Last month was the hottest March ever recorded for the contiguous United States — and not by a small margin. Federal data shows it exceeded previous records by the largest gap ever logged for any month, which is the kind of statistical anomaly that stops being reassuring to explain away. A forecast El Niño is expected to push temperatures higher still in the months ahead.

March being warm doesn’t make every summer extreme, and climate operates at scales that resist single-month narratives. But the margin matters. When records aren’t just broken but shattered, it suggests the baseline is shifting faster than the models anticipated, or that the models were right and we’re simply further along the curve than most public discourse has caught up to. Either interpretation leads to the same place.

Colorado State University released its annual Atlantic hurricane forecast this week, projecting 13 named storms and 6 hurricanes for the 2026 season. The forecast arrives against an already elevated baseline: last month was the hottest March on record for the contiguous United States, by the widest margin ever recorded for any single month. A developing El Niño pattern could push temperatures further.

El Niño typically suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing wind shear — but when baseline sea surface temperatures are already this high, the suppression effect is partially offset. The models are working in territory with fewer historical analogs.

Colorado State University released its annual Atlantic hurricane forecast: 13 named storms, six of which are expected to become hurricanes.

The forecast comes as NOAA data shows last month was the hottest March on record for the Lower 48 states — the largest anomaly ever recorded for any month. A forecast El Niño could drive temperatures higher still.

El Niño historically suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing wind shear. But the baseline sea surface temperatures are so elevated that even a shear-heavy season may produce more intense storms than historical averages would suggest.

The global authority on threatened wildlife has declared the emperor penguin an endangered species. Climate change is the mechanism: as Antarctic sea ice shrinks, the stable platforms emperor penguins need for breeding and raising chicks disappear. The species is being squeezed by a warming trajectory it cannot adapt to at the pace the ice is retreating.

Emperor penguins are the largest penguin species and among the most recognizable animals on the planet — which makes the listing a symbolic moment as much as a conservation one. The species’ entire existence is organized around sea ice timing. They need it to arrive early enough and last long enough each year. As that window narrows, chick survival rates fall.

Permafrost thaws → ancient organic material decomposes → carbon that’s been frozen since before agriculture releases into the atmosphere. And it’s reshaping rivers in the process.

The feedback loop problem: warming causes thaw, thaw releases carbon, carbon causes more warming. The concern has always been that this becomes self-sustaining at some point regardless of what humans do.

New study says it’s already further along than thought.

2025 was confirmed as the hottest year in recorded human history, continuing a streak that has now run for over a decade. The science is not the contested part anymore. What deserves more attention is the gap between what is being done and what the models say is necessary.

Global renewable energy deployment is genuinely accelerating. Solar installation in particular has beaten nearly every projection made ten years ago — costs have fallen faster and adoption has spread wider than analysts expected. This is good news and it is real. The problem is that it is happening alongside continued fossil fuel use rather than replacing it at the rate required to hit agreed temperature targets.

Nuclear power was supposed to be a fading technology. Expensive, politically toxic after Fukushima, outcompeted by renewables. The reversal now underway is genuine and worth understanding.

The driver is AI. Data centers powering large language models and the infrastructure they require consume enormous and rapidly growing amounts of electricity. Unlike residential or commercial demand, these loads are constant — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Solar generates during the day. Wind generates when the wind blows. Nuclear generates all the time, regardless of conditions. For a tech industry trying to guarantee power availability at scale, nuclear has become newly attractive precisely because of the attribute that made it economically awkward in a grid context: it does not stop.