Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth's hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, European climate service Copernicus reported Friday.

And if this sounds familiar, that's because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Nino, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

Like ghosts from the past, sunken villages at the bottom of water reservoirs are not meant to be seen. But the ruins of Kallio in the mountains of central Greece are becoming very much visible — and they have a warning to deliver.

As an unprecedented drought induced by climate change rampages across much of southern Europe this summer, reserves at the artificial Lake Mornos — the biggest of the four reservoirs supplying drinking water to Greece's capital, Athens — have hit their lowest in 16 years.

A British man has been found dead while emergency services search for a woman of the same nationality after both were apparently swept away in a flash flood while hiking on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, Spanish police said Wednesday.

Spain's Civil Guard said that both people were taking a trail that leads through a small canyon to the sea when the storm hit on Tuesday.

Lightning struck Rome's Constantine Arch near the Colosseum during a violent thunderstorm, loosening fragments from the ancient structure.

The fragments from Tuesday's lightning strike were immediately gathered and secured by workers at the Colosseum Archeological Park, officials said. The extent of the damage was being evaluated.

The blood, milk and meat of cattle have long been staple foods for Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, perhaps the country's most recognizable community. But climate change is forcing the Maasai to contemplate a very different dish: fish.

A recent yearslong drought in Kenya killed millions of livestock. While Maasai elders hope the troubles are temporary and they will be able to resume traditional lives as herders, some are adjusting to a kind of food they had never learned to enjoy.

Salvagers abandoned an initial effort to tow away a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea targeted by Yemen's Houthi rebels as it "was not safe to proceed," a European Union naval mission said, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

While a major spill has yet to occur, the incident threatens to become one of the worst yet in the Iranian-backed rebels' campaign that has disrupted the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. It also has halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

Officials from nine southern European Union countries pledged Tuesday to work together to develop more water-saving technologies in agriculture as the prospect of worsening droughts puts additional strain on farmers and threatens food security.

The promises came during a gathering in Cyprus of the so called MED9 countries — France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Portugal, Malta, Spain and Slovenia — to address growing water scarcity as a result of climate change, especially in the Mediterranean region, which they say is being affected to a greater degree than other parts of the 27-member bloc.

African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP every year as they bear a heavier burden than the rest of the world from climate change, a new report said Monday after one of the continent's hottest years on record.

The World Meteorological Organization said many African nations are spending up to 9% of their budgets for climate adaptation policies.

A fierce storm was blowing out of the northern Philippines Tuesday after leaving at least 14 people dead in landslides, floods and swollen rivers, disaster-response officials said.

Tropical Storm Yagi swept past Paoay town in Ilocos Norte province into the South China Sea with sustained winds of up to 75 kilometers (47 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 125 kph (78 mph), according to the weather bureau.

Heavy monsoon rains and floods have killed at least 33 people in southern India and five children in Pakistan over the past two days, authorities said Tuesday.

In India's Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states, houses collapsed and were swept away by torrential downpours while floods disrupted road and rail traffic, officials said. The weather service issued a red alert for 11 districts, predicting more rains in the region, Telangana's top bureaucrat, Shanta Kumari, said.