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The coming U.S. retreat from leadership on global climate policy comes amid a dawning reality: For much of the world, China already calls the shots.

Beijing’s decades-long effort to dominate the world’s clean energy economy is enabling it to woo tight business alliances with governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America — without insisting on the labor and environmental safeguards that the United States and European Union typically demand. Those countries, in turn, are taking China’s side in disputes with the U.S. and Europe about trade policies or efforts to make rich nations step up their international climate aid.

And as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, promising to walk away from the Paris climate agreement, some diplomats at the U.N.-sponsored talks in Azerbaijan said they hope China will fill the void by championing steep cuts in greenhouse gas pollution. Trump has also pledged to shred Biden administration clean energy policies that were designed to weaken Chinese control of key technologies.

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A major storm pummeled northern California with rain and snow on Thursday and threatened to cause flash flooding and rockslides, in the latest wave of damaging weather to wash over the west coast.

The National Weather Service (NWS) extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas north of San Francisco as the strongest atmospheric river – a large plume of moisture flowing onshore – that California and the Pacific north-west has seen this season inundated the region. The storm system unleashed winds the night before that left two people dead and hundreds of thousands without power in Washington state.

The weather service office in Sacramento, California, said early on Thursday in a social media post that slick roads with ponding water were observed across parts of the valley and foothills, and there were some snow-covered roads in the mountains.

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A set of powerful storms that could rank among the strongest in decades will slam British Columbia, thepacific north-west, and northern California this week, with torrents of rain, inches of snow in high altitudes and damaging winds. The region is bracing for widespread power outages and flash flooding, with extreme rainfall that could linger until the weekend.

After a relatively mild autumn, these rains are part of a familiar pattern caused by atmospheric rivers – strong storm systems that can bring both relief and ruin.

This week’s weather event is predicted to be the strongest atmospheric river the regions have seen this season. Heavy rainfall started Tuesday evening with the worst of the event unfolding throughout the rest of the week, causing “life threatening” conditions, according to the weather prediction center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa).

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Fire crews are continuing to battle a large wildfire spreading across New Jersey and New York amid an increase in wildfires in the north-eastern US.

Much of the region is facing a drought, and dry conditions across almost the whole country have made wildfires a more frequent occurrence, with windy periods further exacerbating potential or existing fires.

The blaze, known as the Jennings Creek wildfire, has burned more than 3,000 acres (1,214 hectares) as of Monday, according to the New Jersey forest fire service.

New Jersey and New York forest fire services have joined forces to tackle the wildfire. Firefighting crews are reported to be understaffed, however, with most teams being largely composed of volunteers.

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Since early this year, climate scientists have been saying 2024 was likely to be the warmest year on record. Ten months in, it's now "virtually certain," the Copernicus Climate Change Service has announced.

This year is also virtually certain to be the first full year where global average temperatures were at least 2.7 degrees (1.5 Celsius) above preindustrial levels, said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Climate Change Service. That’s a target world leaders and climate scientists had hoped to stay below in the quest to curb rising temperatures.

“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29,” Burgess stated. The conference starts Monday in Azerbaijan.

The previous hottest year on record was last year.

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A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Cuba on Sunday, causing material damage in several regions as the island continues to recover from widespread blackouts and the impact of two hurricanes over the past few weeks.

The earthquake was reported about 39 km (24 miles) south of Bartolomé Masó before noon local time, about an hour after a 5.9 magnitude quake rocked the area, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.

“There have been landslides, damage to homes and power lines,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said, adding that authorities are evaluating the situation to start recovery efforts.

Pictures of Granma Province published by the state-run outlet Cubadebate showed buildings with cracks on the walls and piles of debris littering the ground.

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Climate change-induced warming is drying out the American West by not only reducing precipitation, but also by accelerating evaporation — even amid adequate rainfall, a new study has found.

Evaporation accounted for 61 percent of the region’s drought severity from 2020 to 2022, while reduced precipitation was responsible for just 39 percent of these conditions, according to the study, published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Historically, drought in the U.S. West was driven by a lack of rainfall, while evaporative demand — the amount of water that the atmosphere can absorb from the Earth’s surface — has only played a small role, the study authors noted.

But climate change caused by burning fossil fuels has brought about higher average atmospheric temperatures and has increased the contributions of evaporation to drought severity, the researchers explained.

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Fast-moving fires erupted across California on Wednesday as the state was lashed by powerful winds that complicated firefighting efforts, necessitated power shutoffs and raised the danger for more ignitions.

Just hours after igniting in Ventura county, the Mountain fire rapidly swept through more than 10,000 acres as flames jumped into rural and residential communities tucked close to the burning hillsides, leaving devastation in its wake.

“It has hopscotched over several ridgelines and is now burning structure to structure in neighborhoods,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an online broadcast, calling the event a “suburban fire storm” that could rank among the most destructive in California this year. “And the fire is still spreading.”

Fueled by gusts of up to 80mph, the fire spewed flames and embers up to 2.5 miles out, making it difficult and dangerous to fight. Every firefighting resource in the area has been thrown at the fire, according to Ventura county fire chief Dustin Gardner, who added that is is “still moving at a dangerous rate of spread”. By Wednesday evening, the fire remained at 0% containment.

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