A singular storm in Houston; a recurring nightmare in Mumbai

Two massive, rain-soaked cities on opposite sides of the world are struggling with swirling, brackish waters that have brought death and devastation. For Houston, it’s unprecedented. For Mumbai, it’s painfully common.

For India’s financial capital and other South Asian cities and farmlands, floods are regular, cataclysmic occurrences made worse by breakneck urban development and population booms that will only become more challenging as climate change increases disaster risk.

Scientists say massive iceberg has broken off in Antarctica

One of the biggest icebergs ever recorded, a trillion-ton behemoth more than seven times the size of New York City, has broken off of Antarctica, triggering disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is to blame.

The event, captured by satellite, happened sometime in the past few days when the giant chunk snapped off an ice shelf.

G-20 shut Trump out on climate, strike deal on trade

World powers lined up against U.S. President Donald Trump on climate change, reaffirming their support for international efforts to fight global warming.

The Group of 20 summit that ended Saturday in Hamburg also revealed tensions on trade, as the U.S. administration and international partners forged a deal that endorsed open markets but acknowledged countries had a right to put up barriers to block unfair practices.

Key points from the G20 summit of world leaders

Leaders of the Group of 20 rich and developing countries spent two days trying to come up with common positions on climate change, trade and migration at their summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Implementation depends on the will of national governments to take action, and compliance isn’t perfect. But a common statement of purpose sets the tone for policy and enables peer pressure.

Here’s a look at what the leaders did — and didn’t — agree on:

India to ratify Paris Agreement on climate change

India's prime minister said Sunday that his country will ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change early next month.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his government will ratify the agreement Oct. 2, coinciding with the birth anniversary of India's independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, who believed in a minimum carbon footprint. Modi made the announcement at a meeting of his Bharatiya Janata Party's leaders in the southern Indian town of Kozhikode.

Obama meets Indian PM, seeks implementation of climate pact

India will try to join a climate change deal within this year, the Obama administration said Tuesday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Barack Obama at the White House and the two leaders played up their efforts to cooperate on issues of global concern.

Stressing their "strong bonds," Obama said the world's two largest democracies had "joined forces" to bring about the landmark climate agreement that was reached in Paris last December.

Historic pact to slow global warming is celebrated in Paris

Nearly 200 nations adopted the first global pact to fight climate change on Saturday, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that don't.

The "Paris agreement" aims to keep global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

Timeline of key events in UN effort against climate change

After decades of warnings from scientists that greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet, governments started coming together in the 1980s to combat the problem. Here's a timeline of key moments in the diplomatic effort to stop global warming, leading up to the U.N. climate conference in Paris:

1987: MONTREAL — Governments adopt a treaty pledging to restrict emissions of chemicals damaging the ozone layer. While it doesn't deal with climate change specifically, the Montreal Protocol becomes a model for how to rein in man-made emissions through international agreements.

Commonwealth seeks legally binding climate deal in Paris

The 53-nation Commonwealth has said climate change poses an "existential threat" to some of its member states, and urged participants at the Paris climate talks to produce a legally binding agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The Commonwealth — a grouping of Britain and many of its former colonies that is home to more than 2 billion people — includes industrialized economies such as Canada and Australia, resource-hungry India and small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Energy-rich Russia pays little attention to climate change

When forest fires roared through Siberia this summer, so vast that the smoke blocked vast Lake Baikal from satellite view, Russian officials blamed the blazes on arsonists and disorganized fire crews. Environmentalists say there was another culprit: global warming.

As temperatures rise worldwide, areas such as Siberia are suffering increasingly long dry spells. Russia's national weather agency says the country is the fastest-warming part of the world.

UN weather agency: It's record hot out there this year

Because of man-made global warming and a strong El Nino, Earth's wild weather this year is bursting the annual heat record, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Wednesday.

The United Nations weather agency's early bird report on 2015 says it is the hottest year on record, surpassing last year's record heat. It made the proclamation without waiting for the end of the year because it has been so extraordinarily hot, forecast to stay that way and unlikely to cool down enough to not set a record.

World Bank: Climate change could result in 100 million poor

Climate change could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 by disrupting agriculture and fueling the spread of malaria and other diseases, the World Bank said in a report Sunday.

Released just weeks ahead of a U.N. climate summit in Paris, the report highlighted how the impact of global warming is borne unevenly, with the world's poor woefully unprepared to deal with climate shocks such as rising seas or severe droughts.