The record "rain bomb" that struck Dubai and other nearby Gulf states on Tuesday dumped more than two years' worth of rain on the global financial and transportation hub.
Why it matters: By bringing the city to a standstill, the floods demonstrated how inadequate existing infrastructure is for withstanding extreme weather events that are becoming more common and severe due to climate change.
Climeworks, one of the earliest and most prominent companies trying to draw carbon out of the air for a profit, is branching out via a carbon removal portfolio company called Climeworks Solutions.
Why it matters: This move, announced Wednesday, allows companies to pay Climeworks for verifiable carbon removals from a range of technologies.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been hit by a major bleaching event affecting 73% of the iconic ecosystem, according to a new Australian government report.
The big picture: A "perfect storm of threats" including climate change and the related hottest year on record in 2023 and warmer ocean temperatures, coupled with El Niño, contributed to the bleaching, said Anna Marsden, managing director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation nonprofit, in a Wednesday interview.
Some 45 million Americans are at risk of severe thunderstorms from Nebraska through parts of the Midwest and south-central states from Tuesday through Thursday.
The big picture: The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center issued an enhanced risk (level 3/5) of severe thunderstorms for parts of Iowa, northern Missouri and Illinois Tuesday.
The NOAA's finding that the fourth global coral bleaching event is underway — the second in the past decade, indicates global warming's ocean impact is worsening, scientists say. But all hope is not lost.
Why it matters: At stake is the fate of everything from the health of national economies to the availability of experimental treatments for cancer.
