This weekly round-up brings you key climate news from the past seven days, including worrying temperature trends for January and a new study confirming climate change contributed to the deadly LA fires.
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1. ‘Unexpected’: January Breaks Temperature Record Globally, Startling Scientists
January stood out as an anomalous month in temperature terms, becoming the hottest January ever recorded despite the arrival of a cooling weather pattern.
Last month’s surface air temperature of 13.23C was 0.79C above the 1991-2020 average for January, the European Union-led Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced on Thursday as it described the event as “surprising.”
The recent development of La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific had scientists believe global temperatures would slowly drop after the planet recorded its hottest year on record in 2024. The weather pattern, which typically occurs every three to five years, is associated with the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. It comes after another weather pattern, known as El Niño, pushed temperatures “off the chart” in 2023 and last year.
January’s measurements are therefore “surprising,” as Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, put it.
2. ‘Hotter, Drier, and More Flammable”: New Study Finds Climate Change Played a Role in LA Fires
Reduced rainfall and an abundance of dry vegetation due to human-induced climate change have worsened the recent LA wildfires, a new study has confirmed as it warned of escalating fire conditions as the climate crisis worsens.
Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA), an academic collaboration studying extreme event attribution, found that the hot, dry, and windy conditions that fuelled the recent fires were made about 35% more likely due to human-made warming, which is primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas.
When the fires started on January 7, LA County was tinder dry after experiencing its hottest summer in at least 130 years and receiving only 0.16 inches (4.1mm) of rain since last May. The region typically sees the bulk of its precipitation between October and April, but, as Glen MacDonald, a geography professor at UCLA, told The Atlantic last month, “[y]ou’d have to go to the late 1800s to see this dry of a start to the rainy season.”
3. Scientists Find Microplastics in 99% of Seafood Samples
Researchers in Oregon, US, sampled a total of 182 individual seafood species for anthropogenic particles, including microfibers shed from laundering clothing, microplastic beads from personal care products, and tire wear resulting from tire degradation.
Of the vessel-retrieved and retail-purchased individuals sampled, 180 contained some levels of anthropogenic particles, including pink shrimp, black rockfish, lingcod, Pacific herring, lamprey, and Chinook salmon. The latter had the lowest concentrations of particles while pink shrimp had the highest. Only two individuals – one vessel-retrieved Pacific herring and one vessel-retrieved lingcod – had no detected anthropogenic particles in their tissue.
“We found that the smaller organisms that we sampled seem to be ingesting more anthropogenic, non-nutritious particles,” said study lead Elise Granek, a professor of environmental science and management at Portland State University.
4. Canada’s Biggest Banks Join Wall Street-Led Exodus From Climate Alliance
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) became the latest to leave the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, after Toronto-Dominion, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, National Bank of Canada, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce all announced their departure last month.
The UN-sponsored initiative was set up in 2021 by former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to encourage financial institutions to limit the environmental footprint of their operations and push toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
The exodus of Canadian banks comes on the heels of a trend where several major Wall Street banks are stepping back from climate initiatives.
The six biggest banks in the world’s largest economy – Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan – recently quit the alliance. While not directly citing it as an influencing factor, the banks have for some two years been the focus of a Republican-led campaign against environment, social and governance investing.
5. UN Climate Chief Says Energy Transition ‘Unstoppable’ Despite US Exit From Paris Accord, Urges Countries to Deliver on Climate Finance at COP30
Speaking at a university in Brazil on Thursday, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said countries were “already stepping into their place to “reap the massive rewards” of transitioning to cleaner forms of energy, such as new jobs, reduced pollution and associated health costs, economic growth, and more affordable energy.
“A country may step back – but others are already stepping into their place to seize that opportunity,” he said, adding that the energy transition is “unstoppable.”
Stiell was referring to the US, which President Donald Trump last month withdrew from the Paris climate deal for the second time, calling the agreement an “unfair, one-sided … rip-off.” The move places the country – the world’s second largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases – alongside Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only countries in the world outside the accord.
In November, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that progress on the Paris Agreement could suffer a major setback if the US were to leave the international treaty for a second time.
