Europe is experiencing an exceptional heat episode these days for a month of May, with values between 10 and 15 degrees above average. The temperatures, more typical of the summer heatwave, have sent thermometers soaring above 35 °C in several countries on the continent, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Europe, as well as in southern countries, the United Kingdom, and the Balkans. Numerous regions are on alert for extraordinarily high temperatures. In fact, in recent hours, the government of Italy has activated the national climate alert system, raising it to the maximum risk level for highs of up to 35 °C in cities such as Rome, Bologna, Brescia, Florence, and Turin, and some regions have restricted outdoor work during the hours of maximum insolation to protect workers.

It is one of the most iconic animals on a European scale and surely one of the most representative and studied amphibians in the world. And yet, until now it was unknown that common salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) have a very special property, not at all common in nature and invisible to the human eye: under ultraviolet light they are fluorescent.

After the Harry storm in January, which flooded the riverbeds and streams of the Baix Empordà, the Palamós EDAR wastewater treatment plant became completely unusable. Electrical installations, pumps, motors, and laboratories, submerged under two meters of water and mud, were completely damaged. 187 l/m² fell. The Aubi stream, next to the plant, overflowed, and workers had to swim out. Total disaster. Since then, the Consorci d'Aigües Costa Brava Girona, belonging to the Diputació, which is responsible for the infrastructure, has been working against the clock to repair the damage and bring the machinery back into operation. The objective is clear: to have everything ready to face the summer campaign with guarantees. The priority is maximum, as it is a key infrastructure for cleaning the wastewater from the coastal towns of the Baix Empordà. An area that, from Sant Joan onwards, significantly increases the number of visitors and residents.

Much more than an endemic species, the Ibiza wall lizard (Podarcis pityusensis),which has inhabited Ibiza and Formentera and the surrounding islets for millennia, is a living cultural and identity symbol, as well as a key piece of the island ecosystems. And yet, it is being erased from the territory. In fact, the situation it is in is so critical that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has placed it on its red list in the category ofendangered.The reason for this extreme situation is that an invasive snake, the horseshoe snake (Hemorrhois hippocrepis),which arrived hidden in ornamental olive trees imported from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in the 2000s, has already spread across 90% of Ibiza's territory, and is devouring most specimens of lizards. Now, moreover, and worryingly, the snake has made the leap to Formentera and many of the nearly 40 surrounding islets, where unique populations of this small lizard live.

In May of last year, workers at NASA's Goddard Laboratory received the order to go home and work remotely. The Trump administration was rescinding the lease on the building where, since the 1960s, this institute has led the climate and Earth research of the North American space agency. It was an attempt to dismantle the center, which preceded the threat of total closure proposed by the White House in its budget for NASA last year. Fortunately, Congress halted that massive funding cut. But that did not prevent the purge of the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk from targeting NASA's Earth science program and other U.S. scientific agencies that are crucial for global climate research.

The last precedents of strong or very strong El Niño episodes left worrying data that were exacerbated by the influence of global warming. The super El Niño of 2015-2016 was the most powerful on record, with an oceanic warming index of more than 2.5 ºC. An extraordinary fact that contributed to 2016 being the warmest year recorded worldwide up to then.

The world is looking towards the Pacific with unease. Forecasts from major international climate agencies warn of the probable formation of what has popularly been dubbed a super-Niño over the coming months in this area of the planet. An episode of the El Niño phenomenon much more intense than usual, capable of shaking global climate. Its consequences could range from extreme droughts to torrential rains in different parts of the planet, but above all due to a clear and general rise in temperatures.

El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon that occurs when the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean warm more than usual. This warming alters the usual large-scale circulation of winds and rainfall. Normally, trade winds push warm water westward in the Pacific, near Indonesia and Australia. But when these winds weaken, the warm water shifts towards the central and eastern Pacific, especially off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. This causes the sea temperature to rise and alters precipitation.

The combination of a mass of warm air and the persistence of the anticyclone have caused us to leave behind an exceptionally warm April across the country, the warmest ever recorded at 104 out of the 122 stations of the Meteocat Automatic Meteorological Station Network, which have over 20 years of data. The head of the Climatology area of Meteocat, Marc Prohom, highlights that this atmospheric pattern has driven warm air from North Africa towards Catalonia, causing such high temperatures in the middle of spring.

Europe is the continent that is warming fastest in the world. This is causing a continued loss of snow and ice and increasingly extreme weather phenomena. In the year 2025 alone, several records derived from the climate crisis were registered across the continent, which caused serious consequences for the societies and ecosystems of all of Europe.

It’s not a race, but if it were, the climate emergency wouldn’t just be winning—it would be doing so with one feat after another. “It’s as if every year a new runner appeared and broke a record, and did so by a wide margin, and the following year it was broken again—that wouldn’t be normal,” says Francisco Doblas, head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), in a vivid analogy. The paradox is that, in this case, record highs are not achievements to applaud, let alone celebrate.

In the early morning of January 17, 1994, a strong earthquake shook Los Angeles. Just after, lights appeared in the sky. People, frightened, began calling the city's astronomical observatory to find out what that unusual sight was, asking if it had anything to do with the earthquake. The scientists, at first, didn't understand anything, because there was nothing abnormal in the sky, until they realized that, since the power grid had gone down and there was no electricity in a large part of the city, the Milky Way could be seen clearly. Our own galaxy.

The Pyrenees are warming up at cruising speed due to the climate crisis. The average temperature across the mountain range has increased by 1.9 °C since 1959, a figure that rises to 2.7 °C in the summer. This means that, since the mid-20th century, the Pyrenees have lost twenty frosty days per year and gained 32 summer days (days with temperatures above 25 °C). Or, in other words: every decade, 3 frosty days are lost and 4.9 summer days are gained.

In a remote corner of the planet, just 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole and surrounded by ice, lies a kind of modern-day Noah's Ark, designed not to save animals, but to preserve the future of global agriculture. Buried beneath a mountain of ice in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, the vast global seed vault has become a silent symbol of resilience in the face of the global uncertainties of the 21st century. Designed to ensure the continuity of spices and plant-based foods in the event of a catastrophe, this biodiversity sanctuary receives samples of crops from all over the world. And now, finally, the olive tree is also part of this select group. Therefore, the future of this symbol of the Mediterranean landscape and culture is guaranteed.

This week, the Catalan government (Generalitat) requested increased funding from the European Commission (EC) – through the Next Generation EU and ERDF funds – to boost the construction of three new desalination plants in Catalonia. The government conveyed its request to Claudia Olazábal, head of the EC's Sustainable Water Resources Management Unit, during a visit to Barcelona. The government justified the request by citing the need to bolster water availability and reduce dependence on rainfall after a historic drought. While this drought currently seems distant given the levels of water reserves in reservoirs and internal basins (92%), it led Catalonia to a critical situation in 2023. The Commission issued a warning to the Generalitat: more desalination plants are welcome, but only if they are part of a broader and more comprehensive plan for managing water supply and demand. And only if all other necessary steps are taken.

Global warming is unstoppable, and in the last ten years it has accelerated significantly. This is the conclusion of a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, published this Friday in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study confirms that since 2015, global warming has increased by approximately 0.35°C per decade, compared to the slightly less than 0.2°C average per decade recorded between 1970 and 2015. This new rate of temperature increase is higher than in any previous decade since instrumental records began in 1880, leading the research group responsible for the study to conclude that the warming limits set for this century could soon be exceeded. "If the warming rate of the last ten years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5°C limit set in the Paris Agreement before 2030," warns Stefan Rahmstorf, a researcher at PIK and lead author of the study, in the article. "The rate at which the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how quickly we reduce global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels to zero," he states. According to Rahmstorf himself, the adjusted data show an acceleration of global warming since 2015 with a statistical certainty of over 98%. The researchers compiled the study using the five major global temperature datasets established worldwide (NASA, NOAA, HadCRUT, Berkeley Earth, ERA5). Interference from specific phenomena

"We can now demonstrate a strong and statistically significant acceleration of global warming since approximately 2015," says Grant Foster, a US statistician and co-author of the study. The data have taken into account "natural influences" that can interfere with and mask changes in the warming rate data, such as El Niño, solar cycles, and volcanic eruptions. According to Foster, this ensures that the long-term warming signal is "clearly more visible" and reliable. Taking all this into account, after correcting for the effects of El Niño and the solar cycle maximum, 2023 and 2024, which were exceptionally warm years, have turned out to be somewhat cooler than previously thought, but they remain the two warmest years since instrument records began. The study has confirmed that the acceleration of global warming began to become evident in 2013 or 2014. To determine if the rate of global warming has changed since the 1970s, the research team used two statistical tools. The first analyzes whether the temperature trend has been accelerating over time, and the second divides the data series into different periods to objectively detect any points at which the rate of warming changes. The study does not analyze the exact causes of this possible acceleration. However, according to the authors, current climate models already predict that the rate of warming may increase, so this behavior falls within the realm of what climate studies consider possible.

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Storms and heavy rain continue to batter the Iberian Peninsula this winter, and this week Andalusia is the epicenter of the storms. Provinces like Seville, Cádiz, and Córdoba are the hardest hit by the abundant rainfall caused by Storm [name missing]. Leonardowith exceptional rainfall totals. The worst affected area was the municipality of Grazalema, in Cádiz, where almost 600 liters per square meter fell in just 24 hours on Wednesday. This record figure for the area is very similar to the rainfall recorded during the historic and tragic DANA storm of October 2014 in Valencia. And all that water is also having consequences for the subsoil. Grazalema is located at an altitude of over 800 meters in the Sierra de Cádiz mountains, a geographically exposed area that is very rainy and receives nearly 2,000 liters per square meter annually. The problem is that this amount of rain, which usually falls over an entire year, has already been exceeded between January and the first days of February. This exceptional rainfall has completely saturated the subsoil. The ground can no longer absorb any more water, which is gushing out uncontrollably everywhere, even through electrical outlets, toilets, and walls of houses. And a phenomenon little known until now has occurred: hydroseisms.

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2025 was the third warmest year on record globally. This data reinforces the advance of global warming, as the last eleven years have been the warmest in history. But above all, it is noteworthy that the last three years (2023, 2024, and 2025) were the first to exceed the 1.5°C limit above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). Never before had the combined figure for a three-year period surpassed this limit set in the Paris Agreement. This is the conclusion of the annual climate report published today by the climate change service of the European Copernicus program. Specifically, the average global temperature last year was 14.97°C, 0.59°C above the reference average (1991-2020) and 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels. In fact, 2025 is only 0.01°C below 2023—the second warmest year on record—and 0.13°C below 2024, which currently holds the record for the warmest year. It's worth remembering that 2024 was the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, specifically reaching 1.6°C.

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That life is full of coincidences and that it's about knowing how to seize them is something Tomàs Marquès Bonet (Barcelona, ​​1975), one of the world's leading experts in primate genomics and evolution, knows well. Although he wanted to dedicate himself to studying bats and Pyrenean frogs, he ended up at IBM performing banking transactions and learning to program. A few years later, life presented him with an opportunity to return to science, which he seized by writing a computational thesis at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) comparing humans and chimpanzees. And so, it all began again. Since then, Marquès, a professor at UPF and ICREA researcher, and head of the comparative genomics group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE UPF-CSIC), has dedicated himself to the molecular study of primates to learn about humans as a species. He argues that the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives are key to understanding human biology. Also to combat the illegal trafficking of these animals and help their conservation.

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Up to €150 million, according to the most pessimistic estimates from opposition groups, €14 million of which will be lost in the coming weeks. This is what the Valencia City Council stands to lose due to Vox's refusal to implement a Low Emission Zone (LEZ), required for cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The decision, already announced in October, was confirmed this week with the approval by the People's Party (PP) and the far-right party of the city's 2026 budget without including any restrictions on the circulation of the most polluting vehicles. The first penalty will come with the loss of government subsidies for passenger transport, which the national government makes conditional on the existence of an LEZ. To compensate, the city council will have to allocate €14 million of its own funds to maintain the reduced price of the 10-trip pass for the municipal bus network (EMT), which currently costs €5.40. Beyond the bus discount, the implementation of the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) was one of the requirements for receiving funding for urban development projects such as the Petxina superblock or the construction of various bike lanes, among others. This is the complaint of opposition groups, who point out that the Ministry of Transport could demand the return of its subsidies and could also impose fines of up to three times the amount of money provided by the State. This is the basis for the opposition's calculations, which amount to 150 million euros, slightly more than 10% of the city's budget, which will be 1.415 billion euros in 2026.

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