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Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of April 27 to May 3, 2026.
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Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in B.C. and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems, to all the up-to-date science.
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Check back every Saturday for more climate and environmental news or sign up for our Sunrise newsletter HERE.
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In climate news this week:
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• B.C. gardeners and farmers prepare for record-high temperatures
• Drought forces earlier watering restrictions in Metro Vancouver
• Record heat waves hit Europe last year as glaciers shrink and snow cover declines: WMO
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Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface and ocean temperature.
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Sunrise
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The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, including researchers from B.C., has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as the province’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.
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According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”
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As of March 5, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 429.35 parts per million, up from 428.62 ppm the previous month, according to the latest available data from the NOAA measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii. The NOAA notes there has been a steady rise in CO2 from under 320 ppm in 1960.
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Quick facts:
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• The global average temperature in 2023 reached 1.48 C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. In 2024, it breached the 1.5 C threshold at 1.55 C.
• 2025 was the third warmest on record after 2024 and 2023, capping the 11th consecutive warmest years.
• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.
• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.
• UNEP’s 2025 Emissions Gap Report, released in early December, shows that even if countries meet emissions targets, global temperatures could still rise by 2.3 C to 2.5 C this century.
• In June 2025, global concentrations of carbon dioxide exceeded 430 parts per million, a record high.
• There is global scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that humans are the cause.
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Latest News
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Metro Vancouver bans lawn watering starting May 1
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Lawn sprinklers across Metro Vancouver will soon go dry, as the region moves straight into stricter Stage 2 water restrictions weeks earlier than usual because of drought concerns and a shrinking snowpack.
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Stage 1 restrictions typically begin May 1, limiting lawn watering to specific days and times. But Stage 2 — which bans all lawn watering — is usually reserved for later in the summer, when reservoirs come under pressure.
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This year, officials are skipping ahead.
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Metro said it’s activating Stage 2 restrictions earlier this year because of drought concerns, with below-normal snowpack levels and forecasts indicating a dry summer ahead.
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—Cheryl Chan
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B.C. gardeners and farmers prepare for record-high temperatures
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A garden can be an oasis from life’s chaos, an idea that has long sent British Columbians to local garden shops at the first sign of spring. But this weekend, with record-high temperatures forecast for Sunday and Monday, the impulse might be more practical.
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“It’s been very busy already,” said Rebecca Stevenson, assistant manager at Hunters Garden Centre in Vancouver. “Everyone wants their own little oasis.”
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In Vancouver, temperatures could rise to 23 C on Sunday and 24 C on Monday, with 27 and 28 C forecast for Abbotsford, according to Environment Canada.
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“Those are unusual temperatures in the sense of the daily temperature,” said meteorologist Colin Fong. “But on the flip side, it’s not all that unusual to see higher temperatures in May.”
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While the average daytime high for early May is about 14, there are plenty of instances where the temperature has been much higher than that, with a record of 30 set later in the month. But Fong said there are indications the next three months will continue to be warmer than usual, with a “strong signal for above-normal temperatures” through May, June and July.
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—Glenda Luymes
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Kenya’s economy slows as drought continues
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Kenya’s economy expanded at its slowest pace in five years in 2025, as drought weighed on the East African nation’s key agricultural sector.
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Gross domestic product grew 4.6 per cent in 2025, compared with 4.7 per cent a year earlier, data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics showed Wednesday. That marked the slowest pace since 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Agricultural activity, which includes fishing and forestry, slowed to 3.1 per cent, from 4.4 per cent in 2024, the agency said. The sector contributes as much as a quarter to overall output.
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Agriculture is largely “rain-fed and so that’s something that we are not able to control,” the statistics agency’s director general MacDonald Obudho said at a briefing in Nairobi, the capital.
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—Bloomberg News
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Global forest loss fell sharply in 2025 after hitting record high
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Tropical forest loss declined significantly last year, falling 36 per cent after reaching a record level in 2024. Still, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of rainforest — an area roughly the size of Denmark, or more than 11 soccer fields every minute.
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New data from the University of Maryland, published through the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch, shows that the loss of primary — or mature and largely undisturbed — humid tropical forests slowed down in 2025. But it was still 46 per cent higher than a decade earlier, and last year saw a relative lull in wildfires after an exceptionally bad fire year in 2024. Blazes are increasing in the tropics due to warmer temperatures and more severe droughts.
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Outside the tropics, the climate signal was starker. Wildfires burned 5.3 million hectares in Canada, making 2025 the country’s second-worst fire year on record. In France, fire-driven tree-cover loss was the most severe on record, seven times higher than in the previous year.
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The analysis uses a broad definition of forest loss that includes not just deforestation for agriculture but also timber harvesting and natural disturbances to forests.
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At the COP26 climate summit in 2021, more than 100 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. The world remains far from that goal as agricultural expansion and fires continue to destroy important biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks.
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—Bloomberg News
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Fort McMurray’s rise from ashes after wildfire ravaged city 10 years ago
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The fiery “beast” that razed so much of the northern city of Fort McMurray 10 years ago May 3 has made a lasting impact on Alberta’s wildfire landscape.
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The 2016 wildfire that consumed more than a half-million hectares and spread to the heart of Fort McMurray causing 90,000 to evacuate has changed the community and how the province battles blazes.
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The Horse River wildfire seemed unstoppable as it crackled its smoky way from a two-hectare concern to 589,000 hectares, more than an average wildfire season across the province.
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Wood Buffalo fire chief Jody Butz recalls long, feverish hours on the emergency services team with a single purpose — “trying to keep the fire from taking our community.”
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“You didn’t have enough time to kind of sit and reflect on the situation. You had to deal with what you had in front of you. And every one of the firefighters out there were dealing with fire, whether it was in the house or in the neighbourhoods or in the trees coming at them,” Butz recalled.
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—Edmonton Journal
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Two councillors aim to scrap climate emergency declaration, again
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Two Calgary city councillors are looking to revive the debate around the previous council’s declaration of a climate emergency.
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Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot and Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston are both planning to bring notices of motion next week that ask to revoke the 2021 declaration, which stated Calgary is in a climate emergency.
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Their motions will have to pass through Tuesday’s executive committee before they’re formally debated by council at a future meeting.
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Chabot is also calling for a full accounting of all climate-related spending by the city in the four-plus years since the declaration was made, and for an assessment of whether spending outcomes are aligned with council’s priorities.
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—Calgary Herald
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The world met to talk climate change, the U.S. wasn’t invited: New York Times report
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The New York Times reports that diplomats from nearly 60 countries gathered in Colombia this week to discuss one of the most urgent questions of how to move beyond fossil fuels.
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The issue is urgent because emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas are rapidly warming the planet, leading to increasingly dire consequences, the report said.
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However the report says the U.S. was not invited, given the Trump administration’s refusal to engage with international climate talks.
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The gathering took place outside the formal U.N. process that organizes the annual Conference of the Parties climate summits, known as COPs. The NYT reports that was intentional, and exposed what critics say are failings with the annual U.N. climate events.
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Record heat waves hit Europe last year as glaciers shrink and snow cover declines: WMO
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The World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus Climate Change Service released its European State of the Climate for 2025 report this week.
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Here are a few of the key findings:
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• At least 95 per cent of Europe experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2025.
• A record three-week heat wave affected sub-Arctic Fennoscandia, with temperatures near to and within the Arctic Circle exceeding 30 C.
• Glaciers in all European regions saw a net mass loss, with Iceland recording its second-largest glacier loss on record; snow cover was 31 per cent below average; the Greenland Ice Sheet lost 139 billion tonnes of ice.
• The annual sea surface temperature for the European region was the highest on record, and 86 per cent of the region experienced at least strong marine heat waves.
• Wildfires burnt around 1,034,550 hectares, the largest area on record.
• River flows were below average for 11 months of the year across Europe, with 70 per cent of rivers seeing below-average annual flows.
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—Source: WMO
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I’m a breaking news reporter but I’m also interested in writing stories about health, the environment, climate change and sustainable living, including zero-waste goals. If you have a story idea related to any of these topics please send an email to ticrawford@postmedia.com
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