Climate

It’s only going to get hotter

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This week, as wildfires break out across Texas, life-saving alerts are being issued by the National Weather Service (NWS), informing evacuations ahead of the advancing threat. On the ground, firefighters are using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites for wildfire monitoring in real time. This is just one of dozens of emergencies our first responders rely on NOAA and NWS data for on any given week. Simply put: NOAA and the NWS save lives and must be defended against the Trump administration’s ongoing assault.

We are witnessing the vanishing of our own US assets which taxpayers have funded and built over generations to serve the public good. We need those assets and will suffer in their absence. And we may be forced to pay the private sector to dole them back out to us, piecemeal. We need to call the theft, harm and grift what it is—and stop it. 

The theft

Since 1849, when the Smithsonian Institution began furnishing telegraph offices with weather instruments, meteorological data have been continuously and systematically collected in the United States. In 1870, Congress established within the US Army’s Signal Service the very 19th-century named Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce and tasked it with issuing weather forecasts and warnings.

Later, the service became a civilian agency when Congress transferred its meteorological responsibilities to the US Weather Bureau under the Department of Agriculture. Today, those duties are carried out by the National Weather Service (NWS), housed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the Department of Commerce. And thanks to the progression of recognizing the value of investing in weather forecasts and warnings, the American people own the NWS, a public service that is paid for with your tax dollars. That investment totals about $1.3 billion dollars annually—or about $7 per person in the United States—and it puts much more than this back into the US national economy.

The NWS’ own assessment in 2017 found that private businesses can derive up to $13 billion dollars in economic value from weather knowledge, and that its freely-available data powers a $7 billion-dollar market that creates tailored weather products for business and people. Economy-wide, the value of weather and climate information to the US economy exceeds $100 billion annually, which is roughly 10 times the investment made by taxpayers through federal agencies such as NOAA, involved in weather-related science and services. 

That weather app on your phone, or the weather report on TV? How about the storm forecast that the airports you fly in or out of receive every three hours for the next 36 hours and are the basis for rerouting or grounding planes? That’s critical for safe air travel, and yes, that was paid by taxpayers and also belongs to you. The 418 people who were rescued last year from incidents over water, land, and in downed aircraft? That was possible because the Coast Guard and the military had access to NOAA’s search and rescue-aided satellites. All of it is powered by NOAA’s free and public data that are available for public safety or business operations.

At UCS, we know full well how valuable the data are—we power our own Danger Season extreme weather tracker using the NWS’s daily-updated data (another free service!)  

But the valuable data and information that we obtain from NWS is at risk of being stolen. The Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE—the black-box entity that has no actual legal authority to dismantle agencies created by Congress—have signaled as much by illegally invading NOAA headquarters, firing thousands of its staff, and canceling leases on some of its key buildings.

Here we are in the era of presidential overreach, where a Republican-controlled Congress is allowing the executive branch to usurp its powers, and a Democratic minority leadership is unwilling to use its remaining power to block these illegal actions. And that overreach has slipped into the judicial branch, where the Trump administration is openly ignoring judges’ decisions and orders to reverse course on illegal executive action. 

But why? The Trump government wants to dismantle the climate and weather science conducted by NOAA because evidence of a warming world resulting from burning their products is a pesky reality for the fossil fuel industry that gave millions to his campaign. In addition, he would like to put behind a paywall those parts that they will not be able to completely eliminate—the NWS. This is not speculation. Just read the chapter on the Department of Commerce in the Trump government’s blueprint for dismantlement, Project 2025.  Or if you can’t stomach the lunacy of the nearly 900-page document, read my blogpost readout of the plan for NOAA and NWS. This is very, very harmful. 

The harm

Where is the harm in dismantling—or even simply compromising—NWS and its parent office, NOAA? Without accurate, updated, and free weather information, we lose the ability to prepare ourselves for potentially lethal extreme weather such as hurricanes, heat waves, floods, and snowstorms.

Travel by air becomes an uncertain activity that could kill you (think of the Age of Exploration, when galleons departed with very little certainty of arriving safely on the other side of the world, much less coming back!), as airports will not have reliable and updated storm forecasts. The national economy suffers because weather events account for impactful fluctuations in the country’s GDP and affect the ability of all sectors to provide goods and services. Planning for weather-related risks requires information that can help reduce uncertainty that is costly for business; its absence hampers emergency managers and first responders.  

As it turns out, we lose quite a bit of life-saving alert information. I took a look at the number of times that the NWS issued an alert that impacted a county (or county-equivalents in the territories) each day between 2010 and 2024, a metric I call county-alert days. I use this metric rather than the raw number of alerts because NWS alerts often span multiple counties, so the raw number does not quite communicate the spread of alerts in counties.

NWS keeps track of nearly 70 different types of extreme weather, so I grouped them into thirteen categories. I am sure meteorologists may disagree with some of my grouping choices, but I think this serves to illustrate my point: Between 2010 and 2024, NWS issued extreme weather alerts that impacted all 3,144 counties (and equivalents) a whopping 3.7 million times.

I also grouped the alerts geographically according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment regions to show how different regions of the country face different kinds of extreme weather. Wildfires in the Great Plains, the Southwest, and the Northwest have prompted thousands of fire weather (also called “red flag”) alerts by the NWS; historically, alerts in the Southeast and the Northeast are mostly related to flood, cold, heat, and wind. The US Caribbean (that’s Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands) have faced floods, dangerous ocean weather and currents, and in the previous two years, extreme heat alerts that were not common before. Note that the small number of storms does not reflect their devastating impact, such as Hurricane María’s in 2017. Finally, Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands have faced much flooding and storms, and in the last few years have seen red flag weather alerts for wildfires such as the terrible Maui fires of 2023. 

NWS alerting us to potential harm: Between 2010 and 2024, NWS issued extreme weather alerts that impacted all 3,144 counties and county-equivalents in the US 3.7 million times. 

Let’s say you live in a coastal community along the Gulf of Mexico. Would you like to know how much storm surge or wind speed you need to prepare for in the face of an incoming hurricane, or when you need to evacuate to higher ground? Well, you could have this information if NOAA could fly their hurricane hunters, those very cool aircraft flown by very brave pilots who soar into hurricanes to collect data that are fed into storm track models to refine projections of intensity, speed, and landfall as hurricanes form, evolve, and intensify rapidly from one day to the next (a hallmark behavior of storms in the climate change era).

But guess what? There is no certainty we will have such information this hurricane season. In February, flight directors and other pilots were fired, but news media reported that some were rehired in March. No clear information is coming through from the administration, so it’s anybody’s guess if there will in fact be planes, pilots, and a flight plan ready to go if and when hurricanes threaten populated areas in the Gulf of Mexico. 

For other types of extreme weather worsened by climate change, harm will follow as well: farmers will lose drought monitoring that they rely on to plan and prepare for the season; forest managers and wildfire first responders will lose seasonal and monthly wildfire risk outlooks. Alerts about rapid-onset events such as extreme heat domes and flooding are also at risk of being lost.  

Hurricane season and the time of the year when climate change makes extreme weather more likely (we call it Danger Season) are right around the corner. Without our hurricane hunters and their pilots, weather balloons, and forecasters, we are going impaired into seasonal climate and extreme weather dangers that we already know are destroying lives and property.  

The presidential grift of what’s ours

So… <deep breath>. Let’s take Project 2025 seriously about its goal of privatizing NWS—which we definitely should take seriously, since in the first two long months of the Trump administration it has reliably been its modus operandi. According to pages 674-677, it appears that the theft and the harm will be followed by the further crime of privatizing what we own and pay for already.

What we already own and pay for is giving back dividends in lives and property saved, increasing prosperity, reducing uncertainty about extreme weather impacts, and providing the scientific bedrock of knowledge that can inform how to safeguard us from a climate-changed world. And the unilateral and illegal actions of the administration intend to put this service behind a paywall to make us pay again for it?

Public services exist to provide parity in access to all people in society without regard to their ability to individually fork out money for such a service—so those unable to pay will end up paying twice: once with their tax dollars, and once with their wellbeing or with their lives. Paywalled weather alerts will deprive individuals, households, or towns with lower incomes of access to life-saving services.

And there are early indications of the privatization to come. The private company WindBorne Systems has offered to backfill atmospheric data no longer collected by weather balloons in Alaska after the Juneau local NWS office lost 10% of its staff due to downsizing. While this may look like good corporate citizen action from a technically-savvy and well-resourced private company, businesses exist to make money, so it is a bit hard to see how WindBorne will be willing or able to permanently fill the gap in data collection in Alaska without compensation.  

Is this the wasteful spending that President Trump and Musk pledged to root out? Are we supposed to accept the demolition of the jobs, the infrastructure, and the data that saves lives and property and increases prosperity, under the pretense of rooting out a federal workforce that is falsely vilified as being lazy, leeching the system, and wasting taxpayers’ money?

There is a perverse psychology of revenge at play here. In dismantling the federal workforce, the administration’s goal has been, in the words of director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought (and architect of Project 2025), for “the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.” This vengeful discourse has been embraced by a significant part of the country who gleefully watch the administration’s actions inflicting pain on the federal workforce across the board.

Year after year, billion-dollar disasters, many of them worsened by climate, destroy and displace communities across the country. And as Danger Season and the heat waves, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires it brings loom over us, people across the country and territories—regardless of political persuasion—will suffer under extreme weather disasters without life-saving information, and without adequately-funded and staffed emergency management, recovery, and reconstruction services.

The life- and property-saving value that federal workers bring to the people of this country is on the line, and I fear that the consequences of dismantling the country’s weather and climate forecasting enterprise as well as disaster assistance and recovery agencies will strike a blow to communities still reeling from previous years’ extreme weather in addition to this year’s worsening economic challenges related to market uncertainties and cost of living increases.  

The Trump administration is dismantling institutions, firing expert staff, and stealing data paid for out of our own pockets. Such theft will lead to harm as we lose the information that saves lives, protects property, and enables prosperity across many aspects of daily life in the US.  It will also change how the US has regarded science and the NWS as a beloved and public good.

The country has invested in, and innovated through, this scientific public service for over a century, not for selling it to the highest bidder, but for the common good. Dismantling NOAA and the National Weather Service is a presidential grift that we must oppose. 

When we save science, we save lives. Take action to tell the Trump administration to stop its all-out war on our science and our scientists.

Vast quantities of climate and environmental information have been removed from official websites in the past months. Scientists are trying keep it available.

Amid dizzying changes caused by a warming climate and global attention, Greenlanders don’t want to have to choose between embracing the future and honoring their heritage.

Unesco report highlights ‘unprecedented’ glacier loss driven by climate crisis, threatening ecosystems, agriculture and water sources

Retreating glaciers threaten the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world, the UN has warned, as current “unprecedented” rates of melting will have unpredictable consequences.

Two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world is likely to be affected in some way by receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountain regions, driven by the climate crisis, according to a Unesco report.

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A Times reporter co-wrote a guide to buying a home in an era of record heat, floods and billion-dollar disasters.

The ancient Mediterranean city is at risk as sea levels rise. But most people in the vulnerable fishing village of El Max believe it will always weather the storms of time

On a sunny January morning in El Max, west of Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, where a canal meets the Mediterranean Sea, Ahmed Gaz is untangling his fishing net on the beach after landing his catch at dawn.

Like almost everyone in the neighbourhood, Gaz was born and raised by the water, destined to fish for a living: “My whole life is in the sea. My life, my work and my livelihood.”

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The run-up to 2016 shows ‘common sense’ isn’t enough. Even ignorant, reactionary arguments must be properly countered

Kemi Badenoch’s speech on climate this week was not interesting of itself: she said net zero couldn’t be achieved by 2050 “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”. She has no expertise in climate science, no background in renewables or apparent familiarity with the advances made in their technology, no qualification in economics – just about the only bit of that sentence she knows anything about is bankrupting us.

Yet even if Badenoch can take its particulars and shove them, the fact of its existence is interesting for a number of reasons. First, this attack on net zero has been predicted, not secretly by new-Conservative fellow travellers, though conceivably them too, but by progressives – and for years. Among the first was the Cambridge academic David Runciman, who predicted a backlash against action on the climate crisis as the new galvanising issue on the radical right after it had moved on from Brexit. On his Talking Politics podcast, he was in conversation with Ed Miliband, who took that point but said he hoped Runciman was wrong. He was not wrong.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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As birds begin long journey north, climate-driven seasonal changes may leave late arrivals struggling to find food for young

Thursday is the spring equinox, when day and night are more or less equal all over the world. For naturalists, it marks the official start of spring, though judging by the birdsong in my Somerset garden, the season began several weeks ago.

As we eagerly await the return of swifts, swallows, warblers and flycatchers – all long-distance migrants from sub-Saharan Africa – we should reflect on how shifts in the world’s climate are causing them problems.

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The environmental group had said the lawsuit, over its role in a protest movement, could mean an end to its operations in the United States.

Non-profit, which will appeal decision, says lawsuits like this are aimed at ‘destroying the right to peaceful protest’

A jury in North Dakota has decided that the environmental group Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the pipeline company Energy Transfer and is liable for defamation and other claims over protests in the state nearly a decade ago.

Energy Transfer Partners, a Dallas-based oil and gas company worth almost $70bn, had sued Greenpeace, alleging defamation and orchestrating criminal behavior by protesters at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, claiming the organization “incited” people to protest by using a “misinformation campaign”.

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Climate models are the main tool climate scientists use to predict how Earth will respond to more heat-trapping pollutants in the atmosphere.

But what exactly is a climate model? Let’s start off easy by breaking down the phrase “climate model.” The “climate” is simply the weather averaged over a long period of time. A “model” in this case is a physical approximation of a complex system. So a climate model is an approximation of the Earth’s weather over a long period of time.

Since their debut in the 1960s, scientists have been improving and increasing the complexity of climate models (check out my History of Climate Models blog), and my colleagues and I at UCS continue to use them today. 

General circulation models 

When climate scientists reference a climate model, they are generally referring to a general circulation model (GCM), which is the main tool climate scientists use to simulate and understand how the Earth’s oceans, land, atmosphere, and cryosphere (a word to describe the planet’s sea and land ice) respond to changes in both its own internal dynamics as well as changes in heat-trapping pollutants.  

Just by looking at the name, you can see that a GCM is a model that simulates the circulation of Earth’s different physical systems like the atmosphere and ocean. What causes a circulation? In my blog on the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is the conveyor belt of water moving in the Atlantic Ocean, I discussed how regions around the equator are warmer than the poles due to different amounts of incoming solar radiation, that is, energy from the sun.

The Earth’s climate system doesn’t like imbalances in heat given the difference in density: Earth will do everything in its power to mix the cold poles and the hot tropics. The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans create circulations in order to mix temperature differences between regions; GCMs, or climate models, simulate these circulations quite well. 

The AMOC is an oceanic circulation that transports warm, fresh water from the Equator to the North Atlantic and cold, salty water from the North Atlantic to the Equatorial region. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/amoc.html. 

How exactly do GCMs simulate circulations? In order to model the climate system, a GCM uses a set of equations that explains how energy, momentum (e.g., moving air), and water interact and change within the atmosphere and oceans. GCMs simulate the Earth as a giant three-dimensional grid and calculate how different variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, etc.) change at each grid point. The models further simulate how heat and other climate variables travel to and influence values in other grid points. 

A climate model splits the Earth into a three-dimensional grid, with calculations of momentum, heat, and water changes at each grid point. https://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/breakthroughs/climate_model/welcome.html A climate model is made up of many models 

In my blog on the history of climate models, I discussed how the first climate model back in the mid 20th century was actually just a single model of the atmosphere, which is just one part of the climate system. We know that there are other components of Earth’s climate besides the atmosphere, for example, the ocean, the land, and ice. Today’s climate models are so complex because they are made up of all of these components: atmosphere, land, ocean, and ice. We also have scientists who specialize in each component, allowing for further complexity and improvement in prediction of the Earth’s climate system. Today, a climate model is made up of smaller, component models of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere.

How exactly do all these different components of Earth’s climate system communicate with each other while a climate simulation is running? Through something called a coupler, which connects the different model components so that data can easily flow between the different sub-models. 

Modern-day climate models incorporate multiple subcomponents that are integrated by means of a coupler. 

Why do we need so many different models? Each model simulates something specific in its respective system. An ocean model calculates ocean circulation (like the AMOC) as well as ocean biogeochemistry, which is the science of how different molecules, such as carbon or nitrogen, cycle through the ocean. A land model will simulate:  

• vegetation  

• snow cover  

• soil moisture  

• evapotranspiration (process by which water moves from the land surface or vegetation to the atmosphere)  

• river flow

• and carbon storage 

A sea-ice model will calculate  

• reflection of incoming sunlight  

• air-sea heat exchange

• and moisture interaction between ice and water  

An atmospheric model calculates changes in  

• atmospheric circulation  

• radiation  

• clouds  

• and aerosols  

All of the different processes each climate sub-model will calculate. https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsearth-system-and-climate-models.  Model parameterizations 

You might be thinking, how could we possibly simulate clouds if they’re created from many tiny water droplets and ice crystals? If we were to simulate a cloud and all of its tiny droplets, our three-dimensional grid would have to be extremely detailed. Unfortunately, we don’t have the computer power to perform these kinds of detailed calculations (we also don’t fully understand the dazzling complexity of all the physics involved), so scientists developed something called a parameterization. A parameterization can be thought of as a model within a model.

Let’s say there’s a cloud in the eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean near the Galápagos Islands. This cloud exists under certain atmospheric conditions (temperature, moisture, wind) that support its existence.  

If we were to simulate this cloud in a GCM, these atmospheric conditions would first be reported to the cloud parameterization scheme from the main atmospheric model. The parameterization then calculates certain properties of the cloud, like how much sunlight the cloud reflects or how much cloud coverage there is in the cloud’s surroundings. The parameterization then reports back its findings to the main atmospheric model, which allows for continuous communication between the main atmospheric model and the parameterization to follow the cloud through its lifecycle. 

Many small-scale processes are parameterized in GCMs. Beyond clouds, air quality and turbulence are also parameterized. Turbulence is just the word for abrupt, small-scale changes in wind (think of being in a plane and suddenly experiencing a bump, or playing frisbee in a park and the frisbee changes direction or elevation as it suddenly experiences a gust of wind).

What are climate models used for?

The obvious use for climate models is to predict how the Earth’s climate may change given a “forcing” applied to Earth’s atmosphere. A forcing is typically a change in the composition of Earth’s gases in the atmosphere or a change in incoming solar radiation that leads to a radiative imbalance.  

What do I mean by this? A key feature of the Earth’s climate system is that it is always trying to maintain equilibrium—that is, the energy coming into the planet must always equal the energy leaving the planet. Why? Because the whole of the Earth’s climate system is subject to the laws of thermodynamics: energy in = energy out. But if the composition of gases in the atmosphere changes, then this can affect the energy balance.

When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, an energy imbalance is established, and the only way to reach energy equilibrium again is for the planet to warm up. This is why the Earth is warming in response to added CO2 in the atmosphere. 

In the 1960s, it started to become clear, with the help of climate models and theory, that fossil fuel use would warm the planet. The National Academy of Sciences released The Charney Report in 1979, which used climate models to predict, and warn the U.S. government, that the planet would warm due to fossil fuel emissions (though the U.S. government was warned about global warming as early as 1965). The authors estimated that the world would warm 3°C (5.4°F) given a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on their climate model simulations in the 1970s. 

But this is just one example. You could use a climate model to ask any question that would affect the climate system: “What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted?” “What if the sun disappeared for five days?” “What if all atmospheric nitrogen was removed?” You can also construct a climate model with any arrangement of continents—for example, a climate model to represent Pangea Earth or a “Waterworld” planet with no continents at all. Some scientists even built a climate model to simulate the climate of Westeros from the Game of Thrones TV show.

Today, climate models are so complex that we can study how climate may be changing on a more regional level. In my research, I’ve run climate models to study how drought in the U.S. Northeast is changing with climate change, how the Earth may start to rapidly warm in the near-future given a change in oceanic warming, and how precipitation patterns might shift in the Southwestern U.S.   

Climate models will continue to become more complex and more accurate 

GCMs are complex, made up of multiple sub-models, and have a few parameterizations. They have been improved on for decades and are the combined work of climate scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists. They’re also incredibly accurate—model simulations run in the 1990s predicted how much the Earth would warm by 2025, which matches our current observations. 

In the future, climate models will become even more complex, perhaps resolving small-scale features, like clouds, rather than parameterizing them. We need these improved climate models to better predict and reduce uncertainty of regional climate change. The more scientists can equip society and decision makers with the best available climate science, the more we can sufficiently respond, adapt, and prepare for the changes underway.

Tariffs, tax credits and deregulation are among the industry’s top priorities.

Deciding where to live has always been a high-stakes financial decision, but a changing climate makes it even more critical. This guide will get you started.

Moves to roll back 31 pollution regulations risk public health and big annual healthcare savings, Guardian analysis shows

A push by Donald Trump’s administration to repeal a barrage of clean air and water regulations may deal a severe blow to US public health, with a Guardian analysis finding that the targeted rules were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead.

Last week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provoked uproar by unveiling a list of 31 regulations it will scale back or eliminate, including rules limiting harmful air pollution from cars and power plants; restrictions on the emission of mercury, a neurotoxin; and clean water protections for rivers and streams.

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Here are some tips on how to defend your home against floodwaters, dangerous winds and wildfires.

The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.

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A report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial era.

Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

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The Orbital and Morningside authors join Abi Daré, Roz Dineen and Kaliane Bradley in the running for the £10,000 award, for inspiring ways to ‘rise to the challenges of the climate crisis with hope and inventiveness’

Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht are among the writers in the running for the inaugural Climate fiction prize.

Harvey’s Orbital, her Booker-winning novel set on the International Space Station, and Obreht’s novel The Morningside, about refugees from an unnamed country, have both been shortlisted for the new prize, which aims to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis”.

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