A French tourist recently died in Death Valley national park after a car mishap left him stranded in 116F (47C) weather.

The visitor, identified as 68-year-old Pierre Michel Formosa, was traveling with another French man along the park’s remote West Side Road when their vehicle became stuck in mud near Queen of Sheba Mine Road.

With no other vehicles nearby, the pair walked across the salt flats toward Badwater Road in search of help as excessively temperatures reached 116F (46.6C), the National Park Service (NPS) said in a recent statement.

After walking roughly 1.3 miles (2km), Formosa was unable to go any farther, the agency said. His companion continued toward Badwater Road and eventually got help from a passing driver.

The companion subsequently reported Formosa’s plight at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center shortly after 2pm, the NPS said.

Park rangers and an Inyo county sheriff’s deputy launched a search and rescue operation for Formosa at about 2.15pm. A California highway patrol helicopter later joined the effort and located Formosa that afternoon, about 1.5 miles from Badwater Road.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. The NPS said the Inyo county coroner will determine the cause and manner of death; nonetheless, the agency cautioned the public about how dangerous the heat at Death Valley can be, along with other characteristics there.

“Our deepest condolences are with the family and friends of the visitor who died,” said Mike Reynolds, the Death Valley national park superintendent. “This is a heartbreaking reminder of how quickly conditions here can turn dangerous.

“Death Valley is an extraordinary place, but its heat, distances, and remoteness can be dangerous, regardless of experience. We’re grateful to everyone who took part in the search, and our thoughts are with his loved ones.”

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Death Valley, which lies near the California–Nevada state border, is widely known as one of the hottest places on Earth. In July 1913, Furnace Creek, an unincorporated community within Death Valley national park, recorded a temperature of 134F, which is recognized as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

Beside the temperatures, vast terrain and remoteness, the NPS often warns Death Valley visitors that cell service is limited or unavailable – and emergency assistance can be hours away. The park covers about 3.4m acres (1.4m hectares) and is the largest national park in the contiguous US.

The park recommends several precautions for visitors, including planning routes in advance and checking road and weather conditions before setting out. Visitors are also advised to carry at least one gallon of water per person per day, along with extra supplies for vehicle emergencies – and to make sure their vehicle is suitable for the road, as many backcountry routes require high clearance or four-wheel drive.

Other safety recommendations include carrying a satellite communicator or emergency beacon, staying with a vehicle if it becomes disabled (as it can provide shade and shelter), and sticking to paved roads while avoiding hikes at lower elevations during extreme heat.

The warnings come as heatwaves have swept across the US amid the ongoing climate crisis. July was the hottest month ever recorded in the country, and several hikers have died in suspected heat-related cases this summer.

In June, the NPS reported three apparent heat-related deaths during trips into the inner canyon of Grand Canyon national park in Arizona. The victims were a 72-year-old man, a 67-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman.

The British government must soon decide whether it should give consent to two oil and gasfields, Rosebank in the North Atlantic and Jackdaw in the North Sea. Amid both insecurity of energy supplies and deadly evidence of the climate crisis, the prime minister, Andy Burnham, is facing pressure from the oil and gas industry and unions on one side, and environmentalists on the other.

Labour’s manifesto commitment not to approve new drilling licences offers little help, because the fields already have licences, granted by the previous Conservative government in 2022 and 2023. But last year, Edinburgh’s court of session ruled that the environmental impact assessments on which this decision relied were unlawful. The Conservative government had, the court ruled, failed to include the emissions generated when the oil and gas from the fields is burned. The court allowed work to continue on the fields, but a new assessment had to be done and approval sought again.

The issue facing the new energy and climate secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is whether the additional information on the fields’ global emissions alters the grounds for consent.

Although invariably discussed together, the two fields are very different. Jackdaw is a small gasfield, with a production life of only 11 years. Its total carbon emissions will be only around 24m tonnes. Annually this would equate to around 0.8% of the UK’s total emissions. The gas would be piped into the UK, so would be consumed domestically. As this would probably displace dirtier liquified natural gas (LNG) imported from the US, it would make a small contribution to the UK’s energy security and emissions reduction.

By contrast, Rosebank is a large oilfield, with a 25-year life. During that time it would generate around 250m tonnes of carbon emissions. The oil would be sent to the Netherlands for refining, since the UK no longer has the appropriate capacity – and very little, if any, is likely to be used in the UK. So it would not contribute to our energy security.

There are good reasons, therefore, for the government to make different decisions on the two fields. Jackdaw can be justified (just) on energy security grounds. The UK needs gas over the coming decade, and there is a benefit to a little more of it being domestic. Jackdaw will stop generating emissions in 2037-2038, when the UK, and the world, will still be well above net zero.

Rosebank, by contrast, will still be producing oil in 2050, when the UK is legally obliged under the Climate Change Act to achieve net zero emissions. Indeed, by 2050, the Paris agreement (which forms the bedrock of the UK’s international commitments) expects the entire world to be just a decade or so off achieving net zero emissions. For that reason, the International Energy Agency expects global oil demand by that date to be lower than today and falling, if governments around the world follow their own stated climate policies.

Jackdaw is frankly too small to have any meaningful impact on global supply and demand in the decade it will be producing. But because of its size and longevity, the same cannot be said of Rosebank, which between 2040 and 2050 will be making a material contribution to global oil supply just when the market should be starting to decline. The greater the supply, the lower the price, and the higher the demand. So Rosebank has implications for both global emissions and international climate change policy.

Rosebank could be given consent while avoiding these consequences if the government required it to pay for some or all of its emissions to be captured and stored in disused oilfields or saline aquifers. Most of Rosebank’s emissions will occur when its oil is burned. So, making carbon capture and storage (CCS) a condition of its licence would effectively mean requiring it to pay to capture and store the equivalent volume of other producers’ emissions.

Though controversial, CCS is a proven technology: one of Rosebank’s owners, Equinor, has been using CCS in its Norwegian Sleipner field since 1996, is reported to have stored over 20m tonnes of CO₂ without leakage. The UK government’s own CCS programme, operated by the North Sea Transition Authority, has now licensed 21 CCS projects at different stages of development. But Rosebank is not one of them.

The oil and gas industry has yet to acknowledge that its production can ultimately only be consistent with net zero emissions if it uses CCS. Giving consent to the Rosebank field on condition that it pays for its emissions to be captured and stored – say, from 2035 onwards – is the only way to make it compatible with the UK government’s domestic and international climate change commitments. By joining the UK CCS programme, Rosebank would probably be eligible for government support.

The additional costs of CCS might mean that Rosebank’s owners would decide not to go ahead with it. But this would merely demonstrate that the project cannot in practice be undertaken in a way that is consistent with the UK’s net zero commitments.

It is also critical that for both Jackdaw and Rosebank the government insists on strict methane limits. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and both fields will have significant emissions.

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The government should make two other announcements at the same time. The first is to secure thousands of jobs by accelerating the labour-intensive decommissioning of oil and gasfields in the North Sea. At the same time, the government should publish a net zero transition roadmap, explaining how the UK will “defossilise” its economy over the next 25 years.

Rosebank’s and Jackdaw’s operators say they will create around 3,500 jobs in development and around 880 in operation. These are not negligible, but they will not save the oil and gas industry or the wider economy of north-east Scotland. Between 2013 and 2023, jobs in the sector fell by more than half, from 441,000 to 213,000. This has nothing to do with UK climate change policy, but is simply the inevitable consequence of the exhaustion of the British North Sea basin (around 90% of the UK’s oil and gas has now been extracted).

With around 1,700 wells due to be plugged and abandoned in the next six years and 500 already overdue for removal, decommissioning is a huge task. It will create many more jobs than drilling would (it is estimated that decommissioning will generate up to 25,000 UK jobs over the next decade and deliver about £6.8bn in economic benefit).

A net zero transition roadmap would cover both the anticipated technological pathways in energy, transport, industry and agriculture, and the implications for businesses and households. Such a roadmap would reassure firms, unions and consumers concerned about what the net zero goal really means, and deprive the media and opposition parties of the chance to speculate wildly about its costs.

It would give investors much-needed certainty. France has already produced such a roadmap, and other countries are also committed to doing so. Britain should join them.

The world’s oceans were hotter than ever previously recorded on Saturday, according to the latest data.

The average surface temperature was 21.1C, with the rising marine heat a stark indicator of the climate crisis. More than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning enters the oceans.

Hotter oceans exacerbate the sea level rise and extreme storms that threaten billions of people, as well as driving marine heatwaves that decimate sea life and undermine coastal livelihoods, scientists warned.

Daily global sea surface temperature records broken

The northern hemisphere summer has already been hit by record-breaking heatwaves, drought and wildfires in Europe and North America, and intense rain and typhoons in Asia.

The ocean heat spike is being intensified by a fast developing El Niño event, which is set to be the hottest in at least a century. El Niño events are natural climate variations that raise global temperature and change weather patterns, with serious impacts around the world. The new El Niño has already delivered low monsoon rain in India, major wildfires in Indonesia and heightened fire concerns in Australia.

The new ocean heat record being set in August is especially remarkable as global sea temperatures are typically highest in March and April, after the austral summer. The southern hemisphere has significantly more ocean area than the northern.

“The record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which produced the new data. “El Niño is adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming. The consequences are already visible: the number of marine heatwave days globally has more than tripled since the early 1990s.”

Warmer oceans contribute to sea level rise because of thermal expansion of the water, increasing flooding risks for coastal communities and low-lying island nations. Higher ocean temperatures also supercharge extreme weather events, because warmer seas transfer more energy and water vapour to the atmosphere, intensifying rainfall and storms.

Most of the planet-heating CO₂ from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction is absorbed by the oceans. However, a hotter ocean is less efficient at absorbing CO₂. This is potentially weakening one of the planet’s most important natural buffers against global heating, the scientists said.

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“Two key actions are needed to address this record ocean warming,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature. “Fossil fuel emissions need to be rapidly reduced. Meanwhile, it is essential that countries protect marine and coastal ecosystems. Kelp beds, mangroves and marshes absorb carbon and coral reefs protect against storms and provide habitat. More than 190 governments have committed to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet by 2030, and now is the time to turn that commitment into effective, durable conservation on the ground.”

The data, from the C3S, covers the oceans outside the polar regions. The Arctic is the fastest-heating region on the planet. The records stretch back to 1979, when satellites began delivering the highest quality date.

• The Guardian’s climate forum 2026
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Well, there’s no getting around it now. What many of us once feared has become a reality.

The dangerous conditions climate scientists long warned of have become our common, if deeply unwelcome, experience, and season by season, our acquaintance with disorder and extremities deepens. In both hemispheres, wildfires rage right into our cities and incinerate entire neighbourhoods. Marine heatwaves are bleaching corals and cooking seagrasses on a global scale. This northern summer has brought temperatures most Europeans associate with the Australian desert. Heat events in Europe have paralysed whole countries, destroyed infrastructure and killed citizens in their thousands.

Such is life at barely 1.5C of heating since pre-industrial times. We keep telling ourselves this is the new normal. But the awful truth is, we’re on track for nearly twice this. That’s tough to digest.

In 2024, I published a novel, Juice, about a world that has lurched beyond even the horror zone of 3C of heating. Many readers told me the book was terrifying. Some felt it was prophetic. And while I appreciate having galvanised a few readers and helped them imagine the consequences of what’s still being done in our names, I hope to God they’re wrong about the book’s visionary aspect. Because the world of Juice is a nightmare. It’s what I fervently hope we will not pass on to our descendants.

My book was published into a strange cultural malaise from which we have not yet recovered. It feels like a debilitating communal illness whose symptoms include febrile delirium, visceral rage and a kind of nihilistic lassitude. But among the afflicted, you sense a terrible thirst and hear a babble of confusion, and also many plaintive cries of yearning. What sufferers thirst for is honest information. What they are addled by is the tide of bullshit that besets them. What they yearn for is solidarity and common purpose.

There are those who have come to think of global heating as an inevitable fact, a tragedy, if you will. And there are some who have been convinced it isn’t real, not a fact at all. These sufferers have been poorly served, for instead of being ministered to humanely and conscientiously, they have been at the mercy of quacks and carpetbaggers. What we are all experiencing is not a mystery ailment. Neither is it inevitable. And it’s sure as hell no tragedy – it’s an outrage. Only those who have been coached into crippling delusion can continue to deny the very heat that torments them; they are victims of gross malpractice.

There’s nothing accidental or inadvertent about what we’re all suffering through together. We’ve had enough time now and have sufficient expertise to understand that this is not a natural calamity. This is something that is being done to us. Knowingly. Which makes it a crime.

A narrow class of people is profiting from our anguish. They know they’re setting our world on fire. They persist because they love neither the Earth nor its people. What they care about is money. Not just enough to get by on. Not even enough to become grotesquely rich with. They want the kind of money that bends others to their will. They seek power, buy it, co-opt it, leverage it and always thirst for more of it. As far as they’re concerned, the rest of us can go to hell – so long as we bend the knee and keep paying them as we stagger towards the flames.

This is why reporting on the state of our climate is so inadequate. Too often, coverage is evasive, recklessly shallow or simply dishonest. The oligarchs who own the news and direct the algorithms of social media are committed to keeping it that way. They give us bread and circuses and bank on our remaining distracted and tractable. They are betting against our children’s futures.

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This is why factual reporting on the trajectory of our heating world is more vital now than ever before. We deserve to be told the truth. We need to hear the good news and the bad news alike because honest information is central to humanity’s chances of securing a safe and decent existence for our children. The truth is what fortifies us and brings us together to defend ourselves and our planet.

I read the Guardian and write for it because it’s one of the few honest brokers left in the mainstream media ecosystem. Over many years it has distinguished itself by bringing courageous, forensic reporting on climate to counter this welter of lies and confusion. There are no pie-faced billionaires dictating its editorial line. No fossil fuel corporations are allowed to launder their reputations in the Guardian’s advertising platforms. This masthead continues to speak truth to power and to empower the rest of us who deserve to know there is hard news to absorb and good news to bear us up together.

This year’s climate support campaign highlights the Guardian’s unrivalled coverage of the climate emergency, including the ideas and initiatives that can help tackle it. Please consider supporting this work today.

It’s official: after years of tense negotiations and missed deadlines, there is finally a plan to govern the future of the imperiled Colorado River – or at least the makings of one.

With the previous framework set to expire in October, the US Bureau of Reclamation publicly released its proposal for a new plan on Friday.

The broad, 10-year blueprint sets parameters for operating guidelines that will be decided every two years.

Under the new federal framework, California, Arizona and Nevada could collectively lose up to 3m acre-feet of water – roughly 40% of their supply – per year. One acre-foot, a unit denoting the amount of water that can cover a football field one foot deep, is equal to roughly 326,000 gallons (1.2m liters) – enough to supply roughly three families for a year.

The document doesn’t spell out how exactly those cuts would be handed out. But the so-called lower-basin states would see a mandatory 1.25m acre-feet shaved off from their share in 2027 and 2028 with the possibility of larger cuts, depending on conditions.

Rather than a steadfast solution to the water crisis rapidly unfolding across the American west, the new rules set by the federal government are a stopgap, experts said. The goal is to protect the infrastructure at the heart of the system, they said, while giving the seven states still embroiled in an impasse over how to inflict the enormous cuts needed to pull the entire system back from the brink and allow more time to come to their own agreement.

For the last three years, the upper-basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the lower-basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada) have blown through deadline after deadline in attempts to form a lasting consensus.

With little hope of a reprieve from warm and dry conditions that have widened the gap between water demand and supply, there are also concerns that the proposed cuts won’t go far enough.

Tensions are still high, and time is running short.

Quick Guide

The Colorado River crisis – explained

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What is the Colorado River?

The Colorado River is one of the largest waterways in North America, snaking across 1,450 miles (2,300km) from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico. It supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, dozens of Indigenous tribes and two countries, and irrigates 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland.

Its waters raised bustling cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas, and fuel an estimated $1.4tn in economic activity. Large dams on the river’s two main reservoirs – Lake Mead and Lake Powell – provide hydroelectric power to millions of people. The sprawling basin is also home to diverse ecosystems, with scores of birds, fish, plants and animals, and provides critical habitat for more than 150 threatened or endangered species.

Why is the river in crisis?

The river has been overdrawn for more than a century. An outdated compact agreed to in 1922 doled out more rights than there was water in the system, a gap that’s only widened as the climate crisis takes a larger share and the region warms and dries.

Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, which form the upper-basin states, have resisted any mandatory cuts to their share, insisting the lower-basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – are responsible for drawing down the reservoirs. The lower-basin states have already agreed to take substantial cuts but are demanding their neighbors to the north share the burden.

What’s being done about it?

There have been layers of agreements and emergency orders to conserve water over the years, but the framework currently governing the waterway is set to expire in October 2026. States urgently need to agree to a new plan, but that hasn’t been easy. Negotiators have spent years trying to iron out the thorny disagreements, without success, and the seven basin states remain at an impasse.

The US federal government has limited jurisdiction to force more cuts or compliance but it does control Lake Powell and Lake Mead. By managing flows through them, federal officials have some power over how much water reaches the lower-basin states.

The threat of lawsuits hangs over the process. Stakeholders agree that letting the courts decide through long, drawn-out legal battles would be a catastrophic outcome for all. In the region where water has long been the source of survival and conflict, the challenges that hinder consensus are as steep as the stakes are high.

Words by Gabrielle Canon

Photograph: Daniel Cole/REUTERS

“This just kicks the can down the road,” Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said after the contours of the plan first became public in July. He and others are concerned the federal plan leaves the stakeholders across the basin limited ability to move forward, locked in endless negotiations.

“There is a potential for extremely serious consequences if we don’t address this,” Garrison said. “We’re putting the water supply for 40 million people at risk.”

More than 3m acre-feet (3.7bn kiloliters) of cuts are needed to bring the basin back into balance – an amount equal to more than a quarter of its annual average flow. In years as dry as this one, even that amount may not be enough. Lake Powell and Lake Mead recently fell to the lowest combined levels recorded since Lake Powell was built.

“In order to best protect the system, there needs to be pretty significant shortages,” said Dr John Berggren, regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates. “We’re going to have to do more.”

A tipping point

The intractable conflicts over the Colorado River are more than a century in the making.

A water compact from 1922 initially divided water resources equally between the upper-basin and lower-basin states, with each awarded rights to 7.5m acre-feet. Since 2020, the Colorado’s flows have averaged just more than 10m acre-feet a year, creating a staggering gap between the water available and the rights issued for it.

Consumption has fallen in recent years even as some communities and industries have continued to grow, thanks to conservation efforts and increased efficiency. But that hasn’t kept up with a dwindling water supply as the region warms and dries. Snowmelt that feeds the river is evaporating more quickly, and thirsty soils and plants soak up more water. Since 2020, average flows in the Colorado have dropped by 32% compared with the last century.

The ecosystems on the river have already paid a heavy price. But water shortages affect communities and businesses too. More than 70% of Colorado River water used goes to agriculture, including thirsty crops such as alfalfa and hay, which feed cattle, and the bulk of the winter lettuce and leafy greens grown in the US.

The crisis came to head this year, as a devastating snow drought and an extreme spring heatwave served as the one-two punch.At the start of summer, the water line at Lake Powell hovered just 37ft above the point where Glen Canyon Dam would fail to generate hydroelectric power relied on by nearly 6m households and businesses.

If the reservoir’s levels fell far enough, gravity would cease carrying the water downstream. A so-called “deadpool” would be catastrophic.

The reservoir levels typically don’t peak until early summer, which means there are months left before new snowmelt flows in. That is, if there’s even snow to melt off.

“If we have another mediocre year of runoff – not an excessively low year, just a mediocre year – we’d go over the cliff,” said Dr Jack Schmidt, the director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “Even if we had the ultimate gangbuster year,” he added, “we would still not get out of the crisis we’re in.”

Even with the possibility that the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, which models show could pack a punch this winter with surges of precipitation, will provide some relief, wet conditions don’t always guarantee strong flows.

“El Niño is not gonna save our bacon here,” Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado University, said. A century of data shows there isn’t a strong connection between El Niño’s strength and water supplies in the Colorado.

“If we had a decent winter, it would only buy us a little time,” he added. “ But arguably, that could confuse the nature of the serious steps we’d still need to take.”

Battle lines and sharp divisions

While the federal government has limited authority over the states’ water policy and can’t force cuts across the board, the Bureau of Reclamation operates Lake Powell and Lake Mead, which gives it more jurisdiction over the lower basin’s water supply.

The federal plan does go further than previous ones, more than doubling the maximum reductions required under the previous frameworks.

The framework also attempts to incentivize conservation, allowing users to store large amounts in federal reservoirs for future use. Rather than sacrificing the water, water users could get credits for conserved amounts. While the plan doesn’t force any cuts to the upper basin, this is one mechanism the federal government is using to encourage up to 200,000 acre-feet of water savings from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

But state negotiators haven’t hung up their hats.

“This is a bridge, not a permanent solution,” JB Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California and Colorado River commissioner for California, said in a statement issued with the announcement. “Three states cannot carry the responsibility of all seven.”

He added that the next two years under the federal plan provide an opportunity to reach an agreement between all the basin states that “spread that responsibility fairly across the basin”.

Others were more critical of the proposal. “We need to plan for our future. And this deal does not let us do that,” Bill Hasencamp, the southern California metropolitan water district’s manager of Colorado River resources, told Cal Matters before the plan was officially adopted.

Representatives from states facing the harshest cuts were also quick to push back after the proposal was first published in late July. The Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, said some of the federal options were unacceptable. The Nevada governor, Joe Lombardo, promised to fight “any outcome that imposes unreasonable impacts” to his constituents.

The rhetoric reflects sharp divisions that remain – and the still-present threats that these fights could be taken to the court. The legal challenges that still loom large could sink urgent management decisions into years of drawn-out courtroom battles.

“Some states in this basin are preparing to sue their sister states,” said Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, in a Senate committee hearing before the federal plan was released. Citing a “public display over hiring high-dollar firms” and war chests with litigation funds being set aside, she warned lawsuits could tie up decisions for decades.

Even with this plan in place, lawsuits from the lower basin against the upper could fly this year. Legal disputes would center on whether the upper basin can be held responsible for losses in supply due to the climate crisis. An interstate water law conflict like this would go straight to the US supreme court.

“By this September or October, there’s going to be a pretty compelling argument from the lower basin that the upper basin hasn’t met its delivery obligation,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University.

With no end to the crisis in sight, experts agreed the federal plan is a starting point – not the final word.

“We are going to have to at some point agree on reductions in supply across the seven basin states, and we have absolutely not been able to do that,” Garrison said. “But even more, we need to look at ways to maximize water supply, and that’s going to require a host of solutions.”

He pointed to increasing the use of recycled water or setting new price signals on growers that use large amounts. “Otherwise, in two years, we’re going to be right back where we started – if not sooner.”

Railway companies are racing to prepare for another brutal summer next year, as a developing El Niño could see 2027 break more heat-related records.

Britain’s railway system has already been under stress from extreme heat this summer, with several operators reducing timetables and train speeds.

Two trains derailed within 24 hours during the UK’s fifth heatwave in August, in what Network Rail said had “presented exceptional challenges to the railway”.

“Traditionally, our railway system hasn’t been designed for hot weather. So that puts our railway system under stress but also our overhead lines as well. That can also cause trouble for the whole [railway] system, not just the ground infrastructure,” said Xueyu Geng, a professor of ground engineering at the University of Warwick.

The Met Office has said that the El Niño event developing over the Pacific Ocean is likely to be the strongest for more than 100 years, with the UK forecast to experience increased rainfall and stormy weather this autumn due to the “unprecedented” weather pattern.

In 2024, Network Rail increased their projected five-year spending on climate, earthworks and drainage by five times the amount allocated from 2019.

“I believe Network Rail has done a great job to maintain our railway network, but we still need to be able to adapt more in order to cope with this changing climate,” Geng said.

She warned Britain must begin to factor in higher temperatures as part of the design standards for its railways. “We need to look at how the hot countries are managing their railway systems. For example, in Spain, their rail system is managing between 0C and 45C. Saudi Arabia is 10C to 55C. The track is pre-stressed. We need to manufacture the pre-stress level in order to cope [with extreme heat].”

Geng explained that Britain’s railways can typically handle temperatures as low as -10C, and this will need to be maintained. “We might have extreme cold as well. But, in the meantime, we need to look at the upper boundary temperature, and to actually manufacture our rail to cope with both kinds of extreme temperatures.”

Prof Adam Scaife, the Met Office’s head of long-range forecasting, said the scale of the growing El Niño is unprecedented. “We’re expecting the biggest El Niño for over a century, [with Pacific sea temperatures] peaking at something over 3C. That is unheard of in modern climate records.”

Rail operators need to be prepared in the coming year for both “potentially prolonged periods of hot dry weather and more intense rainfall and storminess,” said William Powrie, professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Southampton.

“There will need to be a serious look at parts of the network where past decisions have compromised the infrastructure, such as the extensive singling on the Salisbury to Exeter line, and reducing the train speed to account for poor track quality as a result of soil moisture deficit destroys the timetable,” Powrie said.

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“The immediate priority should be to use the warning time we have,” said Ioannis Koliousis, associate professor at the Cranfield School of Management. “Before a potentially wetter and stormier autumn and winter, Network Rail should intensify drainage clearance, culvert inspections, earthwork monitoring and vegetation management, particularly at locations with a known history of weather-related failures.

“The most important consideration is that we should now distinguish between maintenance and adaptation. Clearing a drain prepares us for the next storm, [but] redesigning or increasing the capacity of that drainage system prepares us for the next 30 years. We need to be doing both.”

A spokesperson for Network Rail said: “Our long-range forecast suggests it will be a warm, wet winter – in line with climate change predictions for Britain – and we are doing all we can to be ready for that. Britain’s railway is one of the safest in the world and improving its resilience to more frequent and extreme weather is an ongoing priority.

“We are continuing to invest in making the railway more resilient to extreme weather and climate change. This includes a £2.6bn programme of works in track maintenance and renewals, including drainage, earthworks, track and overhead power improvements, as well as monitoring and predictive technologies to identify risks earlier and enable proactive intervention.”

Europe is burning. This summer, an unprecedented series of heatwaves has swept through the continent and across many parts of the globe. The consequences have been nothing short of catastrophic. In recent weeks deadly blazes have torn through France, Greece and Spain, killing firefighters, forcing people from their homes and robbing them of their livelihoods.

With Tuesday marking Britain’s 34th day of temperatures exceeding 30C (86F) this year, the UK has also found itself reckoning with ferocious heat. Wildfires have forced evacuations in Suffolk and the Cairngorms. In London – where parks have become burnt, brittle and brown – hundreds of grass fires have put our firefighters under pressure like never before. In July, the weather station at Kew Gardens recorded its first ever month without rain since it started operating in 1871. As rivers run dry and reservoirs run low, farmers are warning of food shortages amid the deepening drought. With thousands of deaths already estimated to be linked to the extreme heat we saw in May and June alone, it’s likely this figure will climb higher still.

The terrifying scenes we’ve seen so far this summer are the latest part of a pernicious long-term pattern. This is the third drought London has experienced in the past five years. Across the world, the past 11 years have been the 11 hottest ever recorded – and with a super strength El Niño forming in the Pacific which could pour yet more fuel on the fire, that trend is all but certain to continue. The climate emergency is here – and no one can say they didn’t see it coming.

When I was first elected mayor back in 2016, I warned that our rapidly warming world would be the defining challenge of our time. I was the first mayor of a global city to declare a climate emergency. Since then, a coalition of climate deniers and delayers has been relentless in condemning the green policies I’ve introduced. When I announced my intention to expand the Ulez – creating the largest clean air zone in the world – they unsuccessfully attempted to drag down the debate and whip up a crude culture war. On social media, people were blinded by a dark blizzard of disinformation designed to discredit climate action. Radicalised by what he’d seen online, one man even detonated a homemade bomb, destroying a Ulez camera in a shocking act of domestic terrorism.

Looking back now, it feels like the fierce fight over Ulez marked the beginning of something else: a new age of extreme climate scepticism. In the years since, the horrifying reality of the climate crisis has come into sharp relief – and yet somehow the clamouring voices of denial and delay have grown louder than ever. Having dismissed climate change as a “con job”, Donald Trump has sought to sabotage global climate action, withdrawing the United States from the Paris agreement for the second time, cutting support for clean energy, and boosting oil and gas production. In the UK, where cross-party consensus on the climate crisis has collapsed, his ideas have been echoed by opposition politicians and rightwing populists who veer wildly between denialism and fatalism. As some claim the climate crisis is a hoax, others insist it’s too late to act.

Both arguments are bogus. The climate crisis is getting worse, but in London we’ve shown that – with courage and creativity – we can prepare ourselves for its impacts. We’ve planted more than 640,000 trees across the capital, shading our streets from the summer sun. We’ve embraced rewilding while creating and improving more than 2,000 football pitches’ worth of green space, providing natural drainage to prevent flooding. And just last month, we set out a plan to clean up our rivers and create safe swimming sites where Londoners can cool down in the heat. We have more zero-emission buses than any city in Europe and about a third of our country’s electric charging points.

At the same time, since I’ve been mayor our city’s carbon emissions have fallen by about a quarter, while our economy has continued to grow. And last year the Ulez helped us to get levels of nitrogen oxide – one of the most toxic pollutants in our air – within legal limits almost two centuries before experts predicted we would. Between 2019 and 2024, estimated deaths associated with air pollution in London fell by an estimated 40%.

Through C40 Cities, a network of almost 100 global cities I co-chair, London is working side by side with cities around the world to take on the climate emergency – from rolling out new green buses to boosting the supply of renewable energy – but we cannot do this alone. National governments across the globe must step up and meet the gravity of this moment with renewed focus, funding and resolve. This includes our own government, which should reassure the public by reaffirming its commitment to net zero and making clear that it will continue to reduce our reliance on oil and gas and to invest in green projects.

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The most common refrain I hear from climate deniers is that green policies are some kind of luxury divorced from the worries of working people who are just trying to get by. But the idea that you can separate the climate crisis from the cost of living is patently absurd. What happens when droughts cause food prices to rise and when oil-price shocks squeeze household budgets? When hospitals are overwhelmed by vulnerable people struggling in the heat? When railways and roads buckle, workplaces close and schools are shuttered? The notion that climate action represents “woke nonsense” relies on the ridiculous premise that the climate crisis isn’t real – or that if it is, we won’t feel its impact on our lives. This year has proven just how wrong that is.

We are living in an era of extremes, and my fear is that – without urgent action – the worst is still to come. In this context, climate denial and delay isn’t just delusional – it’s deadly. Because it won’t be President Trump and the fossil fuel companies paying the price for failure – it will be the rest of us. If we are to protect our planet and the people who call it home, we must turn the tide on climate denial by preparing for a hotter future and embracing net zero like never before.

This summer’s record drought has forced a football league to delay the start of its season because “rock hard” pitches are a danger to its players.

The 2026/27 season in the Anglian Combination League of 85 amateur teams in Norfolk and Suffolk was due to start next weekend.

But on Friday after an urgent meeting, the league’s board announced it had unanimously decided to postpone the start of the season until the end of August, because most of the clubs’ pitches are dried out and too dangerous to play on.

It said a number of pre-season friendlies have had to be cancelled because of the drought and matches that have gone ahead have led to “many injuries”.

In a statement addressed to all leagues clubs, players and officials, it confirmed the start of the season will be delayed until 29 August.

“The rationale behind this decision is to protect the welfare of players, officials and all associated with the match day, in what has been the driest and hottest July since records began in 1836,” the league chair, Dale Brown, said in the statement. “Most of our league clubs pitches are grass and the ground conditions are extremely dry and pitches rock hard.”

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Brown added: “This was a very difficult decision to reach and one that will not please all clubs.”

The league’s decision comes after a series of record-breaking heat waves and exceptionally low rainfall have left much of England and Wales visibly parched and the ground as hard as concrete.

Record temperatures were experienced in May and June, and July was the driest month since records began. A drought was declared in half of England last month with many water companies imposing hosepipe bans. Such a ban by Anglian Water which covers Norfolk and Suffolk, has been in force since 11 July.

Aerial images have shown dried out parks and sports fields devoid of any signs of green, with the exception of golf clubs, some sports clubs, and private schools who enjoy controversial exemptions from hosepipe bans.

The Met Office forecasts another heatwave next week, with temperatures set to reach 36C in parts of East Anglia and south-east England by next Thursday. There is no sign of much-needed rain, although humidity is expected to increase next week.

The FA does not hold figures on the number of leagues that have been forced to postpone the start of next season because of the drought. It said it was a matter of individual leagues and county football associations.

Record-low water levels in the Danube have exposed remnants of Europe’s Nazi past, with dozens of second world war warships emerging from the riverbed during an intense drought.

In the middle of the river on the Serbian and Romanian border, a broken-up hull was visible on a sandbank that is normally underwater. Other vessels were partly submerged, some still believed to be laden with weapons.

The ships were part of Adolf Hitler’s Black Sea fleet that the German military deliberately sank towards the end of the war to slow down the Soviet advance. Historians say up to 200 German warships were scuttled in this way in September 1944. But Nazi Germany did not surrender until the following year in May 1945.

The ships have been revealed during previous droughts only to disappear again as water levels rose along the second-longest river in Europe. The Serbian government has tried in the past to remove the wrecks, but most remain in place owing to the explosives they carried.

Other second world war remnants have been found in other parts of the river, including a German military motorcycle in Budapest, Hungary.

In Slovakia, police recovered an unexploded British 1,543lb (700kg) bomb. Police said authorities loaded it on to a “specially modified firefighter vehicle with a sand bed, which ensured its safe transport” and took it to a 5-metre deep pit to detonate it.

In 1944, Britain’s Royal Air Force mined the river to disrupt enemy troops.

The Danube, which flows through 10 countries, has become increasingly difficult to navigate as low water levels create dangerous conditions. Prolonged droughts have left major European rivers at significantly lower water levels than is typical for the time of year, creating an energy crisis as many power plants rely on their natural water supply for cooling.

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Intense summer heat and continuing drought conditions are being supercharged by the escalating human-caused climate crisis.

Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues.

Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures this week. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new national record of 42C (108F) had been reached in the village of Dolné Plachtince.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Shoppers stayed away from UK high streets during last month’s heatwave temperatures, with many choosing to buy online instead as the mercury in some areas rose into the mid-30Cs.

Trips to high streets were down by 3.8% year on year in July after a 6.2% fall in June, according to research from the monitoring firm Sensormatic for the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Visitors to shopping centres also declined, but those at retail parks returned to growth.

Overall there was a 2.1% decrease in numbers attending all shopping destinations compared with the same month last year.

Helen Dickinson, the BRC chief executive, said: “The heatwave continued to bear down on retail footfall in July, with high streets worst affected.

“London was hit particularly hard as soaring temperatures made tube and train travel less attractive, with some commuters and shoppers opting to stay home.”

The capital had 5.3% fewer shoppers last month compared with 3% fewer across England. There were increases of 2.7% in Scotland and 2.5% in Northern Ireland and flat footfall in Wales where the weather was less intense.

Dickinson said: “Climate change continues to deliver more and more extreme temperatures in the UK.

“Retailers are responding by investing in both mitigations – such as more air conditioning and more efficient refrigeration units – and in sustainability initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

“Unfortunately, business rates often punish stores for such investments, showing the need for government to look again at this broken system.”

The figures highlight the potentially differing fortunes of retailers during the hot spell, with those more reliant on physical stores potentially suffering.

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On Wednesday, the fashion and homewares retailer Next upgraded its profit guidance for the third time this year, saying it had benefited from sunny weather and the release of some “pent-up demand” in the Middle East and northern Europe in the 13 weeks to 1 August.

The growth was led by the range of other brands Next now sells, including Gap, Reiss and Joules, and strong sales online. Trading in its stores faltered during the sweltering heat.

Fashion is expected to be one of the winners in retail this summer, along with supermarkets and technology sellers as people bought cold food and drink, fans and air conditioning to cope with the heat.

Furniture and garden plants are among the losers, with the former under pressure from the cost of living and slow housing market while fewer plants have been planted because of extreme heat and dry weather.