleaf canopies on permafrost thermal dynamics. Canopy buffering maintains approximately 59 Pg of carbon in a frozen state, which equals 32% of the total forested permafrost carbon pool and far exceeds boreal biomass stocks (7–19 Pg). Canopy changes could mobilize this frozen SOC through gradual thaw (40 Pg) and rapid thermokarst collapse (19 Pg). While forest loss sacrifices biomass carbon stocks, resulting thaw would expose orders of magnitude more SOC from previously frozen reservoirs, revealing a critical asymmetry. Forest conservation strategies in continuous permafrost zones must account for canopy-mediated thermal protection of frozen SOC, which far exceeds its biomass carbon sequestration capacity.

The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change, Marshall et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

In the spring of 2026, anomalously low snow conditions in the western United States threatened winter recreation and water supplies. Here, we investigate: to what extent was this snow drought attributable to the climate change that has occurred since the pre-industrial period? We find that a snow drought this severe across the western United States was approximately 4.4 [95% CI: 2.6, 9.4] times more likely in the current climate than in the preindustrial period. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the snow drought was approximately 14 times more likely [0.09, 4,300]. Given a projected increase in the frequency of snow droughts at least this severe in a moderately high emissions warming scenario, the lived experience of this event may help scientists, resource managers, and the public consider what western US snow might look like if greenhouse gas emissions are not aggressively reduced.

Feasibility of CO2 pipeline construction to enable gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals: evidence from historical precedent, Roberts et al., Frontiers in Climate

In this analysis, we use the history of fossil fuel pipeline networks to assess the feasibility of rapidly building enough CO2 pipelines to enable gigaton-scale removals of CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere. We collect data on scenarios of CO2 pipeline construction, historical fossil fuel pipeline construction, and the historical context of this construction to answer four questions: (1) What length of pipeline network will be required to achieve the benchmarks of 1 Gt or 100 Mt of CO2 in 2050? (2) What have been the largest national and international fossil fuel pipeline buildouts achieved in a 25-year period? (3) Is it feasible to build enough CO2 pipelines to enable gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals given these historical precedents? (4) Under what political, economic, and social circumstances have rapid pipeline build-outs occurred? We find that a pipeline network of roughly 8,000 km will be necessary to enable 100 Mt of carbon dioxide removal, and that roughly 100,000 km will be necessary for 1 Gt. There are 15 cases in the historical record of a country building 8,000 km of fossil fuel pipelines in 25 years, and only three cases of a country building 100,000km or more of pipelines in the same timescale. Rapid construction of fossil fuel pipelines has benefited from strong economic and institutional drivers, which may not apply to CO2 pipelines in the same way. Our findings are reason for caution about the likelihood of CO2 pipeline build outs keeping pace with CO2 removal targets.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Pay, Baby, Pay. Why Trump's Energy & AI Dominance Agenda Means Higher Bills For Everyone, Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International

U.S. wholesale fossil gas prices will likely double by the late 2030s relative to the 2020 to 2025 average if the Trump administration’s energy and AI policies succeed in pushing gas demand to levels that can only be met by more expensive gas production. Significant energy price volatility from 2020 to 2025 caused hardship in the U.S. and in LNG-importing countries, particularly in Asia and Europe. Costlier U.S. gas risks exacerbating the energy affordability crisis for U.S. and international consumers alike. The surge in gas demand – and gas prices – is being driven primarily by the Trump administration’s support for massive increases in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Trump’s hostility toward renewables and support for the poorly regulated AI data center boom aggravate the impending crunch. Lower-cost gas from the two biggest U.S. gas-producing regions, the Permian and Appalachian basins, will not be able to meet rising demand alone. To fill the gap between demand and production, gas producers will have to increase drilling in the significantly more expensive Haynesville shale play in Louisiana and Texas.

Interfacing science and policy: Exploring the role of scientific knowledge in the design of Voluntary Sustainability Standards, Loconto et al., Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Through the concept of scientific cherry-picking, the authors analyze how Voluntary Sustainability Standards selectively incorporate particular strands of scientific knowledge that align with operational models and governance structures. This selective integration often leads to the promotion of interpretations of sustainability that are compatible with weak sustainability paradigms –emphasizing incremental improvements within existing systems – rather than fostering more systemic and transformative approaches. 181 articles in 66 journals by 1509 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Climate Coupling in the Western Hemisphere and 2023 El Niño Onset, Jury, ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN 10.1080/07055900.2026.2698635

Fast expansion and slow contraction of the ITCZ in response to CO2 forcing, Zhang, Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.18164506

High-resolution simulations reveal positive global warming feedback from Pacific low clouds, Chammas et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aec8488

Key role of continental inorganic halogens in the evolution of global air quality, Li et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-75932-7

Multi-century cooling after net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, Tarshish et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02700-2

Subtropical gyre expansion causes Southern Ocean salinification contrary to freshening predictions, Yu & Toole, Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-75775-2

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A more quiescent deep ocean under global warming, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02075-2 20 cites.

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Observations of climate change, effects

Accelerating and Intensifying Dry-to-Wet Hydroclimate Whiplash Across the Contiguous United States, Yang & Li, Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008646

Anthropogenic Warming Increases Extreme Precipitation in Huaihe River Basin, China in 1961–2020, Guo et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70525

Asymmetric Warming and Climate Regime Shift in Bhubaneswar: Evidence from a Rapidly Growing Tropical City (1950-2025), Beuria et al., Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 10.1016/j.jastp.2026.106922

Attribution of the Record-Breaking June 2024 Eastern Mediterranean Heatwave: Contrasting Roles of Soil Moisture in Anthropogenic Forcing and Natural Variability, Ma et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121002

Escalating heat waves and human thermal stress over semi-arid Bundelkhand region, India, Singh et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103035

Lengthening Summer in the Northern Hemisphere with the Declining Arctic Sea Ice, Cui et al., ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN 10.1080/07055900.2026.2695602

Observed Multi-Decadal Acceleration of Globally Averaged Abyssal Ocean Warming, Johnson, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl124104

Opposite changes in comfortable days over tropical and mid-latitude lands due to anthropogenic warming, 1980-2020 and 2060-2100, Wang et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.07.010

The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change, Marshall et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2612961123

Warming-Induced Increase in Flooding in the Taklimakan Desert, Su et al., Journal of Earth Science Open Access pdf 10.1007/s12583-025-2033-0

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Anthropogenic amplification of precipitation variability over the past century, Science, 10.1126/science.adp0212 218 cites.

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Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

A multi-method Antarctic atmospheric blocking dataset (1979–2024), Bozkurt et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-5399-2026

A simplified method to calculate atmospheric CO2 equivalency for changing surface albedo, Akbari, Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.102795

Climate scientists sharpen tools for linking global warming to extreme weather, Vaz, Science 10.1126/science.aek8030

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Causes of extreme events revealed by Rényi information transfer, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adn1721 9 cites.

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Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

European summer drying largely driven by atmospheric circulation changes since the 1980s, Dunkl et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41561-026-02050-w

Future tropical cyclone rainfall constrained by increased atmospheric dryness, Chen et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-026-02047-5

Identifying the Timing of Regional Summertime Minimum Temperature Threshold Crossings and the Potential Subsequent Climate Evolutions, Arcodia & Barnes, Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008520

Imbalances in climate outcomes in net-zero pathways with fossil fuel CO2 emissions and reforestation-based CO2 removals, MacIsaac et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03329-x

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The Indian Ocean Dipole in a warming world, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43017-024-00573-7 52 cites.

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Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

Added value of a priori bias correction for dynamical downscaling - A case study of Coastal British Columbia, Hingmire et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000717

Added value of a priori bias correction for dynamical downscaling - A case study of Coastal British Columbia, Hingmire et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000717

The Big Data paradox: how climate model authority becomes institutional mandates for climate extremes in the Anthropocene, Vijayakumar, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 10.1016/j.cosust.2026.101698

The TIPMIP Earth system model experiment protocol: phase 1, C. et al., Publication Database PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)) Open Access pmh:oai:publications.pik-potsdam.de:item_32889

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
On the suitability of a convolutional neural network based RCM-emulator for fine spatio-temporal precipitation, Climate Dynamics, 10.1007/s00382-024-07350-8 16 cites.

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Cryosphere & climate change

Century-long data reveals complex trends in ice cover in the Laurentian Great Lakes, Cannon et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03866-5

Climate-driven tree failures: how extreme rainfall threatens the survival of monumental Araucaria angustifolia trees, Scipioni et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111168

Glacier loss in Central Caucasus from ICESat-2, using the SRTM baseline and crossover analysis, Mehrishi et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.07.012

Mass Loss From Thwaites Glacier Continues Even Without Ocean Melting, Williams et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl122843

Observed responses of sea ice formation and decay in a mid-latitude marginal sea under dual-mode global warming, Qiu et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105631

Rapid acceleration of ice-cover loss from Northern Hemisphere lakes above critical air temperature thresholds, Zhou et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2610752123

The 2026 western US snow drought was about four times more likely due to climate change, Marshall et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2612961123

The dynamic response of Pine Island Glacier to two decades of intermittent ice shelf regrounding, Stepney et al., White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) pmh:oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:243583

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Ships are projected to navigate whole year-round along the North Sea route by 2100, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01557-7 24 cites.

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Sea level & climate change

Observed thresholds in sea-level rise driving global tidal wetland loss, Luo et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-76031-3

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Probabilistic reconstruction of sea-level changes and their causes since 1900, Earth system science data, 10.5194/essd-16-3471-2024 31 cites.

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Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry

Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past 3 million years, Marks-Peterson et al., Nature 10.1038/s41586-025-10032-y

Interplay of North Atlantic freshening and deep convection during the last deglaciation constrained by Iberian speleothems, Endres et al., Climate of the past Open Access pdf 10.5194/cp-22-797-2026

Wildfires rampaged across Europe in the dying days of the Triassic, [authors did not process], Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-02333-7

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Response of coastal California hydroclimate to the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, Climate of the past, 10.5194/cp-20-1615-2024 2 cites.

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Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

Larix gmelinii growth limitation shifts from nitrogen availability to drought under warming and permafrost degradation, Chen et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105395

Aftermath of marine heatwaves on the growth and physiological performance of Sargassum fusiforme and Sargassum thunbergii, Chu et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107945

An integrated assessment of climate change on landscape adaptive capacity, vulnerability, and divergence in Avicennia species, Sheidai et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-42720-8

Analysis of the mechanism of MKK4 participating in heat stress response in Mytilus coruscus, Wei et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107956

Aragonite Saturation Horizon Variability Along North Pacific Seamounts and Implications for Deep-Sea Coral Reefs, Kassem et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc023926

Assessing impacts of extreme climate and weather events on endangered pearl oysters Pinctada maxima, He et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.107821

Biogeochemical signal from marine heatwaves, cold spells, and transient warming events in a coastal upwelling system, Valdés et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-62941-1

Climate change alters biogeochemical cycles in oxygen-depleted and dead zones, Bourbonnais et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03756-w

Climate Change Enhances the Success of Marine Invasive Species, Smith & Cheung, Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.71020

Climate-Driven Population Dynamics, Growth, and Phenology of the Moon Jellyfish Aurelia coerulea in the Mediterranean Thau Lagoon, Pigeon et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107977

Climate-Driven Restructuring of Phytoplankton Productivity and Community Composition in the South-eastern Black Sea: Insights from Seasonal CO2-Temperature Manipulation Experiments, A??rba? et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108029

Disentangling the effects of FPAR, CO2, and climate on terrestrial vegetation productivity trends over two decades (2001–2023), Pu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111122

Ecological novelty induced by climate change, Wright et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02697-8

Ecosystem services can persist in drowning macrotidal salt marshes, Mason et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108260

Establishing ring width and cell chronologies for predicting future growth of Thuja koraiensis under climate change, Park et al., Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2025.126423

First evidence of climate-driven modulation of octinoxate toxicity in the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus, Costa et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107847

Global Change Reshapes Northern Lakes Towards Browner, More Nutrient-Depleted and Nitrogen-Limited Conditions With Contrasting Impacts on Phytoplankton Biomass, Bergström et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.71008

Iceberg-driven constraints on colony–foraging connectivity result in severe decline in chick counts for the Coulman Island emperor penguin colony, Park et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03764-w

In-situ experimental evidence revealing how ocean warming promotes Aurelia coerulea polyps mediated by benthic ecosystem change, Zang et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107853

Landscapes heavily impacted by human activities amplify climate sensitivity of Aleppo pine growth, Cappelluti et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111364

Marine heatwaves disrupt germination and seedling physiology in Zostera marina, Pieraccini et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.107789

Microbial drought resistance is achieved at the expense of soil carbon loss, Pang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76033-1

Modelling and geospatial mapping of whitefly Bemisia tabaci population dynamics in cassava-growing areas of Sub-Saharan Africa in response to climate change, Ndjomatchoua & Gilligan, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111059

Moisture limitation superseding thermal forcing: Elevational divergence in growth and physiological responses of Picea crassifolia to accelerated warming and drying on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau, Wang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111377

Ocean acidification effects on growth, survival and physiological immunity of farmed Larimichthys crocea, Zhang et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107869

Penguins on the Move: Mapping Priority Penguin Habitat Areas Under Climate Change, Ramirez et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.70233

Physiology and behaviour of eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) and soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) under hypoxic and heatwave conditions, Talevi et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107902

Predicting the water temperature effects and climate change impacts on gametogenesis of the sea urchin Mesocentrotus nudus using a DVI model, Takagi et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107941

Projected declines in zooplankton energy supporting Northwest European Shelf ecosystems, Tyldesley et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03840-1

Relationships Between Climatic Variation and Population Dynamics of the Threatened Mohave Ground Squirrel, Poessel et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.73952

Resilience of the macroalgae Gongolaria barbata under ocean acidification: physiological responses and restoration perspective, Ilaria et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107887

Responses of plant biomass to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration in the Yellow River Basin, Luan & Ma, Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105480

Strengthened resource limitation driven by accelerated microbial growth dampens response to elevated CO2 in a mature forest, Yuan et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03365-7

The Impact of Subglacial Drainage System Evolution and Glacier Lake Outburst on Arctic Fjord Macronutrient Dynamics, Alexander et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2023jg007969

Thermal responses and climate change implications of spring and autumn spawning Patagonian squid (Doryteuthis gahi) embryos, Grient et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107856

Tracing the imprints of dual stressors: eco-physiological and genotoxic insights from Mystus gulio under acidification and warming scenario, Mahapatra & Mandal, Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108290

Tree-Ring Based Precipitation Reconstructions Reveal Hydroclimatic Variability and a Recent Drying Trend in Northeastern Iran, Mazaherifar et al., Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126587

Understanding the resilience of Halophila ovalis to warming and nutrient enrichment for improved seagrass conservation policy, Yuxin et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.107824

Warming overwhelms CO2-driven drought mitigation in alpine vegetation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Lyu et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03308-2

Widespread Increase in Global Plant Water Stress Obscured by Greening, Chang et al., AGU Advances Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025av002243

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Large potential impacts of marine heatwaves on ecosystem functioning, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17437 29 cites.

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GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

Applying satellite observations to improve bottom-up national emission inventories for methane: application to Colombia, Hancock et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-26-10455-2026

Canopy-mediated climate feedbacks in the boreal continuous permafrost zone, Stuenzi et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-026-02692-z

Carbohydrate-active enzymes of soil prophages enhance global carbon cycling potential, Liao et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-75907-8

Carbon sink-source dynamics across ecuadorian coastal tropical dry forests: unraveling the seasonal balance of soil carbon inputs and CO2 efflux, Jarre-Castro et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.3389/fevo.2026.1824696

COVID-19 induced reduction of fossil-fuel emissions in 2020 altered the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2 at high latitudes, Gui et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111071

Extreme precipitation during the warm growing season amplifies methane emissions and reduces non-growing season contributions in a Tibetan alpine peatland, Lin et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111378

Floods Enhanced the Terrestrial and Marine Organic Carbon Burial in the East China Sea, Xu et al., Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.20278779

Global vessel carbon dioxide emission from navigable rivers, Lü et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02718-6

High-resolution land surface modeling of climate and CO2 effects on ecosystem carbon-water coupling across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Xi et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111195

Higher, but more variable, annual CO2 emissions from lakes in drier Arctic landscapes, Hazuková et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03275-8

Hydrological Threshold for Optimizing Wetland Climate Mitigation, Li et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl123743

Leveraging wide snapshot XCO2 pre-training to estimate urban fossil fuel CO2 emissions from space, Wang et al., Remote Sensing of Environment 10.1016/j.rse.2026.115260

Long-Term Urban Emission Trends in Salt Lake City: Examining CO, CO2, and NOX Enhancements, Humble et al., Atmospheric Environment 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2026.121883

Microbial Functional Gene Abundance-Integrated Modeling of Global Methane Sinks in Upland Soils Under Future Climate Change, Xiao et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71026

Migratory bird aggregation drives seasonal greenhouse gas hotspots in restored wetlands, Zhang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03853-w

Modeling the impact of drainage on peatland CO2 and CH4 fluxes and its underlying drivers, Liu, HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) pmh:oai:HAL:hal-05574304v1

Multi-Year Continuous Lateral Fluxes of Dissolved Carbon From a Microtidal Saltmarsh, He et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg009760

Rapid microbial production of long-lived dissolved organic carbon in the global ocean, Cai et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2601044123

Soil moisture-induced changes in land carbon sink projections in CMIP6, Gabele et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-2729-2026

Spatio-temporal patterns and environmental controls of soil organic carbon stocks in global tidal wetlands since 2009, Yang et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-76092-4

Tall-tower isotope measurements to infer urban CO2 sources: a case study of Vienna, Austria, Meeran et al., Atmospheric Environment Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2026.122245

The added value of new ground-based observations in improving China's methane emission quantification, Zhong et al., Atmospheric measurement techniques Open Access pdf 10.5194/amt-19-4759-2026

The Evidence for Linearly Scaling Ocean Gas Exchange With Sea Ice Needs Strengthening, Watts et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025jg009346

The timing of warming matters as much as its intensity for the annual carbon balance of a degraded raised bog, Behrens et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-5071-2026

Thermogenic methane beneath the North Greenland Ice Sheet revealed by isotopic and geological evidence, Ketzer et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-75951-4

Three-Fourths of Carbon Emissions From 2023 Record-Breaking Wildfires in Canada Traced to Soil and Peat Combustion, Zhong et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl123393

Transition of coastal marsh to mangrove forest: implications for Everglades CO2 and CH4 fluxes, Yannick et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.3389/fevo.2026.1890986

VOCs Impact Soil Carbon Transformations and Sequestration, Zhang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg010104

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Dual roles of microbes in mediating soil carbon dynamics in response to warming, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-50800-4 92 cites.

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CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Bioinspired charge reservoir enables efficient CO2 photoreduction with H2O via tungsten valence oscillation, Huang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-68991-3

CO2 subsurface mineral storage by its co-injection with recirculating water, Oelkers et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10130-5

Electrified reversible surface mineralization of CO2 for direct air capture, Liu et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-026-01989-9

Feasibility of CO2 pipeline construction to enable gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removals: evidence from historical precedent, Roberts et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1807933

Nanoscale greenhouse effect for promoting solar-driven CO2 reduction with water to CH4, Kang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-70960-9

Observationally constrained global warming hysteresis under CO2 removal, Song et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03484-1

Potential evaluation and favorable zone optimization of CO2 geological sequestration in deep coal reservoirs, Xue et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-42680-z

Reducing Uncertainties in Net Carbon Capture to Advance Wetlands as Natural Climate Solutions, Mistry et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2025jg009136

Reflecting on the politics and power dynamics of contested climate technologies, Fritz et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104448

Rethinking expertise on climate cooling technologies, Carabajal et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104446

The renaissance of carbon capture and storage in Germany and the politics of conditionality, Haas et al., Environmental Politics Open Access pdf 10.1080/09644016.2026.2700726

Translating insights from progress in photovoltaics to accelerate industrial-scale CO2 electroreduction, Choi et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-025-01953-z

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Deployment expectations of multi-gigatonne scale carbon removal could have adverse impacts on Asia’s energy-water-land nexus, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-50594-5 27 cites.

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Decarbonization

An Analysis of Future Wind Energy Resources and Cost Uncertainties Across the United States, Buster et al., Wind Energy Open Access 10.1002/we.70144

Assessing potential impacts of offshore wind development on U.S. marine ecosystems using food web modeling, Lato et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-026-63407-0

Carbon-aware resource allocation and task offloading in EH-assisted edge-cloud systems, Fu et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-62950-0

Solar-driven co-production of C2H4 and H2O2 from CO2 and H2O, Xie et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-69277-4

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Geothermal energy in Kenya: Evaluating health impacts and environmental challenges, Energy Sustainable Development/Energy for sustainable development, 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101522 23 cites.

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Geoengineering climate

Robust Solar Radiation Modification Strategy for Achieving Temperature Targets, Zheng et al., Risk Analysis 10.1111/risa.70312

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Effects of grain size and seawater salinity on magnesium hydroxide dissolution and secondary calcium carbonate precipitation kinetics: implications for ocean alkalinity enhancement, Biogeosciences, 10.5194/bg-21-3463-2024 13 cites.

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 Aerosols

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A model study investigating the sensitivity of aerosol forcing to the volatilities of semi-volatile organic compounds, Atmospheric chemistry and physics, 10.5194/acp-24-8489-2024 6 cites.

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Climate change communications & cognition

Misperception of Extreme Weather Event Mortality Risk in the United States, Manware et al., GeoHealth Open Access 10.1029/2025gh001782

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Communicating the Links between Climate Change and Heat Waves with the Climate Shift Index, Weather Climate and Society, 10.1175/wcas-d-23-0147.1 13 cites.

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Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

A data-driven method for identifying climate drivers of agricultural yield failure from daily weather data, Sweet et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-6687-2026

Agroforestry protects arable crops from climate shock during critical early-season phenological stages, Tosh et al., Agronomy for Sustainable Development Open Access pdf 10.1007/s13593-026-01129-3

Attribution analysis of historical and future global staple crop yield shocks to climate stressors, Xiao et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111340

Balancing growth, resource efficiency and soil greenhouse gas emissions: optimal water-fertilizer coupling for Chukrasia tabularis seedlings, Quan et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1914270

Carbon fluxes and partitioning in Eucalyptus and Pinus plantations across a climatic gradient in Brazil, Cunha et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110977

Designing agrivoltaic systems for plant protection, Vernier et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111361

Exposure risk of maize cropland under compound high-temperature and drought events over Northeast China in response to future warming, Yan et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.accre.2026.07.015

Ocean acidification effects on growth, survival and physiological immunity of farmed Larimichthys crocea, Zhang et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.107869

Quantifying the impact of extreme heat events on net ecosystem exchange in a wheat-maize cropping system in North China, Pei et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111379

Reduced phosphorus bioavailability in rice paddies intensified by elevated CO2-driven warming, Wang et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-01917-2

The economic dimension of climate-smart agriculture: bibliometric review of trends, challenges, and opportunities from an economic perspective, Jing et al., Environment Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-026-07995-x

The occurrence of extreme heat events offset CO2 fertilization and deteriorate grain quality in double cropping rice systems under projected climate change, Liu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111184

Warmer growing seasons improve cereal yields in Northern Europe only with increasing precipitation, Tootoonchi et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-2583-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Global assessment of production benefits and risk reduction in agroforestry during extreme weather events under climate change scenarios, Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1379741 31 cites.

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Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

Accelerating and Intensifying Dry-to-Wet Hydroclimate Whiplash Across the Contiguous United States, Yang & Li, Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008646

Amazon Dry Season Will Lengthen Under Future Climate, Ferreira et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.71018

Anthropogenic Warming Increases Extreme Precipitation in Huaihe River Basin, China in 1961–2020, Guo et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70525

Asynchronous Emergence of Water Scarcity Risks Amid Shifting Hydrological Regimes in High Mountain Asia, Zhao & Yang, Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008373

Dominant Controls on Preferential Flow and Their Implications for Future Soil Water Fluxes, Li et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008296

Future tropical cyclone rainfall constrained by increased atmospheric dryness, Chen et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-026-02047-5

Global Terrestrial Water Storage Projections and Uncertainty Decomposition Under Multiple Warming Levels, Kim et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007835

Integrating climate projections and hydrological modeling for sustainable water management in a major indian peninsular basin, Thakur et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1835963

Intensifying Sub-Daily Rainfall Extremes in Tropical Cities: Projections From Downscaled Baselines in a Warming Climate, Blagojevi? et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007703

Marine heatwaves in the Northeast Pacific intensify landfalling atmospheric rivers on the west coast of North America, Renkl et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-026-62522-2

Nature-based solutions in arid and semi-arid countries: A review of best practices and lessons learned, Chiarelli et al., Urban Climate Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103060

Seasonal Asymmetry in Extreme Precipitation Intensification Across China's Drylands, Wang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 10.1029/2026jd046518

U.S. rivers are transporting more suspended sediment, often in less time, Sigdel & Husic, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03847-8

Warming-Induced Increase in Flooding in the Taklimakan Desert, Su et al., Journal of Earth Science Open Access pdf 10.1007/s12583-025-2033-0

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Critical Effects of Precipitation on Future Colorado River Flow, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-23-0617.1 25 cites.

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Climate change economics

Climate change and high-quality economic development: Insights from the perspective of extreme temperatures, Li & Feng, Environment Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-026-07996-w 

 

Climate change mitigation public policy research

2040 greenhouse gas reduction targets and energy transitions in line with the EU Green Deal, Rodrigues et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-71159-8

A simplified method to calculate atmospheric CO2 equivalency for changing surface albedo, Akbari, Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.102795

Bricolage as an early-niche mechanism: Expectations and carbon lock-in in two Polish energy clusters, Stasik & Da?kowska, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104861

California's plan to decarbonize electricity omits key greenhouse gas emissions, Fortier et al., Energy Policy Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115509

Cost-effective abatement of industrial sources of nitrous oxide with methane for urgent climate mitigation, Wu et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-75982-x

Eligibility interpreted as assurance and trust inflation in carbon credit markets, Kuwae, PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001001

Optimizing residential energy management through an integrated techno-economic evaluation of PV-battery systems, Kumar et al., Electrical Engineering 10.1007/s00202-026-03614-0

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Public acceptability of carbon pricing: unravelling the impact of revenue recycling, Climate Policy, 10.1080/14693062.2024.2376747 29 cites.

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Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate change, Berrang?Ford et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-021-01170-y

Beyond adaptive capacity: Assessing how power relations shape household responses to climate impacts on water and sanitation, Dickin et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000906

Building climate-resilient development pathways in China: Evaluating environmental policy impacts, Zhou et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104456

Deep uncertainty analysis to characterise regional climate for building stock transition: A Nordic empirical study, Feng et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103057

Europe's transport infrastructure is not ready to face climate change, Deidda et al., Natural hazards and earth system sciences Open Access 10.5194/nhess-26-3345-2026

From devolution to distortion: political and fiscal constraints on locally led adaptation in Kenya, Mulwa & Gravesen, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2703375

How urban system structure and land use dynamics jointly shape climate vulnerability in Northwestern China over the 21st century, Zhou et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103066

In search of climate migrants: a journey from crisis to opportunity, Ahmed et al., Climate and Development Open Access 10.1080/17565529.2026.2694724

Scenario Planning for Transformative Climate Adaptation, Mach et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change 10.1002/wcc.70084

Strategic streams of evolving climate policy and governance in Vietnam: Challenges and potentials for resilience, Doi et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104451

Unequal protection and sacrificial territories: climate governance and infrastructural exposure in Southern Italy, Terenzi & Paone, Environmental Sociology 10.1080/23251042.2026.2704993

Unraveling the nuances of climate change maladaptation: A call for more verstehen perspectives, Ofosu, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000784

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Nature-based solutions in spatial planning and policies for climate change adaptation: A literature review, AMBIO, 10.1007/s13280-024-02052-1 28 cites.

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Climate change impacts on human health

Climate change and health in the rural context: Vulnerability, capacity and outlook, Rose & Birchall, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000974

Climate regulation as cardiovascular prevention: Heart failure risks after the Endangerment Finding rollback, Nguyen et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001006

Divergent Heat Assessments Across Thermal Stress and Sensation Metrics, Huang et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008395

Drought amplifies the psychological burden of war, Döring et al., Nature Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41893-026-01882-z

On the compound effect of humidity and temperature on mortality in the Eastern Mediterranean, Tzyrkalli et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000821

Survival First: How Citizens Prioritize Competing Climate-Health Risk Countermeasures Under Fiscal Constraints, Tanaka & ??, Risk Analysis Open Access 10.1111/risa.70315

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Framework of street grid-based urban heat vulnerability assessment: Integrating entropy weight method and BPNN model, Urban Climate, 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.102067 40 cites.

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 Other

Fire weather waves drive extreme fires globally, Yin et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03858-5

Implementing a National Framework for Climate Services: Understanding Progress, Challenges, and Future Opportunities, Golding et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-25-0281.1

Navigating optimal solar-wind trade-offs under climate change, Li et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-75879-9

Projecting climate change impacts on Scottish River pollution, Corrochano-Fraile et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2026.100856

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Evolution of the Climate Forcing During the Two Years After the Hunga Tonga=Hunga Ha'apai Eruption, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, 10.1029/2024jd041296 32 cites.

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Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Four years of PLOS Climate: Past, present and future, Boers et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000866

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
State of the UK Climate 2023, International Journal of Climatology, 10.1002/joc.8553 39 cites.

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

The Environmental Footprint of Emerging Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Data Centers, Community Health and Policy Responses, Emma Uridge and Jasmin Kamruddi, Kansas Health Institute

The rapid growth and use of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming many sectors, but it also has environmental implications that are complex and multifaceted. AI infrastructure drives increased demand for significant water use, greater energy consumption and expanded grid infrastructure, all of which require careful management to avoid environmental and community harm.

How Local Governments Can Use Communication to Drive Climate Action, Dwight et al., Yale University

The majority of constituents want local government climate action - 56% of registered voters want local government officials to do more to address climate change. With a duty to serve the public, local governments are well positioned to listen and respond — and the Yale Climate Opinion Maps include city- and county-level public opinion data to support your efforts. Know your audience and foster trust - To motivate climate action, governments must understand their communities and become trusted partners. Short surveys, message testing, and in-person engagement can help local governments understand what messages resonate and what issues are a priority for their audience. To build and retain trust, partnerships with community-based organizations, transparency, and frequent engagement are essential. Make climate action local - Many perceive climate change as a problem that is distant in time and space. Local governments can communicate local stories and social norms to help community members understand how climate change is impacting their community now — and that their neighbors are worried about it and taking action, even if they aren’t talking about it.

Protecting the nature of Texas, powering our clean energy future, Quentin Good and Luke Metzger, Frontier Group

Renewable energy developers in Texas have demonstrated many ways their siting practices and operations can minimize harm and even create new benefits from renewable energy projects. Texas should take steps to encourage the adoption of “best practices” by renewable energy developers that protect wildlife and landscapes while continuing the beneficial transition to clean energy. Operational changes and smart siting decisions can reduce the environmental impact of wind energy. The most serious environmental challenge posed by wind energy is its impact on birds and bats, but smart strategies – including those currently in use by Texas wind farm operators – have been proven to reduce collisions.

U.S. Can Cost-Effectively Supply One Third of Industrial Heat Demand Using Off-Grid Electric Thermal Storage and Heat Pumps, Dominguez et al., India Energy and Climate Center, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Industrial heat is a major source of U.S. emissions and is challenging to decarbonize due to the availability of low-cost natural gas keeping fossil fuel heating highly competitive. Emerging low cost and efficient options such as thermal electric storage and industrial heat pumps offer a promising alternative when combined with local low-cost solar and wind power. Using facility-level emissions data and a geospatial assessment of nearby buildable land, the authors evaluate 3,559 industrial sites and three temperature ranges: low (0–200°C), medium (200–850°C), and high (above 850°C). For each site, the authors estimate how much heat could be supplied using off=grid renewable systems, its' cost, and how their potential grows as clean energy costs fall. By 2035, the authors found that renewable-powered heat systems could economically supply up to one third of U.S. industrial heat demand—3,255 trillion BTU out of 9,530 trillion BTU in total. This includes more than half of temperature heat needs above 200°C, particularly in states with higher natural gas prices and strong renewable resources, such as California and parts of the northern and eastern U.S. Local off-grid systems also avoid multiyear grid interconnection delays while reducing integration costs for many facilities.

Coal Beneath Federal Lands in the United States— Mines, Reserves, and Resources, Shaffer et al., US. Geological Survey

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) compiled a list of coal mines and tabulated the coal reserves and available coal resources beneath Federal lands in the conterminous United States. Coal resources beneath Federal lands in Alaska are also discussed in this report. In 2024, the 34 coal mines on Federal lands produced more than 261 million short tons of coal. Surface mining is used at 23 of the coal mines, and underground mining is used at 11. These 34 coal mines control more than 4.2 billion short tons of reported coal reserves. Most of the coal mines (31) and more than 98 percent of the reported coal reserves are on Federal lands west of the Mississippi River. Of all the States, Wyoming has the most coal mines on Federal lands (14) and produces the most coal from Federal lands. The Powder River Basin has the most coal mines per basin or coal field operating on Federal lands (12 in Wyoming, 2 in Montana). Most of the available coal resources in the conterminous United States are also west of the Mississippi River. There are five basins or coal fields in the West that each contain available coal resources of more than 25 billion short tons. The USGS estimates that more than 355 billion short tons of available coal resources remain beneath Federal lands in the conterminous United States. Alaska contains substantial quantities of coal resources. The USGS estimates that Alaska has at least 140 billion short tons of identified available coal resources but may ultimately have as much as 5.5 trillion short tons of coal resources.

Americans with disabilities are more likely than those without disabilities to say global warming is harming their health, Ettinger et al., Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Americans with disabilities are more likely to think global warming is harming their own health than Americans without disabilities. Americans with and without disabilities have similar views on whether some groups of people are more likely to experience the health harms of global warming. Americans with disabilities have lower trust in several information sources about the health harms of global warming.

Paying for Resilience in New York State, Rebuild by Design and The New York State Adaptation Practitioners Network

Climate change has catalyzed new and opportunities and risks within nearly every dimension of New York State’s economy – with the costs being passed onto New Yorkers in the form of tax increases, medical bills, insurance hikes, damages, home repairs, and business losses. The authors present a first-of-its-kind inventory of the cost to adapt to climate effects. New York State will need to spend over $519 billion to build, upgrade, or adapt infrastructure to prepare for climate impacts. This accounts for costs of proposed, in-progress, and completed adaptation investments. The per capita cost of adapting New York State’s infrastructure is approximately $26,000. The highest regional adaptation cost, $387 billion, is in New York City, where the approximate per capita need is $50,000. The most substantial costs include culvert replacements, sewer and stormwater upgrades, and coastal defense on Long Island and in New York City.

Transmission Planning with Large Loads: Current Practices and Recommendations, Large Loads Task Force, Energy Systems Integration Group

The authors trace the structural reasons why the growth in data centers, AI facilities, and other large loads is outpacing existing transmission planning processes, which were designed for slower and more dispersed demand growth. They lay out what planners, utilities, and regulators can start doing now and over the longer term, as large load and associated generator interconnection requests continue to arrive faster than current planning processes can accommodate. The authors identify three structural reasons current planning processes struggle to keep pace including planning functions are siloed by jurisdiction, time horizon, and study method; there is a fundamental timing mismatch between how fast large loads want to connect and how long transmission takes to plan and build; and planners face a radically different level of demand uncertainty that current planning methods were not designed to handle. The authors distinguish between actions planners can take now with immediate payoff, such as studies that make visible where the grid can serve new load, tools that quickly expand available grid capacity, and coordinating assumptions across planning functions and structural shifts in the planning process, including moving from project-by-project upgrades toward proactive, scenario-based, multi-value planning with longer-term benefits.

Electricity Mid-Year Update 2026, Çam et al., The International Energy Agency

Amid the energy shock triggered by the war in the Middle East, the world’s electricity consumption is set to increase strongly in 2026, driven by rising demand from industry, appliances, cooling needs, data centers and electrification. This mid-year update builds on the comprehensive Electricity 2026 report published in February, providing an assessment of recent market developments and updated outlooks through 2027. It incorporates updated data for 2025 and new forecasts for 2026 and 2027, covering global electricity demand, generation by fuel, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity generation, among other trends. The report also reviews the latest developments in major economies such as China, the European Union, India and the United States and provides updated tracking of wholesale electricity prices across markets worldwide.

Interfacing science and policy: Exploring the role of scientific knowledge in the design of Voluntary Sustainability Standards, Loconto et al., Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Through the concept of scientific cherry-picking, the authors analyze how Voluntary Sustainability Standards selectively incorporate particular strands of scientific knowledge that align with operational models and governance structures. This selective integration often leads to the promotion of interpretations of sustainability that are compatible with weak sustainability paradigms –emphasizing incremental improvements within existing systems – rather than fostering more systemic and transformative approaches.

Food Security Green Bonds. Scaling finance for sustainable and climate-resilient agrifood systems, Mikell O’Mealy, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The authors examine the growing pressures on global agrifood systems, where hunger and food insecurity remain widespread and are expected to intensify under climate change and population growth. They highlight the dual challenge of expanding production to meet rising demand while addressing the sector’s significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and increasing climate risks that threaten agricultural land and livelihoods. Despite strong recognition by countries of the need for climate-smart agriculture and agrifood systems transformation, progress is constrained by a large financing gap. Current investment levels fall far short of the estimated USD 1.1 trillion required annually by 2030, with particularly acute shortfalls affecting smallholder farmers and agri-Subject Matter Experts. Public finance continues to dominate, reflecting both its catalytic role and the barriers limiting private sector engagement. The authors identify public-led green bonds as a practical avenue to mobilize private and institutional capital at scale.

Pay, Baby, Pay. Why Trump's Energy & AI Dominance Agenda Means Higher Bills For Everyone, Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International

U.S. wholesale fossil gas prices will likely double by the late 2030s relative to the 2020 to 2025 average if the Trump administration’s energy and AI policies succeed in pushing gas demand to levels that can only be met by more expensive gas production. Significant energy price volatility from 2020 to 2025 caused hardship in the U.S. and in LNG-importing countries, particularly in Asia and Europe. Costlier U.S. gas risks exacerbating the energy affordability crisis for U.S. and international consumers alike. The surge in gas demand – and gas prices – is being driven primarily by the Trump administration’s support for massive increases in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Trump’s hostility toward renewables and support for the poorly regulated AI data center boom aggravate the impending crunch. Lower-cost gas from the two biggest U.S. gas-producing regions, the Permian and Appalachian basins, will not be able to meet rising demand alone. To fill the gap between demand and production, gas producers will have to increase drilling in the significantly more expensive Haynesville shale play in Louisiana and Texas. About New Research

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Registered nurses at Jackson Park Hospital and Medical Center (JPH) will hold an informational picket on Friday, July 31, 2026, to raise their concerns about short staffing of both nurses and ancillary staff putting patients at risk, contributing to a high staff turnover, and creating challenges recruiting and retaining nurses.

The history

 

Phillips 66 has profited and polluted for over a century here in Carson. Now that the last barrel of oil has left the refinery, we finally have the chance to clean up the land, invest in good union jobs that protect our health and environment, and give residents a say in what happens next.

The stakes are high: Just because the refinery stopped refining oil doesn’t mean a century of pollution in the soil and groundwater will vanish overnight. There’s a “lake of oil” beneath the 233-acre Carson refinery site, made up of decades of petroleum sludge, toxins, and other pollution. 

Our communities know that back-room deals, shoddy cleanup, and greedy zoning decisions can lead to cancer, death, and huge cleanup bills down the line.

Lawmakers and regulators have a choice: let Phillips 66 and developers continue to take the lead – or can bring residents into the driver’s seat. They can allow Amazon warehouses, data centers, or ICE detention centers fill the gap left by the refinery – or create good union jobs for the city, with work that protects our health and environment.

Join us in fighting for a just transition in Carson, California. Tell the L.A Water Board: Capped toxins are still toxic.

Refinery communities deserve to see real cleanup today, not more promises from an unreliable corporate polluter.

Los Angeles: take action. Who we are We want to live, work, and raise our families in Carson, California, but with each passing year we’ve seen fossil fuel companies pollute the air and sicken our families.

Now, we’re organizing to demand that Phillips 66 pays to clean up their toxic mess – so that we don’t get left with the bill for cleanup. What we need from the City of Carson:

 

• Launch a Just Transition Taskforce – We need a real, staffed taskforce to guide refinery site cleanup, bringing together City planners, City building department, Los Angeles Waterboard, environmental and toxins experts, and frontline residents. 
• Conduct a Site Revisioning Process – Bring our neighbors and surrounding community into the site redevelopment with a visioning process for the refinery. Create an “open front door” with freely shared studies of the site. If Phillips 66 doesn’t pay, taxpayers will: we deserve to guide the process. 
• Champion Strong Community Benefit and Project Labor Agreements. Encourage strong Community Benefit Agreements and project labor agreements to ensure that unionized workers perform the decommissioning (tear-down) and remediation (cleanup).

What we need from the Los Angeles Water Board:

 

• Create a Strong Plan for Refinery Cleanup with Real Teeth –  Working together as the City and LA Water Board, we need a strong work-plan for cleanup that holds Phillips 66 to real standards. 
• Transparency & Real Input – Our neighbors deserve more information, updates, and a means of giving input on the site cleanup. The Water Board can and must hold public workshops to update residents; provide resources in the languages spoken and read by Carson residents; provide frequent opportunities for public comment and public forums; and establish an open door policy for site remediation data.

Phillips 66 Carson refinery site remediation estimated at nearly $1 billion

by TEAM APEN | Jun 5, 2026

For Immediate Release June 5, 2026 Contact:  Blake@sunstonestrategies.com, 310-894-6690   Phillips 66 Carson Refinery Site Remediation Estimated at Nearly $1 Billion   New report reveals Carson community at risk of shouldering millions in cleanup costs...

read more Holding Phillips 66 Accountable

by Jonathan Garcia | Jun 1, 2026

From engaging in door knocking campaigns to speaking at city council meetings, APEN's youth leadership in Carson plays an important role in our strategy to hold Phillip's 66 accountable for remediation of their Carson refinery. Through our advocacy, we were able...

read more Before the Last Drop: Lessons From the Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery Closure

by TEAM APEN | Dec 9, 2025

After years of asthma, sickness, and death for nearby residents, Los Angeles’ Phillips 66 refinery is on its way out.  Now, frontline communities are counting on elected officials and responsible agencies to clean up refinery sites and ensure the safety, health, and...

read more

The post We’re fighting for a future beyond oil here in Carson. appeared first on Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

This article What India’s Cockroach Party won — and what’s next was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Thirty-six days after a joke about “cockroaches” became a youth movement, India’s education minister was gone. On July 25, Dharmendra Pradhan resigned after weeks of protests over failures in the public examination system and demands for political accountability. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, declared victory — “Cockroaches won. Democracy won.”

For a movement that began online in May and grown into a nationwide agitation, forcing a cabinet minister from office was an unmistakable political concession. But almost as soon as the protesters packed up, the meaning of that victory became less certain.

Three days later, the movement was already threatening to return to the streets. The CJP said over 100 protesters been arrested nationwide, with cases filed in the states of Delhi, Assam, West Bengal and Bihar, despite assurances that demonstrators would not face punitive action. CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka warned that the agitation could resume if those arrested were not released.

Bihar police announced that the protesters had been released and would face no adverse legal action. But the assurance did not hold in other states, like West Bengal and Assam, where more than a dozen are still being detained.

Removing a minister was a visible symbol of accountability; ensuring that other promises made to end the protests were actually honored would require something harder — sustained organization after the crowds had gone home.

A movement that couldn’t be decapitated

When Delhi last saw a mass youth mobilization, over the citizenship law in 2020, the state answered by naming the organizers in a conspiracy chargesheet: Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have now been held for more than five years under India’s 1967 anti-terror law and were refused bail again on July 4, 16 days before the cockroaches marched on Parliament.

It began as a joke. Amidst a youth uproar over invalidated examination results, during which India’s highest judge referred to the nation’s youth as “cockroaches,” a Boston-based student from India, Abhijeet Dipke, posted on X, “What if the cockroaches marched?”

Previous Coverage

The strategic satire of India’s Gen Z ‘Cockroach’ movement

The joke carried a serious message: The protesters who turned out in response, under the banner of the Cockroach Janta Party, saw themselves as people the political system had stopped listening to.

But the Cockroach Janta Party — a parody of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, the Hindu right-wing party that has governed India since 2014 — had few of the trappings of a serious political party. There was a website where people could sign up; there was an Instagram account that had grown rapidly; and there was Dipke. By July, he was leading the sit-ins and the marches from a stage in Central Delhi — a founder the movement had acquired without ever electing one, and who insisted, along with everybody else there, that the CJP had no leader.

For five weeks, Delhi Police dealt with a protest that offered nothing conventional to target. There was no office to raid and no membership list to seize — the two things that allowed police to quell earlier movements.

So on the morning of July 18, police went for the one man everyone knew.

Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer and education reformer from the Indian Himalayas, is 59 years old and was 20 days into a hunger strike. He had lost more than 18 pounds. Police carried him from the protest site and took him to hospital.

Wangchuk had become the most recognizable face in a movement that insisted it had no leader. He runs a school in the region of Ladakh for children who struggle in India’s examination system and is a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often described as Asia’s Nobel.

Delhi Police said they acted on a High Court order and medical advice. Protesters tried to stop officers from taking Wangchuk away, leading to what police described as a “slight commotion.”

But the police statement did not end with Wangchuk’s health. It also asked the remaining protesters to leave. They did not.

Taking a man 20 days into a hunger strike to a hospital could be explained as a medical decision. Asking everyone else to clear the square was something different.

By that afternoon the square was fuller than it had been all month, with people packed under sheets of black plastic strung between trees, facing a stage with nobody on it. The banner behind the empty platform still read “Hunger Strike.” Removing the hunger striker had doubled his audience.

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And that was the problem the Cockroach Janta Party exposed: How do you shut down a protest when there is no leader to remove, no organization to dismantle and no one person whose arrest can make the crowd disappear?

Two million children, one exam, 89 leaks

The packed square is Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory of huge stone sundials about half a mile from India’s Parliament, and the only place in central Delhi where a demonstration is permitted at all. For five weeks it was a tent city of students, parents who had spent their savings on high-stakes test coaching, teachers, lawyers, a few farmers’ unions and a great many people in their 20s who had never protested before.

What brought them there was an examination. Every year more than two million Indian teenagers sit the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, or NEET, for fewer than 130,000 undergraduate medical seats. Whole towns exist to coach children for it — Kota, in Rajasthan, held around 250,000 aspirants at its peak and still houses roughly 85,000 to 100,000 in hostels and cram schools built for nothing else. In May, nine days after the exam, the government cancelled the results over an alleged paper leak and told two million candidates to take it a second time. Several students died by suicide in the weeks that followed.

On May 15, the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, while hearing a case about fraudulent degrees, turned to unemployed young Indians and called them cockroaches who attack everyone because they have nowhere to go. He said afterward he had been misunderstood.

But Dipke, a 30-year-old political strategist watching from Boston, had already asked on X what would happen if all the cockroaches came together. Rinku Kumar was one of the millions who answered. He is a 23-year-old English teacher at a coaching center in Nawada, in the poor eastern state of Bihar, India — nobody’s stereotype of an activist. He traveled to Delhi because a protest he had been watching on his phone had begun describing his own life back to him.

For decades a protest in Delhi became a national event only if television decided it was one. At Jantar Mantar that assumption had visibly broken: Some protesters did not want mainstream TV crews at the site at all. Instead of waiting for prime time, they filmed everything themselves, livestreamed speeches, circulated their own footage of the police lines and followed independent reporters directly. The grievance had become a meme, the meme a crowd, and the crowd had built its own distribution network. Part of what the CJP was winning was the account of itself.

That is how a coach from Nawada ended up in the same square as Ashutosh Ranka — an Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur graduate with a degree from the London School of Economics and a stint at McKinsey behind him. In June, Ranka was named one of the movement’s three spokespeople, alongside the investigative journalist Saurav Das and the researcher and filmmaker Vijeta Dahiya. Their life paths had nothing in common, but the protest had handed them the same vocabulary of jobs, exams and accountability.

A leaflet circulating that week wondered whether India was still a democracy or had become a “deMOCKracy,” then graded the government in its own vocabulary, saying it flunked this lesson.

The day the internet went off and 10,000 people walked anyway

The CJP called a mile-long march to Parliament House for July 20, the opening day of the monsoon session and of Parliament, but permission was refused. Instead, the state prepared by switching off mobile internet around the site, closing metro stations and putting up barricades.

More than 10,000 marched anyway, the turnout swollen by anger at Wangchuk’s removal.

The placards had stopped asking politely. One carried Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s photograph with “Resign” across his face and a performance review printed beside it: “You are a government servant, you work for us, we pay your salary, we the people of India fire you.” Two balloons tied to the same hand read “Grow a pair.”

A satirical placard on the march to Parliament, demanding accountability from the education minister. (WNV/Shruthi Manjula Mohan)

Delhi Police denied using violence, though NPR watched officers fire tear gas and hit demonstrators with sticks. I witnessed it, too. The tear gas came in from the Parliament Street side and the crowd did not run so much as fold and re-form 100 feet back.

Nearly 180 protesters injured and 70 detained. Several videos show police attacking marchers; none has surfaced showing the reverse.

Pradhan, who had spent June dismissing the protesters as disruptive elements, upgraded them that week to a “B-team of terrorists” trying to “divide the country.”

That kind of rhetoric has been effective in the past, according to Tanuj Gaurav, a doctoral researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the campus that has been the center of Indian left student politics for decades and a standing target of this government. “The moment you raise a question, you’re linked to the enemy,” he told me. “After that, nobody wants to ask questions anymore.”

Then, on the same day it called them terrorists, the government invited Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka two of them to meet Health Minister J.P. Nadda. Dipke announced the invitation from the stage. Shortly afterward he was reportedly detained.

They stopped waiting for television to notice them

Here is the test the movement passed twice in three days. On July 18 the state removed the famous man; on July 20 it removed the founder. Neither removal stuck. Wangchuk went on issuing statements from his hospital bed and was part of the talks that followed. Dipke was released within hours and was back on the stage by then. The protest did not pause or splinter, but it also never had to find out what would happen if either man stayed gone.

The next day it stopped marching altogether, while keeping the sit-in going. “We will not march again because the police will hurt the youth again,” Dipke said.

A volunteer used art as a medium of dissent at Jantar Mantar. His stall became one of the site’s biggest draws, with visitors joining him to paint, sketch and draw in support of the CJP’s demands for accountability and reform of the examination system. (WNV/Shruthi Manjula Mohan)

The discipline was visible on the tarmac on July 20. One volunteer had turned a stretch of road into a gallery row of watercolors weighted against the wind. They depicted cockroaches marching on Parliament, a government drawn blind, mute and deaf. A handwritten sign invited strangers to sit and add their own; another asked people not to touch the pictures, only to photograph them. It read as a rule about wet paint, and it was, but it also described how the whole movement worked: Make the thing, let everyone copy it, keep no object anybody could be arrested for holding.

Thirty-six days after a joke, a cabinet minister was gone

On July 24 Wangchuk broke his 26-day fast after written assurances on exam accountability.

His decision, however, did not settle the central political demand driving the wider movement: Pradhan’s resignation. Wangchuk said his immediate priority was protecting students from further violence and legal action, and suggested that Pradhan’s departure could still follow. The youth-led CJP, meanwhile, continued protesting, refusing to accept the government’s attempts at compromise.

The next day Pradhan resigned, saying he deeply respected the aspirations of the country’s youth — a respect that had taken 36 days and a hospitalization to locate.

With demonstrations persisting despite the government’s attempts at compromise, Pradhan’s resignation became the concession capable of bringing the confrontation to an end.

Hours later, CJP spokespeople sat beside two ministers at a joint news conference. “All our demands have been accepted,” said Ranka, asking everyone to go home. The party posted four words: “Cockroaches won. Democracy won.”

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political theorist and one of India’s most widely read columnists, wrote in the Indian Express that the resignation alone changes little, but that a generation failed by its elders had made a government drunk on its own power look small and had shown it can be moved.

The state had gone looking for the movement’s head and failed. The movement, which had none, had taken down a minister.

Now watch the demands get smaller

In June, they wanted a minister gone. On July 13 they wanted a law. The CJP’s voluntary tech team published a five-point charter for rebuilding how India runs public examinations — closer to draft legislation than to grievance. It asked for a new Public Examinations Act and for the National Testing Agency that runs the exams to be dissolved and rebuilt as a statutory body with permanent staff and compulsory audits. It called for an independent ombudsman, a judicial inquiry opening automatically under a retired judge after every leak, refunds and compensation turned from favors into legal entitlements, and a permanent parliamentary committee to keep watching after the cameras left.

After July 20 they added two more demands: Don’t prosecute us, and apologize for hitting us.

They began by asking the government to fix an examination that two million children sit. They ended by asking it not to arrest them for asking.

What they were given was the minister and very little else. On compensation, the government agreed it would pay “whatever maximum possible” under existing rules for each of the more than 20 families of students who died by suicide, not the $105,000 each that the CJP demanded.

On criminal cases, protesters won a promise that nobody would be pursued in states the BJP governs — and because India’s police answer to state governments, that covered only part of the country. Since then 11 people have been arrested in West Bengal, 10 of them Muslim, six in Assam, and three protesters were injured when police opened fire in Bihar.

On the apology, the movement received nothing at all.

The CJP says it will now identify officers from protest footage and take them to court; the cameras pointed at that crowd for five weeks will become an evidence file.

But footage works both ways: A 36-second clip on a protester’s phone identified a senior officer by his own badge as he struck a woman standing at the roadside. Police accepted he had lost his composure and took him off protest duty, but he has not been suspended and no case has been registered. In other words, a protester’s phone named an officer within 48 hours, and the state answered with a change of desk.

A committee to look into what the last committee said

And the charter? On July 26 Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a task force to make the examination system reliable and transparent. It will be headed by Nandan Nilekani, who cofounded the software giant Infosys and built Aadhaar, the biometric identity system now held by more than a billion Indians.

New anti-leak legislation went to Parliament the next day. Pralhad Joshi, the head of two cabinet ministries, was handed the education ministry on top of his other responsibilities.

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A task force is not nothing, but it is not new either. After the 2024 NEET leak, the government appointed a committee under K. Radhakrishnan, the former head of India’s space agency, to make the exams fair. Jairam Ramesh of the opposition Congress Party answered the announcement on July 26 by asking what became of it, noting that the government has still not finished implementing that committee’s 101 recommendations.

So the cockroaches asked for a statute and were handed a committee — a second committee, set up to consider what the first committee’s 101 recommendations were supposed to have fixed. A minister is only a head, a statute would have been a structure, and a task force is mostly a way of agreeing that something ought to happen later.

When the street is the only place left to complain

India’s cockroaches are the newest arrivals in a global wave more than two years old — youth movements organized online, often under the skull-and-straw-hat flag borrowed from the manga “One Piece,” that have shaken governments from Nepal and Peru to Morocco, Madagascar and Kenya since Bangladesh’s students brought down Sheikh Hasina in 2024.

Their records should be read as a warning rather than a template. Nepal’s movement carried the rapper and Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah to the prime ministership in March, and three and a half months later he had shown no visible progress on the inequality and unemployment that carried him there. On July 9, a 25-year-old Dalit man running a motorcycle taxi set himself on fire over a six-dollar parking fine, triggering new protests. In Madagascar, the president fled and the army installed a colonel.

What researchers keep finding is the trap the CJP now sits inside: movements built online can be remarkably effective at forcing political change, but often struggle to turn that momentum into democratic governments that remain accountable and responsive to the people who brought them to power. But the deeper problem is not how the movement was built; it is what it was built around. Mehta, the political theorist, believes that India has run out of institutional ways to lodge a complaint or make anyone answer it. “The street is our only channel,” he wrote.

That is why the cockroaches were organized the way they were. Leaderlessness was a choice, not a default — one many movements have made since the committees, the regulators and the courts stopped functioning as places where a complaint could be filed. It buys speed and makes a movement hard to decapitate. It also leaves no one authorised to sign anything.

It is also exactly why the charter has nowhere to go. There is nobody obliged to read it, and nobody left at Jantar Mantar to ask why nobody has. Every quality that made this movement impossible to stop — no leader to arrest, no office, no list — is the same quality that makes it impossible for anyone to hold the government to a promise, which is to say: The armor has led to paralysis.

The walls at Jantar Mantar have been painted over. Rinku Kumar has gone back to Nawada to teach English. The charter sits in a drawer in a ministry whose minister has resigned, and a new task force will report in due course on what the last task force recommended.

Somebody has to still be standing there in six months to ask what became of any of it. That is the one job a movement without standing structure cannot do.

The cockroaches were never short of leaders — Dipke had a stage, and the government found two names to summon within the hour. What they never built was anything that would outlive the people holding the microphone. A leader can be detained on a Monday afternoon, and Dipke was. The concessions came fast because the crowd was large. But the crowd will not likely be large in December.

Shruthi Manjula Mohan, a young professional based in New Delhi, contributed reporting and visual support to this story.

This article What India’s Cockroach Party won — and what’s next was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Article written by Montezuma Audubon Center intern Olivia Mathews.Working alongside a volunteer, I haul a canoe into the slow-moving, shallow water at Knox Marsellus Marsh within the Montezuma...