A violent, tornado-spawning storm system tore across the central US, leaving at least 25 people dead in Missouri and southeastern Kentucky as it cut a path of destruction through several states. The storm made its way towards Kansas and Oklahoma late Sunday, where significant damage was reported in Grinnell, a town some 250 miles west of Wichita. Photos show severely damaged homes, blocked roads and overturned vehicles. One image shows a local church with its roof blown off. Parts of the I-70 and Kansas Highway northwest of the state have been closed due to downed power lines near Grinnell, according to roadway tracker KanDrive. In the small town of Plevna, roughly 60 miles from Wichita, Reno County Sheriff Darrian Campbell said a passing tornado Sunday night caused significant damage to homes. “We did have a tornado touch down and travel approximately 12 miles and went through a small town of Plevna,” Campbell said in an email to CNN. There are no reports of injuries in Kansas, where a life-threatening tornado alert was issued for the cities of Sylvia, Plevna, and Abbyville until roughly midnight CST. CNN has reached out to state authorities for more details. Over the weekend, 18 deaths were reported in Kentucky, just hours after authorities announced seven fatalities in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Two additional deaths were reported in northern Virginia. Both fatalities were caused by trees falling onto vehicles, one in Fairfax County and another on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Fairfax County police and the United States Park Police said. The storms damaged homes and downed power lines across the Midwest and Great Lakes, brought by the same system that produced destructive storms and tornadoes Thursday. Over 100,000 homes and businesses across five states were without power as of Sunday night, with Missouri, Michigan and Arkansas among the hardest hit, according to Poweroutage.us. The same storm system hit Colorado Sunday afternoon, producing at least two tornadoes. Homes and buildings in Arapahoe, Adams and Elbert County were damaged or lost, according the counties’ sheriff’s offices. No injuries were reported. It’s part of a multiday spate of widespread severe weather stretching into early next week. As the system that generated deadly tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky loses strength, another round of severe storms is expected near the border with Mexico, thrusting more than 20 million Americans across the Southwest in the risk zone. Southeastern Kentucky hit hard The National Weather Service reported a radar-confirmed, “large, extremely dangerous” tornado sweeping east across lower Kentucky shortly after midnight. Video and photos from southeastern Kentucky show a trail of destruction that began in Pulaski County before moving east into neighboring Laurel County, leaving at least 18 dead and 10 in critical condition across the state. Videos showed widespread damage to buildings, cars, trees and infrastructure in the wake of the possible tornado. “I’ve now been governor for at least 14 federally declared disasters, 13 of them weather. And this is one of the worst,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference Saturday evening. “It’s one of the worst in terms of the loss of human life. It’s one of the worst in terms of damage.” Beshear has declared a state of emergency in the state and requested a federal disaster declaration. Mahala Watts told CNN affiliate WLKY her family was watching the news after 11 p.m. Friday when their phones started blaring with tornado warnings. She grabbed the dog, and her family took cover in the bathroom in the center of their home in Laurel County. The storm suddenly roared over her house – as the family was “breathing in all the debris.” They got on their hands and knees, Watts told the station. A bathroom mirror fell on Watts before the roar went silent. “We were just kind of praying, you know, scared it was going to come back,” she said. “We had no idea the roof was gone. The fridge was blocking the bathroom door.” Watts told WLKY her family climbed over the refrigerator and stood outside in the dark, fearing another hit. Cars were overturned and debris was strewn about. They used a relative’s car to get to a hospital where they sought refuge before making it to a hotel after the storm passed. Drone video over London, Kentucky, at daylight Saturday showed a vast wasteland of damaged and overturned vehicles and flattened homes as first responders searched heaps of rubble for possible survivors. London is about 75 miles south of Lexington. At the London-Corbin Airport, several planes were damaged and a medical helicopter was destroyed, CNN affiliate WLKY reported, adding officials said at least one airplane was pulled into a funnel cloud. Hangars and other buildings were leveled. In another video from Laurel County, first responders are seen descending on the Sunshine Hills area, a barren landscape of twisted cars, downed trees and piles of debris. Seventeen deaths were reported in Laurel County, including in London, Mayor Randall Weddle told CNN affiliate WKYT. Among those who died was Maj. Leslie Roger Leatherman of the Laurel County Fire Department, who had been responding to the storm, the governor said Saturday. “I have never personally witnessed what I’ve witnessed here tonight. There’s a lot of devastation,” Weddle told WKYT. Police in Corbin, south of London, were responding to mutual aid calls for tornado victims and described the devastation as overwhelming. “Stop and pray for Laurel County residents and victims of the tornado that touched down there,” the department wrote. Pulaski County Judge Executive Marshall Todd declared a state of emergency, and crews are working on cleanup efforts, county spokesperson John Alexander told CNN. One person was reported dead in the county. Heavy damage can be seen in Somerset, a city in Pulaski County to the west of London, where emergency officials urged residents to stay indoors. “The southern side of the city has been hit by a possible tornado!” the Somerset Fire Department posted on social media around 11 p.m. Friday. “Please avoid the area, poles and power lines are down!” St. Louis has massive damage A storm that produced a devastating tornado in the St. Louis area Friday afternoon has left five people dead and many others injured, according to local authorities. The EF3 tornado traveled at least 8 miles, according to an initial survey conducted by the National Weather Service. “We’re just a city that’s really grieving,” the city’s new mayor, Cara Spencer, told reporters Saturday. About 5,000 buildings have been impacted by the severe weather but she noted, “This community is coming together in a truly, truly amazing way.” Spencer called the event “one of the worst storms” in the city’s history. A curfew will remain in place overnight and thousands of homes and businesses still have no power. Nearly 40 people were injured, the mayor said. A state of emergency was declared in the city, and officials are seeking a federal major disaster declaration. More than 130 miles to the south of St. Louis, in Scott County, two others were killed during Friday’s storms, Sheriff Derick Wheetley announced on social media. Several others were taken to medical facilities, “with injuries ranging from minor to severe,” the sheriff added. “The tornado moved from the eastern part of the county, leaving behind a trail of destruction, with multiple homes completely lost and areas left unrecognizable,” the sheriff said. The devastation occurred after a tornado warning was issued at 2:34 p.m. Friday and a “likely tornado” touched down seven to eight minutes later, said Ben Herzog, a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service. One St. Louis resident, Cindy Spellman, told CNN her niece was in her apartment when the storm hit. Damage from the Friday storm is seen in St. Louis. Damage from the Friday storm is seen in St. Louis. Cindy Spellman “When the sirens sounded, she went to the basement of her building,” Spellman said. When her niece returned to her apartment, “she had to push her way inside because the tornado had thrown all of her furniture to the far walls.” They helped clean up after the storm passed and had to park over a mile away due to road closures, Spellman said. Dirt, glass and debris from trees and nearby homes coated everything inside the apartment and building. It took more than four hours to secure her niece’s apartment, clean it and remove her necessary belongings before dark. Another resident, Joan Miller Hitt, was in her home Friday when it was torn apart like a dollhouse. When a large tree outside started swaying violently and all the doors shut like in the movie “Carrie,” Miller Hitt and her husband took shelter in a bathroom. Seconds later, “the whole back of the house was gone.” Miller Hitt said she never saw it coming. “I never had any fear of anything happening to that house with a storm because of where I live and the sound structure of the house,” she told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday afternoon. “I go between being overwhelmed, shocked, teary.” Gov. Mike Kehoe said he has already been in contact with federal officials about disaster relief. The American Red Cross opened three shelters in St. Louis for storm and tornado victims, the nonprofit announced Saturday. First responders looking for victims or people in distress searched about 4,000 residences. More technical searches with boom microphones and cameras were being conducted Saturday. One victim was identified as Patricia Pendleton, who had been serving lunches before the storm caused a roof to collapse at Centennial Christian Church, her family told. Sarah Russell, commissioner of the City Emergency Management Agency in St. Louis, said some of the tornado sirens did not go off Friday, which will be investigated. “We’re looking into that,” she told reporters Saturday. The focus now is on life-saving measures in the community, she added. The citywide system of tornado sirens was being replaced and had undergone testing on Thursday. Residents were encouraged to rely on multiple warning systems, including mobile apps and weather radio, she said. The National Weather Service is surveying the damage and has no information on the intensity but estimated winds reached 100 mph. Herzog’s message for residents: “I think the biggest thing would be staying away if you don’t need to be around.” Damaging storm risks persist As the system that hit Missouri and Kentucky weakens and pushes across the Southeast, another round of severe storms threatens the Great Plains and Texas. The level 3 of 5 threat of severe storms will affect the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex Saturday evening, with large hail, damaging winds and the potential for tornadoes. The possibility of more severe weather stretches through Tuesday in the Great Plains and the lower Mississippi River Valley. The Plains will remain the main focus of severe weather on Sunday and Monday as well as the storms passing through Oklahoma and Kansas. The severe thunderstorm threat will then shift back into parts of the Mississippi Valley on Tuesday.

Last summer, an abandoned factory in southwest Memphis got a new life courtesy of the world’s richest man. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI moved in to transform this unprepossessing building into the “world’s largest supercomputer.” Musk named it Colossus and said it was the “most powerful AI training system in the world.” It was sold locally as a source of jobs, tax dollars and a key addition to the “Digital Delta” — the move to make Memphis a hotspot for advanced technology. “This is just the beginning,” xAI said on its website; the company already has plans for a second facility in the city. But for some residents in nearby Boxtown, a majority Black, economically-disadvantaged community that has long endured industrial pollution, xAI’s facility represents yet another threat to their health. AI is immensely power-hungry, and Musk’s company installed dozens of gas-powered turbines, known to produce a cocktail of toxic pollutants. The company currently has no air permits, appearing to rely on a loophole for temporary turbines — but environmental groups say the exemption does not apply, and residents are angry. “Our health was never considered, the safety of our communities was never, ever considered,” said Sarah Gladney, who lives 3 miles from the facility and suffers from a lung condition. xAI did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. This part of Memphis, home to 17 other polluting facilities — including an oil refinery, steel plant and gas-fired power plant — is used to fighting for clean air. This time, however, not only are they up against the world’s richest man, who happens to be one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisors, but it’s happening as the Trump administration takes an ax to pollution legislation, slashes environmental justice programs and throws its full-throated support behind AI. What’s unfolding in Memphis should be a warning to other communities, said Erika Sugarmon, a commissioner of Shelby County, which encompasses Memphis and the surrounding area. “All these different safeguards are being taken away,” she told CNN. “So where do you go?” The race for AI The new Memphis facility is part of Musk’s quest to dominate AI, providing computing power to xAI’s chatbot, Grok, which the company promotes as an “anti-woke” version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It has been under fire for loose guardrails, including allowing users to create Nazi Mickey Mouse images. Memphis Mayor Paul Young has thrown his support behind xAI’s arrival, emphasizing benefits including the promise of hundreds of high-paying jobs and around $30 million in tax revenues in the first year alone. “What we are looking at is an opportunity to completely transform our economy,” Young said. It’s “game changing,” he told CNN. Others see it very differently. Some local lawmakers say they were kept in the dark about the facility’s arrival, leaving them scrambling for information. State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat who lives 3 miles from the facility, said he was blindsided. His initial concern was how it would be powered. “Our grid is already not stable enough” and the last three winters have seen rolling blackouts, he told CNN. It turned out the answer is partly grid power. The facility receives 150 megawatts from the local public utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water — enough to power around 100,000 homes. MLGW said it had done an impact study to ensure this would not affect power availability and reliability for consumers. xAI is now awaiting approval for a further 150 megawatts. But what really spiked Pearson’s concerns were the turbines that started appearing at the facility last summer. Gas-powered turbines produce pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, a key component of ozone pollution — also called smog — which can cause asthma attacks and chest pain and, in the longer-term, is linked to decreased lung function and premature death. They also generate the carcinogen formaldehyde and tiny air pollution particles so small they can pass through lungs into people’s bloodstream. It’s a big concern for a region already grappling with the impacts of air pollution. The cancer risk from industrial sources in southwest Memphis is 4.1 times higher than the EPA’s acceptable risk, according to a ProPublica analysis. Shelby county has an F in air quality for ozone levels from the American Lung Association and the highest rates of children hospitalized for asthma in Tennessee. Aerial images taken by the Southern Environmental Law Center and South Wings, an organization of volunteer pilots, in March showed xAI had 35 turbines at the facility. These can generate a total of 420 megawatts, equivalent to a “medium- to large-sized power plant,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at SELC. They can produce an up to 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxide pollution every year, which would make xAI one of the biggest sources in the county, according to SELC calculations. Aerial pictures taken in April, this time with a thermal imaging camera, showed 33 turbines were producing heat, suggesting they were operating, Anderson told CNN. What has inflamed the community further is xAI’s lack of air permits. It appears the company relied on a loophole which allows temporary turbines in one location for less than a year to operate without a permit. The SELC, however, argues xAI’s turbines don’t fall within a permit exemption because of their size and the pollution they produce. “Our position is (xAI is) without a permit, they should not be operating,” Anderson said. In January, months after starting operations, xAI applied to the Shelby County Health Department for permits for 15 turbines. A health department spokesperson told CNN the application was currently under review and all community feedback would be “carefully considered.” Twelve of the remaining 20 turbines were removed in May, and the rest will go in the future, said Mayor Young, although the timeline is unclear. The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce said the turbines for which permits have been requested “will achieve industry-leading emission standards” once they are equipped with pollution reduction technologies. For Rep. Pearson, however, the situation is bewildering. “It’s an actual gas plant in the middle of a neighborhood and you don’t need any permitting?” he said. “Something has failed drastically and significantly with our system of checks and balances.” ‘Not a new fight’ Some of xAI’s supporters have accused those who oppose it of being motivated by animosity toward Musk. It’s a theory rejected by KeShaun Pearson, director of Memphis Community Against Pollution. Southwest Memphis has a long history of battling for clean air, soil and water, he told CNN. Residents successfully fought off a crude oil pipeline in 2021 that would have crossed Boxtown and multiple other predominantly Black communities in southwest Memphis. A medical sterilizing facility in south Memphis, which since the 1970s had been pumping out ethylene oxide, a toxic pollutant linked to blood and breast cancers, closed in 2023 after local campaigning. xAI’s facility “is not a new fight; this is the most recent,” Pearson said. Southwest Memphis has long been seen as a “sacrifice zone,” he added. Pearson is wary of promises of hundreds of highly-paid jobs; data centers don’t typically need large numbers of workers. He fears the majority of roles available to local people will be in janitorial and security. xAI’s taxes also won’t make up for health impacts, said Pearson, whose grandparents both died of cancer in their 60s, losses he blames on long-term pollution. What’s happening in southwest Memphis reveals the tension between two very different narratives of what AI can bring US communities. For some leaders and business groups, xAI offers an opportunity to bring investment to an area in desperate need. Young people will be trained for AI jobs, and xAI tax dollars will be reinvested in the community, including tackling indoor air pollution, Mayor Young said. For environmental groups and many residents, this much-hyped, new technology brings the same old problems. “If the innovation shackles you to fossil fuels like methane gas or coal, that’s regression, right? That’s not progress,” Pearson said. There could be a rash of similar power-hungry data centers appearing across the US as Trump and tech companies pave the way for AI. The EPA has listed making the US the AI “capital of the world” as one of the five pillars guiding its work. An EPA spokesperson told CNN “the Trump EPA will continue to implement its core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback” but did not answer specific questions about the xAI facility. Rep. Pearson fears for the impacts. “If you look at where these data centers are propping up, it’s always in poor communities” he said. There is “no hope” the federal government will help protect them, he added. In southwest Memphis, the fight for clean air will continue, especially as xAI looks to expand its footprint with a new 1 million-square-foot facility. But it’s exhausting, said Boxtown resident Sarah Gladney. “It seems like we are constantly at battle,” she said. “We deserve to breathe clean air.”

Climate change should be considered a new core aspect of creditworthiness when prospective home buyers apply for a mortgage, a new report suggests. The analysis from the climate risk financial modeling firm First Street is a groundbreaking nationwide look at the ties between the growing risks from extreme weather such as floods and wildfires, and a long-suspected spike in mortgage defaults in hard-hit areas. It finds that lenders and borrowers are exposed to more financial risk than they are aware of because current ways of determining creditworthiness leave out exposure to climate disasters as a factor. If climate risk were to be taken into account by lenders — which the analysis shows may be increasingly necessary as climate change worsens the severity and frequency of certain extreme weather events — then the next time someone goes to get a home loan their credit score could be knocked down (or adjusted upward) due to their climate risk exposure. At the same time, mortgage lenders could become more hesitant to provide policies, or raise the cost of borrowing, in certain risky areas with greater exposure to climate-related hazards. First Street finds weather-driven mortgage foreclosures could cause $1.2 billion in lender losses in today’s climate, with the majority of that happening in just three states: California, Florida and Louisiana. Over the next decade, this could increase to up to $5.4 billion per year by 2035, which would be about 30% of annual lender losses, the report says. “This growing share of foreclosure losses is largely driven by the escalating insurance crisis and the increasing frequency and severity of flooding anticipated in the next decade,” the report states. It is well-known that the cost of home insurance is increasing in many areas due in part to climate change-driven hazards. This is causing insurance policies to become unaffordable for many people, which exposes them to financial risk from a flood, wildfire or hurricane, for example. It is also prompting insurance companies to flee particularly disaster-prone locations, such as Florida and California. In California, State Farm is raising rates by 17% in one year due in large part to wildfire-related losses. “When climate events destabilize local housing markets, it doesn’t just affect those directly hit,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications for First Street and an author of the report. “It ripples through the financial system, driving up mortgage rates, directly impacting individual credit risk, and pricing more people out of homeownership,” Porter said. Relying on a combination of peer reviewed methods and new techniques, Porter looked at the number, amount and pattern of foreclosures following wildfire, extreme wind and flooding events nationally. He found the best predictor of rising foreclosure rates among climate-related factors is flooding, particularly when it occurs outside of FEMA flood zones, where homeowners are far less likely to have flood insurance. The study also linked rapid increases in insurance premiums over time at the ZIP code level to increases in foreclosures in those same ZIP codes, finding that insurance increases are putting many families in a more financially vulnerable position and creating greater risks for lenders. Properties flooded in an extreme weather event face a 57% higher foreclosure rate than nearby, unflooded homes, Porter said. One underlying trend used for the study is the rapid increase in costs of natural disasters in the US, as shown in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s billion-dollar weather and climate disaster database. However, the agency recently announced that due to staffing cuts and shifting priorities, it will no longer update this list, forcing groups like First Street to rethink their methodology and rely on other, potentially inferior datasets.

As Republicans look to broker a sweeping budget deal, top GOP leadership in the House of Representatives unveiled a series of cuts this week to the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed at tackling climate change. This includes proposing to curtail tax credits for clean electricity generation and domestic clean technology manufacturing. To enact the proposed language would deal a swift blow to U.S. efforts to cut emissions and transition to cleaner energy sources. It would also stifle a surge in manufacturing investment that has swept much of the country. “It will come to a screeching halt without the credits,” says George Strobel, co-CEO at Monarch Private Capital, which finances solar projects. “That’s just the way it is.” Since the language was announced on May 12, many Senate Republicans, who would need to approve the measure before it becomes law, have balked, fearing that such a pullback would kill jobs in their home states and harm American businesses. For that reason, they say, the language should represent a starting point, certain to be revised in the lengthy negotiations necessary to approve the changes. “Anything that comes over from the House, almost by law, we’ve got to redo,” Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters. The debate on the fate of the clean technology tax incentives is likely to center on immediate concerns: on one side jobs and the implications for American businesses and, on the other, simple number crunching to fund other priorities including a continuation of broad corporate tax cuts. But jobs in congressional districts and U.S. carbon emissions represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the massive implications of a U.S. pullback from clean technology. The U.S. is already behind in developing an economy around mature technologies—namely wind, solar, and electric vehicles. To nix IRA incentives without a considered replacement would effectively wave the white flag, acknowledging that the U.S. has no plausible way to catch up. Perhaps more significantly, abandoning the incentives would make it even more difficult for the U.S. to capture the market of early-stage technologies where the country can still compete—think of geothermal, advanced forms of nuclear energy, and hydrogen, to name a few. All of this is of significant consequence for the shape of the global economy. China already dominates manufacturing in technologies like electric vehicles and, with an absent U.S., could do the same with future tech, too. All of which is to say: these negotiations will matter for decades to come. “To some extent, I think it’s hanging in the balance,” says Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the Climate Leadership Council, a non-profit that works at the intersection of climate and economic policy. “This is a critical period of time.” Advertisement To understand what enacting the proposed changes to tax incentives would mean, it’s helpful to sit with some numbers. In a research note Tuesday, the Rhodium Group said that the cuts would risk “a meaningful amount” of the $522 billion clean technology manufacturing investment already in the pipeline in the U.S. It could result in a greater than 70% decline in domestic clean energy deployment through 2035—and higher electricity prices for consumers and industry alike. The clean technologies in question are part of a global market expected to total more than $100 trillion by 2050, according to a 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group. And the ripples extend beyond clean tech: higher energy prices would make the U.S. a less attractive place for AI and manufacturing investments. In the past, a U.S. pullback might have been enough to derail this global clean tech momentum. The U.S. is, after all, the world’s largest economy. But, in 2025, the rest of the world is less likely to shift gears in response to one administration. Advertisement A big reason for that is China. The country has become a manufacturing hub for a wide range of clean technologies and has facilitated their export around the world. And, in many cases, the clean technologies manufactured there have simply become better than traditional alternatives. Chinese electric vehicles, for example, are widely thought to offer a better experience at a lower price point than anything coming out of the U.S. or Europe. (Indeed, they’re quickly expanding not just in China but around the world.) More broadly, in parts of the developing world, solar power has become cheap enough that it’s the fastest and simplest way to rapidly electrify. Since President Trump took office, I’ve spent much of my time outside of Washington, talking to policymakers and business leaders from around the world. As shocked as many have been by the Trump Administration's assault on climate policy, few have expressed interest in following suit and instead continue to see opportunity in green investments. Advertisement And so the question for members of Congress is how much, if any, of that $100 trillion market they want to capture. The text proposed by GOP House leadership is just the start of the discussion and unlikely to become law in its current form, but for those looking to capture a share of the future of energy technologies it isn’t an encouraging one.

Flooding on the US Northeast coast has risen significantly as a critical network of Atlantic Ocean currents weakens, according to a new study — an alarming glimpse into the future as some scientists warn the current system could be just decades from collapse. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, known as the AMOC, works like a vast conveyor belt, transporting heat, salt and freshwater through the ocean and influencing climate, weather and sea levels around the planet. Coastal flooding is caused by a cluster of factors, chief among them climate change-driven sea level rise, but the AMOC also plays a critical role in the Northeast, according to the study published Friday in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Scientists used data from tide gauges — instruments which monitor sea level change — combined with complex ocean models to calculate how the AMOC has affected flooding in the region over the past decades. They found between 2005 and 2022, up to 50% of flooding events along the northeastern coast were driven by a weaker AMOC. Drilling down, that means AMOC-driven sea level rise contributed to up to eight flood days a year over this period. The models used by the scientists also give a glimpse into the future, allowing them to forecast coastal flooding frequency in the Northeast up to three years in advance, according to the study. The idea that the AMOC is influencing sea level rise in this region is not new, but this study is the first to find it’s substantially affecting flood frequency, said Liping Zhang, a study author and project scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are two main reasons why the AMOC affects sea level rise, said David Thornally, professor of ocean and climate science at University College London, who was not involved in the research. A strong AMOC is typically associated with dense deep water that flows along the western boundary of the North Atlantic. When the AMOC weakens, water becomes less dense, literally taking up more space and fueling sea level rise. A weaker AMOC also affects the flow of the Gulf Stream, causing water to flow back onto the coastal shelf and increasing sea level rise at the coast. Rising seas are a huge and urgent issue for society as the climate warms, making it vital to better understand how it’s being affected, Zhang told CNN. Coastal flooding can “reshape the coastal environment… (and) poses threats to both lives and infrastructure in coastal regions,” she said. The findings will be very useful for helping society better predict and plan for costly and devastating flooding events, UCL’s Thornally told CNN. “A study like this is a good way to demonstrate the day-to-day impacts of changes AMOC, rather than invoking dramatic scenes from Hollywood disaster movies which are exaggerated and thus easily dismissed,” he told CNN, referring to the movie The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts the world plunging into a deep freeze after the AMOC collapses. As the research relies on climate models, the results will depend on how well these represent the physics of the real world, he cautioned. “The high resolution means it probably does a good job — and it can mimic observed sea-level patterns — but it won’t be perfect,” he said, especially as this is a complex area of the ocean where different currents meet. Gerard McCarthy, an oceanographer at Maynooth University in Ireland, also not involved in the research, said the study is significant because it shows “how AMOC can help predict sea level extremes along this coast.” A slew of recent research has pointed to signs the AMOC could be on course to significantly weaken over the next decades as climate change warms oceans and melts ice, disrupting its delicate balance of heat and salinity. This would have catastrophic planetary impacts, including on sea level rise. “The science is still not clear,” McCarthy said, but a collapse would be a “high-impact event and it is critical that we know what to expect.”

The Atlantic Ocean has a toxic seaweed problem. Floating in brown islands of algae, this year’s sargassum bloom has already broken its own size record by millions of tons — and the growing season isn’t done yet. Now stretching across some 5,500 miles of ocean, the annual bloom is more than just an eyesore: Sargassum hurts ecosystems and economies wherever its overgrown arms reach. And they are spreading into Florida’s waterways, coating marinas and beaches in the Miami area. “Sargassum goes from being a very beneficial resource of the North Atlantic to becoming what we refer to as … a harmful algal bloom, when it comes ashore in excessive biomass,” said Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. “What we have seen since 2011 are excessive inundation events all around the Caribbean region, the Gulf, as well as the South Florida region,” explained LaPointe, who has studied the seaweed for decades. For more than a decade, Atlantic coastal communities have been inundated by more and more sargassum. Images of white sand beaches stretching into azure waters have been altered by the toxic and putrid invasion. In the water, it’s home to larvae and other organisms that can irritate the skin of any passing swimmers. As it rots on shore, it emits harmful gases— an infamous stench. It’s a blight on beaches that repels tourists during the high-travel season, ultimately hurting towns that rely on tourism to fuel their economy. Rising ocean temperatures due to human-caused climate change have spurred this sargassum surplus, supercharging the seaweed. In April, the University of South Florida estimated this year’s bloom is already at 31 million tons — “40% more” than the previous record from June 2022, according to LaPointe. The sargassum bloom itself is not a new phenomenon. It’s long provided a home to species from sea turtles to fish as winds and tides push it from the coast of West Africa toward Brazil, up into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. “Sargassum has been around for eons. Colombus ran into it right in the Sargasso Sea,” La Pointe told CNN. “But what we are seeing now is above and beyond what we had historically.” Sargassum’s growth is also being driven by an excess of nitrogen in the water, LaPointe said — and that’s a key factor behind this year’s monster bloom. Some nitrogen may be coming from the atmosphere, carried in the air from the burning of fossil fuels or dust from the Sahara Desert. But there’s one major source: agricultural fertilizers. Used in the American heartland as well as in the Amazon basin where there’s been rapid deforestation for farming, the nitrogen-rich fertilizers are likely making their way into the Mississippi and Amazon Rivers as runoff, which then carries it into the Atlantic. And the Amazon basin has notched its lowest water levels on record amid two straight years of extreme drought — the worst since records began being kept in 1950. “What happens when you have a severe drought in the world’s largest watershed? You get all this organic matter that dries up. Plants dry up and die. And then, when the rain hits, what happens? All those nutrients wash out,” LaPointe hypothesized, adding that “first flush” events like this are full of concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus at peak levels, which go on to feed the bloom’s growth explosion. Toxic to tourism Unsurprisingly, the constant inundation of stinky, brown seaweed along the coast is not good for economies driven by tourism. This year’s bloom has already been making an appearance along Florida’s east coast, from the Keys to Saint Augustine, according to reports on a sargassum monitoring site, and southeastern Florida could see more in the coming weeks. The unwanted algae has also been spotted in popular destinations from Mexico to Barbados and farther south. “It’s not good for the environment, because what you’re smelling is hydrogen sulfide gas which is toxic,” LaPointe said. In some places, the beaches are cleared of seaweed from sunrise to sunset — an expensive endeavor combing up sargassum that inundates the coastline with every wave. Some of the machinery used to clean the beaches adds its own pollution to the scenic environment, too. “Resorts have gone out to their beaches with heavy equipment like front-end loaders, bulldozers, dump trucks to try to remove the sargassum to make those beaches available,” LaPointe said, as tourists don’t want mounds of sargassum to mar their tropical views. “The tourists check out, and they don’t come back.” This is a major tangle for places like Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which exists in the heart of the sargassum belt between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The problem has become so pronounced along the Riviera Maya, Mara Lezama, the governor of Quintana Roo, a state in the peninsula, has taken to social media to say her state is working with the Mexican Navy to collect the seaweed in the water while also installing a nearly 6-mile barrier in the water to protect Quintana Roo’s Mahahual, Playa del Carmen and Puerto Morelos beaches. The barriers, which are similar to booms that contain oil spills, are just over a yard deep and are designed to keep the seaweed from reaching the coast. As it approaches, the decaying sargassum can also create health problems for animals and humans. “When it arrives to the coastal area, it creates a shadow from the sun, so everything that is below — all the life is not getting sunlight. So, it starts to affect the ecosystem, coastal ecosystem, and many things die,” said Christian Appendini, professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. “Then when it gets over the beach, it starts to decompose. And when it decomposes, it releases all the contaminants it has.” Ammonia is another problem emitted by the decaying seaweed, LaPointe noted. The chemical compound “strips the oxygen out of the waters along our coastal ecosystems like mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds,” he said. “When you see the mass inundation events along the beaches, say in the Mexican Riviera, for example, you don’t see many fish or crabs,” LaPointe continued. “If you do, they’re probably dead because there’s no oxygen in that water.” Seaweed with a silver lining With sargassum cementing itself as an ongoing problem, some are looking into putting the seaweed to good use, instead. Appendini says research is ongoing to find ways to use the sargassum for biofuel, building bricks, or as membranes for cleaning water, since it is particularly absorbent. “They absorb all the heavy metals and contaminants in the water,” he told CNN. “That’s also why sargassum can be very toxic, because when it’s drifting in the ocean it’s just assimilating all the toxic elements in the ocean like cadmium, arsenic and other minerals and elements.” There’s also the possibility of carbon sequestration by sinking the excessive biomass to the bottom of the ocean. And there’s interest in possibly using sargassum to replace one of the globe’s other problems: plastic. “If we could harvest this sargassum and produce this biodegradable product that could replace single use plastics, that would begin to restore the oceans regarding the serious plastic pollution that we’re seeing,” LaPointe said. As the sargassum situation remains pervasive for more than a decade now, Appendini said the record-breaking bloom should make the world pay attention. “I think the sargassum blooms are like a warning that we need to be more mindful of how we are developing in this world,” Appendini said. “We need to change … how we do things.”

As the number of extreme heat days continues to rise due to climate change, the high temperatures are taking a toll on our health—extreme heat has been linked to a range of health issues, including heatstroke, dehydration, and respiratory problems. But some people are at greater risk than others: warmer days are putting pregnant people at a higher risk for health complications. One Climate Central analysis published on May 14 found that extreme heat caused by climate change is posing dangerous risks for maternal health and birth outcomes. Between 2020 to 2024, the average number of pregnancy heat-risk days—defined as days in which maximum temperatures are warmer than 95% of temperatures observed in a given location—doubled in 222 countries. The greatest increase in heat-risk days occurred primarily in developing areas with limited access to health care, including the Caribbean, parts of Central and South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. “Pregnant women and their fetuses are more vulnerable to climate-related changes, especially around heat and extreme heat,” says Shruthi Mahalingaiah, associate professor of environmental, reproductive, and women's health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Mahalingaiah adds that, when it comes to extreme heat, someone who is pregnant might not be able to regulate temperatures in the same way as someone who is not. “This is because the pregnant woman’s body is already undergoing vast changes to accommodate supporting a fetus, and it’s harder to regulate and especially cool the fetal environment to a healthy range.” Enduring this extreme heat puts expectant mothers at a greater risk of developing high-risk conditions like pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, says Anna Bonell, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It also impacts the fetuses' development. “The fetus doesn't have its own capacity to regulate its temperature, and we know that [much of] the development of the fetal organs are temperature sensitive,” says Mahalingaiah. Some studies have linked exposure to extreme heat with increased risk of birth defects including neural tube defects like spinal bifida. “We also know very clearly now that you have an increased risk of pre-term birth, still birth, smaller babies, as well as congenital abnormalities [when exposed to extreme heat],” says Bonell. One 2024 study published by the journal JAMA Network Open found that the rates of preterm and early-term births increased when local temperatures were abnormally hot for more than four consecutive days. Pre-term births can have wide-reaching health impacts for a child. “A baby that's born pre-term has an increased risk of dying, and also then has an increased risk of multiple hospitalizations and ongoing illnesses,” Bonell adds. Extreme heat is also impacting the effectiveness of contraception and pregnancy tests—items which can be easily damaged by high temperatures, rendering them ineffective. One analysis from MSI Reproductive Choices found that, since 2011, an estimated 11.5 million women in 26 countries have had their access to contraception disrupted due to climate-related displacement. Advertisement And although climate change is impacting everyone, the health risks are greatest amongst marginalized communities. “Lower income populations [who have] less access to health care are going to be at a natural disadvantage for all things,” says Howie Wu, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Individuals that don't have access to air conditioning and shade are more susceptible to heat-related complications, while those who live close to highways are likely to face greater exposure to pollutants. Other climate related stressors have also been linked to pregnancy complications. Air pollution has been found to increase the likelihood of high blood pressure during pregnancy, low birth weight, preterm birth, and negative impacts on fetal brain and lung development, according to the World Health Organization. And a 2020 study published in Environment International found that severe storms, like cyclones and hurricanes, could trigger early births, due to factors such as increased stress, environmental contamination, and disruption of health services. Advertisement The impact of extreme weather on accessing care can have a range of consequences. A December 2023 report published by XDI, a data driven organization that quantifies climate risks, found that human-driven climate change has increased the risk of damage to hospitals by 41%—and experts note that disruptions can have ripple effects. “In New York City, for example, Hurricane Sandy led to consequences when it came to the [ability to provide] prenatal care,” says Wu. “These extreme weather events have consequences on care providers that I think are underappreciated and probably understudied.” Experts all stress, however, that much more work needs to be done to understand the way our changing climate is impacting pregnancies and fetal development. “It's very important to think about the upstream and the downstream in the reproductive life cycle for pregnant people,” says Mahalingaiah. “And we have a lot more work to do to really understand it all.”

Jane Fonda has always been one to stand up for what she believes in. With a lifetime of activism under her belt, the Oscar-winning actress has turned her attention to the climate crisis—choosing action over despair. In 2019, she started Fire Drill Fridays, as a way to inspire people to participate in non-violent direct action in support of the climate movement, and created her own climate PAC in 2022 to help elect politicians that prioritize the climate. Now Fonda is turning her attention to the Amazon, partnering with Amazon Frontlines, a non-profit organization working with Indigenous peoples to defend their land rights. Together, they are urging Ecuador’s Constitutional Court to create a national framework that enshrines the rights of Indigenous people to decide what happens in their home—guarunteeing the right to free, prior, and informed consultation and consent. To this end, on May 13 several hundred Indigenous people delivered an open letter to the Constitutional Court in Ecuador. On the same day Fonda is also delivering a printed copy to the Ecuadorian embassy in Los Angeles—which includes signatures from a number of organizations, including Greenpeace and Amazon Watch, as well as advocates like Lupita Nyong’o, Emma Thompson, and Mark Ruffalo. The campaign comes as Ecuador’s President, Daniel Noboa, announced plans last year to auction off 8.7 million acres of Indigenous territory in the Amazon rain forest to oil companies—despite Ecuadorians voting to stop oil drilling in the region. Time spoke with Fonda ahead of planned actions in Quito and in Los Angeles on May 13 with Amazon Frontlines. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TIME: How did you get involved with Amazon Frontlines? Fonda: I don't think it's a secret that I'm a climate activist. I'm very concerned about what burning oil, gas, and coal has done to our climate. It's created a pollution blanket around the planet that's heating the climate, such that ecosystems that are critical to our survival are risking collapse. The rain forests in South America determine a lot about the welfare of the entire world, not just the people who live there. A number of tribes that live in that northern forest have created an organization called Ceibo Alliance [to defend their community and culture]. This is really the first time that this has happened where not just one tribe of Indigenous peoples, but many tribes have come together in an organization to save their forest. The Amazon Frontline is the outward looking arm of the Ceibo Alliance. It is the people who live outside the forest who are helping Ceibo succeed. I’m part of that group now. Advertisement [Last year] I met an Indigenous woman named Nemonte Nenquimo, whose ancestral lands are in the northern part of the Ecuadorian rain forest. I asked if [Ceibo] would invite me to the rain forest. I had two reasons for going. I wanted to just experience the forest and understand it and feel it. And then I wanted to find out what I could do to help them save the forest. Can you tell us a bit about the open letter you signed with the Amazon Frontlines? What is the action about? Indigenous peoples in Ecuador are leaving their forest today and traveling by canoe, by foot, to get to Quito on the other side of the Andes, to deliver a letter and a message to the Constitutional Court of Ecuador saying, “Give us our rights. We need to have a voice in what happens to our land, informed prior consent.” This is a really important case, because the prior victories that the Indigenous peoples have had didn't lock this into law. The informed prior consent in this case is not only to save the forest, but is to lock in the law that they have to be informed before any action is taken on their homelands. Advertisement Why is Amazon preservation a critical part of the climate fight? The Amazon, along with all the other rain forests in the world, but the Amazon happens to be the biggest, does two things for us.… The forests absorb a whole lot of the carbon that we burn, which reduces the pollution, and that is critical. Also, there are species that still exist in the forest that we don't know, that we've never discovered. So many cures, so many solutions to problems exist in the rain forests that we haven't discovered yet. So it's a fountain of information, of knowledge, of cures, of medicines. Those creatures and plants, the flora and fauna that live there, are part of the fabric of life that is required for human beings to survive on the planet. It would be a critical blow to the fight against the climate crisis if 8.7 million acres of ancient rain forests are cut down for oil. Advertisement You recently traveled to the Amazon. What did you learn about the grassroots work happening in Ecuador? It's unprecedented. [The place where we stayed] was a series of very beautiful thatched buildings, including a seven story high tower with thatched roofs all the way down. It was gorgeous. [The Indigenous people] run it, they own it, and they benefit from it. We stayed there, and it's incredible. They're working on ways to create eco-tourism that they can benefit from. I was shown what plants heal toothaches, what plants heal broken bones. The forest becomes a pharmacy. They listen to the plants, they talk to the animals. It made me very sad, because I realized how much we've lost our connection to nature. They understand that we're part of nature. For many people, tackling climate change feels like an insurmountable task. What advice do you have for people who want to take action but don’t know how to? Advertisement The vast majority of Americans are really concerned about climate, and they don't do anything because they don't know what to do. First of all, talk about it. Talk about your concerns. We have to make people understand that the natural world is why we are alive, and that we have to care about it. Number two, be sure you're not invested in fossil fuels. Trillions have been taken out of banks and investment companies by people who are concerned about the climate crisis. If you're disinvested, think about your city, your school, all the organizations that you know, and start to build support for getting them to divest from fossil fuels. Third, vote for climate champions. Find out if the people you're thinking of voting for take money from the fossil fuel industry. Most of them do, and vote for people who don't, because if they do, they're going to be supporting legislation that helps the corporations, not you as a citizen.

Greetings from Los Angeles where the Milken Global Conference concluded earlier this week. For the uninitiated, Milken is a key stop on the conference circuit for many business and finance leaders—a great way to escape Manhattan to brush shoulders with industry titans and top policymakers in Beverly Hills. It is by no means a climate conference. This year, public sessions with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang drew packed ballrooms. But, to many, the real draw of the conference is the behind-the-scenes discussions—an opportunity for information gathering and dealmaking. For me, Milken is a great place to take the pulse on how key figures in the world of business and finance are feeling about energy, climate, and related issues. There is no doubt that climate has slipped from center stage as CEOs contend with tariffs and what might diplomatically be called a fast-changing policy environment. At the same time, it may come as a surprise to those who just follow the headlines, but the issue remains well-placed on the corporate agenda—not just in the ballroom discussion panels of the Beverly Hilton at Milken but in the behind-the-scenes executive conversations taking place in private meeting rooms, nearby restaurants, and even just the crowded hallways. The picture that emerges to me is a dynamic one. Companies are trying to navigate an increase in climate regulation in many jurisdictions around the world while at the same time contending with a U.S. government that doesn’t want to hear about it. They are trying to protect their operations from the risks posed by climate change while conserving their financial resources in uncertain economic times. “I've had hundreds of conversations since the election. I've never spoken with a company that said, ‘You know what? We're going to let go of our net-zero target,’” said Nili Gilbert, vice chair at Carbon Direct, a company that invests in carbon management, on a Milken panel. “However, there is a lot of conversation going on about the interim strategy.” My conversations at Milken will inform my reporting in the weeks to come, but for now I want to highlight a few things that stood out to me: Physical risk Much of the public discussion at the intersection of business and climate has focused on how companies can decrease their emissions. But companies have also been forced to look at how the physical risks of climate change may affect their operations. That rethinking is the result of both climate disclosure rules in Europe that require companies to assess how climate change threatens their operations, and recent climate-linked disasters that have brought those realities home. Advertisement Many companies want to avoid talking about climate risk directly. It’s not exactly a great PR move. But a careful look at many companies’ more recent sustainability initiatives makes the link apparent. Think of an agriculture company that helps farmers in the supply chain use less water or a fashion company diversifying where it buys materials. “Being able to map those impacts and hazards is super important,” said Melissa Fifield, who runs the BMO Climate Institute, on a panel I moderated focused on water and climate. “It's a material impact to a lot of companies.” Investment speed Climate isn’t an island. The trillions in investment that the world needs to mitigate and adapt to climate change will come in forms that might otherwise be classified broadly as infrastructure, venture capital, or private equity. And the uncertainty of the moment—political and economic—has made companies and investors reluctant to make big bets and instead focus on conserving cash. Advertisement “These asset owners… want to focus on climate and infrastructure,” said Mark Berryman, partner at Capricorn Investment Group, an impact investing fund, on a Milken panel. But “they may just kind of tighten their belt in general, even if it was not a climate focused investment,” AI, meanwhile, is a bright spot for how companies might focus their investment. As I’ve written before, the race to build data centers has created a race to build clean energy. Financial innovation Innovation typically draws to mind new technologies, but financial innovation can be just as important to bring clean energy to market. Across the conference, it was reassuring to hear leaders at the intersection of climate and finance talk about different ways companies may soon be able to raise the money necessary to bring climate projects to life. That includes long-standing conversations like carbon markets and blended finance, where public or philanthropic dollars are combined with return-oriented investment. But it also includes new vehicles like private credit, an emerging asset class where investors outside of typical banks lend directly to companies. Advertisement Ultimately, financial innovation is a key ingredient to any energy transition, and these questions will need to be settled.

After a brief, two-day deliberation, a new pope to lead the Catholic Church has been selected to succeed Pope Francis, who died on April 21. Robert Prevost, the first American Pope in history, took the name Pope Leo XIV, and appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday evening. Much remains to be seen on where Pope Leo will stand on key issues—the cardinal is known to be reserved. But he is steering the Catholic Church at a time where the world is facing a number of pivotal crises—from geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, to global issues regarding migration, human rights, and the climate crisis. Global leaders including U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hope that, when it comes to the climate crisis, Leo might take up the mantle of Pope Francis, whose strong climate advocacy earned him the moniker of “the Climate Pope.” An invitation has also already been extended to Pope Leo to attend this year’s COP30 U.N. climate conference in Brazil. Little is known about Pope Leo’s commitment to environmental activism, but some indications show that he might be willing to prioritize the climate fight. Last year, speaking at a Rome seminar to discuss the global impacts of the climate crisis, Prevost said that it was time to move “from words to action,” according to an article published by the Vatican’s official news source. “‘Dominion over nature’—the task which God gave humanity—should not become ‘tyrannical.’ It must be a ‘relationship of reciprocity’ with the environment,” the Vatican News described him saying. Following this week's announcement, a handful of influential global decision makers expressed their optimism that Pope Leo might continue on with Pope Francis’s climate legacy. “Our world is in need of the strongest voices for peace, social justice, human dignity and compassion,” said Guterres. “I look forward to building on the long legacy of cooperation between the United Nations and the Holy See – nurtured most recently by Pope Francis – to advance solidarity, foster reconciliation, and build a just and sustainable world for all.” No time was wasted in inviting the new Pope to this year’s annual U.N. climate summit. "The COP30 Presidency hopes to welcome Pope Leo XIV in Belém in November to help us reach a climate agreement that will mark a turning point in the creation of a more prosperous, safer, fairer, and sustainable future," Ana Toni, the summit's CEO, said in a statement. And in a statement posted on Thursday, Brazil’s Lula da Silva also expressed hope that Pope Leo might continue in the footsteps of his predecessor on several fronts—including climate. Brazil, which has one of the largest Catholic populations in the world, is already facing the impacts of the climate crisis. “I hope that he will continue the legacy of Pope Francis, whose main virtues were the incessant search for peace and social justice, the defense of the environment, dialogue with all peoples and all religions, and respect for the diversity of human beings.”