Every June 8, World Oceans Day invites us to reflect on the health of this vast blue frontier that regulates life on Earth. This year, the commemoration arrives with an air of cautious victory following the historic adoption by the UN of the High Seas Treaty, a legal framework designed to protect biodiversity in waters that do not belong to any country and which represent two-thirds of the marine surface. However, to understand the global health of the ocean, sometimes you have to look at what is small. 

When this evening, in all corners of the Catalan Countries, the fire of the Flame of Canigó arrives, the Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands will still be under the governmental binomials of PP and Vox, the xenophobic arsonists will be accumulating firewood in the Principality with the intention of lighting it soon and in North Catalonia, months ago the far-right – from Perpignan to Elna – imposed themselves in the first round. Their uncontrolled fires – where everything burns, from language to country, from biodiversity to the future – are not ours. But surrounded by the global far-right wave, perhaps from up there – the walls of the monastery of Cuixà, let's say – they will be able to tell us in perspective that if we get right what needs to be done, we have come out of worse situations, when they have seen it all. For example, that only 50 years ago we still lived under a dictatorship, there was no trace of democratic elections and death sentences were signed. Perhaps they will remind us that everything goes very fast when it comes to dismantling what has been built and everything goes exasperatingly slow when it comes to moving forward. In form and substance, no news. Not a single one. That some things mutate rapidly and others never change. That the bank wins and the State wins. Almost always.Last Saturday, Marc Castellnou, from the GRAF of the Generalitat Firefighters, said that fires are very good teachers but very bad students. For decades he has also told us that fires are extinguished in winter and that our ecosystem concentrates the fourteen possible types of fires – that is, all existing options. And that after years of turning a deaf ear, we are now beginning to pay attention to what has not been done and what still remains to be done. It is quite eloquent to apply the three fire-fighting maxims of the firefighters to the accelerated devaluation of democracy in the era of global fires. Which range from the Strait of Hormuz to a nihilistic billionaire in Colombia, from a shooting on Balmes street to the mass eviction of a building in La Mina this week, from devastated Gaza to German and Japanese rearmament, from Infantino's corrupt World Cup to Musk's tweet about Belfast – or Albiol's in Badalona. Fires provoked everywhere by the scorched earth profiteers. However, it was not they who left the land barren and the undergrowth neglected. Three maxims: that we do not learn, that what needed to be done has not been done, and that anything can happen on the ultra-revell that ignites the world.

Catalonia is advancing unstoppably towards an increasingly warm and dry climate. 2025 has been the fourth consecutive year with an annual temperature of more than 2°C above the average of the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). Therefore, since 2022, temperatures have soared like never before. And they have been exceptionally warm. These last four years mark the path towards the worst predictions of the impact of the climate crisis and global warming in our country.

Almost all children in the world face at least one climate threat. But nearly half – about 1.1 billion children – are exposed to three different climate threats that put their health and survival at risk, according to the report Children’s climate risk report 2026, published this Tuesday by Unicef.

Global warming is advancing and temperatures continue to rise relentlessly. This spring has been no exception. In fact, Catalonia has experienced the warmest spring since records began, according to data from the seasonal climate bulletin published by the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat). This report covers the three months of meteorological spring – March, May, and June – even though astronomical summer will not officially arrive until June 21.

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.

Forecasts from various international climate agencies indicate that we are on the verge of an El Niño episode that could be one of the most intense in decades. Popularly, it has been nicknamed Superniño, and its effects will be global, especially with more extreme heat. We analyze this phenomenon and what impact it may have in Catalonia.

Carlos Duarte (Lisbon, 1960) is one of the most prestigious oceanographers in the world. He now resides in Mallorca, but has lived in Catalonia, Canada, Australia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. His lectures always provide revealing data about the sea, some alarming. But he always tries to find an optimistic approach in turbulent times. Duarte, moreover, is the scientific advisor for the congress 'Encuentro de los Mares' (Meeting of the Seas), held in Tenerife, where the scientific community, fishermen, and chefs meet for four days to exchange knowledge.

Amitav Ghosh (Calcutta, 1956), one of India's most important fiction writers, has for many years placed his pen at the service of climate activism. Ten years ago he published in English The great derangement: climate change and the unthinkable (now available in Spanish published by Capitán Swing with the title El gran delirio. Cambio climático y lo impensable). As he explained these days in the CCCB debates, Ghosh understands this "great derangement" as a collective disorder that makes us all incapable of assuming the gravity and reacting adequately to the climate emergency. An incapacity that he particularly denounces within literature.

Very few people know that oil was produced in Collserola. In the middle of the last century, owners of farmhouses in this mountain range surrounding Barcelona owned olive trees, made self-consumption oil from them, and sold the surplus. But with the abandonment of the countryside throughout Catalonia, all this productive activity was also lost and the olive trees of Collserola, some centuries old, were swallowed by the forest. If in 1956 21.5% of Collserola were cultivated land, now it is only 6.4%. This not only represents a loss of the typical biodiversity of the area, but also has a dangerous collateral effect: it increases the risk of fire.

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.

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.

The Arctic is the fastest-warming region on the planet and is doing so at an unprecedented rate: up to four times faster on average than the rest of the Earth's land areas. And this has an enormous global impact because the ice in this ocean played a key role in regulating the Earth's climate, and it is now melting at an unprecedented speed. This is also changing the structure of the oceans, with a brutal impact on local communities and biodiversity.

"The Montreal Protocol agreed in the late eighties to reduce and eliminate gases that destroyed the ozone layer. All UN member states approved it, and agreed to end the use of these substances, which implied the change or elimination of products such as some aerosols or air conditioners. The result has been very satisfactory: the hole in the ozone layer is closing, and between the years 2040 and 2066 it will close completely. This can reduce global warming by up to 0.5 °C", remarked Xavi Segura, head of Meteorology at ARA, in the talk he gave in the majestic auditorium of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona, an activity of Club Prèmium open to all subscribers.

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.