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Today's Top 5 Trending

El Niño Causing Global Food Crisis, UN Warns

Severe droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events ever recorded have left nearly 100 million people in southern Africa, Asia and Latin America facing food and water shortages and vulnerable to diseases including Zika, UN bodies, international aid agencies and governments have said. - The Guardian

Pacific Nations Desperate for Climate Action

New Zealand climate scientists have echoed desperate cries from small Pacific nations in the firing line of rising seas. Representatives from 17 Pacific states, including Kiribati President Anote Tong, have been meeting leaders and experts in Wellington this week as part of Victoria University's Pacific Climate Change Conference. - New Zealand Herald

Global Warming in Overdrive: Hottest January Ever Recorded

January was the globe's most unusually warm month ever recorded, and the past three months have been the most unusually warm three-month period on record as well, according to new findings from NASA. - Mashable

Experts Call On Feds to Re-Evaluate World's Most Heavily Used Herbicide

U.S. and European health officials need to take a fresh look at assumptions about the safety and health impacts of glyphosate herbicides, according to a group of health scientists worried about the chemicals’ explosive worldwide growth. - Environmental Health News

Six Things I Would Ask Presidential Candidates About Food and Farming 

Slow-motion ecological crises haunt the country's main farming regions, and diet-related maladies generate massive burdens on the US health care system. Over the next three frantic weeks—with five debates and more than two dozen primaries—the two major-party candidates may well emerge. If Tom Philpott were a debate moderator or a reporter on the trail, here are some questions he would ask them. - Mother Jones

Today's Top 5 Trending

Greenland Is Melting Away

Scientific data collected in the rivers of Greenland could yield groundbreaking information on the rate at which the melting of Greenland ice sheet, one of the biggest and fastest-melting chunks of ice on Earth, will drive up sea levels in the coming decades. The full melting of Greenland’s ice sheet could increase sea levels by about 20 feet. -- New York Times

Deadly Heat Forecast in Middle East By 2100

By the end of this century, areas of the Persian Gulf could be hit by waves of heat and humidity so severe that simply being outside for several hours could threaten human life, according to a study published Monday. Because of humanity’s contribution to climate change, the authors wrote, some population centers in the Middle East “are likely to experience temperature levels that are intolerable to humans.” -- New York Times

Bleaching and Disease Are Devastating Biggest Coral Reef In Continental US

The world’s coral reefs are currently in the grip of a massive global bleaching event — only the third such event in recorded history. Thanks to unusually warm water brought on by the effects of climate change, a particularly strong El Nino event and a persistent warm “blob” in the Pacific Ocean, corals throughout the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans are at risk of bleaching and possible death. One of the places most recently affected is the Florida coral reef tract, which spans from the Florida Keys up to Martin County and is the only coral reef tract found off the coast of one of the continental U.S. states. -- Washington Post

House, Senate Move to Block Obama's Power Plant Plan

Congressional Republicans are moving to block President Barack Obama's plan to force steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants. The maneuver is subject to a presidential veto and has rarely been successful in overturning executive branch rules. Still, it allows opponents to set up votes calculated to embarrass the Obama administration ahead of international climate talks in Paris this fall. -- Associated Press

No Chance for Africa's Lions? 

The king of the animals is facing extinction. According to a study, the species, which is endemic to Africa, can only survive there on reservations. In some regions, populations have disappeared completely. -- Deutsche Welle