Know better. Do better.

The heat is on – even more so, with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declaring today that El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years.

El Niño is a climate pattern that occurs naturally when the surface of the Pacific Ocean warms – but, as the WMO warns, it takes place in the context of climate change and sets the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and more extreme heat in many parts of the world this year.

It can also bring disruptive impacts such as severe drought in Australia and Indonesia, or increased rainfall in the southern U.S. and the Horn of Africa.

Those things on their own don't necessarily spell disaster, however – it’s the responses that matter. El Niño turbocharges the growing risks of flash floods and wildfires, for example.

Many countries are now working to protect themselves better from fires, as we reported this past week from Nepal, France and Britain - which just experienced its hottest June on record.

After hundreds of fires broke out on a single day in London a year ago following record temperatures of 40C, the Forestry Commission wants to implement best practices from places like Australia and the U.S. to make Britain's urban areas more wildfire-resistant, Jack Graham reports.

And in France, whose southwest coast saw blazes gobble up pine forests and campsites last summer, our correspondent Jo Gill covers the debate over how to balance commercial needs while replanting in a way that helps make forests less vulnerable to fires by introducing more biodiversity.

Women of the seaweed

Seaweed is another part of the natural world at risk from rising temperatures, which could curb its ability to provide vital income to coastal communities and store planet-heating carbon dioxide. As a versatile crop threatened by ocean warming and volatile weather, it’s not immune to the very problems it might help solve.

For over 30 years, families on the island of Palawan in the Philippines have championed seaweed. But nowadays, they sometimes find storms have ripped their harvest from its ropes – or heat has made it decay from disease. Watch our video – and read our story on the Cherish Fisherfolk Cooperative of mainly women seaweed farmers, named after the 1984 song by American band Kool & the Gang.

Seaweed is also proving a hit in Namibia, where giant kelp forests are being used to make crop biostimulants that can help cope with drought and could one day generate ‘blue’ carbon credits. The business run by a Dutch startup – co-founded by a former Shell engineer – is also providing green jobs in the former diamond-mining town of Lüderitz.

Meanwhile, as the world of climate diplomacy winds down for the summer, it's a good time to start thinking about some of the blockages to climate action I and others discussed at a London Climate Action Week event on those "Hidden Handbrakes" last Friday, organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (recording available online).

Here's one major problem: the lack of fundable clean energy projects in developing countries that could absorb the finance governments are asking for.

And here are two potential solutions: providing technical expertise and risk mitigation to make projects more attractive to private-sector investors; and a proposed global platform harnessing AI and machine-learning that could identify renewables projects worth $2 trillion within two years, according to its backers.

We'd love to hear of other big ideas you might be working on!

Megan