Water sits at the center of this week’s impacts, whether there is too little of it, too much of it, or less of it stored in ice. In Texas, hotter summers are exposing people in uncooled prisons to dangerous indoor heat, while Corpus Christi’s brush with a water emergency exposed the danger of drought planning that leans too heavily on the past. In Colorado, warming is cutting into river flows, snowpack, pasture, and ranch water supplies. In the Himalayas, a rock–ice avalanche near the Nepal–Tibet border turned a high-mountain collapse into destructive flooding downstream. In Peru, glacier loss is changing water expectations, farming choices, and how Quechua-speaking communities understand the mountains above them, while Nazca’s aqueducts and geoglyphs carry a much older record of water scarcity shaping culture. Colombia and Ecuador are also preparing for a strengthening El Niño over record-hot oceans, with risks to drinking water, agriculture, fires, food supplies, and emergency planning. ¹

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United States

• A Texas prison heat case could shape how the U.S. protects incarcerated people during hotter summers — A federal case in Texas is forcing a basic question about climate protection behind bars. The lawsuit centers on prison housing areas without air conditioning, where incarcerated people can be exposed to dangerous indoor heat while having little control over the conditions around them. In uncooled areas of Texas prisons, summer temperatures can exceed 110°F. As of August 1, 2026, Texas state prisons had enough air-conditioned housing beds for fewer than half of incarcerated people. Heat has already been tied to deaths in the state’s prison system, with a 2022 study finding that about 13% of warm-season deaths in Texas prisons from 2001 to 2019 were attributable to extreme heat. The court had not ruled as of the article’s publication, but the case could influence how prisons across the country are expected to respond as hotter summers become more common.

  • People outside prison are usually told to manage heat by changing their surroundings or changing their plans. They can leave an overheated room, buy something cold to drink, open a window, take a cool shower, go to a cooling center, adjust the thermostat, avoid outdoor work, or check on someone with medical needs. Those choices do not translate easily to prison. Many facilities are built from brick or other heavy materials that hold heat, with limited ventilation and few windows people can open. Crowding can make already hot housing areas worse. Whether someone can get cold water, reach a cooler space, or see medical staff usually isn't up to them. It runs through facility schedules, staffing levels, and whoever happens to be on duty. Some incarcerated people also work outdoors in extreme heat, then return to housing areas that may still be hot overnight. That leaves little time for the body to cool down before heat exposure starts the next day again.

  • The medical risk is not the same for everyone inside. Extreme heat can worsen asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Some psychiatric medications can interfere with the body’s ability to regulate temperature, which can make heat more dangerous for people who already rely on the facility for medication, monitoring, and care. Pregnancy adds another layer of risk, and incarcerated women may also face stress related to children, family responsibilities, and unequal treatment inside facilities. Heat inside prisons is not just an uncomfortable indoor condition. It can become a daily health threat shaped by confinement, illness, medication, pregnancy, outdoor labor, poor sleep, crowding, stress, and dependence on staff for water and cooling.

  • Texas is the focus of the current case because the state combines severe summer heat with a prison system that still lacks enough cooled housing for everyone. The broader issue is not limited to Texas or even to the South. Facilities in cooler states may also lack full air conditioning because older buildings and policies were designed for summers that were less extreme. As heat spreads into regions that did not historically plan for long periods of dangerous temperatures, more prisons could face the same mismatch between old infrastructure and new climate conditions. Federal prisons require air conditioning, but state policies vary. Advocates have pushed for cooling that keeps housing areas at a safe temperature, along with rules shaped by people who have lived through prison heat themselves. Prison heat also changes what disaster planning has to include. A city can open a cooling center, issue public warnings, or tell residents to reduce activity, but those measures leave out people who cannot leave the building they are in. Planning for hotter summers has to include prisons, jails, detention centers, and other locked facilities where people depend on the institution for water, ventilation, medical care, and evacuation decisions. Without enforceable cooling standards, heat protections can vary by facility, health status, staff response, and state policy.

• Corpus Christi’s water crisis exposed a Texas planning system built around past droughts, not future ones — Texas has spent decades building a water-planning system meant to look 50 years ahead, but the Corpus Christi crisis revealed how quickly that system can fall behind when drought conditions no longer match the past. State and regional plans still lean heavily on historical drought benchmarks, including the 1950s drought of record in some areas, even as climate change is making droughts more frequent, longer, and more severe. That creates a planning problem before a water emergency ever begins. If the models are calibrated to old extremes, they can understate how much water a region may need, how soon shortages may arrive, and how much time cities, businesses, and households actually have to prepare.

  • Corpus Christi and the surrounding Coastal Bend became the clearest warning sign. The region depends heavily on rivers and reservoirs, making it vulnerable when heat and drought reduce surface water supplies. Years of drought pushed the city’s main reservoirs toward historic lows, and this spring the city warned that it could soon face a water emergency, meaning supply could run short within half a year if conditions didn't change. Residents and businesses were asked to conserve, industrial users raised concerns about leaving, nearby cities issued disaster declarations, and state leaders threatened intervention. Rains later eased the immediate crisis, and July flooding helped refill reservoirs, delaying the projected emergency until 2028, but that rebound does not erase the planning failure. A wet month can refill a lake faster than it can fix outdated assumptions.

  • The warning system did not provide local leaders with a consistent signal. Over five state water plans adopted across 25 years, the Coastal Bend received mixed messages about whether major shortages were coming in the 2020s. The signals contradicted each other from one plan to the next, and none of them made the case clearly enough that the region needed to act before shortages hit. A report by Texas 2036 found that only one of 50 recommended strategies for this decade in the 2021 and 2022 plan had been built by 2025. By the time the drought had already outpaced the benchmark planners were using, the region was too far into the planning cycle to start over.

  • Texas water planning accounts for population growth, industry, infrastructure, and land use, but the state still does not openly build climate change into the process. Texas has already experienced hotter conditions, including its hottest year on record in 2023, and hotter temperatures put more stress on surface water systems such as lakes and rivers. Corpus Christi gets more than 96% of its supply from surface water, so a hotter and drier climate can weaken the very sources the city depends on most. The problem is not only drought length. Climate scientists also describe Texas as facing sharper swings between very dry and very wet periods, meaning a region can move from emergency-level scarcity to flood-driven reservoir recovery without becoming more secure over the long term.

  • Updating the planning system is not just a technical issue. Water projects can take years or decades to plan, permit, finance, and build, and the region is now trying to add supply while the next shortage is still possible. Corpus Christi is drilling groundwater wells, pursuing wastewater reuse, and reconsidering seawater desalination, a project that has appeared in regional plans for years but has also raised cost and environmental concerns. State lawmakers have allowed planners to consider droughts worse than the historical record, but money for updating the models has not kept pace. Half of the state’s surface water models have not been updated since they were created in the 1990s, even though those models shape decisions about rivers, reservoirs, and future infrastructure. In a changing climate, old water models can become a hidden vulnerability, because they make a risky future look more manageable than it is.

• Colorado’s water crisis is showing how human-caused warming is changing both rivers and ranchland — The Colorado River has always been managed around scarcity, but the crisis now facing the basin is not just another dry cycle passing through the West. The river’s cumulative flow near Colorado’s Western Slope reached a record low this year, and the seven states that depend on the river are moving toward a long fight over how to divide cuts after more than two decades of dry conditions. Water managers and elected officials still tend to focus on storage, diversions, conservation, drought-resistant crops, and interstate negotiations. Those choices matter, but they do not fully explain why the river itself is producing less water. Human-caused warming is raising temperatures across the basin, pulling more moisture from soils, plants, snow, and reservoirs, and reducing how much water reaches streams even when precipitation does not disappear all at once. As the air warms, it draws more moisture from the landscape, increasing evaporative demand and making a dry year more damaging than it would have been in a cooler climate. Researchers have coined the term hot drought for what's happening now, marking a break from the twentieth century's drier stretches, which were driven mainly by a lack of rain and snow rather than heat. Higher temperatures alone, separate from any change in rainfall or snowfall, now account for something like 40% to 50% of the river's lost flow, according to the research consensus. The precipitation side is becoming less reassuring too. Multi-year precipitation averages in the Upper Colorado River Basin have been lower since 2000, Colorado had its warmest winter on record in 2025 to 2026, and statewide snowpack fell to its lowest level in more than 40 years. Newer research also points to human-driven changes in western precipitation patterns, meaning the river is being squeezed by hotter conditions and weaker moisture inputs at the same time. That is why some scientists prefer aridification over drought. Drought suggests a temporary shortage with a return to normal on the other side. Aridification better captures a basin where warming is changing the baseline itself, making old water promises, reservoir rules, agricultural planning, and urban growth assumptions harder to defend.

  • Colorado ranchers are bringing climate accountability into the fight over who pays for damage. The same drying, warming landscape is being felt on Colorado ranches, where water scarcity, wildfire, earlier snowmelt, and hotter seasons are changing what it takes to keep livestock and land viable. In Rio Blanco County, one rancher makes a water run into town roughly twice a week just to keep a tank filled, after the ponds her horses used to drink from dried up for good. She and her husband have sold the last of the cattle they once raised, and after the Lee Fire burned across their property, they returned to destroyed fencing, damaged buildings, lost trees, and ash still falling around them. Another rancher grazed cattle on hay pastures because early-summer water sources were dry and expects she may need to sell her herd because feeding animals through a long hay season has become too expensive. Near Steamboat Springs, a rancher described 90°F days that did not used to be part of his experience and snow leaving his meadows unusually early this year. Those losses are why several ranchers joined a brief supporting Boulder and Boulder County’s lawsuit against Suncor and Exxon Mobil, which seeks money for local costs tied to climate-related harms such as wildfire response, transportation repairs, watershed restoration, and other damage. The case is not asking the court to regulate fossil fuel production or emissions directly. It asks whether communities can pursue damages from companies they argue contributed to the harms they are now paying to manage. Several Colorado counties supported the fossil fuel companies instead, citing jobs, tax revenue, royalties, and funding for roads, schools, emergency services, and other public functions. Many rural communities depend economically on fossil fuel production while also facing rising costs from drought, wildfire, heat, damaged infrastructure, and shrinking water reliability. The ranchers supporting Boulder’s case are not denying the role fossil fuels have played in modern life. Their argument is that the science is now clear enough, and the damages large enough, that local communities, food producers, and taxpayers should not be left alone to pay for losses tied to a warming climate.

    

Nepal, Tibet and India

• Nepal’s catastrophic floods reveal how climate change is reshaping rock–ice avalanche risks — Last Wednesday, an enormous section of mountainside and overlying glacier sheared free in Nepal’s Langtang National Park, in the Himalayan mountain range near the Nepal–Tibet border. The massive collapse came crashing more than 2,000 meters onto the valley floor, generating seismic energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The impact sent a debris-laden surge careening downstream, triggering devastating flash floods and debris flows that traveled nearly 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) through the Lhende Khola, Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river systems. The high-velocity floods were initially investigated as a possible result of heavy rainfall or a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF); however, a preliminary scientific assessment now indicates that the disaster began with a massive rock–ice avalanche, which injected huge volumes of ice, rock and debris into regional river systems. According to the preliminary report commissioned by the Nepal Environment Society, the initial avalanche traveled roughly 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) to Rasuwagadhi in just over seven minutes, at an estimated average speed of 46.3 metres per second (~166.7 kph or 103.6 mph). The disaster obliterated roads, bridges, buildings, hydropower facilities and other critical infrastructure at the Gyirong Port in Tibet and in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, disrupting a vital transportation route between China and Nepal. The death toll has risen to 955, with more than 4,400 people still missing, prompting an international rescue effort. Rock–ice avalanches occur when mixtures of rock, glacial ice and snow rapidly collapse from a steep mountain slope and accelerate downslope under gravity. (The term ice–rock avalanche is also used, particularly when ice makes up a larger proportion of the moving mass than rock and sediment). Once released, the avalanche entrains material from the surrounding landscape, rapidly increasing its volume and altering its composition. Friction and intense shearing generate heat within the moving mass, causing ice and snow to undergo a phase change from solid to liquid, while additional water and sediment enter the flow from the surrounding terrain. As liquid water and fine sediment accumulate, an initially dry, granular avalanche can rapidly transform into a wetter debris flow that, under certain conditions, can become a hyperconcentrated flood with increased mobility, downstream reach, and destructive potential.

  • The still-unfolding disaster highlights why these events are particularly difficult to assess. A failure high on a remote mountain slope may rapidly evolve as the moving mass incorporates water and material along its path, transforming an initial avalanche into a cascade of hazards downstream. At the same time, human-caused climate change is reshaping the high-mountain environments in which these failures occur. A March 2026 article published in Communications Earth & Environment identifies glacier retreat, permafrost degradation and extreme precipitation among processes contributing to slope destabilization and complex rock–ice avalanche events. Glacier retreat alters the geometry and loading of steep slopes, while thawing permafrost weakens frozen ground and fractured rock that help stabilize mountain faces. Further stress is added to already unstable slopes when meltwater enters cracks and fractures, particularly when combined with extreme precipitation and rockfall.

  • Rock–ice avalanches also remain underrepresented in hazard assessments and disaster databases, particularly across the Himalayas, where they are often grouped under broader categories such as landslides, avalanches or glacial hazards. This makes it difficult to systematically track their distinct characteristics, failure mechanisms and cascading behavior. Identifying unstable slopes, monitoring changes in glaciers, permafrost and glacial lakes, and conducting model analysis of potential downstream flow paths will be increasingly important for understanding where these compounding hazards pose the greatest risk.

• How rock–ice avalanches turn glacial retreat into cascading mountain hazards — A rock–ice avalanche begins with a sudden failure high on a mountain slope: a mixture of glacier ice, rock and snow breaks free and accelerates downslope under gravity. But the initial collapse is only the first stage. As the mass races downhill, it entrains material from the surrounding landscape, generates heat through friction and shearing, and may transform from a relatively dry granular flow into a far more fluid and mobile debris flow. These events occupy an unusual space between familiar mountain hazards, including landslides, ice avalanches, snow avalanches and debris flows. The 2021 disaster in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India, provides a well-documented example. A massive wedge of rock and glacier ice broke away from Ronti Peak, sending a torrent of water and debris through the Ronti Gad, Rishiganga and Dhauliganga valleys. Researchers estimated that approximately 27 million cubic meters of rock and glacier ice collapsed before rapidly transforming into a highly mobile debris flow. The event killed more than 200 people and destroyed two hydropower projects. But the ground-hugging flow was only one component of the hazard. Rock–ice avalanches also produce a suspension cloud, sometimes described as a powder cloud and associated with an air blast. As blocks of rock and ice collide with the mountain surface, impact energy pulverizes material into fine particles while the rapidly moving avalanche displaces and entrains air. Turbulent currents lift the particles above the main flow, sometimes pushing the cloud ahead of it. This airborne component extends the hazard beyond the main debris path. Rapid displacement and compression of air generate powerful pressure waves, while suspended ice and rock particles reduce visibility and create hazardous breathing conditions. In extreme events, the cloud may envelop a mountain valley within seconds, obscuring terrain and complicating evacuation. Research into the 2021 Chamoli disaster found that the associated air blast reached estimated maximum speeds exceeding 70 meters per second (~252 kph or 156.6 mph), with pressures capable of causing widespread tree breakage. Rock–ice avalanches also interact with other components of the cryosphere. When a large mass of rock and ice enters a glacial lake, it displaces water and generates a wave. If that wave overtops or destabilizes the lake’s natural dam, it may trigger a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). The resulting cascade progresses from slope failure to lake displacement, dam failure and flooding downstream. Ice avalanches and other mass movements are recognized triggers of GLOFs in High mountain Asia.

  • Similar events have occurred worldwide, including the 2002 Kolka–Karmadon disaster in the Caucasus, the 2016 twin collapses of the Aru glaciers in Tibet, the 2017 Piz Cengalo rock–ice avalanche in Switzerland, the 2022 Marmolada glacier collapse in Italy and the 2025 collapse at Blatten in Switzerland. The Blatten disaster also illustrates the value of monitoring. A huge mass of rock and ice collapsed from the Birch Glacier, burying much of the village and damming the Lonza River. In the weeks before the collapse, authorities detected accelerating deformation and evacuated residents from the danger zone, limiting the loss of life despite the scale of the event.

  • The physical complexity of these events also makes them difficult to classify and model. They are often grouped under broader categories such as landslides, avalanches or glacial hazards, making it harder to systematically document their composition, triggers, failure mechanisms and mobility. A model that captures the initial slope failure may struggle to account for what follows as the avalanche melts, entrains water and sediment, generates an airborne cloud or interacts with a glacial lake. The challenge is therefore not simply identifying where a slope might fail. It is determining what happens afterward—how rock, ice, snow, water and sediment interact, how the flow transforms, how far it travels and which secondary hazards emerge. As glaciers retreat, permafrost degrades and glacial lakes expand across high-mountain regions, understanding these cascading processes will be increasingly important for assessing hazards and identifying where communities and infrastructure face the greatest risk.

Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador

• Peru’s shrinking glaciers are changing water, farming, and people’s sense of what they can control — Peru’s Cordillera Blanca is losing ice quickly as global warming advances, and that loss is changing how highland communities think about water, farming, risk, and their own ability to respond. Since 1962, the range has lost 38% of its glacier mass, a trend scientists link to shrinking water supplies, ecosystem disruption, and greater risk of avalanches and glacial lake outburst floods. People describe glaciers retreating, sharper swings between hot days and cold nights, more frequent frost, and rainy and dry seasons that no longer follow a pattern anyone can count on. Those shifts can damage crops, make animal husbandry harder, shrink wetlands, threaten high-altitude plants, and reduce glacial discharge in some valleys. Water loss can also create tensions between users who depend on the same streams, canals, fields, and pastures. The impact is already affecting what people can grow, how secure their animals are, how much water they expect to have, and how much danger they associate with the mountains above them.

  • Many Quechua-speaking residents recognize the physical changes around them without explaining them through a global climate system. Some describe the earth as old, the sun as closer or damaged, the mountains as living beings that can become angry, or God as punishing human wrongdoing. Others connect glacier loss to foreign climbers, mines, traffic, industry, pesticides, smoke, plastic, metal roofs, and other visible changes in the local environment. These explanations are not separate from people’s decisions. They affect where responsibility seems to sit, whether action feels possible, and whether glacier loss is understood as something people can change or something they must endure. In some valleys, water is still abundant enough that residents worry about the future without feeling forced to act immediately. Some people imagine serious water loss arriving within decades, while others place it much farther away. That uneven sense of timing helps explain why seeing a glacier shrink does not always lead to an obvious adaptation response. People may be worried, observant, and already living with more uncertainty, while still feeling resigned or unsure that household-level choices can alter what is happening above them.

  • Farming is changing in ways that sit between climate, markets, and household risk. Some communities have introduced crops such as yana mashwa, sugar snap peas, and snow peas, often describing the shift as a response to market demand rather than climate change. At the same time, farmers are dealing with more unpredictable frosts, water concerns, and growing difficulty with crops such as potatoes. Hualcayán has become attractive for export crops partly because it still has relatively reliable water compared with other production areas, and sugar snap peas and snow peas can tolerate frost better than potatoes. Over the past several years, potatoes, beans, and maize have given ground to export peas, which now account for over 70% of what the community grows. That can help farmers secure a crop with a fixed price, but it also narrows what is grown and ties household income more tightly to outside buyers, export demand, and reliable water. When frost arrives or water becomes less dependable, the consequences affect the whole season, from what farmers plant to what they keep for food and what they can sell for cash.

  • On Peru’s southern coast, water scarcity has been a practical and cultural problem for centuries. The Nazca built puquios to move groundwater through linked wells and underground tunnels, and many of those aqueducts still function today, irrigating fields of beans, lima beans, and watermelons. The geoglyphs belonged to the same water world. Animals drawn across the Nazca and Palpa plains were tied to fertility and rain, and the lines grew larger and more numerous during severe droughts, when people appear to have turned to ritual as another response to water scarcity. The aqueducts and geoglyphs tie survival to meaning, with water scarcity shaping what people built, what they grew, and how they appealed for rain. In the Cordillera Blanca, shrinking glaciers are changing how people understand the mountains above them and what they feel able to do; in Nazca, older water systems and sacred landscapes carry a longer history of people adapting to water scarcity through engineering, farming, and ritual. Today, sudden heavy rains, El Niño, illegal mining, and agricultural expansion threaten the geoglyphs and the water table that keeps the old aqueducts working. The risk reaches cultural heritage, farmland, local labor, and the knowledge needed to maintain a water system that has survived for more than a millennium.

• Record ocean heat is colliding with a strengthening El Niño to put Colombia’s water supply at risk — Global ocean surface temperatures reached 21.1°C on August 22, passing the previous record set in March 2024. The timing is part of what makes this unusual. Ocean temperatures usually peak in March or April, but this year’s high arrived in late summer while a strong El Niño was still developing in the tropical Pacific. Two forces are working at once. Decades of human-caused warming have raised the ocean’s baseline temperature, with the oceans absorbing more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. El Niño is now adding a natural pulse of heat on top of that warmer baseline, while also shifting rainfall and atmospheric patterns around the world. Hotter oceans can add heat and moisture to the air, stress marine ecosystems, lower oxygen levels, and contribute to coral bleaching and changes in fish populations, so the record is not just a number. It is part of the same climate system now affecting water, fire, agriculture, energy, and ecosystems in Colombia.

  • The Colombian government declared a national disaster situation in July for the next 12 months, citing risk to water supplies, agriculture, energy generation, public health, and ecosystems. The country’s meteorological agency estimates better than a 90% chance El Niño conditions persist through the first quarter of 2027, with a 69% likelihood the event reaches “very strong” intensity by the end of this year. Sea-surface temperatures along Colombia’s Pacific coast are already running 1.3°C to 2°C above normal, with anomalies near northern Peru and southern Ecuador climbing close to 5°C above baseline. If this event continues on its current trajectory, it could rank among the strongest El Niño episodes recorded since 1950. Ecuador issued a nationwide red alert this weekend, activating emergency committees to prepare for drought and wildfires in its Amazon region, and joins Panama, Honduras, and El Salvador, which have already declared their own emergencies over the same event. Peru has gone further still, placing about a third of its cities under a state of emergency over extreme heat and heavy rainfall threatening food supplies.

  • Water access is the most immediate concern. El Niño typically suppresses rainfall across Colombia’s Pacific, Andean, and Caribbean regions, and less rain works its way quickly into lower river flows and shrinking reservoirs, straining drinking water, farming, and hydroelectric power all at the same time. Authorities have identified 558 municipalities at high or very high risk of drinking-water shortages, with 111 of those facing the most severe classification. The same dry, hot conditions are already fueling wildfires, most visibly in Tolima, where dozens of active fires and below-average rainfall have made containment harder for crews on the ground. Some fires are being investigated for possible deliberate ignition, so El Niño and climate change should not be treated as the spark for every blaze. But hotter, drier conditions can turn any ignition, including arson, into a more dangerous fire by drying out vegetation and making flames harder to contain once they start.

    

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Safe water, reliable food, and routine medical care all depend on systems that are becoming harder to keep stable in a changing climate. In Nigeria, heat, power cuts, flood damage, dirty air, and rising food costs are making hypertension and diabetes harder to manage, while floods and insecurity are disrupting the fields, livestock, roads, and markets that households depend on for food. Across Togo and Benin, less reliable rainy seasons are cutting into staple crops, with delayed rains, longer dry spells, and hotter soils reducing harvests for maize and sorghum and leaving small farmers dependent on seed access, credit, irrigation, and climate information to adapt. In Egypt’s Nile Delta, sea-level rise, land subsidence, and coastal erosion are pushing saltwater farther into farmland and freshwater sources, threatening agriculture in one of the country’s most densely populated and economically important regions. In South Sudan, years of flooding around Bentiu have turned water into another layer of risk, as contamination from oil-producing areas reaches displaced families already relying on limited safe-water infrastructure. ¹

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Nigeria, Togo, and Benin

• Heat, food costs, power cuts, and dirty air are making chronic disease harder to manage in Nigeria — Hypertension and diabetes are often treated as diseases of diet, exercise, medication, and personal routine, but climate stress is making those routines harder to maintain in Nigeria. Hotter days can raise the physical burden on people already managing high blood pressure or diabetes by increasing dehydration, stressing the heart and kidneys, and making outdoor movement more difficult. Daily exercise becomes harder to sustain when safe walking time is pushed into the early morning by dangerous heat and into the evening by insecurity. Heat can make blood pressure harder to control by changing how the body manages circulation, cooling, and fluid balance. As temperatures rise, the body has to move more blood toward the skin to release heat, while dehydration can add strain to cardiovascular regulation. That does not mean warming alone is driving the prevalence of hypertension. Still, it does make extreme heat an added burden for people already managing high blood pressure, especially where health care access, medication, water, shade, and cooling are limited. Heat can also affect diabetes by disrupting thermoregulation, adding physiological stress, and increasing risks for dehydration. Studies across low- and middle-income countries consistently find worse diabetes outcomes during hot conditions, with more ER visits, more hospital stays, and higher death rates than in people without diabetes. Studies from Brazil, the Philippines, and Thailand back this up. Diabetes-related hospitalizations rose alongside daily mean temperature in Brazil, and diabetes mortality climbed during high-temperature periods in the Philippines and Thailand. In Nigeria, that makes heat part of the same daily care problem as blackouts, insulin storage, water access, food costs, transportation, and missed clinic visits after floods. A person may have medication and medical advice, but blood-sugar control can still depend on whether food is affordable, water is available, roads are passable, and insulin can be kept safe.

  • Food choices are also narrowing as drought, flooding, and erratic rainfall damage farms, raise prices, and make fresh produce, beans, fish, and other healthier foods harder for some families to afford. The cheaper alternatives are often more processed, saltier, sweeter, or fried, leaving patients to manage blood pressure and blood sugar in food environments that work against the advice they receive in clinics. Electricity and air quality add more ways for climate and infrastructure to reach chronic disease. Blackouts can make insulin refrigeration unreliable, while floods can damage roads, clinics, and appointment access. Generator smoke, firewood, charcoal, traffic, gas flaring, and burning waste can expose households to polluted air that damages blood vessels and raises cardiovascular risk. African evidence is still thin, but a scoping review found that the studies available linked particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone with cardiovascular hospitalization, stroke, and cardiovascular mortality. Air monitoring gaps make the burden harder to see. Fewer than half of African countries, 24 of 54, can monitor air quality at all. Some studies also found stronger links between pollution and cardiovascular outcomes during warmer periods, making heat and dirty air a combined concern for people already managing high blood pressure, diabetes, or other chronic disease. For families already paying out of pocket for tests, drugs, and clinic visits, each added disruption makes disease management more expensive and less predictable. Climate change does not need to be the sole cause of Nigeria’s hypertension and diabetes burden to make that burden harder to manage. Heat, food prices, flood damage, unreliable electricity, polluted air, and household costs are all making prevention and treatment less stable for people already living with chronic disease.

• Floods, resource conflict, and insecurity are weakening food access in Nigeria — In Nigeria, food security is being strained through farms, pasture, roads, markets, and household assets. A 2026 study using Nigeria’s 2018/2019 General Household Survey and 2022 National Agricultural Sample Census found that about 61% of households in the sample were severely food insecure, while 29% were food secure. Climate-disaster exposure and insecurity were both linked with lower household food security across the study’s models, pointing to hunger as a problem shaped by environmental shocks and disrupted livelihoods, not just income or food supply in isolation. These pressures are layered onto a food system already exposed to farmer-herder conflicts, banditry, communal land disputes, kidnapping, and insurgency, all of which have shaped rural life in Nigeria well before recent climate stress entered the picture. Agriculture remains central to food supply, jobs, and household income, so damage to crops, livestock, roads, markets, and labor can affect whether food is available, affordable, safe, and stable enough for families to rely on.

  • Conflict has many causes, and drought or heat alone does not automatically produce violence. The narrower risk is that climate shifts can reduce rainfall reliability, pasture, water access, crop yields, and livestock productivity, while weak land governance and insecurity leave farmers and herders competing over resources that are already harder to share. Land, water, and pasture disputes have a long history in Nigeria, but they’ve grown more frequent, more widespread, and more deadly since the early 2000s, a period that lines up with mounting climate variability and weakening institutions. Three causes dominate the conflict data, with land disputes making up 27.05%, livestock-related issues 24.43%, and boundary disputes 24.04%, together accounting for more than three-quarters of conflicts where a cause was identified. Livestock-related disputes made up the largest share of frequent conflicts at 32.2%, reflecting recurring tensions around grazing, seasonal movement, and farmer-herder grievances. Those conflicts affect food systems through planting, harvesting, transport, and prices. When conflict disrupts a season, farmers respond by cutting back, with smaller plots, later planting, skipped fields that feel unsafe to reach, and work abandoned mid-harvest when danger closes in. Cattle rustling and retaliatory attacks strip away livestock, cutting into both what families eat and what they earn. Market access is affected too, as unsafe rural roads raise transportation costs and discourage traders from operating in high-risk areas. Poor households are hit hardest because they spend more of their income on food and have less room to absorb price spikes, lost harvests, or missed market days.

  • Flooding was the most damaging disaster in the results. It accounted for 42.7% of production disruptions and 42.0% of revenue losses, along with 43.9% of crop losses, 39.7% of livestock losses, and 57.6% of aquaculture losses. Floods also accounted for the largest shares of deaths, homelessness, and displacement among the disaster categories reported. These losses do not stay on farms. Reduced production can raise prices, limit market supply, and push households toward fewer and less reliable food options just as income is falling. Asset ownership was one of the protective factors in the food-security models. Without those buffers, the same flood or lost harvest that a wealthier household absorbs can tip a poorer one straight into severe food insecurity.

• Togo’s rain-dependent farms face bigger crop losses as heat and rainfall become less reliable — Togo’s food system depends heavily on seasonal rain, and many livelihoods are tied directly to farming. The country’s wetter south has two rainy seasons, the central savanna has a shorter rainy season, and the drier north depends on one rainy season followed by months of dry weather. Crops are not exposed to the same risks everywhere. Maize is grown across the country and is central to food supply and farm income; rice depends more on plains and river valleys, beans help fill nutritional needs in savanna and plateau areas, and millet and sorghum are especially important in the drier north. Losses in those crops can move quickly from fields into household food access, market prices, and rural income, especially where families rely on subsistence farming and have fewer ways to recover after a poor season. The modeled losses grow as warming increases. A lower-emissions pathway puts maize and sorghum declines around 5% to 10% by 2050, an intermediate pathway raises losses to 15% to 25%, and the highest-emissions pathway puts losses as high as 40% for maize and 35% for sorghum. In northern Togo, dry spells that stretch too long push planting back and cut into the growing window, so maize, sorghum, and millet run out of season before they’re ready. In the south, flooding wears away topsoil, wrecks standing crops, and knocks out the warehouses, irrigation systems, and roads farmers depend on to store and move what they grow. Higher temperatures also dry soils faster and raise crop water needs, while livestock face reduced pasture and more heat-related disease.

  • A weak harvest doesn’t stay contained to one season or one field. A failed or weakened crop can mean less food stored at home, less income from sales, fewer market trips, and higher dependence on purchased staples at the same time prices may be rising. Adaptation options are practical, but they require support beyond individual farmers changing tactics on their own. Drought- and heat-tolerant maize, sorghum, and rice varieties could help stabilize yields, while agroforestry, mulching, crop rotation, zaï pits, drip irrigation, and rainwater harvesting can keep more moisture in fields and reduce erosion. Early warning systems, mobile climate information, farmer field schools, seed and irrigation subsidies, cooperatives, better storage, and stronger local climate data all help farmers act before an unreliable rainy season becomes a food-security shock.

  • Benin shows a similar pattern already underway. A 2025 study combining long-term climate and yield records with farmer surveys found that average annual temperature rose 0.9°C from 1990 to 2020, while rainfall became less consistent. Maize yields fell by 18%, and sorghum yields by 12%, while cassava and yam held up comparatively well. The northern Sahelian and Sudano-Guinean zones were the most vulnerable, where later rains and longer dry periods echo what farmers in northern Togo are already facing. Farmers there have started shifting planting dates and mixing crops to cope, but thin credit access and stretched extension services mean those changes reach only a fraction of the households that need them.

  

Egypt, South Sudan

• Egypt’s Nile Delta is facing a compounding climate risk as sea-level rise, land subsidence and coastal erosion threaten agricultural land and freshwater resources — Deltaic cities are highly vulnerable to human-caused climate change due to their low elevation, dense populations and concentration of infrastructure. According to a recent study published in Nature, sea-level rise, land subsidence and coastal erosion are converging to create a “Critical Risk Triangle” in Egypt’s Port Said Urban Region. This overlap of flooding, erosion and saltwater intrusion threatens freshwater resources, agriculture, ecosystems and major new urban and industrial development. Port Said sits at the northern gateway to the Suez Canal, a critical artery of global maritime trade carrying approximately 12% of global commerce. The region is also rapidly expanding through the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) and development in East Port Said, including new port terminals, logistics facilities and industrial sites. This convergence of economic growth and climate exposure makes Port Said a critical example of compounding risks in a rapidly urbanizing coastal region. One of the world’s major climate-vulnerability hotspots, the broader Nile Delta is home to more than 40% of Egypt’s population while also supporting a substantial share of the country’s agricultural production. Its extremely low-lying topography leaves the delta highly exposed to coastal flooding, while land subsidence of an estimated 4.1 to 5.3 millimeters per year further amplifies these effects. Coastal erosion compounds these pressures by compromising the fragile natural barriers that help protect Lake Manzala and the urban coastline. Projections indicate that erosion will remain a high-impact hazard under future climate scenarios, with severe shoreline retreat expected under the high-emissions RCP 8.5 scenario between 2050 and 2070. Even under the more moderate RCP 4.5 scenario, continued erosion could threaten infrastructure and narrow the remaining coastal buffer. And the consequences of a changing coastline extend beyond land loss. As relative sea levels rise, saltwater can move farther inland, threatening coastal agriculture and freshwater supplies across the Nile Delta. This process, known as saltwater intrusion, occurs when saltwater enters freshwater sources. Sea-level rise, shifts in groundwater levels and coastal flooding can push the freshwater–saltwater interface inland, while flooding can introduce seawater directly into soils and groundwater. Research published in Scientific Reports in 2024 found that 64% of topsoil samples from the northeastern Nile Delta were classified as “strongly or very strongly saline.” For the Nile Delta’s agricultural communities, these conditions threaten crop yields and degrade soil quality, while severe salinization can ultimately force farmers to alter management practices or abandon agricultural land altogether.

  • The threat also extends to regional water security. Increasing salinity in coastal aquifers can reduce the availability of freshwater for drinking, agriculture and industry. For Port Said, this is particularly significant as urban and industrial development expands into areas already exposed to coastal hazards. Rising demand for freshwater could therefore coincide with declining supplies, increasing reliance on alternative or more costly sources and complicating sustainable development.

• South Sudan’s communities are facing a complex water-quality challenge as climate-driven flooding intersects with oil production, inadequate water infrastructure and prolonged displacement — Once home to only several thousand people, Bentiu, the capital of Unity State in northern South Sudan, became a major center for internally displaced people following the outbreak of South Sudan’s civil war. In December 2013, hostilities between government and opposition forces spread to Unity State, driving large-scale displacement and prompting the establishment of a UN Protection of Civilians (POC) site in Bentiu, where an estimated 140,000 people have since sought refuge. The settlement is situated within the Sudd, one of the world’s largest wetlands, where communities have historically adapted to seasonal flooding. But the increasing scale and persistence of recent flood events have placed additional pressure on limited water and sanitation infrastructure. In 2021, severe flooding submerged farmland across Unity State, killing livestock, destroying livelihoods and displacing communities. Five years later, floodwaters have still not fully receded in many areas, leaving families dependent on humanitarian assistance and increasingly reliant on open water sources. In oil-producing areas of South Sudan, where water-management capacity is often limited, flooding can also mobilize pollutants from oil-production facilities into surrounding water bodies. Unity State is South Sudan’s main oil-producing region, and oil accounts for more than 90% of government revenue and nearly all of the country’s exports. A 2023 geospatial analysis conducted by PAX, a Dutch peace and human-rights organization, found that 159 of more than 400 oil wells in one of the state’s oil blocks were submerged during the 2021 floods, representing about 41% of the wells in the area. Oil production can introduce metals generated during extraction such as lead and arsenic, as well as toxic petroleum hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, naphthalene and benzo[a]pyrene. Flooding can mobilize these pollutants beyond production sites, allowing contaminants from inundated wells, pipelines, storage facilities and wastewater infrastructure to enter surface water and potentially groundwater. Water testing around Bentiu and nearby Rotriak has identified elevated concentrations of several contaminants (including lead concentrations of up to 18 micrograms per liter in local rivers, nearly twice the World Health Organization guideline value), while hydrocarbon concentrations exceeded recommended limits by more than five times. Residents have also reported visible contamination of local water sources. Anna Nyashing Bul, who relocated to Rotriak after the 2021 flooding, told DW News in an August 2026 article that the untreated water used by her family sometimes develops a black film on its surface and has repeatedly made members of her household sick.

  • These risks are not distributed equally. Women and girls are responsible for collecting water in roughly four out of five households worldwide where the drinking-water source is located away from the home, increasing their exposure to unsafe sources as well as the physical burdens of water collection and household water management. A 2023 systematic review of 1,280 studies examining drinking water and gender equity and empowerment (GEE) found associations between water conditions and women’s health, psychosocial well-being, education, economic opportunities and household decision-making. Published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, the review identified evidence linking chronic arsenic exposure during pregnancy with increased risks of spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, neonatal death, low birth weight, preterm birth and congenital abnormalities. Water collection can also create physical health risks, with studies associating water carrying with musculoskeletal injuries including back, neck, joint, hip and foot pain. However, these impacts remain relatively understudied: only 21 studies in the systematic review examined physical injuries associated with water carrying. The authors concluded that significant gaps remain in understanding the gendered health consequences of water insecurity and contamination, with relatively little research examining the effects on women with respect to health outcomes (both physical and mental) and the socioeconomic impacts of unreliable water supplies. Evidence is particularly limited on how climate-amplified contamination affects women and girls in conflict-affected settings such as South Sudan.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

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Extreme heat, drought, wildfire, and flooding are reshaping access to safe housing, livelihoods, food, water, and basic services. In the UK, prolonged heat and drought are increasing wildfire risks, while people with limited financial resources may have less ability to evacuate, relocate, replace damaged belongings, or recover from losses. Across southern England, rising heat is also exposing a cooling divide, with lower-income households and renters more likely to live in homes that overheat and less able to afford or install effective cooling. In El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, repeated climate shocks are disrupting crops, jobs, food and water access, while limited access to irrigation, insurance and credit leaves smallholder farmers with fewer ways to recover. For migrants from Central America, climate impacts are also intersecting with violence, unemployment and weak state protection, shaping who can safely remain, who can afford to move, and who may become trapped without either option.¹

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Great Britain

• Climate change is drying landscapes and accelerating wildfire spread across England and Wales — Residents in the small English town of Stourbridge described the wildfires that destroyed more than a dozen homes last week as “horrendous” and “distressing.” On August 13, multiple fires spread across the West Midlands as temperatures reached 38.1°C during the UK’s fifth heatwave of 2026. Fifty-four people were treated at eight fires, including 19 who were hospitalized, while 19 homes in Stourbridge were destroyed and another 18 damaged. The fires are part of a record increase in wildfire activity across England and Wales. Firefighters responded to 966 wildfires between January 1 and August 10, including 185 during the first 10 days of August. The total has already surpassed the previous annual record of 1,017, set in 2025, while July was the busiest month on record. The surge has occurred amid prolonged heat and drought, with more than two-thirds of England and all of Wales officially in drought by early August. These climate-fueled conditions are priming vegetation for faster-moving and more intense wildfires. Hotter temperatures, reduced rainfall and recurrent drought are drying out soils and turning vegetation into increasingly dry “wildfire fuels”, the combustible organic material available to burn. When these fuels are exceptionally dry, fires can ignite more readily, burn more rapidly, and generate more heat, accelerating their spread. Low humidity can further limit moisture recovery, while strong or shifting winds can push flames across the landscape and carry burning embers ahead of the main fire, igniting new spot fires and allowing a blaze to expand rapidly. Once a fire starts, hot, dry and windy conditions can accelerate its growth and make it more difficult to contain. Climate change is making these high-fire-risk conditions more frequent. The consequences extend beyond the immediate danger of flames. Faster-moving fires can leave communities with less time to evacuate and place additional pressure on emergency services during periods when extreme heat, drought and other weather-related hazards already require resources to manage. They can also place additional pressure on emergency services during periods when extreme heat, drought and other weather-related hazards are already demanding resources. These impacts are not experienced equally. People with fewer financial resources may have less ability to evacuate quickly, temporarily relocate, replace damaged belongings or repair homes after a wildfire event. Renters may have limited control over the resilience of their housing, while people without reliable transportation or adequate insurance can face greater difficulty recovering after an evacuation or loss.

  • During a heatwave, closing windows can reduce smoke entering a home, but doing so can also allow indoor temperatures to rise. People without effective cooling, air filtration or well-insulated housing may have fewer options for reducing their exposure to either hazard. Wildfire smoke contains fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, along with gases and other pollutants. Acute exposure to fire-related PM2.5 can pose significant and immediate health risks, including respiratory and cardiovascular effects. Between 2010 and 2018, acute exposure to PM2.5 emitted from fires contributed to an estimated 99,000 deaths worldwide each year, on average.

• Extreme heat is exposing a growing cooling divide across Greater London — Britain is experiencing its fifth heatwave of the year, with 2026 already recording a record four days with temperatures of at least 36°C (96.8°F). Two days have reached 38°C (100.4°F), matching the number recorded in 2022. More than 2,700 people may have died from heat-related causes in England and Wales during exceptionally hot weather in May and June, according to experts at Imperial College London, the Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More frequent extreme heat events across the UK is turning homes without air conditioning into potential hazards. England’s housing stock was largely built for a cooler climate. Many homes are designed to retain heat during the winter season rather than expel it during relatively mild summers. In August, Southern England experiences average daytime highs of 23–24°C (73–75°F) in Greater London, and 20–21°C (68–70°F) in the South West. However, climate-influenced extreme heat is altering these expected conditions. In Greater London, the number of days above 30°C (86°F) and nights above 18°C (64°F) more than quadrupled between 2016–2025 compared with 1961–1990. Hot nights are particularly concerning because nighttime heat can prevent the overnight cooling that allows the body to recover from extreme daytime temperatures. As heatwaves become hotter and longer, homes that were designed for a cooler climate can become increasingly ill-equipped to protect people from dangerous indoor temperatures. Research from the Energy Demand Research Centre found that air conditioning is currently used in only about 3% of UK homes, although demand for cooling is expected to increase substantially as temperatures rise. The National Energy System Operator estimates household AC adoption could reach 10% to 40% of UK households by 2050, depending on how the energy system evolves. But access to protection from extreme heat is not equal. The people facing some of the greatest risks of overheating can also have the fewest available resources to adapt. A Resolution Foundation analysis found that 54% of the poorest fifth of English households live in homes at high risk of overheating, compared with 18% of the wealthiest fifth. Two-thirds of social renters live in homes at the highest risk of overheating, compared with 17% of owner-occupied homes. Lower-income and minority ethnic households are also more likely to live in smaller flats, overcrowded properties and densely built neighborhoods that can trap heat. Housing tenure can further limit people's ability to adapt. Renters may have little control over improvements such as external shading, reflective materials or fixed cooling systems. The cost of cooling can also become a barrier, as households already struggling with energy bills may be unable to afford the electricity needed to run fans or potable air conditioners. The result is a cooling divide: households with greater financial resources can increasingly turn to air conditioning, better-designed homes and other adaptations, while those with fewer resources may have limited ability to change their living environment. The Energy Demand Research Centre study found that only 3% of households with someone over the age of 75 use air conditioning, compared with 4.6% of households without someone in that age group. AC usage also varies substantially by income, from 8.2% of households in the highest-earning fifth to 2.5% in the lowest-earning fifth. That disparity is particularly concerning as extreme heat becomes more common. The UK Climate Change Committee has warned that existing adaptation measures will not be enough to protect people from future heat and has called for greater attention to overheating in family homes, hospitals and care facilities.

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua

• Climate change is widening inequality across Central America as repeated shocks erode livelihoods — A recent report from Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Clinic finds that climate-related shocks are exacerbating poverty, disrupting access to food and water, and eroding fragile living conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. More than 80% of surveyed migrants in Mexico experienced at least one climate event in the five years before leaving their homes, while 55% experienced four or more. Hurricanes, heatwaves and flooding were the most commonly reported hazards, followed by landslides, drought, changes in growing seasons and wildfires. The consequences are often cascading. Among respondents who experienced climate impacts, more than half reported losing jobs or crops, suffering property damage, or losing access to water or electricity. Large majorities also said climate-related impacts had left them without reliable access to clean water or food. Yet only about one-quarter said they had received government assistance. The inequitable ability to recover is particularly apparent in agriculture, where livelihoods often depend directly on unpredictable weather. El Salvador, for example, lies within Central America’s Dry Corridor, a region characterized by recurring drought, heavy rainfall and rising temperatures. The country has experienced three major periods of exceptional drought over the past decade. Around 87% of Salvadoran farmers are smallholders cultivating plots averaging roughly 1.2 hectares. Most rely almost entirely on rainfall and have limited access to irrigation, credit or insurance, leaving them with few financial buffers when extreme heat or drought damages crops. Recent research published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that extreme temperatures significantly reduce corn yields in El Salvador, with consequences for agricultural employment and international migration. For households already operating close to the edge, a climate shock can affect not only the harvest but also how much paid work is available and how much unpaid labor family members must provide. Farmers with limited irrigation or insurance may cut back on hired labor and rely more heavily on family members to absorb losses. Women often bear a disproportionate share of these pressures. Following climate events, women reported higher rates than men of lost work, disrupted access to food and water, crop losses and communication outages. Nearly half of female respondents said they became caregivers for sick or elderly relatives, while others took on responsibilities such as collecting water, securing food and providing emotional support. These burdens reflect a broader problem with climate adaptation: the ability to respond to climate hazards depends heavily on resources that are already distributed unequally. Farmers with access to irrigation, insurance, savings and/or credit have more options when a harvest fails. Households without those resources may have to reduce spending, rely on unpaid family labor or absorb losses that push them deeper into poverty.

  • The same pattern appears across the region. Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants reported the highest levels of climate exposure, with 95% of Honduran respondents and all Nicaraguan respondents reporting at least one climate event before leaving. In Honduras, hurricanes affected nearly three-quarters of respondents, while flooding affected two-thirds and heatwaves nearly 60%. In Nicaragua, hurricanes and heatwaves each affected 60% of respondents. For people already facing economic insecurity, repeated climate shocks can become cumulative rather than isolated setbacks. A damaged crop can mean lost income; lost income can reduce a household’s ability to afford food, water or healthcare; and each subsequent shock can leave fewer resources available to recover.

• Climate shocks are driving migration across Central America — but repeated losses can leave people trapped — Climate change is shaping decisions about whether people can safely remain at home or have to leave, but the ability to migrate is itself unequal. A recent Berkeley Law Human Rights Clinic report finds that climate shocks are intensifying pressures on migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, where environmental disruption intersects with violence, insecurity, unemployment and weak state protection. More than half of respondents who experienced climate events said environmental factors influenced their decision to leave, but climate change rarely acted alone. Insecurity (66%), violence (62%) and unemployment (54%) were also major drivers, illustrating how climate change can act as a threat multiplier. A flood, failed harvest or other environmental shock can undermine a household’s livelihood, while the resulting loss of income or access to basic necessities can increase exposure to other forms of harm. For people already living amid violence or discrimination, an environmental shock can narrow their options even further. Migration can become one of those options. Research published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that extreme heat in El Salvador can reduce agricultural productivity and contribute to international migration, as households respond to income losses by sending a member abroad. But migration is not equally available to everyone. For households with limited savings or other assets, a single climate shock may prompt a family member to leave in search of work. Repeated losses, however, can deplete the resources needed to finance a move. Families can become caught in a “mobility trap,” unable to sustain their livelihoods at home but also unable to afford the cost of leaving. That distinction complicates the idea of migration as a failure to adapt. When households have sufficient resources and agency, migration can be a deliberate strategy for managing climate and economic risks. After better years, for example, some families may have enough income to invest in migration and improve their economic prospects. But when repeated shocks erode those resources, migration can shift from a choice to an option that is simply out of reach. Gender can further shape who has the ability to move and under what circumstances. The Berkeley report found that women often took on greater caregiving responsibilities following climate events, including caring for sick or elderly relatives and helping secure food and water. For some, climate-related pressures also intersected directly with violence: 22% of female respondents said they were fleeing gender-based violence.

  • One woman’s experience in El Progreso, Honduras, illustrates how these pressures can compound. Flooding and crop losses caused her to lose agricultural work, while hunger and unemployment were compounded by the challenges of raising children alone and having limited formal education. Insecurity related to organized crime added another reason to leave. Her experience underscores why climate migration cannot be separated neatly from other forms of vulnerability. Environmental disruption may begin with a climate shock, but its consequences can spread through employment, food security, family responsibilities and personal safety.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Polluted rivers, unstable rainfall, floods, drought, and warming forests are changing access to water, food, health care, land, and cultural life. In Iraq and Syria, drought, water scarcity, and years of conflict are limiting rural livelihoods, schooling, protection from early marriage, and access to reproductive and maternal health care, especially for girls and women. In Colombia, Indigenous children and Afro-Colombian families are facing health, housing, and displacement risks tied to unsafe water, damaged land, and weak state protection. Across the Amazon, warming could reduce the plants that carry food, medicine, and language-based knowledge. In Tanzania and Malawi, floods are straining aid projects, maternal care, infectious disease control, food security, and basic health services. In southern Madagascar, drought, heat, wind, and sandstorms are tying adolescent mental health to water, food, school, family resources, and the routines that make daily life bearable.1

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Iraq, Syria

• The cascading effects of climate change and armed conflict are intensifying pressures on families in Iraq, with consequences that can be particularly severe for girls and women — As climate-influenced water scarcity and environmental degradation undermine rural livelihoods, decades of war and displacement have weakened the social and economic protections available to Iraq’s most vulnerable households. In this context, forced child marriage can become a coping strategy for families facing extreme financial hardship. A catastrophic multi-year drought is easing in Iraq, but the country’s underlying water emergency persists. Ranked among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries by the United Nations, Iraq experienced above-normal rainfall and a surge in transboundary river flows during the winter and spring of 2026, providing vital but temporary relief. Environmental experts and international humanitarian organizations warn that rising temperatures, desertification, and complex water politics with neighboring countries are driving a severe, long-term decline in water availability. Climate change and recurrent conflict disproportionately affect Iraqi girls and women through entrenched gender inequalities, legal and structural barriers, and unequal domestic responsibilities. Deeply rooted social norms, particularly in rural areas, confine many women to domestic roles, limit their financial independence, and restrict their participation in household decision-making.

  • Women also rely heavily on informal agricultural activities, including small-scale farming, livestock herding, and poultry raising, for household food security, family nutrition, and modest income. As drought and water scarcity degrade farmland and reduce livestock productivity, these livelihood opportunities diminish, often leaving women without access to formal employment, social protection, technical training, or alternative sources of income. Decades of external wars and internal conflict have compounded these vulnerabilities, leaving many women widowed and responsible for supporting their households alone. According to UN Women, widows constitute an estimated 80% of female-headed households in Iraq, with the remainder headed by divorced or separated women or women caring for sick spouses. As men have been killed or disappeared during successive periods of violence, female-headed households have faced significant barriers to land ownership, formal employment, and access to financial resources, increasing their exposure to poverty and economic insecurity across generations. At the same time, political instability and legal rollbacks have further weakened protections for Iraqi women and girls. Where civil institutions are weak, women and girls may have little recourse against domestic violence, exploitation, or forced marriage. For families pushed into extreme poverty, child marriage can become a desperate coping mechanism. When household income disappears, daughters may be viewed as an economic burden, particularly when families can no longer afford basic needs such as food, water, clothing, education, and medical care. Marrying a daughter can reduce household expenses by transferring responsibility for her care to another family. Additionally, the mahr, or marriage payment provided by the groom’s family, can also provide an immediate source of cash, which families may use to settle debts, purchase food, or finance voluntary migration.

  • Decades of violent conflict and forced displacement, combined with the climate-related loss of rural livelihoods in southern governorates such as Basra, can also force families to withdraw children from school to work, provide care, or relocate. For girls, leaving school can dramatically increase the risk of early and forced marriage. More than 46% of child brides in Iraq have no formal education, compared with fewer than 9% who have completed secondary school. Once girls leave school, their opportunities for economic independence narrow further, reinforcing a cycle in which climate and conflict erode livelihoods, poverty disrupts education, and lost educational opportunities increase vulnerability to child marriage and lifelong economic dependence.

• The pressures of armed conflict and climate change are limiting access to essential health and reproductive care in Syria — After more than a decade of armed conflict, Syria’s humanitarian crisis remains one of the world’s largest. Forced displacement, extreme poverty, violence and environmental degradation fueled by climate change continue to undermine access to basic services. Within Syria, 6.7 million people are internally displaced, including 4.4 million women and children, while an estimated 2.4 million Syrian children are not in school. These overlapping crises have had particularly severe consequences for women and girls, who face heightened risks of sexual and gender-based violence and significant barriers to essential health and sexual and reproductive healthcare.

  Climate change is compounding these pressures. Prolonged drought, extreme heat and widespread water scarcity are undermining agricultural livelihoods, with women comprising more than 60 percent of Syria’s agricultural labor force. In April 2025, nearly 100 percent of crops were reported to have been damaged due to a lack of rainfall in Syrian Kurdistan, the country’s agricultural breadbasket. As climate-related crop failures deepen poverty and food insecurity, families can face greater difficulty affording transportation and other costs associated with accessing healthcare. At the same time, years of sustained violence have severely weakened Syria’s health system. Only 52 percent of primary health centers remain operational, while an estimated 30 percent of healthcare workers remain. As a result, many women and girls lack access to essential services, including contraception, antenatal and postnatal care, skilled birth attendance and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. In conflict-affected areas, even basic reproductive health services can be unavailable.

  • These barriers to healthcare can be disproportionately dangerous for adolescent girls. Displacement, poverty and instability have contributed to increased rates of early and forced marriage in some Syrian communities, with one study finding a 34 percent increase in child marriage following the onset of the conflict in 2011. When child marriage leads to adolescent pregnancy, limited access to reproductive and maternal healthcare can increase the risk of life-threatening complications. Globally, pregnancy and childbirth complications are among the leading causes of death for girls aged 15–19. The consequences extend beyond pregnancy. Without access to contraception, reproductive health information and maternal care, women and girls have fewer opportunities to make informed decisions about their health, bodies and futures. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 12 million girls aged 15–19 and more than 750,000 girls under age 15 give birth each year in developing countries.

Colombia, Brazil

• Climate change, polluted water, and food insecurity are affecting Indigenous children’s health in Colombia — In Caldas, Colombia, the Emberá-Dobidá Indigenous community, a name tied to their historical relationship with the river, is living with new environmental stress after being displaced by armed conflict from Alto Baudó, Chocó. Families were resettled near a polluted river with no fish and no clean drinking water. That move cut children off from the river-based fishing, farming, and food systems that had shaped daily and cultural life in their ancestral territory. The new settlement is hotter, with far less shade, tree cover, or water access than the community had known before. Children and caregivers described heat that made it harder to farm, fish, gather food, care for family members, work outside, and spend time outdoors. One 13-year-old described arriving somewhere with no river, less forest cover, and far less shade than the community had known. A 16-year-old said the sun made work difficult and damaged their skin. Nearly all families reported not having enough food, and more than 70% reported not having enough money to buy food. Among children, 50% had chronic malnutrition, 20% had incomplete vaccination, 35% had dental caries, and 30% each had palmar pallor, scabies, or fever.

  • Half of the children showed emotional problems, and 30% were identified as being at risk of suicide. Mental health problems were strongly linked with missing ancestral territory, limited access to clean water, difficulty reaching clean rivers, lack of traditional foods such as meat, eggs, and milk, problems cultivating land, and feeling out of place in the new settlement. Water loss cuts especially deeply for the Emberá-Dobidá because the community’s identity, health, and daily life are tied to rivers. One mother described dirty water, the disappearance of fish, children getting sick, and the injustice of children paying for damage they did not cause. A community leader described the Emberá-Dobidá as People of the River and said being far from clean water made the community sick because it separated them from their identity. Children are living with hunger, chronic malnutrition, illness, skin problems, unsafe water, fewer places to play, disrupted farming and fishing, and separation from the land and rivers that shaped family and community life. The results come from a small community already affected by armed conflict and displacement, so they should not be read as proof that climate change alone caused these harms. Climate-related heat, degraded water, food insecurity, and loss of ancestral territory are overlapping in the same children’s bodies, routines, and mental health.

• Climate change is intensifying displacement for Afro-Colombian communities from Colombia’s Chocó — In Colombia’s Pacific coastal department of Chocó, Afro-Colombian communities are facing climate stress on top of armed conflict, poverty, illegal mining, logging, and long-standing state neglect. For families whose livelihoods depend on small-scale farming and fishing, environmental damage reaches food, income, land, and whether people can remain where they are. Families interviewed in Medellín described rainfall patterns that residents say have shifted substantially, with floods arriving with less warning, longer dry stretches than before, growing strain on drinking water sources, and soil degradation that makes planting and harvesting more difficult. Logging and gold mining have added to the damage by polluting rivers, increasing sedimentation, accelerating riverbank erosion, and leaving some farmland harder to use. One older woman from the San Juan basin described losing fields and animals before the water finally destroyed the family’s home. Requests to local authorities went unanswered, and with nothing left to hold them there, the family left.

  • Many families displaced from the Chocó end up in Medellín, but arrival in the city does not necessarily mean safety. Afro-Colombian families are often pushed to steep hillsides, informal settlements, flood-prone ravines, and neighborhoods where housing is precarious, land tenure is unrecognized, and basic services including clean water and sanitation are unreliable. Some families leave floods, polluted rivers, and failing livelihoods in the Chocó only to face landslide risk, water shortages, insecure housing, discriminatory treatment in rental markets and policing, and systematic exclusion from local governance in Medellín. Colombia’s legal framework recognizes internal displacement from conflict, but climate-related displacement has often been harder to register and receive support for. A 2024 Constitutional Court ruling recognized climate change as a contributing factor to internal displacement, opening a pathway for more protection, but Afro-Colombian families still face practical barriers to aid, housing, psychosocial support, and recognition.

  • San Basilio de Palenque, about 38 miles from Cartagena, carries another part of Afro-Colombian history. The village grew out of maroon communities formed by escaped enslaved people and is often described as the earliest place in the Americas where formerly enslaved people won lasting freedom and self-rule. Palenque has preserved language, music, funerary traditions, community governance, and women’s economic labor despite racism, poverty, weak infrastructure, limited political autonomy, and unreliable basic services. Palenquera women have become one of Colombia’s most recognizable tourism images, but many of the women who sell fruit and sweets under the coastal sun lack formal employment protections, health care, social security, retirement benefits, and a fair share of the tourism income built around their image. Afro-Colombian culture is visible to the country in both places, while the communities carrying it are still fighting for land security, basic services, and state protection.

• Warming could erode Amazon plant knowledge along with the plants themselves — Amazonia is home to over a tenth of the planet's land-based species, more than 400 distinct Indigenous groups, and much of the region’s plant knowledge is tied to particular languages, territories, foods, medicines, and cultural practices. A basin-wide database compiled 90,536 records from 700 references across nine Amazon countries and 156 Indigenous languages. It identified 5,796 native plant species with documented human uses, roughly a third of all known seed plants in the Amazon. The most frequently cited species were all palms, including peach palm, ungurahua, moriche palm, açaí palm, and pambil palm. Palms have been used in the region for thousands of years and remain important for food security and cultural practice. Indigenous groups accounted for far more of the documented species than non-Indigenous ones, 4,305 species versus 1,012. A plant used for food, medicine, construction, ritual, or daily tools in one language community may not have the same recorded use anywhere else.

  • The plants documented as useful are projected to lose more range than plants not recorded as useful. Indigenous cultures in the analysis could lose an average of 28% to 34% of utilized plant species within their territories by 2060–2080, depending on the emissions scenario. The services connected to those plants could decline by 18% to 23%. The largest losses are projected in areas where languages are already threatened, adding another layer of risk for knowledge that is often passed through oral teaching and daily practice. Medicinal uses made up the largest share of records in the database, with nearly three times as many records as food uses and twice as many plant species documented. If those plants become harder to find locally, the loss can affect healing practices, food security, ceremonies, construction materials, and the everyday work of naming, harvesting, preparing, and teaching plants. If threatened Indigenous languages disappear by the end of the century, the Amazonian plant-knowledge network in the analysis would shrink by 26%, and possibly more under less conservative assumptions. The projections do not include deforestation, fire, mining, or extreme events. Those threats are already affecting plant use before local disappearance occurs. After the 2024 extreme drought, Brazil nut harvest losses in 2025 affected food security from Rondônia to Amapá, disrupting people’s relationships with important plants well before those species vanish from a place.

    

Tanzania, Malawi, Madagascar

• Floods are affecting aid projects in rural Tanzania — In Tanzania’s Kilosa District, new clinics, boreholes, bridges, nutrition programs, and farming support are being built for communities already living with poverty, long travel distances, unsafe water, and high health needs. Pregnant women in Madudumizi used to walk for hours to reach a clinic in another village, crossing a river that could become dangerous during the rainy season. A new clinic and deep borehole have changed access to maternal care and clean water, but the area around the Mkondoa River is now dealing with heavier rains, repeated flooding, damaged roads, eroded riverbanks, and fields buried under silt. World Vision’s Ulaya area programme covers 13 villages where nearly all people depend on rain-fed farming for food and income. When rains arrive at the wrong time, or floodwaters sit on farms for weeks, families lose crops, roads become harder to pass, and health workers see more malaria, respiratory infections, diarrhea, and other illnesses linked with standing water and unsafe water access.

  • Flooding is also complicating the work aid programs are trying to do. Mothers in Zombo had learned new nutrition practices through a mother-and-toddler group, but submerged farms left families worried they would not be able to grow enough food or earn enough money to buy what their children need. Deep boreholes have improved clean water access in some villages, while shallower boreholes elsewhere are drying out during dry seasons because heavy rainfall runs off compacted soil before it can replenish the water table the boreholes draw from. A bridge completed only two years ago is already cracking as the river expands after repeated heavy rainfall. Flooding is increasing illness just as aid cuts have made some malaria medicines previously supplied by USAID unavailable. Aid workers across Tanzania described heavy rains keeping children home from school and away from vaccination appointments, families facing hunger after failed harvests, and financially strained households making choices that put children at greater risk, from pulling kids out of school to arranging early marriages to increased exposure to violence. Farmers are being trained to use more resilient crops, including sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, and legumes, but some conflicts are already emerging where shrinking and degraded grazing land has pushed pastoral communities and their cattle onto farmland.

• Floods are straining maternal care, child health, and food security in Malawi — Malawi’s rural health and food systems were already vulnerable before Tropical Cyclone Ana brought torrential rain in January 2022. About 85% of the population lives in rural communities, many households depend on rain-fed agriculture, and food insecurity was already widespread before the storm. When Ana flooded large parts of southern and central Malawi, the damage reached homes, crops, roads, water systems, sanitation systems, and health facilities at the same time. Several of the country's poorest southern districts, among them Phalombe, Mulanje, Chikwawa, and Nsanje, absorbed the worst of the damage. Displacement made pregnancy more dangerous at exactly the moment medical care itself was breaking down. Outages spoiled medicine stocks, knocked out vaccine refrigeration, and left reproductive health services badly disrupted. Nsanje District alone counted more than 55,000 displaced residents, roughly 1,500 of them pregnant. Displaced women faced longer journeys for water and firewood and shared inadequate sanitation facilities with many others, conditions that raised their risk of violence.

  • Damaged water and sanitation systems left families facing cholera, typhoid, and leptospirosis, while standing water created more mosquito habitat and drove malaria transmission higher. Women produce much of the food consumed locally, but when floods destroy crops and push food prices up, households headed by women tend to have fewer resources to fall back on. Years of forest loss from charcoal production and farming have left the land less able to absorb heavy rain, making floods worse and recovery harder. A flood can interrupt prenatal care, spoil medicine, break vaccine storage, contaminate drinking water, increase malaria risk, destroy crops, and leave families with less money to buy food. In places where households and health systems are already stretched, the water does not have to stay long to leave months of damage behind.

• In southern Madagascar, climate distress is tied to hunger, thirst, and interrupted childhood routines — Across six rural villages near Ambovombe in Androy, southern Madagascar, adolescents described hotter days, longer drought, stronger winds, and more sandstorms. Because many families rely on farming and livestock, those changes were tied to crops failing, water sources drying up, school being interrupted, and possessions being sold to buy food. Survey and focus group data included 83 adolescents and young adults ages 10 to 24, all living with multidimensional poverty. Very few lived in households with electricity; almost no household owned any form of motorized transport or a computer. About 82% screened in the range for probable depression, 76% to 87% screened in the range for generalized anxiety, and climate worry was high. Food insecurity was severe too. Nearly all the adolescents surveyed, 90%, had lived in a household that ran out of food in the past year. A larger share, 95%, had gone hungry outright, and more than two-thirds, 69%, had spent a full day with nothing to eat.

  • Young people described climate change less as a distant fear than as food and water disappearing from daily life. Heat, drought, failed rains, and wind left crops struggling, boreholes dry, and some families eating cassava again and again because there was little else. Several adolescents described families selling pots and other belongings to buy food. Others described seeing people die from hunger, fearing starvation, or feeling trapped by weather they could no longer predict. Rain brought relief because it meant crops might grow. Drought, wind, and sandstorms brought fear, sadness, discouragement, and helplessness. Climate stress also disrupted the routines young people used to get through it. Sandstorms kept some adolescents out of school or led teachers to cancel classes, and lost household income kept others from paying school fees. Music and dancing came up as ways to cope, but many households did not have radios or had sold possessions to buy food. Some adolescents described having little to do except stay around, play, or think about hunger. The study was small and preliminary, but young people’s climate distress was tied to water to drink, food to eat, school to attend, family assets left to sell, and small routines that made daily life feel bearable.

    

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Extreme heat, floods, fire, and warming seas are changing daily life from East Asia to the Caribbean. In South Korea and Japan, dangerous heat is affecting outdoor work, livestock, rice, classrooms, public events, and the seasons people organize their lives around. In Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, climate change is narrowing safe places for animals and children, from shallow reefs and low-lying Komodo dragon habitat to a flood-damaged school route that still has not been rebuilt. In Thailand, forest monks are treating conservation and restoration as religious work as fires, drought, and forest loss make community forests harder to protect. And across the Greater Antilles, stronger disasters and rising heat are adding costs to countries that have contributed little to the warming driving those risks.1

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South Korea, Japan

• South Korea’s record heat is hitting workers, farmers, livestock, and public life — South Korea’s heatwave has pushed temperatures above 40°C (104°F), broken national records, and made daily life dangerous for people who cannot easily avoid the heat. On July 31, Yangsan in South Gyeongsang Province reached 41.4°C (106.5°F), the highest temperature recorded in South Korea since the national weather observation network was expanded in 1973. Yangsan had already climbed above 40°C (104°F) for three straight days, and the heat continued into August. The Korea Meteorological Administration linked the extreme temperatures to a double high-pressure system over the Korean Peninsula, with hot, dry air from the Tibetan high-pressure system above the country and warm, humid air from the North Pacific high-pressure system closer to the surface. The setup trapped heat over the country, and tropical nights kept temperatures from falling enough for people, buildings, roads, farms, and animals to recover overnight. The people most exposed include workers and farmers whose jobs still have to happen outside. Construction workers, delivery drivers, sanitation workers, palace guards, and farmers have continued working through dangerous temperatures. In Seoul, a sanitation worker in his 60s collapsed while cleaning streets in Jongno-gu. At Gwanghwamun, palace guards continued changing-of-the-guard ceremonies in long robes and armor, though tourist photo sessions were shortened and some ceremonies at Deoksugung Palace were canceled. In Cheongdo, an 85-year-old peach farmer began harvesting as early as 4:30 a.m. to avoid the worst heat. His adult children took time off work to help with the harvest and keep him from overexerting himself. Earlier start times, shorter ceremonies, cooling supplies, and family help can reduce some danger, but much of this work still keeps people outside and at risk.

  • Several of the deaths involved people working or found outdoors during the heat. South Korea’s disease control agency reported six heat-related deaths since July 14, including a 100-year-old woman found dead in a field in Wanju County with a reported body temperature of 42.2°C (108°F). A Thai worker in his 30s died after collapsing near a field in Haenam County, and a 93-year-old man died after being found collapsed in a rice field in Sacheon. By late July, more than 1,300 heat-related illness cases had been reported nationwide. Many occurred outdoors in farms, rice fields, construction sites, maritime workplaces, and other job sites where people have limited protection from the heat.

  • Farm animals are also struggling. At a Hanwoo cattle farm in Imsil County, six large fans ran continuously while barn temperatures stayed around 37°C (98.6°F). The farmer fed cattle mineral blocks, sweet potato vines, and corn to help them get through the heat, but said mother cows were producing less milk. By July 25, nearly 256,000 livestock had died from the heatwave, mostly poultry. Farmers were using ventilation systems, cooling pads, and ice, but the losses kept growing as temperatures stayed dangerously high.

  • The heat has reached markets, roads, and sports, too. In Yangsan, market vendors worked with wet towels around their necks and used ice packs and fans, but merchants said customer numbers had fallen by nearly half since the heatwave began. City workers sprayed roads with water to cool them down, but the water evaporated within minutes, forcing trucks to refill again and again through the day. South Korea’s baseball league canceled two professional games in Busan and Changwon on August 1 after the highest level of heat warning was issued in both cities. The cancellations were made to protect players and spectators as the heat made even evening public events harder to hold safely.

• South Korea’s climate zones are moving north as the country warms — A Korea Meteorological Administration analysis found that South Korea’s annual mean temperature rose by about 0.3°C per decade from 1973 to 2025, with much faster warming over the most recent decade. From 2016 to 2025, the country’s annual mean temperature increased by 1.1°C per decade. The agency analyzed temperature and precipitation data from 66 locations between 1981 and 2025, along with national climate change scenarios through 2100, to track where subtropical climate characteristics are already appearing and where they could expand. Under the Trewartha climate classification, a region can be considered subtropical when the coldest month averages 18°C or lower and at least eight months of the year have average temperatures of 10°C or higher. During the 1991–2020 climate normal period, about 80% of South Korea had seven months above that 10°C threshold, from April through October. Warmer March and November temperatures are pushing more places closer to the eight-month threshold by lengthening the warm season.

  • The changes are already visible along the south coast and in some inland and eastern areas. Using the 1981–2010 normal period as a baseline, 13 locations along the south coast, including four sites on Jeju Island as well as Busan, Yeosu, and Mokpo, already met the criteria for a subtropical climate. Ulsan later crossed that threshold during the 1991–2020 normal period. In the most recent decade, Gwangju, Uljin, and Gangneung were added, bringing the number of locations with subtropical characteristics to 17. The Korea Meteorological Administration found that these conditions are advancing northward from the south coast into southern inland regions, while rapidly warming sea surface temperatures in the East Sea are raising temperatures along the east coast. By the late 21st century, the projected changes depend heavily on emissions. Under a low-carbon scenario, subtropical climates over land would remain mostly limited to southern regions. Under high-carbon scenarios, most of South Korea, except for inland Gangwon Province, is projected to shift toward a subtropical climate by 2081–2100. Those changes would reach beyond temperature averages, affecting crop-growing zones, animal habitats, plant productivity, fish populations, and the seasonal conditions that shape farming, ecosystems, fisheries, and daily life.

• Climate change is pushing Japan into longer, harsher heat seasons — Japan’s summers are getting long enough and hot enough that the country has had to add new language for them. In April 2026, the Japan Meteorological Agency adopted the term “Kokushobi,” or “cruelly hot day,” for days reaching 40°C (104°F) or higher. Japan recorded 40°C days only three times between 1872 and 2017, but they have occurred every year since 2018, with temperatures reaching 41.8°C (107.2°F) in 2025. The shift is happening against a warmer baseline. Land temperatures in Japan have climbed roughly 1.4°C per century, while sea temperatures nearby have warmed at a similar pace, around 1.36°C per century. Summers have also lengthened by roughly three weeks since 1982, leaving less of the year in the milder spring and autumn seasons that have shaped farming, festivals, school calendars, and daily routines. Heatstroke deaths exceeded 2,000 for the first time in 2024, and older adults account for about 80% of heatstroke deaths. In Tokyo, about 90% of heatstroke deaths occur indoors. Air conditioning is common in Japanese homes, but running it through longer and hotter summers can raise household electricity use by around 40%, making cooling harder for lower-income households that are already trying to manage higher bills.

  • The heat is also reaching schools, workplaces, farms, fisheries, and familiar landscapes. In urban areas, schools are already cutting back outdoor playtime during extreme heat, including about 30.6% of schools in one survey and 35.3% of urban schools. Japan lost an estimated 1.42 billion potential labor hours to heat exposure in 2024, equal to about 43 hours per person and nearly $49.4 billion in potential income losses. Heatstroke cases at work have been highest in manufacturing, construction, commerce, transportation, and security, while deaths during work in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries have been rising in recent years. Agriculture is also becoming more vulnerable as temperatures climb. Japan’s environment ministry has warned that rice yields could fall by up to 20% under a high-warming scenario. Heat can also damage rice quality before yields fall. When average temperatures stay above 26°C to 27°C during the 20 days after flowering, more grains become white, opaque, and immature, lowering their commercial value. If temperatures reach 35°C or higher for several days during flowering, pollination can be disrupted, leaving grains sterile or undeveloped, a problem that was widespread in Kyūshū in 2024.

  • In the ocean, warmer water is changing fisheries as warm-water species expand and cold-water species such as chum salmon lose suitable habitat. Some of Japan’s best-known seasonal markers are changing, too. Cherry blossoms are reaching peak bloom earlier, and warmer winters can reduce bloom intensity. On Mount Fuji, subzero days at the summit are decreasing by about 15 days per century, raising the possibility of shorter snowcap seasons and changes to downstream meltwater. Japan is responding with workplace heat rules, fan-equipped jackets, and efforts to lower household cooling costs, but the heat is already altering how people work, cool their homes, grow food, manage fisheries, protect children, and mark the seasons.

Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand

• Climate change and habitat loss are leaving Indonesia’s wildlife with fewer safe places to live — Indonesia’s forests, reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, and coastal grasslands support some of the world’s most distinctive wildlife, but many of those habitats are being damaged by development and climate change. Forest loss is especially important because Indonesia’s rainforests are home to endangered species such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and because forests help reduce the impacts of extreme weather. Trees and vegetation absorb rainfall, hold soil in place, reduce erosion, and release moisture during dry seasons. When forests are logged, burned, cleared for plantations, or opened by roads and mining, animals lose habitat, and nearby communities lose some protection from floods, landslides, drought, and fires. More than 74 million hectares of Indonesian rainforest have been logged, burned, or degraded since 1950, according to Global Forest Watch. That loss removes habitat now and releases stored carbon into the atmosphere, adding to the warming that is making floods, drought, fires, sea-level rise, and hotter seas more damaging for people and wildlife.

  • Komodo dragons have little room to lose. The world’s largest lizards live only in parts of Indonesia, mainly Komodo National Park and nearby Flores, and only a few thousand remain. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the species as Endangered, citing habitat loss, wildlife trafficking, tourism development, rising temperatures, and sea-level rise. Komodo dragons live in forests and open grassland, but they cannot survive above 700 meters, so moving uphill is not a simple escape as low-lying habitat becomes more exposed to rising seas. The IUCN projects that rising temperatures and sea-level rise could reduce their habitat by at least 30% over 45 years. On Flores, where dragons outside protected areas are especially vulnerable, habitat had already shrunk by more than 40% between 1970 and 2000 because of human activity. Tourism projects in and around Komodo National Park add another layer of risk by pushing development into places the species still needs.

  • In Raja Ampat, habitat loss is also reaching shallow coastal waters, affecting the epaulette shark, also known as the “walking shark.” Juveniles use coral reefs as nursery habitat, and adults forage among seagrass and mangrove roots. The sharks stayed close to home, with individual movements rarely exceeding 475 meters and no crossings between islands recorded during the study. Local damage can matter a lot for this species because a shark whose reef or seagrass bed is degraded may not be able to shift somewhere else. Tourism development is already affecting some of those areas, including overwater homestays built above seagrass beds. Warmer seas and more frequent marine heatwaves add risk for a species that depends on stable shallow-water ecosystems, while untreated wastewater from tourism can fuel algae growth that damages coral reefs. For Indonesia’s wildlife, climate risk is habitat risk. As forests, reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, and coastal grasslands are cleared, warmed, polluted, or flooded, animals lose the food, shelter, breeding sites, and room to move that keep populations alive.

• Climate change is putting children in Papua New Guinea at risk before, during, and long after disasters — Children in Papua New Guinea are facing climate risks that overlap with existing gaps in health care, nutrition, education, safe water, and sanitation. A 2026 UNICEF report found that around 1.5 million children, or 1 in 3 children in the country, are exposed to at least two overlapping climate hazards. More than 305,000 children are exposed to three overlapping hazards. The risks include more than 2.6 million children exposed to drought, more than 1.8 million exposed to frequent, longer, and severe heatwaves, more than 600,000 exposed to tropical storms, nearly 200,000 exposed to riverine flooding, and close to 150,000 exposed to frequent fires. Almost 4 million children, nearly every child in Papua New Guinea, are exposed to malaria, a climate-sensitive disease and one of the country’s most serious health risks. Less than half of children in Papua New Guinea receive routine immunization, one in four children experiences severe food poverty, and many communities still have limited access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene services. Floods, droughts, storms, and extreme heat can damage schools, contaminate water sources, disrupt health care, interrupt learning, deepen food insecurity, and make it harder for children to reach the services they rely on.

  • One school route in Papua New Guinea shows how long climate-related damage can stay in a child’s life. In the Rigo District, an extreme flood washed away the footbridge connecting one village to its primary school and health post in 2012. More than a decade later, children still swim across the Kemp Welch River to get to class. They carry school bags and uniforms in a dish, cross a river known for strong currents and crocodiles, change into dry clothes after reaching the other side, and continue on to school. Monsoon rains make the crossing more unpredictable, as debris and fast-moving water create additional hazards, and children arrive at school sick or have lost their belongings to the current. Girls can miss school during menstruation because elders fear blood could draw crocodiles. The destroyed bridge turned one flood into years of missed classes, unsafe crossings, illness, and lost access to a nearby health post. Papua New Guinea’s climate risks are measured in droughts, heatwaves, tropical storms, river floods, fires, and malaria exposure, but they also appear in the daily routes children take to school, the water they cross, the clinics they can reach, and the services that are still missing after the last disaster.

• Climate change is changing the work of Thailand’s forest monks — In northern Thailand, Buddhist environmental work has grown out of a close relationship between forests, farms, water, and rural livelihoods. In Nan Province, Buddhist monks have worked with farmers, nongovernmental organizations, and sometimes state agencies to move away from cash-cropping and contract farming that contributed to deforestation, debt, soil erosion, flooding, drought, and biodiversity loss. One approach, known as dhammic agriculture, connects Buddhist ideas of Right Livelihood with practical farming changes. Farmers are encouraged to grow a mix of crops, raise animals, protect forested watersheds, reduce dependence on chemical-intensive monocultures, and earn income from smaller areas of land without clearing more forest. The point is not only spiritual retreat or symbolic tree protection. Forest conservation becomes part of how communities protect water, soil, food, and livelihoods in places where environmental damage has already made farming harder.

  • Around Wat Pa Sukato in Chaiyaphum province, forest protection has also become part of religious practice. Monks and community members have used tree ordinations, dhamma walks, public education, organic farming, and reforestation to defend community forests and teach children and officials about the value of forest conservation. One nearby community forest, connected to Wat Pa Mahawan, once held old-growth trees and wildlife including hornbills, elephants, binturongs, and macaques. Fires in 2020 burned the remaining old-growth stands and 10 years of restored former plantations. The fire killed some wildlife and drove other animals out of the forest, while monkeys displaced by the damage began spending more time around the temple. After the fire, restoration has become more careful work. Monks and villagers are planting native seedlings while paying closer attention to drought and fire, because the forest they are trying to bring back may not return under the same conditions that once sustained it. Hotter, drier, and less predictable weather can affect which trees survive, how much water young seedlings need, and how often fire threatens the work. Climate change is now shaping religious conservation at the level of daily practice, from what gets planted to how communities protect the forests that support people and wildlife.

The Antilles

• Climate change and escalating extreme heat risks across the Greater Antilles — For many Caribbean nations, human-caused climate change presents a stark contradiction: the countries facing some of the greatest risks from rising seas, stronger storms, and extreme heat have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are highly exposed to climate impacts due to their geographic location, finite land resources, dependence on coastal infrastructure, and limited financial capacity. Yet, their carbon emissions footprint remains tiny when compared with those of larger industrialized economies. Across the Caribbean, this imbalance is tangible as government agencies contend with increasing climate disaster costs while the international aid available for adaptation lingers far below what is needed. Between 2000 and 2024, Caribbean countries endured an estimated $53.2 billion in damage from climate-fueled disasters, according to new research examining the economic costs facing developing island states. The figure represents more than 90% of the $57 billion in total losses caused by extreme weather across 39 developing island nations in the Caribbean, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea, according to ODI Global, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization. For small island economies, a single extreme event can have huge consequences by damaging critical infrastructure, disrupting tourism and agriculture, straining public budgets, and diverting resources from long-term resilience planning. Unlike larger economies, many Caribbean nations have limited capacity to recover from repeated climate-related shocks while also investing in adaptation.

  • The scale of these challenges was laid bare by Hurricane Melissa that devastated Jamaica in October 2025. The Category 5 storm (on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale) made landfall near the town of New Hope with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph (298 km/h) — the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the country. According to ODI Global, of the estimated $12.2 billion in damage and losses in Jamaica from Hurricane Melissa, approximately $9.7 billion, or nearly 80%, can be attributed directly to climate change. These figures far exceed current commitments to the United Nations’ loss and damage fund, established to help countries recover from unavoidable climate impacts. And the risks facing the Greater and Lesser Antilles extend beyond individual disasters. Rising temperatures are reshaping daily life across the region, particularly in cities where dense development, limited vegetation, inadequate housing, and aging infrastructure leave many communities vulnerable to extreme heat.

  • Across Latin America and the Caribbean, urban temperatures are projected to rise significantly this century. Under the middle-of-the-road emissions scenario SSP2-4.5, average daily maximum temperatures in cities are expected to increase by 1.5-1.7°C (2.7-3.6°F) by mid-century (2040–2059) and 2.3–2.7°C (4.1-4.9°F) by late century (2080–2099) compared with the 1986–2005 baseline period. The number of extreme heat days is also expected to increase substantially. Days when temperatures exceed the 95th percentile for a location (during the 1986–2005 reference period) are projected to rise by an average of 36 to 69 additional days per year by mid-century and 66 to 116 additional days annually by late century. The largest increases are projected in tropical and cooler cities, showing that rising heat is not limited to areas already accustomed to high temperatures.

  • Across the Greater Antilles, including Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba, urban communities are likely to experience more frequent and prolonged periods of dangerous heat, the health impacts of which are already well documented. Heat exposure contributes to tens of thousands of deaths worldwide each year and disproportionately affects older adults, young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions, and outdoor workers. The ability of Caribbean nations to protect residents and communities depends heavily on access to climate financing, yet funding has not kept pace with need—instead, some wealthy countries are actively reducing foreign aid commitments, including the United States.

• A widening gap between climate risks and climate finance — As climate impacts intensify across the Caribbean, the resources available to prepare for and respond to these challenges are not keeping pace with the scale of the threat. For Small Island Developing States, climate adaptation is often expensive by necessity. Limited land area, small populations, and geographic isolation can make infrastructure upgrades more costly. At the same time, international financing dedicated to climate adaptation and child-focused programs is severely lacking. In Latin America and the Caribbean, only 3.4% of multilateral climate finance is directed toward children, according to a report by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The funding gap comes as more frequent extreme weather strains essential services. Power grids, transportation systems, housing, and schools across the region were generally not designed with today’s levels of extreme heat in mind. As temperatures rise, communities are facing increased risks of power disruptions, reduced worker productivity, school interruptions, and unsafe indoor conditions. For children, these disruptions can compound existing inequities. Prolonged and/or extreme heat can affect learning environments, while climate-related damage to homes, agriculture, and local economies can increase financial pressure on families. The reduction of international development assistance has added another hurdle for some Caribbean countries. In Jamaica, U.S. government foreign aid commitments declined by well over half, from approximately $48.7 million in 2024 down to $18 million in 2026. Among the remaining contributions were $4.5 million for the World Food Programme’s Emergency Response to Hurricane Melissa and $4.5 million for life-saving assistance to vulnerable populations. The Dominican Republic experienced an even larger reduction. U.S. foreign assistance declined from approximately $107.8 million in 2024 to $56.1 million in 2025, before the most recent dramatic cut to approximately $897,873 in 2026. Programs affected include development food assistance, food security programs, and efforts to strengthen infectious disease detection systems. These reductions come at a time when governments across the Caribbean are committed to expanding adaptation efforts, strengthening disaster preparedness, and protecting essential services from rising temperatures and more frequent and intense extreme weather.

  • Children are among those most affected by rising temperatures and climate-related disruptions, making their needs a critical consideration in climate adaptation planning. The ODI Global report on loss and damage in Small Island Developing States highlights the importance of strengthening social services and critical infrastructure, with particular attention to the first 1,000 days of life—a critical period when exposure to environmental stressors can have lasting effects on health and development. Governments are also being urged to increase child-sensitive climate financing, ensuring that adaptation efforts address the specific needs of children at different stages of life.

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Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

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At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Extreme heat is affecting tourism, fire risk, and access to cooling across Spain, North Africa, and India, while climate-related hazards are also worsening air pollution, water stress, skin health risks, and methane emissions in other regions. In Spain, hotter summers may affect whether tourists return and where they choose to travel. Across Algeria, Morocco, France, and Spain, wildfires are damaging homes, forests, palm groves, and rural livelihoods during periods of extreme heat. Sri Lanka is facing air pollution risks shaped by both local emissions and pollution transported across borders, while India’s growing need for cooling is exposing deep inequalities in who can stay safe during dangerous heat. In Bolivia, drought, fire, and poor water quality are adding to health risks, including skin conditions. And in Chile, methane from a major landfill shows how waste systems can contribute to both near-term warming and local air-quality concerns.1

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Algeria, Morocco, Spain, France

• Extreme heat is starting to affect Spain’s tourism economy — Spain’s tourism sector is one of the country’s major economic strengths, supporting employment, income, and local businesses across much of the country. But part of Spain’s appeal still depends on weather conditions that are becoming less reliable as summers get hotter. A 2026 CaixaBank Research analysis used anonymized foreign card-payment data to examine how international tourists responded after experiencing extreme heat during trips to Spain. The results suggest that heat can affect whether visitors come back. When temperatures during a tourist’s stay rose well above historical norms, the likelihood of that tourist returning the following year declined. Visitors who had the hottest experiences were about 15% less likely to return the following year than those whose stays had temperatures near the historical average. The pattern held when the researchers updated the analysis with 2024 and 2025 data, suggesting it reflected a consistent behavioral response rather than a single unusual year.

  • The tourists who did return usually did not abandon Spain or completely change the type of holiday they wanted. Instead, they made smaller adjustments inside the Spanish tourism market. Many visitors remained loyal to the same broad destination type and season, especially in Mediterranean areas, but chose cooler municipalities, coastal areas, islands, or higher-altitude places within those categories. Extreme heat may therefore shift where tourism spending goes, even when national tourism demand remains high. A visitor who still wants a Mediterranean summer trip may look for a cooler coastal town. A visitor returning to an inland destination may choose a place at higher elevation. These are subtle changes, but they suggest Spain’s tourism sector is already adjusting to hotter conditions. Hotels, restaurants, shops, tour operators, and local governments may need to plan around hotter days more directly, from rethinking how streets and public spaces handle peak heat, to shifting schedules and expanding options that do not depend on being outdoors in the middle of the day. Spain is still a major tourist destination, but extreme heat can change how comfortable a trip feels, where visitors choose to stay, how they spend money, and whether they decide to come back.

• Wildfires are straining communities across Algeria, Morocco, Spain, and France during extreme heat — Wildfire is the shared story across North Africa and western Europe this summer. Fires reached Seraidi in mid-July, a forest-surrounded town west of Annaba, sending more than 100 people to hospitals and affecting more than 150 homes. Civil protection crews were still fighting the fires the next morning. Algeria had already been dealing with hundreds of wildfires for several days, with at least six deaths reported across several provinces. Northern Algeria faces forest fires every summer, but drought and climate change are making the fire season more dangerous. Recent years have brought deaths, destroyed homes, and the loss of thousands of hectares of forest and farmland. The wildfires came during an intense North African heatwave, with nearby Tunisia seeing temperatures as high as 49°C and electricity systems strained by heavy air-conditioning use. Algeria experienced its highest energy demand ever during this heatwave. In Algiers, that same reliance on cooling equipment became part of a separate fire tragedy, after police said a faulty air-conditioning unit that had been running continuously amid the extreme heat sparked an orphanage blaze that killed 11 people and injured 19.

  • In Algeria, fire risk is also tied to bigger changes in rural farming regions such as Kabylie. The Oued Sahel-Soummam Valley has long depended on small landowners growing olives and other tree crops. Scarcer and less predictable rainfall is making rain-fed olive cultivation harder to sustain, especially for smallholders who have long depended on seasonal water rather than expensive infrastructure. Some farmers are trying to keep orchards productive by drilling wells and using more intensive irrigation, but that can draw down limited water supplies and make scarcity worse over time. For smallholder farmers, each coping strategy can make the next season harder. Keeping orchards alive may require more water, equipment, and cash, but those resources are least available to families trying to maintain older farming practices. Many continue working the land under hotter and drier conditions, even as younger people move toward non-agricultural work, leave the region, or begin to see farming as part of a family past rather than a viable future. Wildfires are one part of the larger rural crisis, damaging land and forests in places where climate stress, water shortages, and economic change are already weakening agricultural livelihoods.

  • Morocco is facing its own wildfire threat during extreme heat. In the southeastern province of Errachidia, crews worked to contain a fire that swept through the Afous oasis and damaged a large area of palm groves. No casualties were reported, but the fire came as Morocco remained on high alert for wildfire risk. Earlier in July, the National Agency for Water and Forests issued extreme wildfire warnings for forests in 12 provinces, using its highest red alert level. Those warnings coincided with a heat wave forecast to push temperatures as high as 46°C. In oasis communities, fire risk can affect more than vegetation. Palm groves are tied to shade, farming, local livelihoods, and the stability of places already exposed to heat and water stress.

  • Fires are also forcing large-scale evacuations in Spain and France. Nearly 270,000 people were under evacuation orders across the two countries, including about 200,000 in France and around 70,000 in Spain. Southwestern France has been especially affected, including areas near Bordeaux such as Gironde and Landes. French officials reported that about 98,000 hectares had burned across the country since the start of the year. In Spain, fires burned near Madrid, and officials said about 130,000 hectares had burned this year, above the country’s recent annual average. These fires are unfolding during an exceptionally hot summer in western Europe, where successive heat waves, dry weather, and below-average precipitation have left vegetation more likely to ignite. Heavy winter rainfall earlier in the year had produced dense new plant growth, which the summer heat and drought then dried into abundant fuel.

  • Climate change does not have to start a fire directly to make fire danger worse. Hotter air can dry soils and vegetation more quickly, increase water stress, and extend the periods during which forests, grasses, crops, and palm groves can burn. When extreme heat combines with drought, wind, and abundant dry vegetation, fires can spread faster and become harder to control. That matters even in places where hot summers are already part of the climate. Human-caused warming raises the baseline for extreme heat, making dangerous fire conditions more likely, more intense, or more prolonged.

Sri Lanka, India

• Climate change is amplifying transboundary air pollution and health risks in Sri Lanka — Air pollution is a major public health concern in Sri Lanka. Emissions from local sources contribute to degraded air quality, while pollution transported from India is further intensifying hazardous air pollution episodes across the island. Domestic emissions from transportation systems, industry, waste burning, and the Norochcholai coal-fired power plant contribute to Sri Lanka’s pollution burden. However, seasonal agricultural burning in northern India, combined with toxic pollution from urbanization activities (such as construction and power generation) can transport large quantities of aerosol pollutants across borders. Studies indicate that in neighboring countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal, approximately 50% of air pollution originates from transboundary sources. Climate change is intensifying this environmental challenge that poses significant health risks to Sri Lankans. Rising sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal are contributing to stronger tropical cyclones, while changing atmospheric circulation patterns can transport polluted air masses farther distances across South Asia, carrying short-lived climate pollutants from India into adjacent countries like Sri Lanka. A clear example occurred in December 2022, when Cyclone Mandous altered regional wind patterns and carried airborne contaminants from northern India into Sri Lanka. On December 9, Colombo’s PM2.5 concentration reached 81 μg/m³, more than three times the annual average of 25.2 μg/m³ and approximately 16 times the World Health Organization’s recommended annual guideline. In response, the Sri Lankan government temporarily closed schools, warning that children, older adults and pregnant women were particularly vulnerable to the hazardous air quality. Long-term research shows that the country continues to contend with persistent air quality challenges. A 2020 review of air pollution studies in Sri Lanka published in the Ceylon Journal of Science found that concentrations of sulfur dioxide (SO₂), ozone (O₃), and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) increased between 1997 and 2003. These trends reflect the combined influence of domestic emissions and regional pollution transport.

  • The health consequences of air pollution are significant, with exposure triggering inflammation, oxidative stress, and immune dysfunction while increasing risks to the lungs, heart, and brain. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) is particularly harmful in that these microscopic particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Sources of PM2.5 and PM10 include coal combustion, biomass burning, agricultural fires, cement production, and waste burning. Exposure to these pollutants is associated with respiratory illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia. In 2018, respiratory illnesses were the third leading cause of hospitalizations in Sri Lanka, and medical experts report that the country has one of the highest asthma prevalence rates globally.

• Extreme heat and unequal access to cooling in India — Climate change is intensifying extreme heat across India, but the ability to adapt remains deeply unequal. As temperatures rise and humidity increases, access to cooling is becoming a critical factor in determining who is most vulnerable to dangerous heat conditions. On April 27, all fifty of the world’s hottest cities were located in India, and across northern and eastern regions, temperatures of 45°C (113°F) to 48°C (118.4°F) are now occurring with greater frequency during prolonged heat waves. The health risks are driven not only by rising temperatures but also by increasing humidity, which limits the body’s ability to cool itself through sweating. High humidity slows the evaporation of sweat, reducing the body’s ability to regulate its temperature and increasing the risk of dangerous heat stress. India’s average relative humidity increased from 67.1% between 2015 and 2019 to 71.2% between 2020 and 2024. Researchers use wet-bulb temperature, which combines heat and humidity, to measure conditions that challenge the human body’s ability to regulate temperature. A wet-bulb temperature of 35°C (95°F) is considered the threshold beyond which even a healthy person resting in the shade, with access to water, could experience a fatal rise in core body temperature within hours. Air conditioning greatly reduces these risks, but access to cooling remains limited across India. Only about 8% of India’s 300 million households own an air conditioner, and rural ownership is estimated at roughly 1%. Most cooling systems are concentrated among wealthier households, while millions rely on fans and open windows that provide some relief but cannot reduce humidity or protect against extreme wet-bulb conditions. The inequitable availability of cooling is reflected in India’s growing energy demand. The country’s electricity consumption is projected to rise by approximately 12% by 2050, driven in part by increased demand for cooling. In major Indian cities, air conditioning already accounts for 40% to 60% of peak summer electricity demand. India’s power demand reached a record 270 gigawatts on May 21, largely due to increased cooling needs during extreme heat. For many Indians, however, cooling remains out of reach, particularly among workers whose livelihoods require them to spend long hours outdoors. Approximately three-quarters of India’s workforce—about 380 million people—work in heat-exposed sectors, including agriculture and construction. Up to 90% of the labor force works informally, often without employer safety protections. Outdoor workers, along with elderly adults, infants, and pregnant women, face some of the greatest risks as extreme heat becomes more frequent and intense. India’s heat challenge reflects a broader global pattern in which the communities facing the greatest heat risks often have the least access to cooling. New research published by Climate Impacts Lab (CIL) identifies 18 countries caught in what it calls the “Mortality-Cooling Trap,” where high heat-related deaths coincide with limited growth in electricity use and cooling access. Four of India’s neighbors—Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar—are included on that list. More than 676 million people worldwide live in regions facing this challenge, and the report projects approximately 377,000 annual deaths by 2050 in these areas.

Chile, Bolivia

• Climate change, water scarcity, and rising skin health concerns in Bolivia — Climate-driven drought and extreme weather are creating new health challenges in Bolivia, including the increased risk of dermatitis and other skin conditions. Recent reports from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have identified dermatitis as a significant health concern affecting thousands of Bolivians. Dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder characterized by dry skin, intense itching, and recurring lesions. Atopic dermatitis affects up to 20% of children and 5–10% of adults worldwide. While genetic factors and immune dysfunction play important roles in atopic dermatitis, environmental stressors (including extreme temperatures, changes in humidity, and exposure to air pollution and allergens) can affect disease severity. In Bolivia, prolonged drought, extreme heat, and wildfire-related air pollution may worsen existing skin conditions by increasing inflammation and triggering flares. The landlocked country has experienced several extreme climate events in recent years, driven in part by El Niño. In September 2023, Bolivia recorded its hottest wintertime temperature on record at 40.3°C. The combination of extreme heat and prolonged drought left nearly 2 million people across seven of Bolivia’s nine departments—La Paz, Potosí, Cochabamba, Oruro, Chuquisaca, Tarija, and Santa Cruz—to confront depleted water reservoirs, damaged crops, and significant losses to their livelihoods. As water supplies declined, communities faced reduced access to water for drinking, agriculture, and hygiene, increasing vulnerability to infectious diseases and skin conditions. A historic wildfire season in 2024 further compounded Bolivia’s water challenges, while subsequent flooding and river overflows affected the department of Santa Cruz, the country’s commercial hub, where ash, sediment, and other contaminants entered water systems, leading to degraded local water quality. For communities already experiencing water shortages, dependence on contaminated water increased risks of gastrointestinal illnesses, infectious diseases, and skin irritation. Limited access to clean water can also make it more difficult to maintain the skin’s protective barrier, contributing to conditions such as contact dermatitis.

  • Climate change is increasingly recognized as a factor influencing skin health. Emerging research indicates that heat extremes and particulate pollution can contribute to inflammation and exacerbate inflammatory skin conditions, including atopic dermatitis. The International Eczema Council has highlighted climate-related hazards associated with greenhouse gas emissions as potential factors that can worsen atopic dermatitis symptoms, although impacts vary depending on regional climate conditions and individual vulnerability.

• Landfill methane emissions highlight a global climate challenge in Chile — Methane emissions from landfills are a significant contributor to global climate change, and a landfill in central Chile illustrates the scale of this challenge. The Lomas Los Colorados landfill in Tiltil, located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Santiago, is among the world’s largest human-made sources of methane, according to an April 2026 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The site receives waste from more than 7 million people in the greater Santiago metropolitan area and produces an estimated 102,667 metric tons of methane annually, primarily from the decomposition of organic waste. More than half of the material buried at the landfill consists of food scraps, plant material, grass, and pruning waste. When organic matter breaks down without access to oxygen, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a warming effect approximately 86 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has contributed to roughly 30% of the rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times. Given its exceptional warming potential, reducing methane emissions represents a key opportunity to limit near-term warming. Since 2007, Chile has implemented measures to capture some of the methane produced at Lomas Los Colorados by converting landfill gas into biogas, which is primarily composed of methane and carbon dioxide, to help fuel a nearby power facility. However, continued emissions from the site highlight the challenge of managing methane from large-scale waste systems, where organic materials can continue generating methane for decades. The challenge extends beyond Chile. The waste sector accounts for approximately 20% of human-caused global methane emissions, primarily from organic materials decomposing in landfills, open dumps, and wastewater systems. Three Chilean landfills are included among the world’s largest methane-emitting sites identified by UNEP, underscoring how waste management practices contribute to a broader global climate challenge. Landfill methane also creates local environmental and public health concerns. As methane escapes from landfill sites, it is often accompanied by other compounds, including hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, which produce noxious odors and contribute to quality-of-life impacts for nearby communities. Methane also contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant that affects respiratory health and damages ecosystems.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

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Ecuador’s banana exporters, Guyana’s coastal health system, Brazil’s cattle sector, and drought-affected communities in Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are the focus of this week’s climate impacts roundup. A possible strong El Niño could complicate banana production and shipments in Ecuador, while rising heat and humidity are projected to make cattle welfare harder to manage in Brazil. Flooding, drought, heat, unsafe water, smog, and food insecurity are also shaping health risks and daily life in Guyana, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, especially for communities facing social exclusion, disability, gender inequality, or limited access to basic services.1

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Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana

• Ecuador’s banana exporters are bracing for El Niño on top of a warmer climate — Ecuador’s banana sector is heading into a difficult period as growers and exporters face a possible strong El Niño, along with container shortages, disrupted shipping routes, deteriorating roads, port insecurity, and labor shortages. Exports were still higher through April than during the same period last year, but growth slowed each month, and the industry reported an “operational paradox” of high fruit availability in the fields and limited capacity to move that fruit to overseas markets. Refrigerated container shortages, cargo delays, shifting shipping routes, and disruption along key trade corridors made exports harder to move, while damaged roads and insecurity around highways and ports created problems inside the country. Between weeks 18 and 21, temperatures also ran up to 1°C above 2025 levels, and production indicators suggested more fruit was likely to come through the system even as shipping capacity remained limited. El Niño is a natural climate pattern, but it can raise global temperatures and increase the risk of extreme weather. It now occurs in a climate already warmed by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, which means its heat, rainfall, and flooding risks can unfold from a hotter baseline. Ecuador's banana industry faces added risk because strong past El Niño events have brought major flooding, damaged infrastructure, and agricultural losses. The government declared a yellow alert in 17 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces, including areas with a high concentration of banana plantations. Another strong El Niño could worsen field conditions, reduce fruit quality, damage roads, delay harvest and transport, and make it harder to keep shipments moving through a system already facing shipping constraints.

  • Ecuador has a more favorable long-term outlook than some other major banana exporters in a recent regional suitability study, but banana production across Latin America and the Caribbean faces growing climate risks. Researchers found that, without urgent climate action and adaptation, rising temperatures could reduce the area suitable for export banana production in the region by 60% by 2080. Bananas are concentrated in warm, low-altitude areas with stable temperatures, slightly acidic soils, nearby ports, roads, workers, and export infrastructure. That geography is useful for today’s export system, but it makes adaptation harder. Production cannot just shift to cooler areas if those places lack irrigation, packing facilities, transport networks, labor, or access to ports. Some banana-growing regions are already close to the heat limits for commercial farming. In Bahia, Brazil, one grower said a 2023 heat wave cut the following year’s harvest by 15%, and that banana plants can stop functioning when temperatures reach around 40°C with very low humidity, even when irrigation is available. Farmers and researchers are testing ways to reduce losses, including more frequent irrigation, banana varieties that need less water, heat-tolerance research, and protective sprays that reduce damage to leaves and fruit. But those measures have limits if water becomes less reliable, heat becomes more extreme, and future suitable growing areas are farther from the infrastructure that makes export production possible. Bananas are also tied to trade, jobs, and food security, serving as a major source of export revenue for many low- and middle-income countries, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in places such as Colombia, and remaining an important food crop in many countries.

• Climate change is adding pressure to Guyana’s health system — Guyana is highly exposed to climate-related health risks because much of the country’s population and infrastructure is concentrated along the coast. A 2026 study notes that about 90% of Guyana’s population, along with most of its urban centers, is located along the coastal belt, where sea-level rise, flooding, drainage problems, and coastal erosion can affect homes, roads, health facilities, and access to care. The country’s climate is shaped by seasonal rainfall patterns, with northern Guyana experiencing two wet and dry seasons and southern Guyana having one main wet season. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns become less predictable, both coastal and inland communities face health risks from floods, droughts, heat, and disruptions to water and sanitation systems. Severe flooding can contaminate water supplies, damage clinics, interrupt transportation, and make it harder for people to reach care. Drought can reduce water availability, affect agriculture, and worsen food and nutrition risks. Higher temperatures can increase heat stress, especially for outdoor workers, older adults, children, and people with existing health conditions. Climate-related health concerns in Guyana include heat stress, infectious and vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue, water-borne illnesses such as gastroenteritis, and added strain on people already living with noncommunicable diseases.

  • Guyana has public-sector workers who are concerned about climate change and willing to act, but major knowledge and practice gaps remain. In a survey of 176 public-sector workers, including health professionals, most respondents — 69.5% — recognized that climate change affects health. Fewer than one in five, however, could correctly define what climate change is. Respondents were more likely to recognize direct health effects such as air-quality problems, heat-related illness, and water-borne disease, while mental health and nutrition impacts were less often identified. Climate-health work depends not only on hospitals responding after floods, heat, or outbreaks, but also on workers anticipating risks, communicating with communities, coordinating across agencies, and protecting services during emergencies. Guyana has policy frameworks and post-COVID response systems that can support climate-health planning, but the study also identified outdated legislation, limited training, fragmented coordination among agencies, and workforce attrition as weaknesses. Strengthening climate-health training, interagency planning, and capacity building would help turn concern into practical readiness as climate risks place more stress on Guyana’s coastal communities and health system.

• Rising heat is making beef cattle welfare a growing challenge for Brazil — Brazil has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd and is one of the most important beef exporters, with much of its production based on cattle raised outdoors on pasture. A 2026 study modeled how climate change could change heat stress for beef cattle across Brazil using the Temperature-Humidity Index, which combines air temperature and humidity to estimate how stressful conditions are for animals. The researchers focused on extreme heat stress, when the index rises above 94, a level associated with serious animal welfare risks. When cattle are exposed to heat and humidity outside their comfort range, they use more energy trying to regulate body temperature, which can reduce feed intake, reproductive efficiency, immune function, meat quality, and survival. Historically, Brazil’s North and Mid-West regions had the highest heat-stress exposure, especially from September through December, when dry-season heat already pushes animals closer to dangerous thresholds. Future projections show that the risk could become longer and more intense as climate change raises temperatures and changes humidity patterns. By 2041 to 2060, parts of the North and Mid-West are projected to see much larger increases in extreme heat-stress days, with some areas approaching nearly every day of the month under extreme conditions during critical periods. By 2061 to 2080, under a high-emissions scenario, extreme heat stress is projected to spread across much of Brazil and persist through more of the year. Acre, Amazonas, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia are projected to face 28 to 31 days per month of extreme heat stress during the September to December peak. Heat would become a recurring production and welfare challenge, affecting animal health, ranch management, worker demands, water needs, and the long-term reliability of Brazil’s pasture-based beef system.

  • The adaptation challenge is tied to land use as well as animal care. Expanding cattle production into hotter Amazonian regions may become less viable over time because those same areas are projected to face some of the most severe increases in extreme heat stress. Clearing more forest for ranching would also worsen greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and disruption to the water and climate regulation that forests provide. The study points toward adaptation strategies that improve cattle welfare and productivity without expanding degraded land. Those include more shade, better pasture management, integrated crop-livestock systems, genetic selection for more heat-tolerant cattle, improved drinking-water access, cooling systems such as sprinklers, and precision livestock tools that monitor animals and environmental conditions in real time. Some of these options have tradeoffs. Sprinklers can reduce heat stress, but they also require water and electricity. Integrated crop-livestock systems can improve soil organic matter, water retention, and local microclimates, but the crops and forage used in those systems are also exposed to heat and water stress. Restoring degraded pastures could help Brazil maintain production without pushing ranching into new forest areas, but that depends on technical support, financing, and access to practices that smaller and rural producers can actually use.

    

Ethiopia, Yemen

• Yemen’s Muhammasheen face climate hazards with few basic protections — The Muhammasheen, whose name means “the marginalized,” are among the Yemeni communities least protected from floods, drought, unsafe water, and disease. Yemen is already dealing with years of war, economic collapse, damaged infrastructure, and severe water scarcity, while rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, flash floods, tropical cyclones, drought, and sea-level rise add new risks to daily life. Short, intense downpours are damaging homes, roads, farmland, and infrastructure, and torrential rains in mid-August 2025 affected more than 100,000 people. Drought and groundwater depletion are creating a different threat. Illegal drilling, overused aquifers, reduced freshwater recharge, sea-level rise, and unsustainable agricultural water use are contributing to salt intrusion in coastal basins, making groundwater less suitable for drinking and irrigation. For the Muhammasheen, these hazards are intensified by social exclusion. Many families live in informal settlements around cities such as Sanaa, Ta’iz, Aden, Hudaydah, and Saada, often on slopes, flood plains, dry riverbeds, or near waste sites. Many lack formal land rights, property ownership, or identity documents, leaving their homes more precarious and their access to public programs more limited. Heavy rains can wash sewage and uncollected waste into settlements, destroy fragile housing, and leave families stranded in mud. When drought shrinks or dries up nearby water sources, families without piped connections may have to rely on tanker deliveries at high cost, or walk to distant communal points to collect water. In neighborhoods without reliable sanitation or waste collection, open sewage, polluted water, burning trash, and contaminated groundwater increase the risks of diarrhea, cholera, and respiratory illness.

  • Climate protection for Muhammasheen communities starts with documents, water, sanitation, and health access. Basic services are limited, with only 9% of Muhammasheen households connected to piped water, compared with 30% nationally, and only 42% having an in-home latrine. Many adults lack national identity documents, which can block access to cash transfers, ration cards, health care, education, and other public services. Clinics and vaccination campaigns may bypass Muhammasheen neighborhoods, while children face barriers to school because of documentation gaps, fees, distance, and discrimination. Floods, drought, water contamination, and disease outbreaks become more dangerous when families cannot easily receive aid, access clinics, move to safer housing, or demand repairs. Practical climate-health protection would include identity-document programs, safer housing, drainage, clean water, sanitation, waste services, mobile clinics, vaccination outreach, legal aid, and stronger safeguards against discrimination or aid diversion. Without those steps, climate hazards will keep falling hardest on families already pushed outside Yemen’s systems of protection.

• Disability and drought are linked to deeper poverty in rural Ethiopia — A 2026 working paper on rural Ethiopia links household survey data from 2018/2019 and 2021/2022 with local rainfall records to examine how disability, drought, and extreme poverty overlap. The researchers measured disability at the household level using questions on difficulty seeing, hearing, walking, remembering or concentrating, self-care, and communication, with the main analysis focused on households where at least one member reported a lot of difficulty or could not do one of those activities at all. Under that stricter disability measure, about 10.3% of rural sample households had at least one member with a moderate or severe functioning difficulty. After adjusting for the extra costs associated with disability, households with disabled members had much higher poverty rates than households without disabled members. In the pooled sample, 58.3% of households with disabled members were poor, compared with 41.2% of households without disabled members. The poverty gap was also larger, meaning poor households with disabled members were farther below the poverty line. The estimated extra cost of disability was about 18.5% of real per-adult-equivalent consumption expenditure, reflecting expenses such as assistive devices, medical care, transportation, and other needs that can reduce what a household has available for food, housing, education, and other basic costs.

  • Drought was also associated with worse poverty outcomes. After controlling for household and community characteristics, drought increased the probability of being poor by nearly 9 percentage points, while having a disabled household member increased that probability by nearly 13 percentage points. Both disability and drought were associated with lower household consumption. A drought in rain-fed rural economies can reduce crop production, income, food access, and the ability to absorb expenses, and those losses can be harder for households already spending more to meet disability-related needs.

  • The combined disability-and-drought result was more complicated than expected. The researchers did not find a statistically significant combined effect of disability and drought on the poverty measures, even though disability and drought were each separately associated with worse poverty outcomes. For household consumption, the interaction between disability and drought was positive. The authors suggested that households with disabled members may have been more likely to receive support during drought, including from government or development partners. Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme can provide unconditional support to households or individuals unable to contribute labor to public works, and the paper reports that a larger share of households with disabled members received PSNP support than households without disabled members. That does not mean drought helped households with disabilities. It means the relationship between climate shocks and poverty can depend on whether support systems reach households with higher needs. For climate and poverty policy, disability-inclusive support that accounts for extra living costs, reaches rural households before drought deepens hardship, and treats disability data as part of climate-risk planning rather than a separate social-service issue would better reflect the needs of households facing both disability and climate risk.

    

Afghanistan, Pakistan

• Drought and degraded rangelands are putting Afghanistan’s food security at risk — Afghanistan is facing recurring drought, water scarcity, desertification, and land degradation in a country where many rural families depend on farming, livestock, and seasonal water supplies. Much of the country has an arid or semi-arid climate, with limited rainfall and water systems that depend heavily on snowmelt from the Hindu Kush. Rising temperatures, glacier loss, shifting seasons, and poor water management can make water less reliable for crops, livestock, and drinking. Heavy rains and floods can bring temporary relief after dry years, but they can also destroy homes, roads, farmland, and irrigation systems, leaving communities with damaged infrastructure and continued water insecurity. Rangelands are especially important because they support pastoral communities, livestock production, and ecosystems, but many have been degraded. Declining grasslands, shrublands, forests, and wetlands leave families who depend on animals and small-scale agriculture more exposed to food shortages, income losses, clean-water problems, and displacement. Afghanistan contributes only a very small share of global greenhouse gas emissions (0.1%), but it is highly vulnerable to climate impacts, while investment in water management, environmental restoration, and sustainable agriculture remains limited.

  • Snowpack and seasonal water timing shape Afghanistan’s drought risk. Snow in the Hindu Kush acts like a seasonal water reserve, feeding rivers, irrigation systems, and local water supplies as temperatures rise in spring and summer. Low snow levels, earlier melt, or less predictable melt can leave farmers and herders short of water during the months when crops and animals need it most. Better drought planning, local water management, rangeland restoration, and support for rural communities could help protect livelihoods before families are pushed further into food insecurity or displacement.

  • Drought and water scarcity also deepen gender inequality in Afghanistan. Many rural families lack reliable water systems and must collect water from kariz systems or distant sources. Household water collection, cooking, washing, and caregiving are largely treated as women’s and girls’ responsibilities, so dry periods can add hours of unpaid labor and increase exposure to unsafe water, poor sanitation, and waterborne disease. Nearby sources may shrink or fail during drought, forcing families to travel farther or rely on less reliable water. Women are also largely excluded from water management, policymaking, and technical education under Taliban rule, even though they are often the people managing household water every day. Afghanistan’s water crisis affects women’s health, time, safety, education, and ability to participate in decisions about the resources their families depend on.

• Climate change is making Pakistan’s existing health burdens harder to manage — Pakistan’s health risks are closely tied to water. Much of the country’s supply comes from snow and glacier melt in the northern mountains, while agriculture and irrigation remain central to livelihoods, food production, and the economy. Glacier loss, water scarcity, and poor water management can affect drinking water, crop production, hydropower, and household income at the same time. Flooding creates a different set of health risks. Seasonal floods can kill people directly, destroy livestock and crops, damage sanitation systems, contaminate freshwater supplies, and displace families. Floodwater can also leave behind stagnant pools where mosquitoes and other disease vectors breed, increasing the risk of illnesses such as dengue and malaria. Water- and food-borne diseases, including cholera, diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid, are more likely after rainy and flooding seasons, especially when clean water and sanitation systems are damaged. Heat adds another danger, particularly in Sindh and Punjab, where extreme temperatures can cause dehydration, kidney stones, heatstroke, and death. During Karachi’s 2015 heat wave, extreme heat overlapped with dense urban conditions and strained health services, contributing to a deadly public health emergency.

  • Air pollution and food insecurity add to Pakistan’s climate-health burden. Transport emissions, industrial pollution, and crop burning in central Punjab contribute to recurring smog, with poor air quality linked to asthma, hay fever, allergies, eye disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and other long-term conditions. Food insecurity also connects climate hazards to child health. Drought, erratic weather, crop losses, and high food prices can worsen malnutrition in a country where child stunting and underweight remain serious concerns. Children who are malnourished are more vulnerable to infections and may face lasting effects on growth, immunity, and development.

    

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

See you then.

Unusual heat across several regions is overlapping with climate-linked risks to land, water, health, ecosystems, public finances, and cultural identity. In Hawai‘i, the Lāhainā fires show how hotter, drier conditions interacted with long-running changes to land, water, vegetation, and Native Hawaiian ties to ‘āina. In Kiribati, rising seas and warming ocean waters are threatening football fields, national visibility, tuna revenue, and household food security. In southern India, heat is affecting informal outdoor workers and app-based delivery workers who often have limited control over when they can stop, rest, or cool down. In Sri Lanka, changing wetland conditions could make flamingo habitat harder to sustain, while in India’s mountain regions, warmer winters, unusual rainfall, and longer warm periods are helping mosquito-borne diseases spread into places where they were previously less common.1

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Ghana, Togo, Benin

• Climate change and rapid urbanization fuel deadly floods across West Africa, exposing rising resource pressures— West Africa is enduring one of its most destructive rainy seasons in decades. Last week, catastrophic flooding hit parts of Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo, killing dozens of people, displacing thousands, and leaving major roads and neighborhoods underwater. Ghana was among the hardest hit, where more than 140 mm (5.51”) of rain fell within a 24-hour period, making for the country’s highest single-day rainfall total in more than 30 years. Entire neighborhoods in the capital, Accra, were inundated as roads disappeared beneath floodwaters and residents swam through neck-deep water to rescue trapped neighbors. At least 13 people were killed, hundreds were rescued, and more than 38,000 people were directly affected by the flooding. In neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, weeks of relentless rainfall have killed dozens of people since the start of the rainy season in April, while Benin’s capital, Cotonou, recorded approximately 141 mm (5.55”) of rainfall, leaving major roads underwater and transportation systems immobilized. Residents in Togo also reported repeated flooding that has forced some families to abandon their homes entirely. The floods come as coastal West Africa faces increasingly intense rainfall and fast-growing cities with limited drainage capacity. For every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in global temperature, the atmosphere can hold approximately 7% more moisture, amplifying the intensity of heavy rainfall and turning seasonal downpours into destructive flash floods. These impacts are further compounded by rapid urbanization, inadequate drainage infrastructure, blocked waterways, informal settlements, and construction within floodplains, all of which reduce cities’ capacity to absorb and safely channel floodwaters. Home to more than five million residents, Accra is one of Africa’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, with an annual population increase of more than 2%. But the city’s population has grown faster than drainage and other basic infrastructure. Poor drainage, clogged gutters, informal housing, and development along waterways have reduced the city’s ability to absorb and move stormwater during heavy rain. Following the disaster, President John Mahama ordered the demolition of structures built within waterways and authorized the immediate release of $29 million for emergency relief. Police, firefighters, military personnel, and the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) were deployed to rescue stranded residents, clear blocked drainage channels, and protect critical infrastructure. The Ghana National Fire Service rescued more than 470 people, while the floods also sparked a major fire at a rubber factory, further compounding the emergency.

  • Beyond the immediate destruction, more frequent and intense rainfall is reshaping Ghana’s ecosystems and livelihoods. Floodwaters accelerate soil erosion, stripping away fertile topsoil and degrading agricultural land, while rivers increasingly fluctuate between destructive flooding during the rainy season and prolonged low flows during droughts, making freshwater supplies less reliable for communities and farming. These disruptions threaten one of Ghana’s most important economic sectors, as more than 45% of the country’s workforce relies on rain-fed agriculture. Floods destroy crops, delay planting, damage transportation networks, and worsen food insecurity, particularly in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone, leaving millions vulnerable to increasingly erratic climate-driven conditions. Shifting rainfall patterns can also affect grazing routes and water availability for pastoralist herders, pushing some farther south in search of pasture. These movements can bring herders into conflict with farming communities over cropland, water access, and land boundaries. Displacement also affects host communities, as families forced from flooded homes need somewhere to stay, along with access to food, work, land, schools, and basic services.

• Recent flooding in Ghana threatens to deepen poverty through asset loss and debt traps — The recent wave of catastrophic flooding across West Africa shows how climate-driven disasters can be especially damaging for households with the fewest resources to recover. For many rural families and informal urban households, wealth is often held in homes, livestock, tools, crops, and small businesses rather than in savings accounts or insurance policies. Across flood-affected communities in Accra, homes built from mudbrick, timber, or corrugated iron were inundated or collapsed entirely. With insurance largely inaccessible to low-income households, rebuilding costs fall entirely on families, often at the very moment they are displaced and most vulnerable. Cattle, goats, sheep, and poultry that serve as agricultural capital or "living savings accounts" were killed in rising floodwaters, while grain stores, fertilizers, and farming tools were destroyed, wiping out both household income and future production capacity in a single event. These losses compound existing pressures facing Ghana's smallholder farmers, who already contend with volatile markets, pest and disease outbreaks, and increasingly erratic weather that undermine income security. At the same time, rapid and often unplanned urban expansion has weakened natural flood defenses. In cities like Accra, development has increasingly encroached on wetlands, reducing natural water storage and leaving drainage systems overwhelmed during heavy rainfall events. With few financial resources to absorb such losses, many displaced families are forced to rely on informal lenders offering emergency cash at high interest rates, locking borrowers into long-term debt cycles. Others may sell remaining tools, bicycles, land, or livestock at low prices to afford food and other basic needs. The economic impacts extend beyond the loss of assets that families own. Floods also damage the public and private infrastructure people depend on to earn a living, including roads, bridges, electricity networks, factories, and natural resources. Even households whose homes remain intact can lose their incomes when roads become impassable, businesses close, or agricultural land becomes unusable. While wealthier households can typically rely on savings, credit, or insurance to recover, low-income families are often left to rebuild from nothing. When floods happen again and again, each recovery can leave low-income families with fewer assets and fewer options than before.

Hawaii, Kiribati

• Climate change deepened the conditions that made the Lāhainā fires so destructive, but the loss was also rooted in generations of land and water disruption — The 2023 Lāhainā fires burned an estimated 2,170 acres and killed 102 people, making them among the deadliest U.S. wildfires in more than a century. A 2025 article in the Hawai‘i Journal of Health & Social Welfare described the disaster as the result of global climate change interacting with long-running regional changes to Lāhainā’s land, water, and vegetation. Lāhainā’s leeward location already made it vulnerable to drought, and by August 2023 the area was in severe drought, with increased annual temperatures and decreased rainfall. Those hotter and drier conditions combined with strong winds and a landscape where former plantation lands had filled with invasive grasses that burn more readily than native vegetation. Those fire conditions were also shaped by a longer history of land and water disruption, including Western contact, private land ownership, whaling, sugar plantations, and tourism. Before those changes, Lāhainā was sustained by ahupua‘a, land divisions running from mountain to sea, and by ‘auwai that carried water from valleys into fish ponds, taro patches, and Native Hawaiian kuleana lands. Water diversion for sugar plantations redirected water away from loko i‘a and lo‘i kalo, and by the 1940s almost no viable taro patches remained. Mokuhinia, once a flourishing fish pond near important royal and cultural sites, was filled to make a baseball field. After plantation agriculture declined, abandoned fields became fuel for fire, while tourism placed another demand on limited water supplies, with hotels and resorts using far more water than single-family homes.

  • For Native Hawaiians, the destruction of Lāhainā was not only the loss of buildings. Lāhainā was the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, a land of ali‘i, fish ponds, taro fields, water channels, and ancestral responsibility. In Native Hawaiian understanding, ‘āina is not just land or property; it is genealogically connected to people, and injury to the land creates ‘eha, or pain, for the community. The fire turned that relationship into physical grief, displacement, hazardous ash, unsafe water, trauma, and fear that outside buyers would use the disaster to take land from families with deep ties to Lāhainā. The response also showed why recovery cannot be separated from Native Hawaiian leadership. Community-run “kanaka Costcos,” Native Hawaiian medical and healing groups, and local families with trusted ties to the ‘āina became central to care after the fire. Rebuilding Lāhainā also means restoring water, protecting land from extraction and land grabs, preserving cultural memory, and making sure Native Hawaiians who are genealogically connected to Lāhainā help decide the future of the place.

• Rising seas are threatening Kiribati’s land, football fields, and national identity — Kiribati’s effort to reach the 2030 World Cup is also an attempt to bring global attention to the climate risks facing one of the world’s most vulnerable island nations. The country is made up of 33 coral islands scattered across the Pacific, only 21 of them inhabited, with about 138,000 people and land increasingly exposed to coastal erosion, flooding, relocation, and sea-level rise. Sea temperatures around Kiribati are rising faster than the global average, affecting reefs, fisheries, shorelines, and the communities built around them. The Kiribati Island Football Federation is trying to build the domestic football structure needed to compete internationally, but the country is not yet a FIFA member and cannot play in World Cup qualifiers. Joining FIFA and the Oceania Football Confederation could bring funding for facilities and development, but Kiribati first has to meet membership standards for federation structure, leagues, development programs, and infrastructure. That creates a difficult cycle for a small, remote island nation where many fields are only a few meters above sea level and current facilities include sand pitches and beach football.

  • At the Te Runga Games, football still connects teams from Kiribati’s scattered atolls to Tarawa. The multisport event is held every four years, and football is the biggest draw, with 23 teams traveling by small plane or boat. The national team also reflects the movement of people away from the islands, with some players living in Tarawa and others now based in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. Kiribati has already encouraged migration abroad and bought land in Fiji as part of planning for climate displacement, while its immediate priorities remain coastal protection, water security, sustainable livelihoods, and infrastructure that can withstand future climate conditions. The World Cup campaign gives Kiribati a way to keep its people, culture, and public identity visible as climate change makes the land beneath homes, fields, and communities less secure.

• Warming oceans are putting Kiribati’s public finances and food supply at risk — Kiribati’s climate vulnerability extends into the ocean that supports much of its public revenue and food supply. The country’s 33 islands have a combined land area about the size of New York City, while its ocean territory covers more than 3.4 million square kilometers across the Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line island groups. That ocean provides one of the country’s few major economic resources. More than 70% of Kiribati’s government revenue comes from selling tuna fishing licenses to foreign fleets, and those licenses brought in $137 million in 2024. From 2018 to 2022, they accounted for almost three-quarters of government income and about two-fifths of GDP. Warmer Pacific waters could weaken that system by shifting skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna toward cooler waters farther east, outside parts of Kiribati’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Kiribati’s Ministry of Fisheries says the country could lose more than $10 million in fishing access fees each year by 2050 under high greenhouse gas emissions, while much lower emissions would avoid a projected decrease in tuna biomass in Kiribati’s waters. Local fishers still face losses under both high- and low-emissions scenarios, with the Line Islands projected to see especially large declines.

  • Those losses would affect households as well as the national budget. People in Kiribati eat around 100 kilograms of fish per person each year, and fish has long been a major source of protein, especially on outer islands. Falling local catches could increase reliance on imported foods that cost more and provide less nutrition, while population growth and urbanization around Tarawa stretch limited land and resources further. Kiribati is trying to prepare through tuna forecasting, expanded processing and canning, ocean farming for species such as milkfish, snapper, and sea cucumbers, and new revenue sources including tourism, renewable energy, and its offshore sovereign wealth fund. The country has few other resources to absorb a major loss in tuna revenue. If tuna access declines, Kiribati could face less money from foreign fishing fleets, lower catches for local fishers, higher food costs, and fewer options for households already living with limited land and rising dependence on imported food.

India, Sri Lanka

• Heat is already affecting outdoor work in southern India — In Tamil Nadu, researchers measured heat exposure and surveyed 1,560 informal outdoor workers between 2021 and 2023 across agriculture, construction, brick manufacturing, salt pans, and stone quarries in 11 districts. These are jobs where people often work in direct sun, with heavy physical workloads, limited protections, and little formal job security. Wet-bulb globe temperature, a measure that combines heat, humidity, sunlight, and wind, reached levels unsafe for many workers in both hot and cooler seasons. During summer, 88% of workers were exposed to heat above occupational safety limits, and even in winter, 42.5% were exposed above those limits. Workers in hotter conditions were more likely to report heat-related illness symptoms such as excessive sweating, thirst, tiredness, cramps, headache, nausea, fainting, and prickly heat. The study also measured signs of heat strain in the body, including core body temperature, sweat rate, and urine concentration, and found that nearly half of those measured exceeded safe limits on at least one of those indicators.

  • Heat-related symptoms also affected workers’ ability to get through the workday. Workers who reported heat-related illness symptoms had much higher odds of productivity loss. For about three-quarters of those workers, that meant taking longer than expected to meet daily production targets. Others missed hours or days because of fatigue or illness, lost wages, or faced medical costs. Agriculture and salt-pan workers reported especially high losses, with agricultural workers reporting more heat-related sick leave and salt-pan workers reporting wage loss and hospitalization. These risks fall on informal workers, who make up most of Tamil Nadu’s workforce and often do not have contracts, social security, paid leave, shaded rest areas, or reliable access to cooling. As temperatures rise, outdoor heat can mean headaches, dehydration, exhaustion, unsafe body strain, missed work, medical costs, and lost income for workers with little control over whether they can stop, rest, or move into cooler conditions.

  • Bengaluru’s delivery workers face many of the same heat risks, but app-based pay systems can make it harder to rest. In Bengaluru, where temperatures have risen by about 1.5°C over the past two decades, delivery workers described headaches, dehydration, heat rashes, exhaustion, back pain, and red eyes while working through 35–37°C heat, sudden rain, and April heat-wave conditions. Some workers said they kept delivering because breaks could mean losing incentives or missing daily targets. Others said ratings, rankings, future assignments, and insurance access can depend on completing enough orders on time. Karnataka has created new social-security protections for platform-based gig workers, but heat waves and flood risks are not yet directly addressed. For workers paid by delivery or tied to algorithmic targets, hotter days can make rest financially risky even when heat is already affecting their health.

• Climate change could make Sri Lanka’s flamingo wetlands harder to use — Greater flamingos depend on shallow wetlands with the right water depth, salinity, algae, brine shrimp, crustaceans, and other small organisms to support feeding habitat. In Sri Lanka, that balance has already been disrupted in Bundala National Park, the country’s first Ramsar wetland. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Bundala’s lagoons regularly hosted large flocks of greater flamingos, sometimes numbering more than 1,000 birds. The birds largely stopped coming later after irrigation development altered the lagoon system. Freshwater released into the wetlands reduced salinity, and the small crustaceans and microorganisms that flamingos depended on disappeared. The lagoons remained physically intact, but they no longer provided the food conditions flamingos needed. Climate change could make these wetland conditions harder to maintain by shifting rainfall patterns, altering water chemistry, degrading habitat, and enabling invasive species to move into areas flamingos use to feed and breed. When wetlands become too fresh, too disturbed, or too depleted of food, they may no longer work as feeding or breeding habitat. Recovery can also be slow because flamingos live for decades, mature gradually, and do not breed every year.

  • Recent flamingo deaths in Mannar were tied to collisions with overhead power lines rather than climate change, but those deaths show how human infrastructure is adding pressure to wetlands that are already vulnerable. Flamingos in Sri Lanka face overlapping threats from wetland reclamation, pollution, tourism activity, industrial development, poaching, power lines, and climate-driven changes to wetland conditions. Protecting them will require more than preventing collisions. It also means keeping the water, salinity, food webs, and migration routes of Sri Lanka’s wetlands intact as climate change shifts the conditions these birds depend on.

• Warmer winters are changing where mosquito-borne diseases can spread in India’s mountains — Rising temperatures in Kashmir and hilly parts of northern India are beginning to change disease risks in places where cold winters once helped limit mosquito survival and transmission. Srinagar, long known for cold winters and mild summers, recorded unusually high winter temperatures earlier this year, with February temperatures nearly 10°C above normal and reaching 21°C in some areas. The region also recorded a nearly 50% winter precipitation deficit for the second year in a row, while recent summers have brought heat that residents described as unfamiliar, including a July 2024 maximum of 35.7°C in Srinagar, the city’s highest July temperature in nearly 25 years. Public health experts warned that warmer winters, higher humidity, changing vegetation, unusual rainfall, and longer warm periods are allowing diseases such as malaria, dengue, and chikungunya to persist or spread in mountain areas where they were historically less common. Jammu and Kashmir recorded 3,381 dengue cases in 2025, nearly twice the 1,709 cases reported in 2021. Suspected chikungunya cases rose from seven in 2021 to 773 in 2025, while Himachal Pradesh went from no reported chikungunya cases in 2021 to more than 200 in 2025.

  • Outbreaks that used to be more closely associated with the rainy season are now being affected by unusual rainfall, warmer conditions across more of the year, and longer periods of heat. Public health experts warned that this creates problems for surveillance in hilly and remote regions, where cases may not be detected until transmission has already spread. India’s disease tracking still often responds after outbreaks begin, rather than using climate signals to anticipate where mosquitoes and disease risk are likely to increase. Temperature trends, rainfall data, satellite observations, and environmental indicators could help identify emerging hotspots earlier, especially in mountain areas that have not historically planned for sustained malaria, dengue, or chikungunya risk.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index highlights unusual heat across several featured regions, where climate pressures are reaching food systems, health risks, cultural practices, and public budgets. In Somalia and Somaliland, drought and hunger are making it harder to sustain progress against female genital mutilation, while in Ethiopia, hotter days, wetter stretches, and changing cold-season conditions are reshaping the practical risks faced by pilgrims traveling to sacred sites. In Hong Kong, warmer and saltier spring waters are threatening a centuries-old oyster harvest, and in Mongolia, repeated dzud events are pushing herding families toward insecure urban settlements. In northern China, rising temperatures are projected to cut into winter wheat yields later this century, while Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania face climate-linked risks to health, public finances, and tourism.1

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Somalia, Ethiopia

• In Somalia and Somaliland, drought and hunger can strengthen the economic pressures that keep girls at risk of female genital mutilation — Female genital mutilation, or FGM, refers to the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. In Somalia, where the practice remains widespread, many girls and women undergo Type III FGM, also known as infibulation, which narrows the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning the labia, with or without removal of the clitoris. The practice can cause lasting physical and psychological harm, including pain during menstruation, sex, and childbirth. Climate shocks do not cause FGM on their own. They make it harder to end the practice in communities where cutting is tied to marriageability, chastity, family honor, social acceptance, and bride wealth. Droughts, floods, crop failures, livestock deaths, and water shortages reduce household income and deepen food insecurity, especially in agriculturally dependent communities. When animals die, harvests fail, and aid programs shrink, families may feel more pressure to protect the marriage prospects they believe will secure a daughter’s future and bring income into the household.

  • That pressure can weaken progress made through laws, health education, school programs, community dialogues, and youth activism. Young women in Sanaag, Somaliland, described wanting FGM to end while seeing climate stress and conflict make older gender norms more forceful again. As resources become scarce, some elders and community members argue more openly for a return to practices they associate with purity, marriage, and women’s traditional roles. Similar risks have been documented in parts of Kenya. Researchers have linked climate-related hardship to increases in FGM and child marriage in Garissa and Isiolo, where bride wealth traditions exist. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures created conditions in which some families used girls’ time at home to carry out FGM, while gender-based violence reports increased sharply. Programs in Kismayo and Baidoa have responded through community outreach, psychosocial support, services for survivors, and dialogues with traditional elders, religious leaders, women, men, boys, and girls. Ending FGM in these settings depends on more than banning the practice. Families also need food security, schooling, livelihoods, social protection, and climate adaptation support, because the same crises that destroy crops and livestock can make harmful practices harder to abandon.

• Ethiopia’s major pilgrimages are becoming a climate concern because the journey itself exposes people to cold nights, hot days, rain, and difficult roads — Each year, pilgrims travel to Dirre Sheikh Hussein, an important Islamic shrine in the Oromia region, and to Lalibela, home to the rock-hewn churches visited during Genna, Ethiopian Christmas, and Timket. These journeys can be long and physically demanding. Travel distances of more than 1,000 kilometers are common, and some pilgrims still travel on foot, by mule, by donkey, or by camel, crossing highlands, mountain routes, lowlands, and remote roads before reaching the shrine. The Bega season from December to February is generally cooler and drier, which helps make pilgrimage possible, but it still brings conditions that shape the journey. Pilgrims crossing highland areas can face cold nights, frost, and strong winds, making sleep and shelter harder. Around Debre Birhan, on the route from Addis Ababa toward Lalibela, sub-zero nights have been recorded in the recent past, and the study found that some highland areas can see many nights below 5°C during the pilgrimage season. Travel toward Dirre Sheikh Hussein brings a different kind of exposure. The shrine sits in a warmer, semi-arid lowland area, where average maximum temperatures during the pilgrimage season are around 29°C and spells above 30°C can make walking exhausting without shade, rest, or enough water.

  • Rain can complicate the journey even during the dry season. Around Addis Ababa, the study found roughly 50 millimeters of rainfall during the 77-day pilgrimage period, with rain sometimes falling on consecutive days. Wet conditions can make paths and roads muddy, slow travel on foot or by vehicle, and increase the risk of landslides along mountain routes. Climate pressures can also affect whether people are able to make the journey at all. The number of pilgrims to Dirre Sheikh Hussein has fluctuated over time, with recent declines linked to conflict, drought, and reduced livestock and crop production. Years with higher agricultural income can leave families and communities with more money for transport, hospitality, and other pilgrimage costs, while drought and poor harvests can narrow that space. Mid-century projections under a high-emissions scenario point to warmer nights, fewer cold conditions in the highlands, hotter travel around Dirre Sheikh Hussein, and more rainy days in parts of the southern highlands. Those changes point to a planning gap for religious tourism and pilgrimage routes. Shelters, shade, water access, road conditions, and accommodation near sacred sites will need to account for hotter days, wetter stretches, and the fact that pilgrims experience weather during specific journeys, not as long-term seasonal averages.

    

China, Mongolia

• Hotter, saltier water is putting pressure on one of Hong Kong’s oldest food traditions — In Lau Fau Shan, a fishing village on Deep Bay, oyster farming has been passed through families for generations, with records of the local oyster trade dating back to the 1600s. The oysters grown there, Crassostrea hongkongensis, are especially suited to the lower-salinity waters of the Pearl River Estuary and are prized locally as fresh seafood, dried oysters, and semi-dried “golden oysters” eaten during Lunar New Year. That seasonal cycle is becoming harder to rely on. Warmer winters have delayed the start of harvest from autumn into January or February, cutting what had been a roughly six-month season to about three months. Spring is now especially dangerous. Higher temperatures arrive earlier, while the rainy season often comes later, leaving Deep Bay warmer and saltier than the oysters can easily tolerate. Combined with low oxygen linked to pollution and cloudy spring conditions, that stress can leave oysters more vulnerable to disease. Farmers who once saw severe die-offs about once a decade now report losses of more than 70% every three to six years, while smaller annual die-offs can kill more than 30% of oysters.

  • Scientists and farmers are trying to keep the industry alive by breeding oysters that can survive the conditions now emerging in Deep Bay. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong have developed a genomic selection approach that uses oyster DNA and survival data to identify parent strains more likely to tolerate high salinity and other stresses. Their “Hong Kong Super Oyster” is still being tested by local growers, but early lab results suggest a survival rate of 30–40% under high-salinity conditions, compared with less than 10% for regular Hong Kong oysters. The goal is to eventually raise survival closer to 80%. That would not solve every threat facing Lau Fau Shan. Severe typhoons have already destroyed rafts and crops, including back-to-back losses from Super Typhoons Hato and Mangkhut in 2017 and 2018, and the number of oyster-farming households has fallen from about 300 at the industry’s peak to around 70 today. A proposed development project could also reshape the village’s future. But the super oyster work gives farmers one concrete tool against the warmer, saltier spring waters that are now killing oysters before they can be harvested.

• Mongolia’s herders are being pushed out of pastoral life as climate pressure makes it harder to keep animals alive, repay debts and stay on the land — The country has warmed about three times faster than the global average, and families who rely on livestock are facing harsher winters, drought, desertification, shrinking water sources, and degraded pasture. Dzud events, the extreme winters that often follow dry summers, have become especially destructive. The 2024–2025 dzud killed more than 8 million livestock, about 12.5% of the national herd, and severely affected more than 180,000 herder households. For a herding family, losing animals can mean losing income, food security, transport, savings, and the practical basis of a way of life built over generations. Many families spend more to feed animals through longer and harsher winters while earning less from wool and meat, leaving them in debt and with few forms of support. Mining has fragmented pastureland and dried water sources, further limiting the seasonal movement that herding depends on. The pressure also reaches into family life. Some parents split households so one adult can take the children to school in a town or city while another stays behind with the remaining animals. Others move first to a regional center, then to a provincial town, and eventually to Ulaanbaatar as the chance of returning to herding becomes more remote. By the time many families leave, migration is not a hopeful move toward better work. It is what remains after animals, income, schooling options, and rural safety nets have been worn down at the same time.

  • Life in the city often brings a different kind of insecurity. Many former herders settle in Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts, where housing is informal, services are limited, and registration problems can block access to schools, healthcare, welfare, and formal work. Families may carry water from communal wells, share makeshift electricity lines, use outdoor pit latrines that freeze in winter, and burn coal to heat poorly insulated homes. Some rely on relatives or informal networks for housing, childcare, paperwork, and low-paid work, while others remain socially and economically unsettled long after they have physically arrived. The move can solve one problem while creating others. Families may be closer to schools and services, but farther from the animals, land, and seasonal movement that structured their lives.

• Winter wheat in the North China Plain may see a short-term boost from wetter growing seasons, but rising temperatures become the dominant threat later this century — A 2025 study using the DSSAT crop model and CMIP6 climate data found that winter wheat yields in the region increase by about 1.5% in the 2030s, when projected precipitation gains are large enough to offset some warming-related losses. By the 2080s, that balance changes. Continued warming drives a projected 13.4% yield decline, with higher temperatures shortening growth stages and increasing stress during sensitive parts of crop development. The risk is not the same across farming systems. Irrigated wheat is more strongly shaped by temperature trends, while rainfed wheat is more sensitive to changes in precipitation. That distinction affects what adaptation can realistically do. Delaying planting dates and improving field fertility each reduce some of the projected heat-related losses, while added irrigation provides a much smaller benefit. The finding is especially important for a region that produces a major share of China’s winter wheat and already faces pressure on water resources. In this case, climate adaptation is not just a matter of adding more water. The stronger options are closer to the crop itself, including better timing, soil fertility, heat-tolerant varieties, and management choices that help wheat avoid the most damaging heat during growth.

  • Wheat’s importance in China comes from a long history of adaptation, processing, and regional food culture. Archaeological and genetic evidence reviewed in a history of wheat utilization in China indicates that wheat was domesticated in West Asia and reached China between about 2500 and 2000 BCE. It did not become important everywhere at once. In northwest China, wheat replaced millet as a primary crop in the Hexi Corridor around 1700 BCE and became a staple in parts of Xinjiang around the same period. In the Central Plains, it remained secondary for much longer, even after it was introduced during the Xia period and widely cultivated during the Shang. Its adoption as a staple came during the Han Dynasty, helped by population pressure, food shortages, irrigation development, and new processing technologies. Early wheat was boiled whole, which made it harder to eat, but stone mills allowed grain to be ground into flour and opened the way for a much wider range of wheat foods. Later advances in fermentation further expanded wheat-based cuisine, and after the Song Dynasty, wheat became a favored staple in northern China. Projected losses in the North China Plain put pressure on more than a commodity crop. They affect a grain tied to regional diets, food processing traditions, and the long history of how northern China came to eat.

  

Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Kosovo

• Climate change is worsening health risks in Kosovo through heat, air pollution, allergies, flooding, and shifting disease conditions — Kosovo’s National Institute of Public Health found that climate change is worsening respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, which are already among the most common causes of death for people over 65. Children are one of the clearest risk groups. Pediatric clinicians reported more children seeking care for heat-related illness during the past summer, with heatwaves raising the risk of dehydration, heatstroke, and stress on vital organs such as the heart and kidneys. Children are more exposed because their immune and physical systems are still developing, they breathe faster, and they often spend more time outdoors. Poor air quality adds another pathway, especially for asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other respiratory problems. Allergy specialists in Kosovo also link warming, drought, wind, and reduced rainfall to longer pollen seasons, wider allergen distribution, and worsening allergic asthma and rhinitis. These risks fall harder on children, older adults, pregnant women, people with chronic diseases, and people living with limited access to healthcare, clean water, healthy food, and safe housing.

  • Flooding is adding another health pathway as Kosovo’s rainfall patterns change. Meteorologists expect overall precipitation to decline by the end of the century, while short, intense rainfall events become more common, increasing the risk of flash floods and river overflows. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, allowing heavier bursts of rain when storms form. Kosovo has already seen damaging floods in municipalities along the White Drin River, including January 2023 flooding in Skenderaj that caused unexpected damage in an area not previously known for that scale of flooding. Warmer winters are also bringing more rain instead of snow, with intense winter rainfall reported in January 2021 and 2023. These changes reach beyond immediate flood damage. They affect agriculture through drought, heavy rain, hailstorms, and plant disease, and they can affect energy supply when summer river drying reduces hydropower production. Kosovo passed a Climate Change Law in December 2023, but environmental officials describe the country’s response as partial, with air pollution, heatwaves, floods, droughts, and food safety risks still requiring stronger monitoring and public-health planning.

  • Kosovo’s health risks are also shaped by gaps in climate-health education. A 2025 survey of pre-service teachers at the University of Prishtina found that nearly all respondents thought climate change was already affecting health, but many still held misconceptions about its causes and health pathways. About 64% incorrectly attributed climate change to natural causes or to equal natural and human causes, and more than 94% were unaware of the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Respondents most often recognized illness from reduced air quality as a climate-related health outcome, while mental health conditions, violence, conflict, and displacement were much less likely to be identified. Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe, with 55% of residents under 30. Those gaps affect how climate risks are taught, understood, and acted on by the next generation.

• Climate extremes have cost Serbia more than 10 billion euros since 2001, and the recorded losses are dominated by drought — Serbia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection reported to the United Nations that climate extremes caused more than 10 billion euros in damage from 2001 to 2024. Preliminary estimates from the 2025 drought would bring the total to at least 12 billion euros over 25 years, or nearly half a billion euros per year on average. Droughts made up about 70% of the official estimate, with major events in 2003, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021, 2022, and 2024. The 2012 drought alone accounted for 17% of the total recorded damage, while the May 2014 floods accounted for 16%. Serbia’s losses are not confined to rare disasters that destroy visible infrastructure. A large share comes from repeated agricultural damage, including production that was expected but never realized because heat and dry conditions reduced output. The official total also includes damage to existing property such as buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure, but it leaves out many indirect losses that are harder to count. Climate extremes can disrupt supply chains, traffic, water supply, electricity systems, and human health, while some direct damages are never registered. The official total captures only part of the damage.

  • Several years of losses were large relative to Serbia’s economy. In nine of the 24 years examined, annual climate damages exceeded 1% of GDP. In 2012 and 2014, damages reached 5.36% and 5.21% of GDP. Four of the last five years in the official record also crossed 1%, including 2021, 2022, and 2024, although the incomplete damage record makes it difficult to read that as a clean trend. Even with that caution, the repeated scale of losses points to a country already exposed to costly extremes and not fully prepared for the damage ahead. Serbia sits in a region with pronounced climate change, while its adaptation capacity remains limited. Better damage records would make adaptation decisions more useful, because missing or underestimated losses make it harder to see which sectors are being hit, where public money is needed, and whether new policies are reducing risk.

  • Bulgaria’s low public debt does not shield it from climate-driven fiscal risk. The country had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 23.8% in 2024, the lowest in the EU, but climate impacts are already adding costs through heat, water stress, and flooding. In 2024, people in Bulgaria experienced 12 heatwave days, 10 of which would not have been expected without climate change, and potential labor hours lost to heat exposure were 65% higher than in the 1990s. In summer 2025, more than 260,000 people struggled to access clean water during one of the country’s most serious recent water crises, and floods later triggered states of emergency in several towns. Modeling by the New Economics Foundation, a UK think tank, estimates that under current policies, climate impacts could push Bulgaria's debt 49 percentage points above a climate-agnostic baseline by 2050 and 171 percentage points above it by 2070. Early mitigation and adequate adaptation would reduce that long-term debt burden substantially, especially if paired with wider global climate action.

• Romania’s tourism economy is exposed to climate change because many of its destinations depend directly on weather, snow, water, forests, and seasonal comfort — A national study of tourism vulnerability examined more than 1,000 local administrative units that recorded overnight stays and assessed exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity for both summer and winter tourism. The most vulnerable summer destinations included Băile Herculane, Sinaia, Călimănești, Moneasa, Geoagiu, Predeal, Băile Govora, Băile Olănești, Băile Tușnad, Vatra Dornei, Slănic-Moldova, Azuga, Mangalia, Constanța, Bucharest, and Brașov. These places are not vulnerable for the same reason. Black Sea destinations such as Constanța, Mangalia, Eforie, Năvodari, and Agigea carry high sensitivity because they concentrate beaches, accommodation, road access, and visitor demand. Mountain and spa resorts carry risk through their dependence on snow, forests, mineral waters, bioclimatic resources, and seasonal tourism flows. In winter, the highest vulnerability was concentrated in major mountain and ski destinations such as Sinaia, Predeal, Brașov, Azuga, and Vatra Dornei, along with spa towns including Băile Herculane and Călimănești. Snow reliability is one of the clearer climate pathways. Several localities with ski slopes have seen decreases in the number of days with at least 30 centimeters of snow cover, with some places losing around seven snow-cover days per decade over 1981 to 2020. Warmer-season risks are also spreading. The duration of warm spells is increasing across almost all of Romania, while heavy precipitation days are becoming more frequent in many areas and can raise flood and flash-flood risks for tourists. For destinations built around beaches, ski slopes, spa landscapes, or mountain recreation, climate change is already altering the conditions that make the tourism season work.

  

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Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

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This week’s Global Climate Dispatch looks at climate impacts affecting water supplies in Iran and Turkmenistan, coastal flooding in French Guiana, heat risks and coffee losses in Brazil, and drought pressure across southern Africa. In Iran, years of drought left reservoirs low, reduced nighttime water pressure in Tehran, and made rain prayers part of the public response to a worsening water crisis. In Turkmenistan, hotter and drier conditions are increasing water demand for cotton fields already affected by salinity and aging irrigation systems. Farther west, sea-level rise is pushing some high tides over street-level thresholds in Cayenne, while Brazil’s disaster records, health data, and coffee farms point to rising losses from climate-related disasters, heat waves, drought, storms, and irregular rainfall. In South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, and Namibia, shifting rainfall and drought are affecting sheep health, crop production, water supplies, the Okavango Delta, wildlife, and livestock systems.1

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Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

• Iran’s water crisis reached homes, reservoirs, and public life in 2025 — By mid-November 2025, more than 50 days had passed since the start of Iran’s rainy season, and more than 20 provinces had still not received rain. The number of dams with less than 5% of their reservoir capacity had risen from eight to 32, and the crisis had spread from the central plains across much of the country. Tehran had recorded only 1mm of rain that year, compared with an average annual rainfall of 350mm from 1991 to 2000, after five previous years of drought. Snow cover had fallen 98.6% nationwide compared with the same point the year before, and Tehran was still seeing daily temperatures around 20°C during a period when the second half of November would normally bring snow. In Tehran, bottled water prices had risen, purchase limits had been introduced, and water pressure was being restricted after midnight. Residents had cut water use by 10% in seven months, while officials said a 20% reduction was needed. Authorities tried cloud seeding, and the president warned that the crisis could become severe enough to raise the question of evacuating the capital, a proposal other officials rejected as impractical. Environmental experts had long warned that drought, overuse, and water mismanagement were straining Iran’s water system. By mid-November, those warnings were being discussed alongside falling dam levels, dried-up rivers, water storage tanks, and forecasts for rain-producing clouds.

  • Rain prayers became part of how Iranians made sense of a crisis that officials and water experts were also tracing to drought, overuse, and mismanagement. Across Muslim communities, climate change is not interpreted in one uniform way. Some Muslim leaders and scholars describe climate change as a human-caused problem tied to industrial production, deforestation, fossil-fuel transport, waste burning, and high-consumption lifestyles. Others interpret droughts and disasters through spiritual causes, including divine punishment, moral failure, or signs of disorder in society. Muslim environmentalists offer another perspective rooted in ideas such as balance, stewardship, public welfare, and responsibility for future generations, treating care for water and land as a religious obligation rather than only a technical policy problem. Rain prayers in Tehran were happening alongside arguments over hijab enforcement, questions about whether clouds could be seeded, questions about stolen clouds, worries about diesel burning, and warnings from water experts who had long said the country was using more water than its climate could support. Mosques, clerics, and religious networks were part of Iran’s drought response because sermons, prayers, official statements, and public arguments all shaped how people understood whether the crisis was moral, technical, political, or climatic.

• Climate change is threatening Turkmenistan’s cotton economy through heat, water scarcity, and salinized land — Cotton is Turkmenistan’s second most important export commodity after natural gas and oil, and cotton-based textiles made up 6.2% of national exports in 2017. But the crop is highly water-intensive in a country where more than 97% of water resources originate outside its borders. Much of that water comes from rivers fed by glaciers and snowmelt from upstream mountains in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, leaving cotton production dependent on shared rivers as glaciers shrink, drought risk increases, and water supplies become less reliable. Temperatures in Turkmenistan have risen by more than 1°C over the past 20 years, and higher heat increases evapotranspiration, pushing crops to need more water at the same time irrigation systems face growing strain. Soil salinization is already widespread, with more than 60% of irrigated land affected by salinity after decades of large-scale irrigation and high evaporation in an arid climate. Removing salt from the root zone requires more water, better drainage, and monitoring, adding another demand on water supplies that are already under pressure.

  • The country’s cotton system leaves farmers with little room to respond. The state controls most farmland, sets prices, dictates crops, and imposes mandatory cotton quotas, so farmers are pushed to meet production targets rather than shift toward less water-intensive crops or invest in water-saving practices. Aging Soviet-era canals, dams, and irrigation systems add to the problem by increasing water losses and accelerating salinization. Forced labor in cotton harvesting can also limit access to ethical supply chains, international climate finance, and large-scale partnerships for climate-resilient cotton. Uzbekistan has taken some of the steps Turkmenistan has not yet taken. Since 2017, Uzbekistan has reduced cotton cultivation area, shifted toward domestic textile processing, ended systemic state-imposed forced labor—though labor rights concerns remain in the sector—and invested in water-saving irrigation, precision agriculture, and climate-resilient cotton varieties.

  

French Guiana, Brazil

• Sea-level rise is already turning some high tides into flooding in French Guiana — In Cayenne, French Guiana, researchers examined a well-documented flood that occurred on October 16, 2020 on Serge Brown Street in the Village Chinois district, during calm high-tide conditions rather than during a storm-driven coastal flood. Field surveys and elevation data showed that the flooded area sits in a low-lying part of the city, below 1.70 meters in the local height reference system, and local reports indicated that seawater overflowed from the Leblond channel across a nearby section with a maximum elevation of 1.77 meters. By combining projected relative sea level with the probability distribution of daily maximum high-tide water levels, the researchers found that this flooding threshold could only have started being exceeded around 2007 because of sea-level rise. The flooding was not driven by unusual local sinking of the land. Sea level along French Guiana’s coast has risen at a rate close to the global average, and local land-motion measurements did not show significant subsidence near Cayenne.

  • The same analysis projected that chronic flooding will become more frequent and more widespread in Cayenne and Kourou as seas continue to rise. By 2050, the water level associated with a roughly once-per-year flooding event in 2020 could be exceeded more than 20 days per year in both cities. In Cayenne, areas around Village Chinois and along the Leblond channel are projected to face more frequent high-tide flooding by midcentury, while a larger low-lying urban area connected to the Laussat channel could be exposed more than 10 days per year if flood-control infrastructure does not hold.

  • Human-caused sea-level rise raises the baseline for coastal flooding from ordinary tides as well as storm-driven water levels. A 2026 global attribution study used tide-gauge records to estimate how much local sea-level rise could be traced to human-caused climate change, then recalculated daily extreme water-level exceedances after removing that attributable rise from observed records. The study found quantifiable human-caused sea-level rise at 97% of 519 tide-gauge sites. At the 279 stations with enough data to analyze daily exceedances, human-caused sea-level rise accounted for 58% of observed extreme water-level exceedances from 2000 to 2018, with an estimated range of 44–65%. The average station had 2.8 times more attributable exceedance days than it did from 1970 to 1989. Local flooding still depends on tides, land motion, ocean variability, storms, coastal defenses, and topography, but higher seas are already pushing more daily water levels over local thresholds.

• Climate-related disasters are affecting nearly all of Brazil — A 2025 analysis of disaster records from 1991 to 2023 counted 64,280 climate-related disasters across 5,117 Brazilian municipalities, or 92% of the country’s municipalities. More than 219 million people were affected through death, displacement, homelessness, or illness, including 78 million people in the last four years alone. The records show both the scale of exposure and the speed of change. Brazil averaged 725 climate-related disasters per year in the 1990s, compared with 4,077 per year in the current decade, a 460% increase. Droughts accounted for about half of the recorded disasters, while floods, torrential rains, and high-water events made up 27%, and storms made up 19%. The analysis also linked each 0.1°C rise in average global air temperature with 360 additional climate-related disaster records in Brazil and about R$5.6 billion in damages. Economic losses reached R$547.2 billion between 1995 and 2023, and the average annual loss since 2020 has been more than twice the previous decade’s average. Federal funding has moved in the opposite direction, with Brazil’s risk and disaster management budget falling by nearly R$200 million per year on average between 2012 and 2023. Recorded disasters, affected communities, and economic losses are rising while prevention, monitoring, risk mapping, alerts, and local adaptation planning need more support before emergencies reach communities.

  • Extreme heat belongs in that disaster-risk picture because it can kill people and strain health systems even when it does not leave the same visible damage as floods or storms. A Fiocruz and Federal University of Bahia analysis found that Brazil recorded 120,000 deaths associated with heat waves from 2000 to 2019, equal to 0.6% of all deaths during that period. Older adults accounted for most of the burden, with more than 97,000 deaths involving people age 65 or older. Cardiovascular and respiratory conditions were linked to 58,000 deaths, and the analysis also identified women and people with lower levels of education as more vulnerable. Heat waves were more frequent in the North and Center-West, while the most intense episodes, compared with local average temperatures, occurred in the South and Southeast. Hospital records through Brazil’s public health system showed respiratory diseases and urinary conditions as the most common heat-wave-related admissions, while gastroenteritis was the condition most associated with heat waves among children under 10. Stronger monitoring and warnings would help health systems focus on the people most likely to be harmed before heat waves translate into deaths and hospital visits.

• Coffee connects small-scale farmers in Brazil to a global market, and climate extremes are making that connection more unstable — In Minas Gerais, one of Brazil’s main coffee-growing states, small-scale Arabica farmers are dealing with heat, drought, frost, hail, irregular rain, and rising production costs at the same time global demand for coffee keeps growing. These hazards affect coffee at the stages that determine how much farmers can harvest and whether the beans are high enough quality to sell at a good price. In Poço Fundo, one organic farmer described a drought that brought 45 days without rain, and coffee leaves on his farm showed sunscald, a sign of heat stress on coffee plants. Other farmers described losses from hail, frost, cold winds, drought, and rain during flowering, including a 2021 hailstorm that destroyed most of one crop and a drought last year that reduced bean quality and cut coffee income. A 2024 study from Brazil’s Federal University of Itajubá found that, as warming and water stress intensify, 35–75% of the land currently planted with Arabica coffee in Brazil could become economically unviable by the end of the century. In Minas Gerais, longer droughts, stronger heat, and more irregular rainfall are affecting flowering and bean formation, putting both yields and quality at risk.

  • Farmers are already changing how they grow coffee, but the choices are being shaped by both climate risk and the market. Some are replacing older plants with Arabica varieties that are more productive and more resistant to water stress and disease. Others are planting trees, covering soil with grasses and legumes, installing protective nets, keeping native bees, or testing agroforestry systems that can shade coffee plants, reduce water stress, cushion crops from hail, and support pest control. But higher prices and the need for quick productivity gains are also pushing some farmers away from organic production. At Coopfam, a cooperative of nearly 500 family farmers, the number of organic members has fallen by almost 60% in two years, down to 75 farmers, and organic methods can raise production costs by up to 30%. Coffee prices have helped compensate some producers after bad harvests, but farmers still face higher costs for irrigation, replanting, soil management, and crop recovery.

  

South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho

• Drought, heat, storms, and disease are making sheep farming harder in South Africa’s Drakensberg grasslands — In the mountainous grasslands of the Eastern Cape, smallholder farmers often keep flocks of about 10 to 50 sheep for food, income, cultural practices, and household security. Families typically keep sheep near their homes overnight in simple kraals, then move them during the day onto shared rangelands where grazing depends on pasture conditions, seasonal rainfall, and local knowledge of weather and grazing conditions. Researchers working with 89 sheep farmers in Mabua, Tothaneng, and Madlangala found that drought and heatwaves were seen as the most severe climate hazards, while frost, heavy rainfall, floods, veld fires, and storms were also common concerns. These hazards do not arrive one at a time. Drought and poor rainfall reduce grass and shrubs, leaving sheep weaker, lighter, and more likely to die before pastures recover. Heavy rains and sudden weather changes were linked with parasites, foot rot, and other livestock diseases. Open kraals without roofs also left animals exposed during cold winters and storms, with farmers reporting lamb deaths, abortions, and lower flock productivity.

  • Farmers are already adapting, but the support available differs from village to village. Some are rotating grazing areas, resting parts of the veld so vegetation can recover, feeding sheep maize stalks and leftover crop material during dry or cold periods, choosing hardier indigenous or crossbred sheep, restoring eroded gullies, and sharing information about weather, disease, and livestock management. Many also rely on indigenous weather forecasting, using signs such as animal behavior, low-flying birds, shifting winds, and cloud build-up to prepare for changing conditions. Communities with stronger farmer associations were better able to organize grazing plans, share resources, and respond during feed shortages, while farmers in villages with fewer safety nets and less access to extension programmes had fewer options when drought or disease hit. The farmers identified practical needs including earlier warnings before extreme weather, veterinary support, better disease management, shelters on higher grazing grounds, reliable water points along grazing paths, and stronger community-based adaptation programmes.

• Drought, crop failure, and soil erosion are changing daily life in Lesotho — An Afrobarometer survey conducted in March 2024 found that large majorities of Basotho say drought, crop failure, and land degradation have worsened where they live. Ninety-one percent said drought has become more severe over the past 10 years, 87% said crop failures have become more severe, and 69% reported worsening land or soil erosion. Half said flooding has worsened. Those changes are already affecting work, food, water, and livestock. More than four in 10 Basotho said they had reduced outdoor work or changed working hours because of changing weather patterns, while 36% said they had changed the types of crops they plant or the foods they eat. One-third said they had reduced water use or changed water sources, and 30% said they had reduced livestock holdings or changed grazing patterns.

  • The reported impacts were not limited to one part of the country. Majorities across all four ecological zones reported worsening drought, crop failure, and land or soil erosion, with the foothills reporting especially high levels of worsening drought and crop failure, the Senqu River Valley standing out for water-use changes, and the mountains reporting the highest share of worsening flooding. Awareness of climate change was much lower than the lived experience of changing weather, with only 54% saying they had heard of climate change. Among those who had heard of it, 92% said it is making life in Lesotho worse, 77% said the government should act now even if action is costly, and more than nine in 10 said rich or developed countries should help Lesotho pay for adaptation and response measures.

  • On farms, those weather changes include drying rivers and streams, delayed rainfall, extreme frost or cold, low rainfall, strong winds, warmer temperatures, heavy snowfall, hailstorms, and flooding. A study of 200 food crop farmers across Lesotho linked those conditions with diminishing crop yields, lower-quality harvests, more pests and diseases, crop failure, and post-harvest losses. Many farmers were already using low-cost adaptation practices within their reach, including organic and inorganic fertilizers, soil conservation, fruit tree planting, mulching, composting, keyhole gardens, rainwater storage, changed planting calendars, improved seeds, ridges and trenches, and crop changes. Farmers are often adapting on their own while Lesotho’s national climate adaptation strategy has struggled to reach them, and some coping practices can create new environmental problems.

• Climate change is putting pressure on water, wildlife, and livelihoods in the Okavango Delta — Botswana’s Okavango Delta depends on seasonal water flowing from Angola through Namibia into the Kalahari, sustaining one of southern Africa’s richest wetland ecosystems and supporting communities that rely on farming, livestock, tourism, and traditional boat work. The Delta is home to more than 450 bird species and 130 mammal species, including elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, buffalo, wild dogs, and cheetahs. Local residents described less water than in the past, affecting the plants animals eat and the livelihoods tied to the Delta’s wildlife and wetlands. Warming trends in Botswana’s Okavango region over the past two decades have been about twice the global average, and future warming is expected to bring longer droughts. That loss of water threatens agriculture, livestock, tourism, and the freshwater systems that support both people and wildlife. More than 300 elephants died in Botswana in 2020, with authorities and researchers pointing to toxin-producing cyanobacteria in water sources as the likely cause. Dry conditions followed by unusually wet weather can support harmful algal blooms, and elephants may be especially exposed because they drink below the water’s surface and can draw up mud where toxins accumulate. Poaching was ruled out early because the elephants’ tusks were still intact.

  • The same prolonged dry period also strained livestock systems across southern Africa. In January 2020, Namibia’s state-owned meat processor was in talks with Botswana to import cattle after severe drought sharply reduced local herds. Dam levels in Namibia had fallen below 20%, and officials described the drought as the country’s worst in almost a century. The losses threatened Namibia’s beef export deals with China and European countries, including its annual exports of 10,000 metric tons of beef to the European Union. The same drought had pushed down dam levels in Zambia and Zimbabwe, contributing to power cuts, while parts of South Africa were drilling boreholes and trucking in water. In the Okavango Delta, drought and unusual shifts between dry and wet conditions were also linked to the water-quality changes involved in the 2020 elephant deaths.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Disease risks, shifting allergy seasons, stressed landscapes, dangerous indoor heat, and food insecurity are affecting public health, housing, ecosystems, and farming across Belgium, Germany, Austria, Mozambique, and Madagascar. In Belgium, warmer conditions are helping the Asian tiger mosquito gain ground farther north, raising concerns about future local spread of dengue, chikungunya, or Zika if warm weather overlaps with an infected traveler. In Germany, changing temperature and wind patterns are linked with hay fever among children in Freiburg, where warming could stretch allergy symptoms beyond the familiar spring season. In Mozambique, poor housing in Maputo’s informal settlements can turn outdoor heat into even more dangerous indoor exposure. And in northeast Madagascar, hotter, drier seasons are reducing the time farmers can work outside, drying water sources, and worsening food insecurity while many smallholder farmers lack the resources to adapt.1

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Belgium, Germany, Austria

• Climate change is helping a disease-carrying mosquito gain ground in Belgium — A 2025 study found that Belgium is becoming more suitable for Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito, an invasive mosquito that can transmit viral diseases, including dengue, chikungunya, and Zika. The species has been spreading northward across Europe since it first arrived in the late 1970s, carried by trade and transportation and helped by increasingly favorable climate conditions. Belgium sits near the current edge of the species’ range, where colder winters have historically made it harder for populations to survive year-round. But surveillance has shown more introductions in recent years, especially in Flanders, and the first overwintering populations were confirmed in 2023 in two Flemish municipalities, followed by three more sites in 2024. The study used a mosquito population model to test how likely the species is to establish itself permanently under different introduction scenarios, simulating eggs introduced at different times of summer, in different quantities, and through single or repeated arrivals. Establishment was more likely in Flanders and Brussels than in southern Belgium, largely because warmer local conditions gave populations a better chance of surviving the winter. Earlier introductions also raised the odds of establishment because mosquitoes had more time to reproduce before cold weather arrived, while repeated introductions increased the chance that at least some populations would take hold. Across the simulations, year-to-year temperature differences played the largest role in determining whether a population survived.

  • A permanently established tiger mosquito population would mean Belgium has to plan for mosquito-borne disease risks that have historically not been a local transmission concern. Compared with Mediterranean Europe, where warm seasons last long enough to support sustained local transmission, Belgium's risk today is narrower. Even with mosquitoes present, local spread of dengue, chikungunya, or Zika would still depend on warm enough conditions lining up with an infected traveler's arrival. Repeated arrivals from countries, such as France and Germany, where the species is already established, keep adding new chances for a population to take hold, and as summers warm, the stretches of weather capable of supporting transmission could last longer each year. The harder problem is what happens after a population survives its first few winters in the same place. Once that happens, eradication becomes far more difficult, and the public health question shifts from preventing introductions to managing a mosquito that is simply part of the landscape. Belgium's current monitoring relies heavily on catching new introductions early, through citizen reports and targeted treatment of breeding sites, but those tools work differently once a population is already established and reproducing successfully each year, which is part of why researchers describe the current moment as a meaningful decision point for how Belgium responds.

• Climate change could stretch hay fever into more of the year for children in Germany — A 2025 study examined how local climate conditions were associated with hay fever incidence among children and adolescents in Freiburg, one of Germany’s warmest urban areas. Hay fever is already common in Germany, affecting nearly 10% of children and adolescents, and it can disrupt everything from sleep to schoolwork to time outdoors. It also has longer-term health relevance because children with hay fever are more likely to develop asthma. The researchers used quarterly health insurance data from 2013 to 2021 for children and adolescents (ages 0–17) and compared it with local temperature, precipitation, wind speed, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and PM10. Temperature and wind speed showed the clearest relationships with hay fever incidence, while precipitation and the air pollutants did not show consistent significant associations in the Freiburg data. Hay fever incidence was highest at temperatures around 4–6°C and 10–17°C, ranges that line up with pollen from early-flowering trees (such as hazel and alder), mid-spring trees (such as ash and birch), and later-season plants (including grasses, rye, mugwort, and ragweed). Moderate wind also appeared to affect exposure, with incidence peaking around 2.0–2.1 m/s, likely because wind can lift and spread pollen that has already settled while stronger winds may carry more local pollen away.

  • The Freiburg data cannot identify the exact pollen type behind each diagnosis because the researchers did not have direct pollen measurements, and quarterly health records are too coarse to catch short spikes in exposure. Still, the pattern points to a timing problem. Warmer conditions can cause plants to flower earlier in the year while also stretching later-season pollen production, making allergy symptoms less confined to the familiar spring window. In Freiburg, average temperatures increased significantly in the third and fourth quarters from 2007 to 2021, and continued warming could push some tree pollen earlier while allowing grasses, mugwort, ragweed, and other later-season plants to keep producing pollen for longer. For children, that can mean more months of congestion, itchy eyes, disrupted sleep, missed school, and less time outside. It can also make allergies harder to recognize because symptoms outside the expected pollen season can look more like colds or flu. In that kind of climate, local pollen forecasts and environmental health advisories could help families and doctors understand why symptoms are showing up earlier, later, or more often than they used to.

• Austria’s landscapes provide more than scenery, and climate change could weaken many of the benefits people get from them — Across Austria, landscapes function like everyday infrastructure, supplying drinking water, food, timber, pollination, healthy soils, carbon storage, recreation, cultural heritage, and protection from natural hazards. Research published in 2024 mapped how rising temperatures and changing precipitation could affect 19 ecosystem services across Austria by the end of the century under a high-emissions scenario. Some warmer conditions could improve certain services in some places, including pasture and fodder production, some crop productivity, and certain plant or animal richness indicators. But those potential gains become much less secure when water availability is included. Higher temperatures increase evapotranspiration and can lengthen the growing season, meaning plants and soils can lose more water even in places where annual precipitation does not decline sharply. That pressure can move through the same landscapes people rely on for drinking water, farming, forests, recreation, tourism, and cultural identity. The clearest declines were tied to clean drinking water, prevention of water scarcity, timber production, forest vitality, water quality, habitats, and cultural services connected to recreation and landscape quality.

  • The effects were strongest in south-eastern Austria, including the Pannonian plains and hills, Southern Alpine foothills, Central Alps southeast, and Klagenfurt Basin, where the analysis found the largest number of negatively affected ecosystem services. Western and northern mountain regions generally showed fewer declines, though the results still varied by land cover, elevation, and regional climate patterns. Water-related services stood out because warmer conditions can reduce usable water even where precipitation changes are modest, linking climate change to the reliability of drinking water, agriculture, forests, and downstream communities. Cultural services were also vulnerable, including outdoor recreation, aesthetic inspiration, attractive living spaces, cultural heritage, and people’s experience of plants and animals. Those losses can come from lower water quality, stressed forests, habitat shifts, glacier loss, reduced landscape beauty, and changes in how agriculture and forestry respond to warming, affecting the same landscapes people depend on for water, food, livelihoods, tourism, and a sense of place.

  

Madagascar, Mozambique

• In Maputo’s informal settlements, poor housing can make extreme heat worse indoors — Researchers measured indoor temperature and humidity in five homes in Mafalala, a historic informal settlement in Mozambique’s capital, during both the cool season in July 2023 and the hot season in November 2023. Heat is already a growing health concern in Mozambique, where hot days and hot nights have become more common, and Maputo has recorded repeated heatwaves in recent decades. During one heatwave weekend, Maputo’s main hospital reported more than 950 admissions for heat-related disorders. In Mafalala, where homes are often built with concrete blocks, galvanized steel roofs, limited insulation, weak ventilation, and little space between buildings, outdoor heat can become even more dangerous inside. During the November hot spell, outdoor temperatures reached nearly 40°C, but several homes were even hotter indoors. Median indoor temperatures were above 30°C in nearly all monitored dwellings, more than a quarter of measurements exceeded 33°C in several homes, and one concrete-block dwelling reached 43.5°C. The home built entirely from galvanized steel sheets had the most extreme conditions, with more than a quarter of measurements above 39°C and indoor temperatures reaching 49°C on November 23 and 24.

  • How long and how intensely people were exposed came down largely to what their homes were built from. Concrete-block homes had more thermal stability than the steel-sheet home, but they still overheated because steel roofs, missing ceilings, poor insulation, enclosed courtyards, and limited ventilation kept heat inside. In November, indoor temperatures were often 4–8°C warmer than outdoors, while the steel-sheet home reached as much as 12°C above outdoor temperatures between morning and midday. Heat also persisted after sunset, when the body normally needs relief from daytime exposure. Most homes stayed 3–5°C warmer than outdoors at night, and residents experienced indoor discomfort for more than half of the monitoring period. During the hot-season campaign, indoor conditions exceeded acceptable comfort limits 50–80% of the time, strong or extreme heat stress occurred for more than one-third of the period, and the steel-sheet home reached extreme heat stress for 27% of the monitoring period. In that dwelling, heat stress was already severe early in the day, with physiological equivalent temperature reaching 35°C by 7 AM and exceeding 41°C by 8 AM. Those estimates may still understate the stress in the steel-sheet home because uninsulated metal walls and roofing can radiate additional heat indoors during the day, and the monitored homes had no artificial ventilation systems to help residents cool the space.

• Hotter, drier seasons are making it harder for smallholder farmers in northeast Madagascar to keep food on the table — In the SAVA region, where many families rely on rain-fed agriculture, subsistence crops, and cash crops such as vanilla, cloves, coffee, and cocoa, researchers surveyed 479 farmers in two rural villages near Marojejy National Park about changing temperature, rainfall, food security, health, and farming practices. Nearly all participants said the past five years had become warmer and drier, with 94% reporting higher temperatures and 91% reporting less rainfall. Three quarters of respondents said natural water points had dried up, 75% had reduced outdoor work because of extreme heat, and 85% had reduced outdoor work because of extreme rain. For families who depend directly on farm labor and rain-fed crops, those shifts mean fewer workable days, less reliable water, more pressure on harvests, and a smaller buffer before a bad season becomes a food crisis. Food insecurity was already widespread, with 87% saying there had been times in the previous three years when their household did not have enough food. Most also expected conditions to get worse, with 57% expecting “much less food” and another 35% expecting “somewhat less food” for their families because of changing rainfall and temperature. Many also described changes around them that touch both food and health, including fewer wild plants and animals and more rodents and mosquitoes around villages and fields.

  • Many farmers knew conditions were changing, but far fewer had been able to change how they farm. Only 21% of participants reported adopting new practices to maintain or improve crop yields. Among those who had adapted, the most common changes were using organic fertilizer, mulching, and changing the cropping calendar. Much smaller shares reported fallowing, crop rotation, cover crops, agroforestry, mixed cropping, or growing crops in the off season. Other responses were about getting through shortages rather than making farms more resilient. Some farmers borrowed from others in their community, sold livestock, foraged, reduced the number of meals, or left home temporarily or permanently after crop losses or extreme weather. The farmers most likely to adapt were not simply the most experienced. Men had more than twice the odds of reporting a farming adaptation compared with women, and farmers who owned more durable goods also had higher odds of adapting. Farmers in Sarahandrano had much lower odds of adaptation than farmers in Mandena, where access to Marojejy National Park brings more opportunities for ecotourism and conservation-related income. For families already facing less rain, hotter workdays, dried water sources, crop damage, more mosquitoes, and shrinking food supplies, adaptation depends on having enough money, materials, information, and local opportunity to do something about it.

Peru, Bolivia

• Climate change is threatening both the quantity and quality of freshwater resources in the Peruvian Highlands — The Andes mountain range contains approximately 99% of the world’s tropical glaciers, a unique class of high-elevation glaciers found near the equator that are highly sensitive to temperature fluctuations and El Niño-related climate variability. Of these, ~71% are located in Peru, where human-caused climate change is driving the retreat of these critical frozen freshwater resources, threatening both drinking water availability and ecosystem stability. Recent research indicates that between 1962 and 2018, Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the largest tropical glacier range in the world, lost approximately 275 km² or 38% of its total glacier cover. Unlike their alpine counterparts, which are shaped by distinct seasonal freeze–thaw cycles, tropical glaciers experience year-round melt conditions, with accumulation depending largely on localized precipitation rather than extended winter snow storage. In the high Andes, these glaciers sit close to the atmospheric freezing level, thus even small increases in temperature can raise the rain–snow line. When precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, glacial mass declines, while the darkening of highly reflective snow cover reduces albedo, further accelerating ice melt. Widely recognized as a driver of future water scarcity, glacier retreat also poses a less-frequently discussed, but serious public health threat—by altering the chemistry of mountain watersheds and increasing the risk of heavy metal contamination in downstream water supplies. For thousands of years, glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca acted as a natural barrier, sealing sulfide-rich rocks from exposure to surrounding air and water. However, as climate change drives glacier retreat, these rocks are increasingly exposed to oxygen and precipitation, triggering oxidation reactions that generate sulfuric acid, a highly corrosive mineral acid. This process, known as acid rock drainage (ARD), produces acidic runoff capable of dissolving and mobilizing heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, nickel, chromium, zinc, and manganese. These contaminants are then transported into glacier-fed rivers, lakes, and groundwater systems that supply drinking water to downstream communities—a process already occurring throughout the region. In 2023, researchers identified approximately 60 highly acidic alpine lakes in the Cordillera Blanca, while some glacier-fed rivers have recorded pH values as low as 3.5–3.8, comparable to vinegar. Government scientists have documented acid rock drainage (ARD) in multiple valleys, directly linking glacier retreat to declining water quality. As glaciers continue to shrink, the amount of exposed sulfide-bearing rock is expected to increase, potentially expanding both the scale and duration of contamination.

  • The health implications of this climate-driven heavy metal contamination are significant, particularly for families and communities that rely on untreated or minimally treated water supplies. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), arsenic, cadmium, nickel compounds, and hexavalent chromium are classified as known human carcinogens, and lead is classified as a probable human carcinogen. Chronic exposure through drinking water can result in the gradual accumulation of these metals in the body, where they contribute to oxidative stress, DNA damage, inflammation, and other biological processes associated with cancer development. Long-term exposure has been linked to increased risks of breast, kidney, stomach, skin, lung, and urinary tract cancers, as well as adverse reproductive outcomes, including increased risk of pre-term birth.

  • Water security concerns are already emerging in the region. Huaraz, the capital of Peru’s Áncash Region and home to approximately 150,000 people, has reportedly abandoned two watersheds previously used for drinking water due to unsafe levels of heavy metal concentrations. Scientists have also detected acid rock drainage (ARD) near Lake Palcacocha, an important freshwater source connected to the city’s water supply. For rural communities, the risks are often even more immediate. Many households depend directly on mountain streams for drinking water, cooking, irrigation, and livestock. As heavy metals move downstream, exposure can occur through multiple pathways, including contaminated water, crops, and animal products. Farmers have reported reduced crop yields where acidic runoff is used for irrigation, while livestock consuming contaminated water have experienced illness and mortality.

• Climate change is emerging as a driver of violence against women and girls (VAWG) by intensifying the social and economic pressures that fuel gender-based harm — Intimate partner violence (IPV) is already one of the most widespread forms of violence against women worldwide, affecting an estimated 245 million women each year—nearly 10% of all women and girls aged 15 and older. More broadly, more than one billion women have experienced physical, sexual, or psychological violence in their lifetime—a statistic widely considered a gross underestimate due to persistent underreporting. Only about 40% of survivors tell someone they trust, and just 7% report abuse to formal services such as police or healthcare providers. A growing body of research shows that climate change increases the risk of VAWG by exacting additional strain on already vulnerable households and communities. An April 2025 UN report explores how climate-related shocks (including floods, droughts, forced migration, and food insecurity) can increase both the frequency and severity of gender-based violence, particularly in communities already facing poverty and limited access to resources. And rising temperatures add another layer of risk. Studies suggest that every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in global temperature is associated with a 4.7% rise in intimate partner violence (IPV), with projections estimating that nearly 40 million additional women and girls could experience IPV annually under 2°C (3.6°F) of warming by 2090. One explanation is the temperature-aggression theory, or heat hypothesis, which holds that exposure to extreme heat increases irritability, hostility, and aggressive behavior. Decades of research have linked higher temperatures to increased rates of interpersonal conflict, violent crime, road rage, and domestic abuse. Climate change impacts can also elevate violence through indirect methods by disrupting livelihoods, increasing financial insecurity, and weakening the social networks and support systems that help protect women. At the same time, climate-related disasters can damage critical infrastructure (including healthcare facilities, transportation systems, shelters, and communication networks) making it more difficult for survivors to access support services, report violence, or seek protection.

  • These dynamics are evident in Bolivia, where climate variability interacts with geography, livelihoods, and existing inequalities to increase risks for women and girls. Recent research found that in Bolivia’s tropical lowlands, an additional ten days of extreme cold (below 21°C) increases intimate partner violence (IPV) by 3.6%, while ten additional days of extreme heat (33°C or higher) increase IPV by 2.2%. Given that roughly one in four partnered women in Bolivia already experiences violence, these changes represent increases of approximately 16% and 10%, respectively.

  • The burden, however, is not shared equally. Women in rural farming communities and low-income urban households face the greatest risks in that their livelihoods are highly vulnerable to extreme climate events. In rural and Indigenous communities, cold surazos can destroy crops, reduce agricultural income, and deepen household financial stress. As economic pressures mount, women often become more financially dependent while rising alcohol consumption increase the risk of violence at home. In urban areas, extreme heat disproportionately affects poor women by disrupting informal employment, reducing household income, and increasing psychological stress within already strained living conditions.

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Extreme heat, warming waters, shifting ecosystems, and disease risks are affecting sports, food systems, public health, and health care across the areas featured here. When the 2026 World Cup kicks off across Mexico, the United States, and Canada, hotter conditions could affect players, fans, and workers in and around open-air stadiums. Farther north, warming waters are increasing food-safety and market risks for Atlantic Canada’s oyster industry and changing the algae that support fish in some of Canada’s largest cold lakes. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, climate change can increase Ebola spillover risk as conflict, displacement, and strained health systems make outbreaks harder to contain. And in Kuwait and Türkiye, extreme heat and changing health risks are adding pressure to workers, nurses, medical training, and patient care.

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Mexico, United States, Canada

• Climate change is increasing the chance that World Cup players will face heat that can slow the pace of play — The 2026 World Cup will be played across Mexico, the United States, and Canada from June 11 to July 19, bringing 104 matches to 16 host cities during the hottest part of the year for many venues. That means heat can affect both competition and safety. A new analysis from Climate Central1 found that human-caused warming is increasing the likelihood of performance-impairing heat during 97 of the 104 scheduled matches, with nearly half of all matches facing at least a 50% chance of temperatures linked to reduced player performance. In 26 matches, climate change raises that likelihood by at least 10 percentage points. The largest climate-driven increase is projected for the June 26 match in Guadalajara between Uruguay and Spain, where the chance of performance-impairing heat is 70%, or 37 percentage points higher because of climate change. The final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey also has a 47% chance of performance-impairing heat, about 17 percentage points higher because of climate change. Those risks will not be evenly distributed across the tournament. According to the data explorer, some matches in northern, coastal, or climate-controlled venues will face milder conditions, while open-air stadiums in hotter cities can expose players to heat that lingers into the evening even after the daily temperature has peaked. Organizers are already adjusting to rising heat risks with more evening matches in hotter cities and mandatory hydration breaks, but the tournament still depends heavily on outdoor venues where match timing, local climate, humidity, and stadium design can all shape how hard it is for players to sustain speed, pressure, and recovery over 90 minutes.

  • The threshold comes from research on players during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where physical activity changed under different combinations of air temperature and humidity. Football depends on repeated bursts of speed, high-intensity running, recovery, and decision-making under fatigue. In the 2014 data, hotter match conditions were linked with fewer sprints and less high-intensity movement, especially when temperatures rose above 28°C under lower-humidity conditions, while heat stress can affect concentration, movement precision, dehydration, and the body’s ability to cool itself. For teams that rely on pressing, quick transitions, repeated sprinting, or high attacking pace, hotter match conditions can shape more than comfort. They can affect how much ground players cover, how often they can accelerate, when coaches make substitutions, and whether teams have to conserve energy instead of playing at full intensity.

  • Player performance is only one part of the heat risk. Humid heat can make the same air temperature more dangerous because the body cools itself less effectively when sweat does not evaporate well. World Weather Attribution analyzed World Cup heat risk using Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, a measure that combines temperature, humidity, sun, and wind to better reflect heat stress during outdoor activity. FIFPRO recommends cooling breaks when WBGT reaches 26°C and says play should be delayed or postponed at 28°C, while current FIFA rules use a much higher postponement threshold. WWA found that more matches are expected to reach those humid-heat thresholds in 2026 than during the last U.S.-hosted World Cup in 1994, and that human-caused climate change has made dangerous WBGT conditions more likely. Players may be the most visible people exposed on the field, but fans, stadium workers, volunteers, security staff, and people gathering at outdoor watch parties can also face heat risk, especially in open-air venues and crowded public spaces. Air-conditioned stadiums can reduce exposure inside some venues, but they do not protect people traveling to matches, waiting outside, celebrating in streets, or watching games at outdoor events.

• Warming waters are adding another threat to Atlantic Canada’s oyster industry — Oyster farmers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island are already dealing with MSX and Dermo, two diseases that can slow oyster growth and increase mortality. Now, warmer waters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are making a food-safety risk more common. A new study from Mount Allison University and the federal government found that Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a foodborne bacterium that can survive in shellfish during warm seasons, has become more prevalent over the last 25 years as the region’s waters have warmed. The bacteria does not harm oysters the way MSX and Dermo do, but it can make people sick if contaminated oysters are eaten raw, causing symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal cramps, chills, vomiting, and low-grade fever. Researchers compared Canadian Food Inspection Agency oyster-testing data from 2017 to 2023 with water conditions going back 25 years and found that oysters in 2023 were up to 10% more likely to fail a food inspection quality test for Vibrio than they were in 1998.

  • Diseased oysters can reduce supply in the water, while Vibrio can force closures or keep harvested oysters from reaching the market during the same warm-season window when demand is high. Federal monitoring has helped prevent contaminated oysters from being sold, but warmer water means farmers may face more interruptions, more testing pressure, and more financial risk as they try to keep seafood safe. Because Vibrio is a food-safety problem rather than a disease that kills oysters, warming waters create pressure at a different point in the supply chain. Oysters may be alive and harvestable, but testing, closures, and market restrictions can still keep them from being sold. For farmers, that means climate change can affect income even when the oysters themselves survive.

• Climate change is changing the algae that support fish in some of Canada’s largest northern lakes — Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, and Lake Hazen are large, deep, cold lakes that were long buffered from rapid ecological change by their size and long periods of ice cover. That buffer is weakening as northern Canada warms. A 2026 study of lake sediment records found that all three lakes have undergone rapid changes in algal communities over the past few decades, after remaining relatively stable for much of the last century. Shorter ice-cover periods, warmer air temperatures, and declining wind speeds are changing the light, mixing, nutrients, and growing-season conditions that shape life in the water. Small planktonic diatoms that live in open water are becoming more common, while older algae communities have declined, including benthic algae in Great Bear Lake and Lake Hazen and large filamentous diatoms in Great Slave Lake.

  • More open-water algal production does not automatically mean more useful food for fish if the algae replacing older communities are smaller, less nutritious, or harder for zooplankton and other grazers to eat. In Great Bear Lake, phytoplankton help move energy through the food web to zooplankton, Cisco, and Lake Trout. Great Slave Lake supports commercial, recreational, and Indigenous fisheries, while Great Bear Lake is central to the culture and food systems of the Sahtúot’ine of Délınę. Lake Hazen has a simpler food web, but climate change is already making conditions harder for Arctic Char by lengthening ice-free periods, increasing glacial runoff, and adding turbidity that can make prey harder to see. The full effects on fish are still unfolding, but the lakes are no longer responding slowly or only at the surface. Warming is changing the organisms that feed the food web, and those changes can move upward toward the fish and northern communities that depend on them.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda

• Climate change is driving ecosystem shifts and increasing Ebola spillover risk — Ebola virus disease (EVD) is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. First identified in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ebola causes severe symptoms including high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and organ failure, and in severe cases hemorrhaging. Fatality rates range from about 50% to 90%, depending on the viral strain and access to timely medical care. Although outbreaks are typically localized, transmission through direct contact with infected bodily fluids can allow rapid spread within communities, quickly overwhelming fragile healthcare systems and triggering widespread social and economic disruption. Several species of Old World fruit bats (family Pteropodidae) are thought to serve as natural reservoirs or amplifying hosts for Ebola virus. Zoonotic diseases, transmitted between animals and humans, account for more than 60% of emerging human infectious diseases. Although direct evidence is limited, these bats are widely regarded as the most likely source of Ebola “spillover” into humans. Human–bat interactions are common across Ebola-endemic regions of Central and West Africa, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Uganda, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Activities such as bushmeat hunting, fruit harvesting, and agricultural expansion increase spillover risk, a pressure now intensified by climate change. Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, prolonged droughts, deforestation, and habitat degradation are transforming ecosystems across Central and West Africa. As natural food sources become less reliable, fruit bats travel farther and increasingly come into contact with farms and human settlements, increasing opportunities for human–wildlife interaction. These ecological changes can influence Ebola spillover dynamics by altering wildlife behavior and movement patterns, particularly when episodes of heavy rainfall are followed by drought. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, such environmental pressures are compounded by poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement, and weak public health infrastructure, creating conditions that can make outbreaks more likely and harder to contain.

  • Recent research published in Nature Communications suggests that climate change could significantly expand Ebola risk, with rising greenhouse gas emissions and warming temperatures potentially increasing the epidemic-prone area of West and Central Africa by up to 33% and expanding suitable conditions for spillover by nearly 15%, potentially exposing millions more people to future outbreaks.

• Women disproportionately impacted by Ebola transmission dynamics in the DRC — Early data from Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) show a clear gendered pattern of infection, with women accounting for roughly two-thirds of cases in some outbreaks, including the 2018–2019 epidemic, and up to three-quarters of deaths in parts of the 2014 Liberia outbreak. This disproportionate burden reflects the social roles women occupy as caregivers, healthcare workers, birth attendants, and traditional healers across Central and West Africa. Ebola transmission follows these social structures, spreading through caregiving, domestic labor, frontline health work, and burial practices. Women are often responsible for washing and caring for sick relatives without protective equipment and for preparing bodies for burial, placing them at heightened risk of exposure. Rigid gender norms reinforce these dynamics, while reliance on health services for prenatal and postnatal care can further increase exposure, with UN Women warning of elevated risks to maternal and neonatal health during outbreaks. The current Ebola outbreak caused by Bundibugyo virus further illustrates these intersecting vulnerabilities. As of June 7th, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported 515 confirmed cases and 91 confirmed deaths, including 134 new cases and 27 new deaths since the previous update on June 5th, with 283 patients currently isolated in hospital care. The outbreak is most concentrated in Ituri province, which accounts for 487 cases across 17 health zones. Uganda has also reported 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths, with most linked to travel from the DRC, highlighting ongoing cross-border transmission. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern. The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola currently has no specifically approved treatment or vaccine.

  • Containment efforts remain severely challenged by overlapping diagnostic, political, and structural constraints. The Bundibugyo virus is not reliably detected by some field diagnostic tests, requiring samples to be transported long distances to specialized laboratories and causing delays of days or weeks. This lag ultimately leads to inefficient contact tracing and allows for transmission to persist undetected. Response efforts are further hindered by ongoing armed conflict in eastern DRC, which has driven displacement, restricted access to affected communities, and undermined trust in health authorities.

  • At the same time, major reductions in international humanitarian assistance since 2025 have weakened outbreak response capacity, including significant Trump administration-led cuts in U.S. foreign aid from approximately $1.4 billion in 2024 to $146 million in 2026—a near 90% decrease. These extreme reductions have constrained access to testing supplies, laboratory services, personal protective equipment, and trained response teams. Together, these compounding factors reduce surveillance capacity, delay diagnosis, and increase the likelihood that localized outbreaks will escalate into wider regional transmission.

Kuwait, Türkiye

• Extreme heat is expected to increase deaths in Kuwait, with migrant workers facing the greatest risk — Kuwait is already one of the hottest countries in the world, with temperatures above 50°C recorded in recent years and a 54°C reading measured in Mitribah in 2016. Kuwait’s extreme heat risk falls especially hard on people who cannot easily get out of the heat. About two-thirds of Kuwait’s population are non-Kuwaiti migrant workers, many from Arab, South Asian, and Southeast Asian countries, and many work outdoors or in hazardous jobs where heat exposure can be difficult to avoid. Previous research in Kuwait has linked extreme temperatures to a doubling or tripling of mortality risk, with unacclimatized migrant workers and people with cardiovascular disease among those at highest risk. A 2022 analysis projected how climate change could affect heat-related mortality in Kuwait later this century. Under a high-emissions scenario, Kuwait’s average temperature could rise by about 5.5°C by the end of the century compared with the early 2000s, pushing an already extreme climate farther into dangerous heat.

  • Heat-related mortality is projected to rise by 5.1% by the end of the century under the moderate scenario and 11.7% under the high-emissions scenario, while non-Kuwaiti residents could see a 15.1% increase in heat-related mortality under the high-emissions scenario. The study also estimated that by the end of the century, as many as 13.6 out of every 100 deaths in Kuwait could be attributable to climate-driven heat under the high-emissions pathway. Older adults, people with cardiovascular disease, and non-Kuwaiti residents showed significant increases in projected heat-related mortality, reflecting how heat risk falls hardest on people whose health, work, or housing conditions make it harder to avoid extreme temperatures. Migrant workers are especially exposed because many work long hours outdoors in extreme heat, often in jobs where avoiding heat is not fully under their control. The analysis assumed no future adaptation and held population structure constant, but Kuwait did not show the kind of flattening in the heat-mortality relationship seen in some U.S. cities. In more recent years of the Kuwait data, the heat-mortality curve was steeper, suggesting that deaths linked to extreme temperatures may be rising rather than easing over time. As Kuwait gets hotter, the added mortality burden is expected to fall most heavily on people already exposed by age, cardiovascular disease, or outdoor work.

• Climate change is adding emotional and professional strain for nurses in Türkiye — Nurses are expected to help patients and communities respond to the health effects of climate change, but they are also carrying their own concerns about what those changes mean. A 2024 study of nurses at a university hospital in Türkiye found high levels of climate change worry, along with high levels of hope about preventing climate change. Among the 190 nurses surveyed, older nurses reported slightly higher levels of both worry and hope, and nurses who worried more about climate change also tended to report more hope rather than despair or withdrawal. Nurses are already dealing with the health consequences of a changing climate through their daily work, while also being expected to educate patients, prepare vulnerable groups, support mental health, and respond to health needs after extreme weather. Nurses may still feel motivated to act, but the concern itself can add to an already demanding job. Without institutional support, that worry can become another strain layered onto the work they are being asked to do.

  • Training is another part of that health workforce gap. A 2025 study of 622 medical students at a Turkish medical school found meaningful gaps in knowledge about skin cancer and the ways climate change affects skin health. Most students understood that UV exposure causes skin cancer, and about three-quarters acknowledged a link between climate change and rising skin cancer risk. But specific knowledge was considerably weaker. Only about a third correctly identified melanoma as the deadliest form of skin cancer, fewer than a fifth correctly named basal cell carcinoma as the most common type, and just over a third knew what sun protection factor actually measures. The gap between knowing and doing was also apparent. Nearly all students identified the most dangerous hours for sun exposure, but only about half reported avoiding that window, and almost two-thirds had experienced at least one sunburn. Female students scored higher on both knowledge scales and reported more sun-protective behaviors, though they also reported higher rates of sunburn. The study was conducted at a single institution using convenience sampling, which limits how broadly the findings apply, though the authors note that Türkiye’s standardized national medical curriculum makes some wider inference reasonable. As climate change affects UV exposure and skin-health risks, future clinicians who do not fully understand that connection may be less prepared to counsel patients on prevention.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

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At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Dust storms, disappearing ice, disrupted fieldwork, flood losses, and changing ocean conditions are shaping climate risks across the areas featured here. In Mali, Mauritania, and Algeria, hotter and drier conditions are helping intensify dust storms that can disrupt transportation, worsen air quality, damage economies, and increase disease risks across the Sahara and Sahel. In Indonesia and Malaysia, climate change is accelerating the loss of Papua’s last tropical glaciers, adding pressure to children’s nutrition, and exposing gaps in flood insurance as disasters become more costly. Farther north, communities and researchers in Svalbard, Norway, and the Faroe Islands are dealing with earlier snowmelt, stronger storms, changing village routines, and ocean temperatures that could complicate aquaculture. Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) shows unusual heat across these areas this week, alongside climate risks already affecting ice, health, food systems, infrastructure, and local economies in these places.

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Mali, Mauritania, Algeria

• Climate change is intensifying dust storms and amplifying their impacts across North and West Africa — In late March 2026, an intense dust storm developed over southern Algeria, disrupting trans-Saharan transport routes and choking air quality across North and West Africa. The haboob swept through Mali and Mauritania before extending westward toward the Atlantic, creating a 2,000-kilometer (1,240-mile) “tsunami of dust” that ultimately reached Spain’s Canary Islands. Visible from space, the immense wall of dust engulfed towns and cities across the Sahara, turning skies an eerie orange and reducing visibilities to near-zero. The event underscored the vulnerability of millions of people in Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania to increasingly severe dust storms driven by climate change, land degradation, and desertification. While such storms are a natural feature of arid environments, human-caused climate change is increasing their frequency, intensity, and geographic reach. Rising temperatures accelerate evapotranspiration, drying soils and reducing the vegetation that helps stabilize desert landscapes. At the same time, more frequent and prolonged droughts are leaving vast areas of North Africa and the Sahel exposed to wind erosion. Human land-use pressures are also compounding the risk. Overgrazing, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and excessive groundwater extraction are accelerating land degradation across Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania. As vegetation cover declines and soils become exposed, powerful winds (often the Harmattan in northern Africa) can lift enormous quantities of sand and dust into the atmosphere, generating storms capable of traveling thousands of kilometers beyond their point of origin.

  • Home to vast expanses of the Sahara Desert, Algeria is one of the world’s largest sources of atmospheric dust. Dust particles play a crucial role in the Earth’s climate system, acting as aerosols that influence cloud formation, rainfall patterns, atmospheric circulation, and the amount of solar radiation reaching the planet’s surface. Yet climate-driven drought and advancing desertification are leaving increasing quantities of loose sediment exposed, creating ideal conditions for large-scale dust mobilization and the formation of powerful haboobs. Each year, roughly two billion tonnes of sand and dust are lifted into the atmosphere, with more than 80% originating from the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. In some regions, atmospheric dust concentrations have doubled over the past century, the economic costs of which are often underestimated. Severe dust storms can shut down roads and airports, disrupt trade and supply chains, damage infrastructure and machinery, reduce agricultural productivity, and diminish solar energy output. For countries such as Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania, where transport networks, agriculture, and other climate-sensitive sectors are central to economic development, the consequences can be significant.

• As dust storms intensify, disease risks are rising across the Sahara and Sahel — When major dust storms sweep across North and West Africa, they transport more than sand and dust. They can also carry particulate matter and microorganisms that pose significant risks to human health. The massive haboob that formed in southern Algeria in March 2026 before sweeping through Mali and Mauritania has drawn attention to the relationship between dust storms, infectious disease, and climate change. Dust particles account for roughly 40% of aerosols in the lower atmosphere, and their size helps determine how harmful they can be to human health. Larger dust particles can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat, while finer particles (often more than 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair) can penetrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream. These microscopic particles, known as PM2.5, have been linked to a wide range of health problems, including asthma, pneumonia, stroke, cardiovascular disease, adverse birth outcomes, and premature death. In 2019, long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollution contributed to an estimated 4.14 million deaths worldwide, accounting for approximately 62% of all air pollution-related mortality. That year, more than 19,770 deaths were attributed to PM2.5 exposure in Algeria alone. Globally, the number of deaths linked to ambient PM2.5 increased by about 23% between 2009 and 2019. And now, scientists are increasingly concerned that dust storms also act as biological transport systems, carrying bacteria, fungi, pollen, and other microorganisms across vast distances.

  • As climate change intensifies drought and desertification across Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania, a growing body of research suggests that expanding dust activity could influence the spread of infectious diseases. One of the clearest examples is meningococcal meningitis. The African Meningitis Belt stretches from Senegal to Ethiopia and encompasses much of the Sahel. Mali lies within this high-risk zone and has experienced recurrent outbreaks of cerebrospinal meningitis (often called spinal meningitis) caused primarily by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis. Outbreaks typically peak during the dry season, when dusty winds, low humidity, and respiratory infections combine to damage the protective lining of the nose and throat. Studies have repeatedly linked severe dust conditions to meningitis epidemics across the Sahel. Dust-laden air weakens respiratory defenses and may create conditions that contribute to disease transmission. Meningococcal disease remains one of the world’s most dangerous infectious illnesses. If untreated, it can kill within hours, while many survivors experience lifelong disabilities, including hearing loss, neurological damage, and limb amputations. Although large-scale vaccination campaigns, including the introduction of the MenAfriVac vaccine, have dramatically reduced major epidemics, meningitis continues to pose a public health challenge, particularly in remote communities where access to healthcare can be extremely limited.

  • Dust storms may also facilitate the spread of fungal diseases. Dust clouds can contain enormous numbers of fungal spores capable of traveling thousands of kilometers. In the United States, dust storms have become increasingly associated with Valley Fever, a respiratory disease caused by Coccidioides fungi found in arid soils. Although this pathogen does not occur naturally in Africa, it demonstrates how environmental disturbances can transform dust storms into effective carriers of disease-causing organisms. Scientists are now examining whether changing climatic conditions and increased dust transport could influence the distribution of other fungal pathogens across Africa. One organism drawing particular attention is Cryptococcus neoformans, a fungus commonly found in soil and bird droppings that can cause cryptococcal meningitis, a severe and often fatal infection affecting the brain and spinal cord.

Indonesia, Malaysia

• Papua’s last tropical glaciers are close to disappearing as climate change accelerates melting — The remaining glaciers on Puncak Jaya in West Papua, Indonesia, sit above dense rainforest and are known locally as “eternal snow,” but that name is becoming less accurate as the ice rapidly disappears. An expedition to the remote mountain found that the largest remaining glacier has lost about 95% of its area since 2002, leaving only a small remnant of ice where much larger tropical ice sheets once survived. Tropical glaciers are rare, with most found in the Andes and smaller remnants in East Africa and Indonesia, and they are especially vulnerable because they exist near the temperature limits that allow ice to persist. As fossil fuel pollution warms the planet, the remaining ice is melting fast enough that researchers and expedition teams now expect it to vanish within years, not decades. The loss is environmental, but it is also cultural and historical. Their disappearance would remove a feature that has long been part of Papua’s high-mountain landscape. Their local name, “eternal snow,” shows how the ice has been understood as a lasting presence, making its disappearance harder to reduce to a change in glacier area alone. The expedition used drones and satellite positioning systems to build a 3D record of the glaciers before they disappear, partly because cloud cover, heavy rain, steep terrain, and security constraints make the site difficult to study. That record may become one of the last detailed visual archives of ice that survived for thousands of years but is now being erased within a human lifetime.

  • A 2026 satellite study shows how quickly the ice has disappeared. Papua’s tropical glaciers lost about 97% of their ice cover between 1980 and 2024, shrinking from 7.46 square kilometers to just 0.19 square kilometers. Four of the six glaciers identified in the study have already disappeared, leaving only the Carstensz Glacier and the East Northwall Firn Glacier. The remaining ice is projected to disappear around the end of this decade, with the East Northwall Firn Glacier expected to vanish by 2028–2029 and the Carstensz Glacier by 2029–2030.

• Climate change is making it harder to protect children’s nutrition in Indonesia — Children in Indonesia already face high rates of stunting, wasting, poor diets, and food insecurity, and climate change is adding pressure through food, disease, income, and caregiving pathways. Delayed monsoons, drought, flooding, higher temperatures, and extreme weather can reduce rice harvests, damage crops, weaken livestock production, disrupt fisheries, and make nutritious foods harder for families to afford. Those shocks can push households to skip meals, spend a larger share of income on food, or replace fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables with cheaper, less nutritious options. Children are affected quickly because growth, immune function, learning, and long-term health depend on steady access to enough diverse food during early life. Climate change can also increase disease risks that worsen nutrition. Flooding and damaged water systems can raise the risk of diarrhoeal disease, which makes it harder for children to absorb nutrients, while shifting temperature, rainfall, and humidity patterns can affect dengue, malaria, and other infections that drain household resources and weaken health. Higher temperatures also affect adults working outdoors, reducing safe working hours and productivity in ways that cut family income at the same time that children's food and health needs increase.

  • These pressures can also carry into children’s schooling and development. Children exposed to a climate-linked coral bleaching event were more likely to be severely stunted two years later and more likely to fall behind in school years after the shock. Food, income, disease risk, and caregiving pressures can affect children long after the immediate shock, including their growth, school progress, and long-term health.

• Climate change is exposing gaps in Malaysia’s flood insurance system as disasters become more costly and harder to predict — Flooding is already one of Malaysia’s clearest climate-related financial risks, and a 2026 working paper from the Khazanah Research Institute argues that insurance may need to become part of the country’s adaptation strategy, not just a way to pay for damage after disasters. Malaysia’s monsoon patterns and El Niño conditions have become less predictable, while water management problems, rapid development in river catchments, heavier runoff, and reduced river capacity have increased the risk of both surface flooding and river flooding. From 2015 to 2024, reported disaster events and the number of people and families affected by floods rose sharply, putting more strain on national disaster resources. The 2021–2022 floods caused about RM6.1 billion in economic losses, but insurance payouts covered only about RM2.2 billion, or roughly 36% of total losses, leaving the rest to households, businesses, and the government. More than 50 people died and 40,000 people were displaced, losses that are much harder to capture in financial estimates. Flood coverage also remains limited. In 2024, only 17% of surveyed Malaysians reported using flood insurance as a preparedness measure, while 25% reported taking no formal or informal flood preparation steps. Insurers face their own limits because climate risks are changing faster than historical data can capture, local hazard and claims data are often incomplete or hard to access, and many policies run for only 12 months, making coverage vulnerable to yearly premium increases or cancellations after major events. That leaves Malaysia with a difficult problem as floods become more severe. Insurance can provide faster money after disasters and help reduce pressure on public funds, but it will not work well without better local climate and asset data, clearer flood-loss accounting, and public-private risk sharing that keeps coverage affordable for lower-income households and high-risk communities.

Svalbard, Norway, Faroe Islands

• In the northern Faroe Islands, stronger storms are becoming a bigger threat to homes, roads, power, and village routines — The Faroe Islands sit in the North Atlantic, where storms are already part of life, but climate change is expected to make the strongest storms more intense and possibly more frequent in this region. A 2024 study focused on the Northern Islands, especially Viðareiði and Hvannasund, where small communities live with steep terrain, rough weather, and limited outside assistance during severe storms. Winter storms can bring extreme winds, with some gusts above 70 metres per second, and the 2016 storm produced the strongest wind speed ever recorded in the Faroe Islands. Past storms have blown roofs off houses, shattered windows, damaged buildings, moved cars, boats, trailers, stones, and containers, cut power, and forced families to shelter in basements or stay with relatives. Storm risk also affects the infrastructure that keeps remote settlements connected. Viðareiði used to be vulnerable to landslides that could cut the village off for weeks before a new tunnel opened in 2016, while Hvannasund and Norðdepil are exposed to strong winds funneled through the sound by the surrounding mountains. Local preparedness has improved because people remember storms in detail and have changed how they protect their homes, including clearing loose objects before storm season, fastening larger items with ropes and old fishing nets, keeping boards or plexiglass ready for windows, and relying on firefighters, neighbors, relatives, and contractors for help.

  • That local knowledge is part of why people feel able to stay. Families have lived in these villages for generations, houses and land are tied to ancestry, and everyday life is connected to sheep, birds, fishing, the harbor, schools, churches, and neighbors. Warmer, wetter winters and changing wind patterns are also reaching into daily practices. Residents describe less snow, changing wind and precipitation patterns, and conditions that affect traditional practices such as drying mutton. The challenge is that strong attachment to place can help communities prepare and recover, but it can also make future risk easier to underestimate. Many residents feel safe because houses, roads, tunnels, and emergency practices have improved since earlier storms, even as stronger storms may push beyond what past experience can prepare them for.

• Svalbard’s unusually early spring is disrupting the fieldwork scientists need to track Arctic climate change — Researchers traveled to Svalbard to measure snowmelt and compare conditions on the ground with satellite observations, but this year the snow disappeared so quickly that some teams could not complete their work. In the Longyearbyen area, April temperatures reached about 4°C instead of the usual -15°C, and bare ground replaced the roughly 30 centimeters of compact snow researchers expected to find. Adventdalen, a valley outside Longyearbyen where Norwegian researchers normally travel by snowmobile, was almost completely snow-free, forcing them to stop fieldwork after only a few days. The University Centre in Svalbard also suspended snowmobile traffic because travel conditions had become too unstable. The early melt disrupted Polish research as well. A team planning to work near the Hornsund research station could not reach its field sites after dense sea ice blocked the fjord and prevented their vessel from unloading people and equipment. At the same time, the west coast of Spitsbergen was already experiencing unusually early and intense snowmelt, stopping planned snow measurements and an isotope experiment on the Werenskioldbreen glacier. For the first time in decades, the Polish team could not carry out fieldwork there at all.

  • Svalbard is one of the places where warming is happening fastest, with temperatures rising several times faster than the global average, and snow measurements are one way researchers track how those changes are unfolding. Ground measurements help scientists test whether satellite observations accurately capture snow conditions and understand how snow evaporates and melts under warmer conditions. As spring arrives earlier and field conditions become less predictable, researchers may have to start work earlier in the year, rely more heavily on satellites, and find new ways to collect ground data as the snow season becomes shorter and harder to plan around.

• Norway’s salmon-heavy aquaculture industry is facing a more complicated future as ocean temperatures change at individual farm sites — Norway is one of the world’s largest aquaculture producers, but Atlantic salmon accounts for about 95% of national production, leaving the industry heavily dependent on one species as marine conditions shift. A 2024 study looked at 34 possible farmed marine species across 12 farm sites in southern, western, northern, and Arctic Norway under three climate scenarios through 2099. Diversifying beyond salmon could give the industry more options as conditions change, but each species has its own temperature limits, and those limits do not line up neatly with Norway’s future ocean conditions. Cold-water species such as witch flounder, spotted wolffish, Norwegian shrimp, snow crab, and red sea cucumber could face more days that are too warm, especially in southern and western Norway and under higher emissions. Warmer-water species farmed elsewhere, including European seabass, gilthead seabream, common sole, John Dory, European plaice, and European abalone, would still face too many cold days at Norwegian sites. Even in southern Norway, cold temperatures would remain challenging for more than half the year for European seabass in the most favorable decade and scenario assessed, and for more than 70% of the year for gilthead seabream, common sole, John Dory, and European plaice.

  • Temperature risk also changes from site to site and year to year. Nearby farms can have different numbers of difficult temperature days, and individual years can swing enough to affect growth, stress, disease risk, stocking decisions, harvest timing, and the kind of farming system a species would need. Long-term averages are not enough for planning because farmed species have to live through daily and yearly temperature changes, including periods that are too warm, too cold, or stressful when combined with other pressures such as low oxygen, disease, storms, and production-related stress. Some species may grow more slowly in cold conditions, extending the time needed to reach harvest size, while warmer periods can affect behavior, health, immune response, and vulnerability to disease. Moving production onto land, into recirculating systems, or deeper below the surface may help in some cases, but those approaches bring their own biological, technical, energy, cost, and space constraints. New farmed species also take years of research, investment, regulation, market development, and husbandry knowledge before they can be produced reliably. Norway may need a wider set of aquaculture options as the ocean changes, especially because the industry is still built so heavily around salmon. But diversification has to be planned around the range of temperatures farms will actually experience, not just the hope that warming will make new species easier to grow.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

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Extreme heat, drought, and warming ecosystems are disrupting daily work, water supplies, cultural heritage, public health, and biodiversity across this week’s regions. In South Africa and Namibia, rising heat and drought are affecting taxi drivers, farm income, food security, health, and access to water. In Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Taiwan, warmer conditions are disrupting seasonal tree cycles, threatening heritage sites and traditional practices, and increasing acute heat illness risks. Across France, Spain, and Portugal, early-season heat is straining sports, air quality, and cooling access, while climate change is adding pressure to national parks, invasive species management, fisheries, and coastal livelihoods. Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) shows unusual heat across these regions this week, adding urgency to the climate risks already affecting these places.

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South Africa, Namibia

• Rising heat is making everyday work more dangerous for minibus taxi drivers in Durban, who keep much of the country’s public-transport system running — Sensors placed inside 16 taxis near Warwick Junction found that drivers can spend up to 11 hours a day in vehicles hotter than 27°C, with some taxis reaching 32°C to 38.6°C. On one humid March day in 2024, the heat index inside several vehicles reached 40°C to 45°C, and one taxi reached a dangerous 49°C “feels like” temperature. These conditions can strain the heart and kidneys, cause dizziness, confusion, fainting, and heat stroke, and may contribute to long-term kidney damage after years of repeated exposure. The risks are intensified by dense pavement and concrete, which can make inner-city areas 5°C to 10°C hotter than leafier outskirts, and by poorly insulated taxis that can become several degrees hotter than the air outside. As climate change raises baseline temperatures, these exposures are becoming more common on ordinary hot and humid days, not only during officially declared heat waves. Drivers working long shifts often have limited access to shade, water, bathrooms, cooling spaces, or regular breaks, leaving them exposed for hours inside vehicles that can become dangerous heat traps. Reducing that risk will require practical protections such as shaded taxi ranks, reliable access to water, cooling stations, shorter waiting times, more flexible work hours, tinted windows, air conditioning, and vehicle designs that reduce engine heat beneath the driver’s cab.

• Rising heat is expected to widen South Africa’s inequality gap by cutting into farm income, outdoor work, food security, and the ability of lower-income households to recover from climate stress — Higher temperatures make outdoor and physically demanding work harder, slower, and more dangerous, especially in agriculture, construction, and other lower-paid jobs where workers may have limited access to cooling, shade, paid breaks, or flexible schedules. Heat stress reduces both the number of safe working hours and labor productivity, hitting workers paid by the day, by the task, or through climate-sensitive farm income particularly hard. Agricultural households face added pressure because hotter conditions reduce crop yields and farm productivity, lowering farm income and pushing food prices higher. Agriculture employs about 21% of South Africa's workforce and involves around 17% of households, so those pressures reach a significant share of the population. Rising food costs hit poorer households harder because food takes up a larger share of their budgets, leaving less money for transport, housing, health care, school costs, or recovery after a shock. Wealthier households are more protected because they are more likely to work indoors, afford cooling, rely less directly on farm income, and use savings or insurance to absorb losses. Research suggests that agricultural households reach the temperature threshold at which inequality begins to worsen earlier than the broader population. South Africa’s average annual temperature already sits beyond the point at which further warming improves economic outcomes, meaning all future climate scenarios are expected to make inequality worse, not better. By 2100, moderate warming could raise South Africa's Gini coefficient by 3 to 6 points compared with a future without climate change, and combined with projected GDP losses, that widening inequality could reduce welfare by about 50%.

  • Climate change is expected to affect mortality through heat, food insecurity, disease risk, and other pathways, but households do not have the same ability to protect themselves. Among households earning less than R5,000 per month, just over 5% own an air conditioner, compared with more than 20% among those earning over R20,000 per month, leaving poorer households with less protection during dangerous heat. Food insecurity adds another layer. Nationally, South Africa produces enough food to be a net exporter, but about 20% of households were food insecure in 2017 because poverty and inequality leave millions unable to reliably access what is available. For households already spending a large share of their income on food, that pressure has direct health consequences, including malnutrition, weakened immunity, and greater vulnerability to heat, disease, and other climate-related stresses.

• Namibia’s drought is worsening water scarcity, food insecurity, and health risks for women, children, and farming communities — Communities in Namibia’s Kavango West region are facing severe climate stress as drought dries the land, weakens livestock, and limits access to water. The country is experiencing one of its worst droughts in more than a century, worsened by El Niño, and the crisis has left more than half a million people dealing with food shortages, environmental stress, health risks, and lost livelihoods. The impacts are especially hard on agrarian communities that depend on the land for food and income, as well as women, nursing mothers, children, and teen mothers who face added risks when food, health care, and household resources become harder to secure. In the worst-affected regions of Omaheke, Kavango East, and Kavango West, emergency feeding programs have been set up to reach children and families facing acute malnutrition. Mobile clinics are also providing breastfeeding support, family planning, counseling, and other services for women and children affected by the drought. Longer-term support is focused on reducing dependence on rain-fed agriculture, providing women farmers with equipment, inputs, and market access to build more stable livelihoods.

  • Windhoek’s water system shows how limited rainfall affects cities as well as rural communities. The city depends on distant dams, groundwater, reclaimed wastewater, and managed aquifer recharge because Namibia’s dry climate leaves little water available for rivers or aquifers. Of all the rain that falls across Namibia, roughly 83% evaporates before it can be captured or used, leaving only about 2% as surface runoff and around 1% to filter down into groundwater. The city has used water restrictions, reclaimed water, and aquifer recharge during recurring droughts, but hotter and drier conditions are expected to keep increasing pressure on the system. Climate projections for Namibia point to declining rainfall and a mean annual temperature increase of about 3°C by 2060, while rising demand adds pressure from households, industry, and economic growth.

  • Water scarcity is also raising questions about whether Namibia needs new sources beyond rainfall, rivers, and groundwater. Some experts argue that tapping the country's Atlantic coastline through desalination could give Namibia a water source independent of rainfall, easing pressure on farmers and communities during dry periods. Because Namibia borders the Atlantic along its entire western edge, smaller systems designed for individual farms or cooperatives could make desalination practical without relying solely on large, expensive infrastructure. Farmers with reliable water access near home are less likely to move their herds long distances during droughts, reducing pressure on areas where resources are already limited. When livestock and farmers move into areas where water and grazing are still available, competition for those resources can increase, adding social and economic pressure to communities that are already managing their own climate risks. Desalination is being discussed as one possible way to ease those pressures as climate change makes water access a growing economic and social problem.

    

China, Taiwan, Vietnam

• Hong Kong’s kapok trees are showing signs of seasonal disruption as the city’s winters warm — The trees, known locally as “hero trees,” usually shed their leaves before bright red flowers bloom on bare branches in spring. Conservationists now report that many kapoks are flowering while still holding green leaves, with some trees split between leafy sections and flowering sections. That shift has become more common over the past decade and is linked to warmer winters caused by climate change. Hong Kong recorded its warmest winter on record in 2026, with the mean temperature from December to February reaching 19.3°C, about 2°C above normal. The trees also appeared to bloom about two weeks earlier than usual, likely because temperature and moisture conditions are changing. Keeping old leaves while producing new flowers can force the trees to divide energy between foliage and blooms, which may reduce flowering. Changes in flowering time can also affect birds and bees that rely on kapok flowers for nectar and pollen, creating mismatches across the broader ecological web.

  • Kapok trees are not just visually important in Hong Kong. Their flowers are part of Five Flowers Tea, a traditional herbal drink widely used in Hong Kong and South China for preventive and therapeutic health care. A 2024 study of Five Flowers Tea samples found that Bombax ceiba, the kapok or cotton tree, was the most common herb in the tea. The drink is especially associated with hot and humid seasons, when it is traditionally used to “clear heat” and “dispel dampness” in the body. That tradition is linked to Hong Kong’s subtropical climate, where hot and wet weather has long shaped local health practices and the use of botanical resources. If warming changes the timing or abundance of kapok flowers, it could also affect a plant tied to local herbal medicine, seasonal health practices, and a widely consumed cultural beverage.

  • The trees also carry cultural meaning across Hong Kong’s urban landscape. Kapoks can grow around 20 metres tall in Hong Kong, produce large scarlet flowers before fruiting, and release cotton-like fibres that create the spring “snowflake” effect people gather to photograph. Their name as “hero trees” is tied to a southern Chinese legend, and the tree has long been associated with strength, resilience, and spring in Chinese literature.

• Climate change is threatening Vietnam’s historic sites and the cultural practices tied to rivers, coasts, farms, forests, and traditional materials — Vietnam’s cultural heritage is exposed to many of the same climate pressures affecting the country’s people and infrastructure. Vietnam’s most significant heritage sites sit in some of its most climate-exposed landscapes. In Hội An, Huế, Mỹ Sơn, and the Mekong Delta, heavier rain, storms, high humidity, and rising temperatures are putting repeated stress on old buildings and historic landscapes. Wood, brick, stone, and mortar can weaken as moisture seeps in, heat builds, and mould, mildew, termites, and water damage become harder to control. Along the coast and in low-lying areas, sea level rise, high tides, saltwater intrusion, and riverbank erosion add another layer of risk. Drier conditions can also raise fire danger around heritage landscapes. Climate change can affect living traditions as well as physical sites, because many rituals, festivals, crafts, foods, medicines, and local knowledge systems depend on stable seasons, familiar landscapes, and reliable natural materials. Changes in water, soil, forests, coasts, and traditional materials can alter farming, fishing, forestry, pottery, silk production, seafood traditions, and other everyday practices tied to place. That makes climate change a threat not only to monuments and artifacts, but also to the cultural spaces and daily practices that keep heritage alive.

• Rising temperatures could sharply increase acute heat illnesses in Taiwan — Climate change is expected to increase acute heat illnesses in Taiwan as more days rise above the temperature level where health risks climb quickly. Researchers used emergency department data from Taiwan’s real-time heat illness surveillance system from 2011 to 2023 and found that acute heat illnesses increased sharply once the mean temperature exceeded 27°C. Above that threshold, each 1°C increase in mean temperature was associated with a 71% increase in the risk of acute heat illness, with effects appearing quickly within about one day. Taiwan is already hot and humid in summer, and warming there has been faster than the Northern Hemisphere average in the historical record, making heat illness planning especially important. The projected health burden depends heavily on future emissions and adaptation pathways. By 2090–2099, Taiwan’s mean temperature is projected to rise by 5.8°C under the fossil-fueled development scenario, with about 19,000 acute heat illness cases attributable to temperatures above 27°C and nearly 90% of acute heat illnesses linked to nonoptimal heat. Under a sustainability pathway, the projected temperature increase is much smaller at 1.4°C, and the heat-related burden falls to about 12,500 cases and 62% of acute heat illnesses. The gap between those two pathways is a measure of how much climate policy can affect emergency health risks and health-system demand. Taiwan’s aging population adds another concern because older people are more vulnerable to heat illness, making heat warning systems, real-time surveillance, and targeted protection for vulnerable groups increasingly important as summers get hotter.

  

Spain, Portugal, France

• An unusually early heat wave is disrupting daily life, travel, and sports across France before summer has even begun — France is facing record May heat, driven by climate change, causing dangerous temperatures much earlier in the year and well before many people, buildings, schools, and public events are prepared for sustained summer conditions. Paris reached 31.9°C over the weekend, its first temperature above 30°C this year, and Météo-France issued the country’s first May heatwave alert since the warning system was created in 2004. The heat is making it dangerous to participate in outdoor sports. A man died during a 10-kilometer race in Paris, and several runners were taken to the hospital after a race in Maisons-Alfort. The French Open also opened in unusually hot conditions for late May, with temperatures reaching 33°C during the first two days at Roland Garros. Players used ice bags around their necks during changeovers, while fans cooled off under sprinklers and asked workers watering the clay courts to spray them too. The heat also affected play, with athletes describing faster ball movement, lower focus coming off the bench, and more physically uneven matches as players tried to manage the conditions. The heat is affecting the wider city too. In Île-de-France, high temperatures combined with daily emissions have worsened ozone pollution, prompting traffic restrictions on May 26, lower speed limits across the region, and heavy-goods vehicle restrictions. Additional recommendations were made to avoid driving, carpool, telework, stay indoors during the hottest hours, and limit intense outdoor activity for children, older adults, asthmatics, and people with respiratory or cardiovascular conditions.

  • Demand for cooling is rising as well. Several French households described turning on multiple air-conditioning units as indoor heat became unbearable, even with costs that can add around €80 a month to electricity bills and installation costs that can reach €3,000. Sales of fans and air conditioners were reported to be up 60% from last year, while air conditioning remains unevenly distributed across France, with 27% of houses, 12% of flats, and only 7% of schools equipped. The early heat is already straining health systems, sporting events, transportation rules, household budgets, air quality, and access to cooling, showing how climate change can turn a late-spring week into a summer-level public health and infrastructure problem.

• Climate change is making Spain’s national parks more vulnerable to invasive species — Spain’s national parks are already protecting some of the country’s most important forests, wetlands, mountains, islands, marine ecosystems, and Mediterranean landscapes, but climate change is adding pressure from non-native species. A 2024 analysis identified 200 non-native species across 15 Spanish national parks, including 78 listed under national non-native species regulations. Park managers helped identify 22 priority species of concern, including water hyacinth, American mink, Cape fig, wakame, Barbary sheep, largemouth bass, and several invasive grasses and plants. Many of these species can harm native biodiversity through competition, predation, habitat change, disease transmission, or other ecological damage. More than half of the priority species were classified as having major impacts on native biodiversity, and about a quarter were classified as having massive impacts. Climate change can make that problem harder to manage because rising minimum temperatures may allow some non-native species to move into higher elevations and colder areas that were previously less suitable. High-mountain parks such as Sierra Nevada, Sierra de Guadarrama, and Picos de Europa are expected to see increasing risk as warming opens new space for invasions. Other parks already face high risk, including Islas Atlánticas, Doñana, and the Archipelago de Cabrera. Some species may benefit especially from warming, including Barbary sheep, water hyacinth, and largemouth bass.

  • New species inside protected areas can also change how those ecosystems function. Invasive plants can add fuel for fires, water hyacinth can worsen drought stress through high water use, and damaged ecosystems may become less able to provide services such as pollination, water regulation, and flood control. That means climate change and biological invasions can reinforce each other, leaving park managers with a harder job as they try to protect native species in landscapes that are becoming warmer, drier, and more exposed to human movement and tourism.

• Climate change is putting pressure on the marine species that support Portugal’s fisheries and coastal economy — Portugal’s fishing sector depends on marine ecosystems that are already changing as ocean temperatures, salinity, currents, river flow, plankton, and upwelling patterns shift with climate change. Researchers assessed 74 commercially important fish and invertebrate species across northern, central, and southern Portugal under two climate scenarios. Overall vulnerability was mostly low, partly because many temperate marine species can tolerate some environmental variability, but risks were higher under the high-emissions scenario and highest on average in central Portugal. The most vulnerable species included long-distance migratory species such as European eel and Atlantic salmon, along with some sharks, rays, and invertebrates. Some commercially important species may also shift into different waters as the climate changes, creating practical problems for fishing crews that may need to travel farther, target different species, or change gear and fishing practices. That would be especially difficult for small-scale and traditional coastal fleets that may not have the money, technology, or flexibility to follow changing fish distributions. Warmer water can speed up development, change reproduction, increase oxygen stress, and affect survival at early life stages. Stronger upwelling can also cut both ways, bringing nutrient-rich water to the surface while pushing eggs and larvae away from coastal nursery areas. These changes can affect recruitment, catch composition, and the reliability of fisheries over time. For Portugal, where fish consumption is among the highest in the world and more than 16,000 fishers were registered in 2018, climate risks to commercial species are also risks to food, jobs, and local economies.

  • The ocean has shaped Portugal’s history, culture, economy, and place in the world, and Portugal describes itself as a maritime country whose ocean spaces are a major asset for future development. Fisheries and port activity are part of that ocean economy, alongside newer areas such as marine biotechnology, renewable ocean energy, ocean monitoring, and marine protected areas. Changes in marine species, fishery landings, and coastal ecosystems can affect a sector tied to food, jobs, local economies, national identity, and Portugal’s long-term plans for a sustainable ocean economy.

    

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of climate change in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) highlights unusual heat this week across parts of Central America, the Middle East, and Central Asia. But the impacts of climate change across these regions extend far beyond high temperatures on their own. In Panama, a normally reliable seasonal upwelling nearly disappeared, reducing the cold, nutrient-rich water that fisheries and coral reefs depend on. In Costa Rica, climate extremes are affecting how capuchin monkey groups find food and compete for habitat. In Nicaragua, back-to-back hurricanes damaged the land, water, homes, and local economies that Miskito communities needed to recover. Across Egypt and Jordan, rising heat, shifting rainfall, groundwater stress, and coastal change are putting pressure on ancient monuments, farms, drinking water, and the income families rely on.

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Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan

• Crisis and climate compounding the vulnerability of Afghan women and girls —The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is warning of a deepening “crisis within a crisis” in Afghanistan, as mass returns from neighboring countries converge with worsening climate shocks, economic collapse, and restricted access to humanitarian aid. Since the start of the year, an estimated 2.6 million Afghans have returned, many not by choice, to a country already grappling with extreme poverty, catastrophic drought, and fragile infrastructure. In the first several months of 2025, more than 554,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan under its “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan,” launched in late 2023, which requires undocumented foreign nationals—most of them Afghan refugees—to leave the country or face deportation. This forced migration is unfolding alongside a severe climate emergency in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. At the same time, Afghanistan is shaped by strict restrictions imposed under the de facto Taliban authorities, which have significantly reduced women’s mobility, access to education and employment, and participation in public life. These measures have also constrained humanitarian operations, including limitations on female staff working with aid agencies, further complicating the delivery of assistance in affected communities.

• Within this overlapping crisis, Afghan women and girls face the most acute impacts. Taliban restrictions significantly limit their access to early warning systems, relief distribution points, and disaster response support. As climate pressures intensify, particularly recurrent droughts, flash flooding, and groundwater depletion, safe drinking water remains out of reach for large parts of the population. The burden of water collection falls disproportionately on women and girls. Walking long distances—often around a mile each trip—can be not only physically exhausting but also dangerous, exposing women and girls to greater risks of being sexually harassed or assaulted, jeopardizing their safety, dignity, and overall health and well-being.

  • Climate-driven income loss is also affecting household survival. As droughts and floods cripple agriculture and reduce incomes, families face profound economic strain that can force difficult decisions, including rising risks of early and forced marriage for Afghan girls. These pressures are intensified by structural restrictions that further limit women’s ability to work, move freely, or independently adapt to extreme climate events.

  • Humanitarian operations have also been directly disrupted. UNHCR has suspended some services at cash and support centers after restrictions imposed by de facto authorities prevented national female UN staff from accessing UN compounds. The agency has stressed that effective humanitarian response is not possible without female staff, particularly in reaching women and delivering assistance in culturally and practically accessible ways, and has called for urgent restoration of access.

• Climate change is compromising the stability of one of the world’s largest mountain lakes — Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked, highly mountainous country in Central Asia known for its preserved nomadic traditions and dramatic landscapes. Often referred to as the “Switzerland of Central Asia,” more than 90 percent of its territory is covered by mountain ranges, primarily the Tian Shan system. These mountains are central to Kyrgyzstan’s cultural identity and national economy while also serving as a critical freshwater source for the wider region, feeding river systems that sustain vital ecosystems such as Issyk-Kul Lake. The second-largest alpine lake in the world, Issyk-Kul, is increasingly under pressure from human-driven climate change. Rising temperatures, glacier retreat, declining river inflows, and growing water demand are placing mounting stress on its fragile ecosystem and long-term stability. At the World Governments Summit in Dubai in February, former Kyrgyz Prime Minister Bakyt Torobayev warned that climate change is already affecting Issyk-Kul, while President Sadyr Japarov has also stressed that although Kyrgyzstan contributes only about 0.03 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it bears a disproportionate burden of climate impacts. Issyk-Kul has no natural outlet and depends on river inflows, glacier melt, snowpack, and precipitation for replenishment. Water leaves the system mainly through evaporation and human use, thereby any reduction in inflow or increase in withdrawals directly affects lake levels and water quality. According to Torobayev, the lake’s water level has fallen by nearly 14 meters since the mid-19th century, and it has lost approximately 85 billion cubic meters of water. This decline is closely linked to rapid glacier retreat across the Tian Shan mountains, often described as Central Asia’s “water towers.” Climate warming has accelerated glacier shrinkage, reduced snow cover, and triggered earlier snowmelt, radically altering regional river systems. As a result, the number of rivers feeding Issyk-Kul has also declined significantly due to glacier loss, shifting precipitation patterns, and rising water consumption. Officials warn that continued decline could threaten biodiversity, tourism, and the livelihoods of local communities dependent on the lake.

  • The Ürümqi River, originates in the eastern Tian Shan and flows through China’s Xinjiang region. Its massive 924 km² basin is one of the most closely monitored glacier-fed catchment areas in Central Asia. The river is primarily fed by meltwater from glaciers, including Urumqi Glacier No. 1, along with summer precipitation, and serves as the main surface water source for the city of Ürümqi. Although located outside Kyrgyzstan, the basin is part of the Tian Shan system and reflects similar climate-driven hydrological processes across the region. Studies of the Urumqi Glacier No. 1 catchment show that glaciers covering roughly 51 percent of the basin generate about 76 percent of total runoff, underscoring the region’s heavy dependence on glacier meltwater.

  • Continued glacier retreat due to rising temperatures is expected to reduce long-term water availability across Central Asia, threatening ecosystems, river systems, and regional water security. Climate change is also increasing the risk of glacial lake outburst floods, destabilizing runoff patterns, and intensifying evaporation in high-altitude lakes such as Issyk-Kul. While accelerated glacier melt can temporarily increase river flows, shrinking glaciers ultimately reduce the natural water reserves that sustain rivers and lakes during dry periods. For Issyk-Kul, these changes could have serious environmental and economic consequences. Continued water loss may alter salinity levels, disrupt aquatic ecosystems, and weaken the tourism sector that supports much of the regional economy.

Panamá, Costa Rica, Nicaragua

• In Panamá, a normally reliable burst of cold ocean water nearly disappeared in 2025, threatening the seasonal cooling and nutrients that fisheries and reefs depend on — Panamá’s Pacific coast depends on a seasonal ocean pattern that helps structure the region’s marine ecosystems and fisheries. Each year, from about January through April, northerly trade winds funnel through the low-lying Panamá Canal Zone and push warm surface waters away from the coast. Colder, nutrient-rich water then rises from below, fueling phytoplankton growth, supporting marine food webs, and helping sustain commercial and subsistence fisheries. This upwelling also gives nearby coral reefs a seasonal break from ocean heat, which can reduce thermal stress during part of the year. But in 2025, that pattern nearly collapsed. In a recent study, researchers found that upwelling in the Gulf of Panama arrived 42 days later than usual, lasted only 12 days instead of the typical 66, and never reached the cold temperatures that normally define the season. Historically, waters in the region cool to around 19°C during upwelling, with even colder extremes in some years. In 2025, the minimum daily temperature was only 23.3°C, making the season an extreme outlier across 40 years of satellite observations and decades of in-water temperature records.

  • The breakdown appears to have been driven by a change in the wind pattern that normally powers upwelling. When northerly winds did occur, they were not unusually weak. The problem was that they happened far less often and did not persist long enough to produce the usual ocean response. Northerly wind frequency was 74% lower than normal, wind relaxation periods increased, and total upwelling-favorable wind forcing was sharply reduced. The exact cause is still uncertain, but the researchers note that the event may be related to the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone during the 2024–2025 La Niña. The 2025 upwelling failure has not been directly attributed to human-caused climate change, but it highlights a key concern for a warming world. Tropical upwelling systems like the Gulf of Panama depend on specific regional wind patterns to bring cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface, and research shows that climate change can affect the winds, ocean temperatures, and stratification that shape how these systems function.

  • Upwelling systems support unusually high fisheries productivity and marine biodiversity relative to the ocean area they cover. In the Gulf of Panama, that seasonal upwelling sustains food webs, supports commercial and subsistence fishing, and gives coral reefs a temperature buffer that reduces bleaching risk during part of the year. When the wind setup does not develop normally as in 2025, nutrient delivery can drop, fisheries productivity can suffer, and reefs that would normally get some relief from heat stress may instead face prolonged warming. For fisheries and reefs in the Gulf of Panama, even a short-lived disruption of seasonal winds can mean less nutrient delivery, weaker cooling, and longer exposure to warm water.

• In Costa Rica’s tropical dry forest, climate extremes are making it harder for larger capuchin monkey groups to find enough food — Researchers have spent more than three decades tracking white-faced capuchins at the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project, one of the longest-running primate field studies in the world. These monkeys live in social groups, where size can bring advantages. Larger groups have more allies to help defend territory and compete with neighboring groups for resources. But larger groups also have more mouths to feed. Using 33 years of observations from 12 capuchin groups, researchers found that monkeys in larger groups generally fed at lower rates, especially during extreme climate conditions. That suggests the costs of group living can become more intense when food and water are harder to access.

  • The capuchins often responded by using more space. Larger groups expanded their home ranges, giving them access to a wider variety of food patches rather than simply extending their daily travel routes, which did not increase with group size as researchers had expected. During the dry season, when water, shade, and food become concentrated near rivers, groups overlapped less in space but encountered one another more often, suggesting more active competition over the best remaining habitat. Group size determined who got the best habitat during scarce periods. Stronger groups claimed areas with the most food and water, leaving smaller groups to make do with what remained. But that advantage lessened during El Niño droughts and La Niña periods of unusually heavy rainfall, when foraging costs increased and the usual benefits of larger group size became harder to maintain. El Niño and La Niña are part of natural climate variability rather than direct products of climate change, though climate change is expected to make related extremes, including severe drought and unusually heavy rainfall, more frequent and intense. That makes long-term records like this especially valuable because they show how climate variability can affect where animals forage, how often groups compete, and whether larger groups can keep finding enough food.

• In Nicaragua’s Miskito communities, Hurricanes Eta and Iota show how climate extremes can turn existing vulnerability into displacement — In November 2020, Hurricane Eta struck Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm after strengthening extremely quickly over the western Caribbean. Eta’s winds increased by 45 knots in just 12 hours before the storm reached peak intensity, and the storm brought destructive winds, storm surge, and extreme rainfall across Central America. Two weeks later, Hurricane Iota struck many of the same communities. For the Miskito people living along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, the back-to-back storms hit places already shaped by political neglect, limited infrastructure, poverty, and threats to Indigenous land rights. Climate change does not create every hurricane, but it can make the strongest storms more dangerous. Warmer oceans provide more energy for hurricanes, warmer air can hold more moisture, and rapid intensification is becoming a greater concern as ocean temperatures rise. In communities with few evacuation options, limited government support, and income tied closely to land, forests, rivers, and lagoons, those physical changes can quickly overwhelm the resources people have to protect themselves.

  • For the Miskito, the destruction compounded the specific vulnerabilities of coastal communities. In Haulover, homes were reduced to debris, coconut trees that had provided food and shade were destroyed, and pools of standing water formed where the storm had eaten through the land, making daily life more dangerous for children. In Layasiksa, residents sheltered through Hurricane Iota inside small wooden structures while winds tore off roofs and floodwater rose around them. There was no government evacuation support, and the village had only six boats for about 1,400 people. The fishing grounds that had long sustained the community stopped producing after the storms, leaving families without one of their main sources of food and income. These coastal communities do not have electricity grids or paved roads, and recovery depends heavily on the same forests, rivers, lagoons, and land that the storms damaged. For some residents, leaving became one of the only ways to support relatives who stayed behind. Others remained, facing damaged infrastructure and political insecurity with fewer resources than before.

Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

• In Egypt, climate change is adding new pressure to monuments already exposed to heat, salt, groundwater, and coastal erosion — Ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and coastal ruins were built for harsh environments, but climate change is altering the conditions around them. Rising seas threaten low-lying archaeological sites along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, including Alexandria, while hotter temperatures, heavier rainstorms, dust storms, and moisture can accelerate the weathering of stone. In Upper Egypt, intense heat and sharp day-to-night temperature swings can stress granite monuments and damage inscriptions. At Giza, groundwater, irrigation, urban growth, pollution, and salt contamination are already conservation concerns, and climate change can intensify the same heat and moisture stresses that weaken exposed limestone and mortar. As these pressures build, they can speed the loss of carved inscriptions, surface decoration, and exposed stone that carries historical and cultural meaning. They can also strain local tourism economies and connections to places that have helped define Egypt’s cultural identity for generations.

  • The Giza pyramids show how climate-related stress can interact with older conservation problems. Research on the pyramids points to rising groundwater, urban expansion, irrigation leakage, salt contamination, weathering, and past seismic damage as major challenges. The pyramid stones and mortars are highly exposed to the conditions around them, especially where backing limestone contains pores, cracks, and weaker zones that allow moisture and salts to accumulate. When water moves through the stone and then evaporates, salts can crystallize inside pores and fractures, creating pressure that contributes to peeling, cracking, and surface loss. Repeated heating, drying, and wetting can place additional stress on surfaces already weakened by age, past earthquakes, missing casing stones, and earlier deterioration. The backing limestone also has relatively high porosity and water absorption, along with moderate to poor strength, which leaves it more vulnerable to moisture, salts, and temperature stress. More intense heat, shifts in rainfall and humidity, and changes in groundwater can therefore make stabilization more difficult in areas already affected by cracks, salt weathering, and material decay. At Giza, preserving the pyramids increasingly depends on controlling the surrounding water, salt, heat, and urban pressures that are accelerating damage to exposed stone.

• In Jordan, declining rainfall and rising heat are putting already limited water supplies under greater strain — Jordan is already one of the world’s most water-stressed countries, and climate change is making that challenge harder to manage. Rainfall falls below 200 millimeters annually across more than nine-tenths of the country's land area, and the national long-term average sits at only around 95 millimeters per year. At the same time, water demand continues to rise as the population grows, including through the arrival of refugee communities. Jordan needs about 1.4 billion cubic meters of water each year, but the available supply falls roughly 500 million cubic meters short, a gap that is partly filled by drawing from underground aquifers faster than they can naturally recharge. Lower rainfall and higher temperatures are now driving one of the worst drought periods in the country’s history, with especially severe consequences for water supplies and agriculture in the Jordan Valley. Reduced water access can also increase health risks, deepen poverty, weaken women’s economic opportunities, and add pressure to public budgets and social stability. The strain is especially visible in agriculture, where heat and drought are cutting into major crops, and in groundwater systems, where overuse can create risks that reach beyond the water supply itself.

  • Jordan’s olive harvest shows how quickly heat and drought can move through a rural economy. Record heat and low rainfall in 2025 sharply reduced Jordan’s olive crop, with production reportedly down as much as 70% from the previous year, the poorest olive harvest the country had seen in roughly forty years. These losses are significant because olives are central to daily life. Olive cultivation supports about 80,000 families, helps sustain rural economies, and has long been central to household food traditions. In 2025, extreme heat delayed the harvest, reduced fruit formation, lowered oil quality, and pushed prices higher, making olive oil more expensive for families that rely on it. The losses also hit seasonal workers, including women who make up much of the harvest workforce. For farmers in northern Jordan, where many olive trees are rain-fed and harvests have sustained families for generations, one season of extreme heat and drought was enough to cut production to a fraction of normal, with some farmers openly questioning whether the land can sustain them going forward.

  • The same water stress is also changing the ground beneath farms and communities. As rainfall declines and drought deepens across parts of the Middle East, communities are relying more heavily on groundwater for irrigation. That can lower underground water levels, and in areas with limestone or salt-rich layers, contribute to sudden ground collapse. Around the Dead Sea, falling water levels and changing groundwater conditions have helped create sinkholes that can open without warning, threatening farmland and the people who depend on it. In Jordan, experts describe heavy agricultural water use, falling aquifer levels, worsening water quality, and sinkholes that can open suddenly with no early warning system in place. For farming communities, that creates a difficult choice between continuing to work land that may be physically unsafe and walking away from one of their main sources of income.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of extreme heat in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

We’re taking a short pause from Global Climate Dispatch this week due to travel and scheduling constraints on our end. Thanks as always for reading and following along. We’ll be back next week with more coverage of climate change impacts around the world.

See you then.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) highlights widespread unusual heat this week across parts of southern Africa, eastern Africa, and the Sahel, where climate risks are affecting food production, infrastructure, education, water access, and health systems. In Zambia and Angola, rising heat and shifting rainfall are increasing pressure on rainfed agriculture, threatening maize and other staple crops while raising risks for household incomes, food prices, and rural livelihoods. In Malawi, climate stress is expected to increase the cost of maintaining roads, which could limit rural access to markets, schools, clinics, and emergency support during floods and heavy rainfall. In South Sudan, extreme heat and flooding are disrupting education, forcing school closures, relocations, and planning changes in a system already strained by conflict and limited resources. And in the Philippines, warming waters and heavier rainfall are compounding pollution risks for coral reefs, while fuel shocks are adding pressure to fishing communities already facing climate-related changes offshore.

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Zambia, Angola, Malawi

• Climate change is projected to reduce crop yields and household incomes, and slow economic growth across Zambia — A 2021 study found that by mid-century, rainfall is projected to decline by roughly 3 to 4 percentage points in Zambia’s southern and western regions, while temperatures rise by about 1.8°C nationwide, with some projections reaching as high as 3.6°C. The largest losses are expected in the south and west, where many households depend heavily on rainfed farming and have limited ability to absorb drought or poor harvests. Maize, the national staple and source of about 63% of dietary energy, is projected to be the most affected crop, with yields falling by roughly 3 to 6% in the hardest-hit regions. Individual outcomes vary much more widely, ranging from losses of around 30% to gains of around 26% in those same regions. Cotton and root crops face smaller losses and, in some northern areas, may see modest gains, suggesting that crop diversification could help reduce risk. Over time, these agricultural losses are expected to reduce national GDP and household spending, with the greatest burden falling on rural households in the south and west.

  • The uneven distribution of these impacts matters because the southern and western regions account for a substantial share of Zambia’s maize production, meaning losses there extend beyond local communities to the national food supply and prices. More than 90% of smallholder farming across the country depends on rainfall, leaving farmers with limited capacity to absorb seasons of drought or erratic precipitation. The study also notes that these estimates likely understate total economic losses, as the analysis considers only agricultural impacts and excludes additional effects on infrastructure, energy systems, and other sectors.

  • These agricultural losses sit within a broader set of climate risks that could further weaken Zambia’s ability to adapt. When agriculture, roads, and energy are considered together, climate change could reduce Zambia’s GDP by about 6% by 2045–2050 under an unconstrained emissions scenario, compared with a smaller but still substantial loss under a stronger global mitigation pathway. Roads introduce the most uncertainty because transport infrastructure connects agriculture, mining, petroleum, manufacturing, and food processing across the economy. Damage to roads can raise market costs, disrupt supply chains, and divert public spending from new development toward repairs. The energy system faces another major vulnerability. Zambia depends heavily on hydropower, and reduced water availability can cut local electricity production, increasing reliance on imports from the regional power market. That matters for agriculture as well as industry, since electricity shortages can disrupt food processing, cold storage, transport, market access, and the services farmers rely on before and after harvest.

• Rising heat and declining rainfall are also expected to make Angola’s rainfed agriculture more difficult, especially in the south and southwest — Angola’s agricultural sector is highly exposed to climate change because nearly 95% of farming depends on rainfall, while irrigation remains limited by water availability and cost. A 2025 agroclimatic assessment projected widespread warming across the country by mid-century, with average daily maximum and minimum temperatures rising by roughly 2 to 3°C and hotter conditions increasing the number of tropical nights, warm spells, consecutive summer days, and warm and wet days. Rainfall changes are regionally uneven, but the most severe drying is projected in the southwest, particularly Namibe and Huíla, where precipitation losses could reach up to 300 mm. Consecutive dry days are also expected to increase across the country, increasing water stress for farmers who already rely heavily on seasonal rains. These changes are especially important because Angola has already experienced repeated drought-linked food crises. In 2012, drought in Huambo, Huíla, and Bié, provinces responsible for more than half of national cereal production, exposed 1.8 million people to food insecurity as cereal production fell from 1.4 million to 509,000 tons. In 2019, another severe drought contributed to a food security and nutrition crisis affecting 2.3 million people, including nearly half a million children under five.

  • The projected changes will not affect all crops or regions equally. Maize and beans are among the most vulnerable because they are more sensitive to heat and water stress, especially in southern and southwestern regions where reduced rainfall and rising temperatures are expected to be most pronounced. Changes in the timing and persistence of wet and dry periods could also affect the onset of the rainy season, creating problems for traditional rainfed planting calendars. Sorghum, millet, and cassava appear more resilient under future conditions, making crop diversification an important adaptation option for areas where maize and beans become less reliable. The central region, Angola’s largest agricultural producer and a key part of national food security, faces a mixed future, with more consecutive wet days potentially benefiting some crops while higher temperatures and more heat extremes could disrupt crop cycles and reduce yields. In the north and northeast, cassava and potatoes may remain more viable because of higher rainfall, though rising temperatures could still affect potato productivity. These shifts could deepen rural poverty and raise food prices in communities that already face repeated drought-linked crises.

• Climate change is expected to increase the cost of maintaining Malawi’s roads, threatening rural access to markets, services, and disaster response — Malawi’s road network is highly exposed to climate stress, with heavier rainfall, flooding, and higher temperatures expected to increase damage to both paved and unpaved roads through mid-century. A regional infrastructure analysis of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia estimated that the three countries could face roughly $596 million in climate-related road maintenance and repair costs by 2050 under median climate scenarios, rising to $772 million under higher-impact scenarios if governments respond reactively rather than adapting road systems in advance. Malawi’s projected road burden was smaller than Zambia’s in total dollar terms, but the impact is still significant because road access is central to rural livelihoods, market connections, healthcare, education, and disaster response. Malawi’s no-adaptation road costs were estimated at about $165 million, with damaged roads forcing public spending toward repair instead of expansion or upgrades. In rural areas, where transport links are already limited and many roads become difficult or impossible to use during the wet season, road failures make it harder for farmers to move crops to market, households to reach schools and clinics, and emergency responders to reach communities during floods.

  • For Malawi, proactive road adaptation could reduce long-term costs rather than simply add new expenses, meaning upfront investment in stronger road surfaces and climate-aware rehabilitation standards is also a budget issue, not just an infrastructure issue. Upgrading dirt roads to gravel, strengthening gravel roads, and accounting for future rainfall and heat during rehabilitation would require more money upfront, but could reduce repeated repairs as climate damage increases. The study found that if no proactive action is taken, Malawi alone could lose the opportunity to expand its paved road network by roughly 3,530 kilometers. Every year spent repairing climate damage is also a year when limited public funds are not going toward the road upgrades rural communities need to reach markets, clinics, schools, and emergency support.

    

Sudan, South Sudan, Chad

• Extreme heat is disrupting education in South Sudan, where many schools are not built for dangerous temperatures — South Sudan closed all schools for two weeks last February after an extreme heatwave caused students to collapse in Juba, with officials reporting an average of 12 student collapses per day in the capital. Temperatures were expected to reach 42°C, prompting health officials to urge residents to stay indoors, drink water, and avoid heat exposure. This was the second year in a row the country closed schools during a February–March heatwave. A rapid attribution analysis found that human-caused climate change made the February 2025 heat event in the South Sudan region at least 2°C hotter and at least 10 times more likely, with a similarly frequent event estimated to have been around 4°C cooler in a climate without today’s level of warming. Many classrooms are built from iron sheets and have no electricity for fans or cooling, making them dangerously hot during the hottest months of the year. Education workers have urged the government to adjust the school calendar so students are not in class during the worst heat, with some calling for schedules that reflect weather conditions across South Sudan’s 10 states. Civil society groups also criticized the lack of contingency planning, arguing that repeated emergency closures are interrupting education in a country already strained by political instability, economic crisis, and a fragile health system.

  • South Sudan’s education system is also being disrupted by flooding, heavy rainfall, drought, and soil erosion, not just heat. Education officials reported that some schools relocate up to three times a year to escape flooding, while others run multiple shifts to absorb students displaced from flooded schools. In some areas, floodwater submerges classrooms, blocks access to school buildings, damages roofs, and forces children to evacuate to higher ground. These disruptions have contributed to dropouts, job losses for teachers, and higher risks for girls when schools close, including early marriage and child labor. South Sudan is now developing state-level climate risk analyses for the education sector, so planning can reflect the different hazards facing schools across each state and administrative area.

• A recent fight over water access in eastern Chad turned deadly as scarce resources, displacement, and border insecurity strain local communities — At least 42 people were killed and 10 others wounded in late April after clashes between two families over access to a water point in Igote village, in Wadi Fira province near Chad’s border with Sudan. The army intervened, and officials said mediation and legal proceedings had begun. The clash happened in a region already under pressure from the war in Sudan, which has pushed large numbers of refugees into Chad and stretched access to water, land, and basic services. Similar resource-related violence has occurred elsewhere in the country, including farmer-herder clashes last year that also left dozens dead and homes burned.

  • The pressure on local water points is part of a broader struggle over land and water across the Lake Chad region. Lake Chad supports farming, fishing, grazing, and flood-recession agriculture for communities across Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, but droughts in the late 20th century shrank its surface area by more than 90%. Although the remaining water has partly stabilized, the lake is still less than one-tenth of its 1960 size, and the surrounding landscape now shifts between wetlands, islands, flooded pools, grazing areas, fishing grounds, and farmland. Armed groups have used dense wetlands and woodlands for cover, controlled access to pastures, fishing areas, and cropland, and demanded fees from farmers, fishers, and herders.

  • Climate change adds another layer by making rainfall more unpredictable and worsening temporary water scarcity, increasing pressure on the limited places where people can still reliably graze animals, plant crops, catch fish, and find clean water for their families. In areas where government services are limited and armed groups already influence access to land, pasture, fishing areas, and markets, those conditions fit into a wider set of pressures in which climate stress, displacement, and limited governance capacity converge around the same resources people depend on for daily survival. That makes local disputes more difficult to resolve before they escalate, especially in border areas where conflict, migration, and weak public services are already affecting communities.

• Unreliable water access across the region is also undermining maternal and newborn health care in countries where health facilities already struggle to maintain basic services — In Sudan, for example, unreliable water supplies are affecting maternal health care, which requires safe water during pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum recovery. More than half of Sudanese maternity facilities with water access rely on sources other than piped water, 60% of facilities report frequent water supply interruptions, and facilities with no water source at all make up the bottom tier of the least water-secure facilities in the country. Some specialized facilities that provide emergency obstetric and neonatal care receive water only by truck during the dry season. Red Sea and River Nile are consistently among the most water-insecure states in both current and projected future conditions, with Red Sea also having the lowest share of the population with access to an improved water source. Without reliable water, birth attendants cannot maintain basic hygiene standards, and the risk of infection during and after delivery rises. A geospatial analysis found that the population served by the least water-secure emergency obstetric and neonatal care facilities is projected to grow from 12.88 million to 21.47 million by 2030. This is compounded by the fact that water security was not included as a criterion when Sudan’s national network of emergency obstetric facilities was designated.

  

Philippines

• Beneath the surface, climate change and pollution are threatening coral reefs in the Philippines — Coral reefs are already under intense pressure from climate change, but polluted underground water flows are accelerating their decline. Known as submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), these underground flows can help regulate coastal water chemistry, but they are increasingly serving as a pathway for pollution. In the Philippines, only about 10% of wastewater is treated, and just 5% of the population is connected to a sewer network. As a result, large volumes of untreated waste seep into the country’s groundwater (of which up to 58% is already contaminated), eventually reaching the ocean. Climate change compounds the problem by warming coastal waters and intensifying rainfall patterns that can speed polluted runoff and groundwater movement into reef systems. Unlike rivers, which visibly carry pollutants, SGD operates out of sight and can deliver large nutrient loads into coastal waters. Under natural conditions, these groundwater flows can help maintain coastal water chemistry, but human activity is increasingly turning them into a pollution pathway. These flows are now transporting increasing amounts of pollution into coastal waters, threatening coral reefs in the Philippines, which contains one of the world’s largest coral reef areas across more than 7,600 islands. The influx of nutrients is fueling harmful algal blooms (HABs), or “red tides,” which have become more frequent in the Philippines in recent years. HABs can cause shellfish poisoning, fish kills, and losses to fisheries and tourism. In 2025, an outbreak caused by the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense led to more than a thousand cases of paralytic shellfish poisoning (a severe and potentially fatal illness linked to biotoxins in algal blooms) in Samar and Sorsogon.

  • Scientists attribute these blooms to a combination of climate change and eutrophication, a process in which an overabundance of nutrients fuels rapid algal growth. This overgrowth can set off a chain reaction, depleting oxygen levels and, in severe cases, creating “dead zones” where marine life cannot survive. The problem is particularly pronounced in many island regions, where porous volcanic rock and limestone allow water, and pollutants, to move quickly through the ground. Limited sewage infrastructure often forces Filipino households to rely on septic tanks or cesspools that are poorly maintained and prone to leakage. As a result, untreated wastewater seeps into groundwater and eventually flows into estuaries, rivers, and the ocean. Research from Santiago Island in northwestern Philippines found that groundwater emerging beneath reef flats contained nutrient concentrations far higher than normal seawater. On Boracay, a small island known for its white sand beaches, traces of caffeine and pharmaceuticals have been detected moving from land to sea through groundwater, indicators of untreated wastewater, particularly in densely populated tourist areas.

  • HABs tend to peak during the southwest monsoon season (June to September), when heavy rains accelerate the movement of pollutants into coastal waters. In Metro Manila, fewer than 15% of residents are connected to a sewage system, leaving most wastewater to flow untreated into rivers or seep into the ground before reaching Manila Bay, which is now heavily polluted with dangerously high levels of faecal contamination. For coastal nations like the Philippines, the consequences are far-reaching. Healthy reefs support fisheries, tourism, and shoreline protection. Their degradation leads to declining fish stocks, reduced tourism revenue, and economic hardship for coastal communities. The six-month closure of Boracay in 2018 due to environmental damage affected more than 36,000 workers and resulted in losses of nearly USD 1 billion. Excess nutrients also contribute to low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters, which can kill fish, seagrass, and other marine life while degrading critical habitats, many of which support bivalve species such as oysters, clams, and scallops that naturally help filter the water. When these populations decline, the ecosystem loses an important line of defense, leading to smaller fish catches and higher seafood prices for both commercial and local communities.

• Fuel price shocks are adding pressure to Philippine fishing communities already strained by warming waters and declining nearshore catches — Triggered by instability in the Middle East following renewed conflict involving Iran and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s key oil shipping routes, global fuel prices have surged in recent weeks, pushing up the cost of diesel and gasoline worldwide. For small-scale fisherfolk, the impact has been immediate and widespread. These fisheries, critical to food security for tens of millions of people across the Global South, depend heavily on fuel to power small motorized boats. Fuel typically accounts for 30–50% of operating costs. With diesel prices rising by as much as 60–120% in recent months, many fishers are now cutting trips short, reducing fishing days, or stopping altogether. With the Philippines importing about 98% of its fuel, the country is highly exposed to international price swings. Filipino fisherfolk groups such as Pamalakaya report diesel price increases of nearly 120% in March alone, with municipal fishers facing hikes of around 60%. Trips that once lasted 8–10 hours are now reduced to 4–6 hours, or abandoned entirely. Many fishers say they can no longer recover fuel costs, leaving little to no income per trip. As a result, rising costs are also being passed on through the supply chain, pushing seafood prices higher in local markets. These immediate cost pressures are unfolding alongside longer-term climate stress that is already making nearshore fishing less reliable. Rising sea levels, warming waters, and coastal development, including reclamation projects in areas such as Manila Bay, are pushing fish stocks farther offshore. As fishing grounds move further away, boats must travel longer distances and burn more fuel, making already high costs even harder to sustain. Across the sector, which directly and indirectly supports more than two million Filipinos, incomes, already often below $10 a day, are falling even further, with some fishers reporting near-zero earnings per trip.

  • Along the coast, women play a central but often overlooked role in the fisheries economy. Women account for an estimated 40% of post-harvest work (including cleaning, drying, processing, and selling fish) in the Philippines, and 60% of gleaning, or the harvesting of invertebrates such as shells, crabs, and sea urchins during low tide. Many also take on unpaid tasks such as net repair, bait preparation, and unloading catches, all while managing household responsibilities. As catches decline and energy costs rise, that work is becoming less reliable and less profitable. In some communities, rising liquefied petroleum gas prices have forced households back to using firewood for fish processing. At the same time, increasing costs of basic goods and energy are deepening what is described as “time and energy poverty,” where women spend longer hours on unpaid labor while having less access to income and food.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of extreme heat in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) indicates that temperatures are well above normal across much of the globe this week. In Canada, longer-burning wildfires, rising smoke-related mortality, shifting caribou migrations, and changing winter conditions are affecting both ecosystems and livelihoods. In Brazil and Peru, climate-driven disasters, shifting rainfall patterns, and warming trends are reshaping displacement, biodiversity, and agricultural systems. In Guatemala and Belize, climate vulnerability is intersecting with food insecurity, coastal exposure, and the loss of international support, raising concerns about resilience in already at-risk communities.

While we are focusing on three distinct regions for this week’s post, we want to acknowledge that many of the regions we have covered over the past month continue to experience conditions influenced by human-caused warming—particularly Central and Western Africa and the Middle East. For more on how climate change is impacting these regions, see our posts from the past few weeks.

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Canada

• Longer burning hours are increasing wildfire danger across Canada, as hotter and drier conditions weaken the natural nighttime slowdown that historically helped suppress fires and limit overnight spread — New research examining nearly 9,000 large wildfires across North America found that western mountain regions and Canada’s boreal forests experience some of the longest active burning periods on the continent, with roughly one-third of active days in some fire-prone regions exceeding 12 hours of burning. Fires are also showing weaker ties to the traditional day-night cycle, with some continuing at high intensity through the night and 14% of active days that burned overnight reaching their daily peak after dark, reducing the window when crews have often relied on cooler, calmer overnight conditions to contain flames. Using historical fire weather data, the analysis estimated that potential burning hours across North America increased by about 36% since 1975, with many regions gaining more active fire days each year and sharp rises in extreme 24-hour burning events. In Canada, these shifts are especially pronounced across boreal forests and western fire-prone regions, where hotter temperatures, lower humidity, and seasonal drying are creating conditions for fires that spread farther, burn longer, and remain active through periods once more favorable for containment.

  • These longer-burning fire seasons also carry a growing public health burden, as wildfire smoke exposure in Canada is associated with hundreds to thousands of premature deaths each year, depending on the severity of the fire season and the persistence of smoke conditions. A 2026 national assessment estimated that short-term exposure to wildfire PM2.5 was linked to between 49 and 400 premature deaths annually from 2019 through 2023, with the highest impacts during the extreme 2023 season. When the researchers examined the effects of repeated long-term exposure over multiple years, the estimated annual mortality burden ranged from 660 to 5,400 premature deaths. Using average smoke conditions across the broader 2013 to 2023 period, they estimated roughly 1,900 premature deaths per year attributable to sustained wildfire smoke exposure. Health impacts depend not only on smoke concentrations, but also on how often populations are exposed and how long smoke episodes persist across days, seasons, and successive fire years. That makes recurring multi-day smoke events and repeated severe fire seasons particularly consequential for people with pre-existing health conditions. Because wildfire smoke can travel far beyond the flames themselves, the mortality burden is often distributed across large population centers well outside the regions where the fires are burning.

• Climate change and industrial disturbance are affecting one of Canada’s major wildlife movements, as southern mountain caribou migrations shrink in distance, duration, and elevation across western Canada — A 2025 study analyzing 35 years of tracking data from more than 800 caribou across 27 subpopulations found that seasonal migrations have eroded substantially since the late 1980s. Many herds remain migratory to some degree, but movements that once carried animals vertically up mountain slopes and horizontally between alpine terrain and lowland forests are becoming shorter and less consistent, with five subpopulations experiencing a sharp decline of elevational migration. Researchers linked these changes not simply to weather variability, but primarily to expanding human disturbance. Over the study period, human-caused landscape disturbance from logging, oil and gas development, reservoirs, and related fragmentation rose from about 5% of the landscape to more than 30%. Southern mountain caribou populations declined by more than half during the same period. Climate change may intensifying these pressures by increasing wildfire activity, shifting snow conditions, altering forage availability, and compounding habitat stress in already fragmented landscapes. Because caribou migrations help animals track food, avoid predators, and move between seasonal habitats, the loss of these movements weakens the chances of population recovery.

  • Tundra caribou herds across Arctic Canada face a related but distinct climate crisis, driven less by industrial footprint and more by direct warming effects on food and survival. A 2024 NOAA Arctic Report Card assessment tracking thirteen major herds found that migratory tundra caribou have declined roughly 65% over the past two to three decades, falling from around 5.5 million animals to under 1.9 million. Warmer falls are increasing the frequency of rain-on-snow and icing events that lock away the forage herds depend on through winter, while hotter and drier summers reduce adult survival and limit the fat reserves animals can build before the coldest months. The Bathurst Herd has declined 97% since the mid-1990s, a loss Indigenous Elders have described as unprecedented, with warming summers, roads, and mining all contributing. Even under optimistic warming projections, some of the largest inland herds are expected to continue declining, with only smaller coastal herds currently showing signs of recovery.

• Canada’s maple syrup industry is becoming more vulnerable to warmer winters, disrupted freeze-thaw cycles, and more extreme weather, making one of the country’s most iconic seasonal harvests less reliable — Canada produces about three-quarters of the world’s maple syrup, with Quebec dominating national output and Ontario supporting a smaller but important regional industry. High yields depend on a consistently cold winter followed by gradual spring warming, conditions that allow sap to flow steadily through tapped trees. Producers say those patterns are becoming less reliable. In Ontario, some farms have seen harvest seasons begin weeks earlier than expected, while sudden cold snaps after warm spells and stretches of above-freezing nights can interrupt sap flow and shorten the season. Farmers also report growing uncertainty over when harvests will start and end, complicating labour planning and production schedules. Many producers are responding with efficiency upgrades such as reverse osmosis systems that reduce fuel use, but the harvest itself remains tied to weather conditions that are becoming harder to predict

  • The industry’s vulnerability is rooted in the biology of sugar maple trees and the freeze-thaw cycle that has governed sap harvests for generations. Producers have long relied on several weeks of below-freezing nights followed by milder daytime temperatures, conditions that historically arrived in late winter or early spring across the maple belt stretching through eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Research summarized in a recent scientific review found that warmer winters are already causing tapping seasons to begin earlier and become less predictable, with many producers reporting that harvest windows now start and end sooner than in the past. Higher temperatures may also reduce the sugar concentration of sap, requiring producers to collect and boil more raw sap to produce the same amount of syrup. The trees themselves face additional stress. Sugar maples depend on insulating snowpack to protect roots during winter, and declining snow cover can increase root damage and slow growth. Some projections suggest the most favorable climate zone for sap production could shift roughly 250 miles northward by the end of the century, raising longer-term questions about where large-scale maple production remains viable.

    

Brazil, Peru

• Climate disasters in Brazil are displacing women into deeper economic and social vulnerability, as floods and landslides destroy homes while unequal caregiving burdens, housing insecurity, and limited recovery support make rebuilding far harder — Brazil has faced a rapid succession of deadly climate-related disasters in recent years, including the 2022 mudslides in Petrópolis that killed more than 230 people, severe flooding in Recife later that year that killed around 130, and the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul that affected roughly 2.4 million people across hundreds of municipalities. Reporting from survivors and aid officials suggests women often bear disproportionate costs during and after these events. Many delay evacuation while helping children, elderly relatives, or sick family members, increasing exposure during fast-moving floods and landslides. In the aftermath, single mothers and low-income women frequently face rent spikes, income loss, disrupted healthcare access, and the burden of caring for displaced relatives with limited institutional support. Psychologists working with survivors also described persistent trauma long after floodwaters receded, including panic during rainfall, sleep disruption, and the loss of social ties rooted in home and neighborhood life. Black, Indigenous, and poorer women were identified as facing additional barriers because existing racial and economic inequalities shape who lives in higher-risk areas and who has access to recovery resources. In Petrópolis, survivors reported rents rising sharply after the disaster as displaced families competed for scarce housing, while damaged health services forced some residents to leave the city entirely in search of medical care and stability.

  • Reports following floods in Rio Grande do Sul found that many emergency shelters lacked adequate protection for women and children, with documented cases of abuse, attempted sexual violence, and unsafe conditions in temporary housing. Advocates said these risks reflected a broader failure to incorporate gender-specific needs into disaster planning, even though women often carry much of the unpaid care burden during crises, including caring for children, elderly relatives, and sick family members, while access to food, drinking water, medicine, and sanitation is already strained. They also argued that emergency committees and recovery planning are frequently dominated by men, limiting the representation of those most affected in decisions over shelter conditions, aid distribution, and long-term rebuilding. Another major concern is the lack of demographic data collected after disasters. Basic information on how many displaced residents are women, Black, or Indigenous is often unavailable, making it harder to identify unequal impacts, target assistance effectively, and measure whether recovery resources are reaching the communities facing the greatest barriers.

• Shifting rainfall patterns in the Andes are pushing tropical bird communities to flip their breeding seasons entirely, with insectivorous species on mountains just 60 miles apart now nesting at opposite times of year — A five-year study by researchers from Texas A&M University and the Florida Museum of Natural History across eight Andean mountains in northern Peru captured more than 8,000 birds, documented nearly 4,000 breeding events, and collected around 48,000 insects to map how rainfall shapes the food supply that governs when birds can successfully raise young. The core finding was that insect availability serves as the critical threshold between breeding seasons, with roughly 43 milligrams of insect biomass per square meter determining whether a community nests at the end of the dry season or shifts entirely to the start of the rains. What made this threshold so significant was the discovery that rainfall pushes insect abundance in both directions, as drought reduces arthropod biomass but so does excess rainfall, meaning insects occupy a narrow climatic window that is becoming harder to predict as precipitation grows more erratic. When insect biomass dropped during droughts or heavy rain events, it fell by as much as 50%, directly undermining the food supply chicks depend on during their most vulnerable weeks. Because timing reproduction to match peak food availability is how these birds sustain their populations across generations, disruptions to that alignment can reduce the number of young that survive each season. The study also found that deforestation across the Andes has compounded climate stress, with habitat loss already linked to declines in hundreds of bird species adapted to the specific conditions of dense tropical forest.

• Brazil’s cotton sector is projected to face higher temperatures and shifting rainfall, reducing suitability in several producing regions — A 2025 agroclimatic zoning study evaluated cotton suitability across Brazil under multiple future climate scenarios using thresholds for precipitation, temperature, and topography. Under current conditions, 33.9% of Brazil’s territory was classified as suitable for cotton cultivation. Water deficit was identified as the main climatic limitation, followed by excessive heat. Bahia, one of Brazil’s major producing states, was highlighted as especially vulnerable because production there already depends on rainfall totals close to the lower end of what is considered favorable for cotton. Bahia currently averages about 848 mm of annual rainfall, but future projections fall to roughly 770 mm under an intermediate emissions scenario and as low as 688 mm under a high-emissions pathway by late century. Because more than 95% of Brazil's cotton is grown without irrigation, declining rainfall and less reliable wet seasons could directly affect planting success, boll development, and final yields. Cotton reproduction is negatively affected above roughly 28 to 30°C, with more severe damage around 32°C. Growth and photosynthesis can decline near 35°C, making hotter growing seasons a direct threat to productivity and fiber quality in already warm regions.

  • Under the high-emissions SSP5-8.5 scenario, Brazil’s average air temperature was projected to rise by about 6.1°C by 2081 to 2100, with national averages near 31°C. In that same period, land classified as suitable for cotton fell from 33.9% today to 12.1% of the country, while the share considered unsuitable because of excessive heat rose to 22.8%. Mato Grosso, Brazil’s dominant cotton-producing state and source of about 90% of national output, remained one of the strongest areas for future cultivation because of its large agricultural land base and higher rainfall, averaging around 1,890 mm annually. Existing soybean-corn rotations could theoretically support additional cotton production without new deforestation, though machinery costs, freight bottlenecks, and export infrastructure remain major constraints. Widespread no-till practices, second-crop production after soybeans, and limited irrigation may also help preserve Brazil’s competitiveness relative to other major cotton producers.

    

Guatemala, Belize

• USAID withdrawal is deepening climate vulnerability in Guatemala — The Central American country of Guatemala is facing a complex humanitarian crisis driven by food insecurity, climate-related crop losses, acute malnutrition, and rising migration pressures. Longstanding poverty and inequality had already left many communities highly vulnerable, but recent economic shocks fueled in part by the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID programs, are destabilizing an already tenuous situation. Humanitarian assessments estimate that 2.2 million people in Guatemala are currently in need of assistance, with the greatest needs concentrated in areas hit hardest by climate-fueled effects and displacement. Guatemala’s large Indigenous population, estimated at nearly 44 percent of the country’s total population, has been disproportionately affected by poverty, land insecurity, and food shortages. Food insecurity presently affects millions of Guatemalans, particularly in the country’s Dry Corridor, where rural families contend with prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall associated with human-caused climate change that have altered traditional crop and livestock practices. Declines in agricultural yields have led to rising food costs, falling incomes, and persistent shortages in a country where millions of farmers and families depend on agriculture and informal labor, can have cascading effects across entire communities.

  • The result has been worsening malnutrition, particularly among young children. By October 2024, Guatemala’s Food Security and Nutrition Secretariat reported 25,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children under five, with 21 percent classified as severe and 50 associated deaths. The hardest-hit departments included Alta Verapaz, Huehuetenango, and San Marcos. Currently, an estimated 2.6 million people are experiencing ‘crisis’ (IPC Phase 3) levels of food insecurity, including nearly 386,000 people in ‘emergency’ (IPC Phase 4) level food insecurity, the second-highest emergency category before famine. This fragile humanitarian state is further destabilizing in the wake of major reductions to U.S. foreign assistance in 2025, when the Trump administration cut roughly 90 percent of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s foreign aid contracts, including programs operating in Guatemala.

  • The withdrawal of this long-term aid commitment has disrupted agricultural, health, nutrition, and protection services that many rural families depended on. Programs helping thousands of smallholder farmers improve crop diversification, strengthen climate resilience, and access markets were terminated or sharply reduced. Maternal and child nutrition programs, supported by organizations such as Save the Children, were also halted, and cash-transfer programs that helped drought-affected households buy food were suspended. The closure of these initiatives removed critical lifelines in Guatemala, where climate shocks can quickly translate into hunger and child malnutrition in communities that depend on agriculture for survival. USAID climate-adaptation programs were designed to reduce these risks by promoting climate-resilient farming practices, strengthening irrigation systems, and expanding economic opportunities that help ease migration pressures. Many of these development efforts also targeted the root causes of irregular migration by improving food security, creating local employment, and strengthening community stability.

  • In the fiscal year 2024, USAID committed $14.25 million in foreign assistance to Guatemala. By 2026, official reporting showed net negative USAID obligations, meaning previously committed funds to the country were withdrawn or de-obligated.

• Climate resilience in Belize strained following USAID exit — The recent termination of operations by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is also raising concerns regarding climate change resilience and adaptation capacity in Belize. This funding withdrawal and its ripple effects are expected to significantly affect the country’s ability to respond to climate-related risks across infrastructure, public services, and community development. USAID has historically been a key partner in supporting Belize’s climate adaptation agenda, providing financing and technical assistance for resilience-building initiatives and disaster preparedness. The program’s exit is creating uncertainty for a range of projects that sit at the intersection of development and climate vulnerability, particularly those designed to help communities adapt to increasingly extreme effects of human-caused climate change. Belize has nearly 386 kilometers (240 miles) of coastline along the Caribbean Sea, along with more than 450 cayes and islands. A significant share of the country’s population and economic activity is concentrated in these low-lying coastal and insular areas, much of which sits at or just above high tide level. This geographic reality places Belize at high risk from sea level rise, coastal erosion, and storm surge events.

  • Rising sea levels are already contributing to the loss of beaches, degradation of coastal ecosystems, and damage to public infrastructure. In many areas, saltwater intrusion and rising water tables are further compromising freshwater availability, reducing water quality and increasing the cost and complexity of water supply and management systems. Higher temperatures are expected to affect human health and comfort, with potential implications for tourism demand, particularly among older visitors who are more sensitive to heat stress. At the same time, tropical storms and hurricanes are projected to increase in intensity, size, and duration, compounding the risk of flooding and infrastructure damage across roads, housing, and critical services. Together, these stressors threaten both livelihoods and long-term economic stability. As one of Belize’s primary economic engines, the tourism sector depends heavily on coastal ecosystems, beaches, and marine biodiversity. Continued environmental degradation could reduce the country’s attractiveness as a destination, leading to declines in tourist arrivals and, in turn, employment losses in communities that depend on tourism-related income.

  • Over time, this creates a reinforcing cycle where climate impacts directly translate into economic vulnerability. Long-term projections are particularly concerning, with estimates suggesting that continued sea level rise could affect nearly the entire coastline of Belize City and most of the country’s cayes by 2050. This places pressure not only on environmental systems but also on spatial planning, infrastructure investment, and national development strategy. Previously, USAID played an important supporting role in climate research and monitoring in Belize, including partnerships with regional institutions such as the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre in Belmopan. These collaborations supported reef monitoring, vulnerability assessments, and aerial mapping efforts that have been essential for understanding climate risks and informing adaptation policy.

  • Despite the gap left by USAID’s withdrawal, other financing mechanisms continue to support climate resilience efforts. In July 2025, the World Bank approved a US$20 million Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat-DDO) for Belize, aimed at strengthening the country’s financial capacity to respond to climate-related shocks and natural disasters.

We Would Love to Hear From You!

Have you noticed the impacts of extreme heat in your community? Whether it’s unusual weather patterns or disruptions in local ecosystems, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Share your experiences or observations in the comments below and join the conversation!

Your Feedback Matters

At Global Climate Dispatch, we strive to provide accurate and equitable coverage of climate change and its impacts. If you come across anything that seems inaccurate or concerning, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Your insights help us ensure that the information we share remains truthful, balanced, and relevant to all.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index1 (CSI) indicates that temperatures made significantly more likely by climate change are affecting multiple regions across the world this week. We use the CSI as a guide to highlight where warming conditions are interacting with existing environmental, economic, and social pressures. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, climate disruption is threatening beekeeping livelihoods tied to forest health and food systems. In Uganda, disappearing glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains are increasing flood risk while eroding traditions tied to snow and ice. In Iceland and Greenland, warming temperatures are reshaping Arctic ecosystems while declining snow and sea ice disrupt winter recreation and longstanding Indigenous ways of life. And on the Arabian Peninsula, extreme heat and chronic water stress are increasing the risks associated with conflict and fragile infrastructure.

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Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda

• Climate change is disrupting beekeeping in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reducing honey production and threatening livelihoods tied to an industry that also supports food security and forest health — In North Kivu, beekeepers report that hives that once produced reliably during the main harvest months are now frequently sitting empty as prolonged drought, irregular rainfall, and increasingly unpredictable seasons reduce flowering and nectar availability. Producers say trees are blooming less consistently, dry spells are lasting longer, unknown insects are attacking hives, and some bee colonies are abandoning their hives as conditions worsen. This decline is reducing both an important source of income for many households and access to a valued food and medicinal product. For beekeepers who have maintained their hives for decades, the loss carries a deeper weight, with the work forming a core part of their identity and sense of purpose. The disruption is already feeding through to local markets, where the price of a litre of honey reportedly rose from around $7 in early 2025 to between $10 and $12 in 2026 as supply tightened. Conflict-related insecurity has added another layer of pressure by limiting safe access to production areas, while local groups are calling for reforestation with nectar-bearing trees, wetland protection, and wider adoption of modern hives better suited to shifting climate conditions.

  • Beekeeping has wider importance across the Congo Basin because it can generate income while reducing pressure on forests often exploited for timber, charcoal, and other extractive uses. Honey, wax, royal jelly, and other hive products represent an underused economic resource, and one promoter argued that the equivalent volume of honey sold at minimum prices could generate seven to eight times more revenue than a barrel of oil. Bees also serve as indicators of environmental quality, as they do not tolerate pollution, and, as essential pollinators, they underpin both food production and wild plant diversity.

  • The sector is also being promoted as a pathway for employment, skills training, and more sustainable rural development. In Pointe-Noire, a cooperative working across the beekeeping value chain has trained people in hive construction, harvesting, processing, packaging, and marketing, operating what is described as the only professional beekeeping training center in Congo and one of the very few in Central Africa. Its 2019 launch drew participants from Senegal and France, reflecting broader regional interest in the model. More recently, programs supported young people from forested northern departments in moving away from environmentally damaging wild honey gathering. This reflects growing recognition that resilient beekeeping can contribute not only to conservation but also to jobs, enterprise development, and climate adaptation across Central Africa.

• Climate change is accelerating the loss of Uganda’s tropical glaciers, threatening water systems, ecosystems, and communities living below the Rwenzori Mountains — The ice fields of the Rwenzori range on the Uganda–Democratic Republic of the Congo border shrank from about 6.5 square kilometres in 1906 to less than one square kilometre by 2003, and researchers have warned that the remaining glaciers could disappear entirely within this decade. A 2024 expedition led by the environmental nonprofit Project Pressure, in collaboration with UNESCO and the Uganda Wildlife Authority, created the first detailed 3D model of the surviving ice fields and found that the glaciers on Mounts Speke and Baker are already gone, with only Mount Stanley retaining any significant ice. The retreat is one of the clearest visible signs of warming in equatorial Africa, but the impacts extend far beyond the mountaintops. In 2012, wildfires swept through the mountains at altitudes above 4,000 metres, stripping slopes of vegetation that helped regulate river flow downstream. Communities living at the foot of the Rwenzori have since experienced some of the most destructive flooding the area has seen. In 2020, heavy rains sent rivers bursting from their banks, destroying roughly 25,000 homes and affecting around 173,000 people in western Uganda. Communities in the foothills report increasing extremes of both drought and flooding as rainfall patterns shift and protective vegetation declines. Scientists working in the region have noted that even modest warming at the equator can significantly alter water balances and local weather systems, making the Rwenzori a particularly acute example of how tropical highland ecosystems respond to climate stress.

  • For the Bakonzo people, the disappearance of the glaciers is also a cultural and spiritual loss tied to identity, language, and longstanding relationships with the mountain landscape. The name Rwenzori itself derives from a Bakonzo word associated with snow, and the range gives its name to the Bakonzo kingdom, making the glacier loss a threat not only to the environment but to the community's sense of origin and continuity. Local cosmology places the deity Kithasamba within the mountain ice and links the glaciers to fertility, rivers, and the well-being of surrounding communities, with glacial melt understood as a sacred gift that nourishes the valley below. Cultural leaders and community members have warned that as floods erode sacred sites and the snow vanishes, ceremonies tied to waterfalls, hot springs, and river confluences are becoming harder to sustain. During the 2020 floods, hot springs used for ritual purposes were submerged and vegetation around a ceremonial waterfall was washed away, leaving spiritual leaders unable to perform ceremonies that have been practiced for generations.

  

Iceland, Greenland

• Warming temperatures and expanding human activity are increasing mosquito activity across the Arctic, helping reshape ecosystems that were once too cold or isolated for many species — Mosquitoes were detected just north of Reykjavík in 2025, ending Iceland's long-standing status as the only Arctic nation without them and showing how quickly species ranges are shifting across the far north. The Arctic is warming roughly four times faster than the global average, with earlier snowmelt, longer summers, and more frequent disturbances such as wildfire, creating more favorable conditions for arthropods, including mosquitoes and other biting insects. These changes can reverberate through food webs. Arctic shorebird chicks are increasingly vulnerable when hatching no longer aligns with peak insect availability, while caribou and reindeer face heavier harassment from biting insects that reduce grazing time, raise energy expenditure, and can weaken body condition and reproduction. Climate-linked insect outbreaks are also capable of stripping tundra vegetation across grazing landscapes, altering nutrient cycles, changing surface reflectivity, and contributing to warmer soils that accelerate permafrost thaw, which can trigger the release of greenhouse gases and potentially dangerous microbes. Simultaneously, expanding shipping, tourism, military activity, and infrastructure are creating new pathways for species introductions, while the region still lacks a coordinated monitoring system to detect and respond to emerging biological risks before they spread further, and in cases involving potential disease vectors, delays in building that capacity have costs that compound over time.

• Record winter warmth in Greenland left Nuuk’s ski slopes without enough snow to open this season, highlighting how rapidly Arctic warming is disrupting local economies and winter traditions — Greenland’s west coast experienced its warmest January on record in 2026, with temperatures in Nuuk far above the long-term average and at times rising above freezing during what is normally the coldest part of winter. Similar anomalies were recorded across towns along much of the west coast, where unusually mild conditions persisted through the month. For Nuuk’s small ski hill, which typically operates through the core winter season and depends entirely on natural snowfall, the consequences were immediate. The slopes never opened, leaving the lift idle and cutting off a seasonal draw for residents and visitors. The manager, who has worked there for a quarter century, said he had never seen a winter like it. Bare rock was visible where snow should normally cover the mountain, and operators estimated at least a metre of snowfall was missing. The lack of snow has intensified calls for artificial snowmaking equipment, as warming temperatures and declining snow cover increasingly reshape recreation, business activity, and everyday life across Arctic communities.

  • The same loss of snow and ice is threatening older ways of life rooted in Greenland’s Indigenous history. In Ilulissat, residents reported a January without enough sea ice for normal dog sled travel, forcing sleds onto exposed ground during what should be peak winter conditions. For more than a thousand years, sled dogs have supported Inuit hunting, fishing, travel, and social life across Greenland, with frozen bays and coastal sea ice functioning as winter routes that connect settlements and provide access to hunting grounds. Residents said those routes once allowed people to travel freely along the coast across large distances during winter, but are now becoming shorter, less reliable, and in some years absent altogether. Rising temperatures are also bringing more rain instead of snow, creating clearer, harder-to-read ice that can be more dangerous for fishermen and travelers than traditional snow-covered sea ice. In some northern communities, unreliable ice conditions have already required government financial support for families whose winter hunting seasons were disrupted.

  • The loss carries significant cultural consequences. Longtime mushers warned that losing dog sledding would mean losing a major part of Greenlandic identity, knowledge, and heritage passed between generations. Near Ilulissat, the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier has also retreated sharply, and Greenland as a whole has lost more than five trillion tonnes of ice since the early 2000s, helping drive sea-level rise that affects coastlines far beyond the Arctic. Darkening ice surfaces from soot and debris can accelerate melt by reducing reflectivity, while longer melt seasons expose older ice that absorbs more heat. Continued large-scale ice loss in Greenland would raise global sea levels over time, with the full ice sheet containing enough water to increase oceans by roughly 23 feet.

    

Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates

• US–Israel–Iran war poses threat to Gulf state desalination infrastructure, intersecting with climate change and extreme water stress across Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — Across the Gulf region, desalination plants are among the most strategically important civilian infrastructure in the world, forming the technological backbone of everyday life in one of the driest climates on Earth. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, including Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, rely on desalination for the majority of their water supply, serving roughly 62 million people and accounting for an estimated 40% of global desalinated water production. The United Arab Emirates derives more than 80% of its potable water from desalination, Oman about 86%, and Saudi Arabia leads the world in total capacity, operating mega-facilities such as Ras Al Khair, which can process nearly 3 million cubic meters of water per day. With minimal rainfall, depleting aquifers, and rapidly growing urban populations, these countries have few viable alternatives. That dependence creates a clear strategic vulnerability. Heightened tensions involving the United States, Israel, and Iran have raised concerns that coastal desalination plants, pipelines, or the electricity systems that power them could become targets in a wider regional conflict. In several Gulf states, emergency water reserves are measured in days rather than months, meaning prolonged disruption could quickly cascade into shortages, economic paralysis, and potential social unrest.

  • These risks are compounded by climate change. Rising temperatures are intensifying evaporation, worsening drought conditions, and placing additional strain on already fragile groundwater systems in a region described as facing “absolute water scarcity” or conditions where water supplies are structurally insufficient to meet basic needs such as food production and sanitation. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is already the most water-stressed in the world, with 83% of its population exposed to extremely high water stress, defined as withdrawing more than 80% of available renewable freshwater annually. To confront the depletion of scarce surface water, groundwater, and aquifers, Gulf countries have turned to desalination, a process that removes salts and minerals from seawater to produce freshwater. Modern large-scale plants rely primarily on Reverse Osmosis (RO) and Thermal Distillation. Gulf countries operate more than 400 desalination facilities, yet a significant share of total output is concentrated in a relatively small number of mega-plants. These facilities are fixed infrastructure, costly to repair, slow to replace, and in many cases tightly integrated with electricity generation systems. As a result, a single major disruption could simultaneously compromise both the power and water supplies, with the potential to leave entire cities facing acute shortages. Most Gulf states also maintain only limited emergency water reserves, often sufficient for days rather than months, meaning that as climate change erodes natural resilience, any major regional disruption would increase the risk of acute water shortages in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with the potential to quickly become a humanitarian crisis.

• A broader US–Israel–Iran war could worsen Yemen’s crisis in indirect but devastating ways — Yemen already faces one of the most severe water emergencies in the world. Years of armed civil conflict, economic collapse, recurring drought, and under-resourced public services have left over 17 million people without access to safe water and adequate sanitation, with nearly two-thirds of the Yemeni population in need of humanitarian assistance. In many areas, water systems have collapsed, forcing communities to rely on trucked deliveries or fuel-powered pumps to meet daily needs. Only about one-third of the population is connected to a piped water network, leaving millions dependent on unstable and costly alternatives. Yemen is also among the most water-scarce in the world, with one of the lowest per capita water availability rates globally—approximately 150 cubic meters per person per year, compared with an average of roughly 1,250 cubic meters per person per year across the broader Middle East and North Africa region. This places Yemen well below the 500 cubic meters per person per year threshold commonly used on the Water Stress Index (WSI) to classify conditions of absolute water scarcity. When Yemen’s complex civil war began in 2014, primarily between the Houthis (Ansar Allah) and the internationally recognized government, now represented by the Presidential Leadership Council, the country’s water crisis became substantially worse. More than 45% of Yemen’s water infrastructure (including pumping stations, reservoirs, treatment facilities, and dams) has been either partially or completely destroyed, damaged, or rendered inoperable.

  • In many regions, maintenance systems have collapsed, spare parts are scarce, and local authorities lack the revenue or capacity to restore basic services. As a result, millions of households rely on unsafe wells, trucked deliveries, or expensive private vendors. At the same time, groundwater extraction in many areas significantly exceeds natural recharge rates, drawing down aquifers faster than they can recover. This is particularly severe around major urban centers such as Sana’a, where water tables have fallen for years, and long-term depletion has become a major national concern. Unlike wealthier Gulf states, Yemen lacks large-scale desalination infrastructure capable of stabilizing water supplies during emergencies. Instead, the country’s water system is heavily dependent on imported fuel, functioning ports, electricity, and aid corridors. Even before any broader regional escalation, fuel shortages alone have repeatedly disrupted water access for millions by shutting down pumps, reducing tanker deliveries, and increasing the cost of already scarce supplies.

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