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President Donald J. Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the accord forged by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, with its 195 signatory countries pledging to cut carbon emissions in a effort to limit global warming to no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. Trump says that he plans to halt payments into the Green Climate Fund, and re-negotiate the United States’ place in the agreement, claiming that the deal, as it stands, was specifically made to disadvantage the American economy.
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A new study has been published that has found that the rate of sea level rise is much worse than previously thought, having tripled in pace since 1990. Before 1990, the oceans were rising at an average rate of 11 millimeters (0.43 inches) per decade, but between 1993 and 2012, that rate increased to 31 millimeters (1.22 inches) per decade.

"We have a much stronger acceleration in sea level rise than formerly thought," explains study lead Sönke Dangendorf, with Germany’s University of Siegen. "The sea level rise is now three times as fast as before 1990."
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The Officials in charge of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault have reported that water from melting permafrost and heavy rain, brought about by record-high temperatures in the Arctic over the past winter, has leaked into the entrance tunnel leading to the underground stronghold. The water subsequently froze on the floor of the tunnel, prompting the vault’s caretakers to chip the ice away from the tunnel floor.
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The World Meteorological Organization is forecasting a possible return of the El Niño phenomenon to the Pacific Ocean later this year, hot on the heels of the 2015-2016 back-to-back El Niño events, with only a short-lived, milquetoast La Niña cooling period having occurred in between.

The WMO, drawing on recent observations, climate models and historical trends, predicts that there is a 50-60 percent chance of a reoccurrence of El Niño before 2017 ends. Regional El Niño-associated warming in the Eastern Pacific has already caused heavy rains in Peru and Ecuador, leading to extensive flooding. The sea surface temperatures in the far eastern tropical Pacific have been 2ºC above normal during February and March.
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