As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says.

The strongest of California's storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That's because the rain and snow is likely to be 22% more concentrated at its peak in places that get really doused, and to fall over a considerably larger area if fossil fuel emissions grow uncontrolled, according to a new study in Thursday's journal Nature Climate Change.

Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists held a small protest on Friday accusing the global elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos of doing little to save the planet.

Some 30 protesters gathered in freezing temperatures down the road from the WEF congress center, holding signs reading "SOS" and chanting "What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!"

A sharp spike in Greenland temperatures since 1995 showed the giant northern island 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) hotter than its 20th-century average, the warmest in more than 1,000 years, according to new ice core data.

Until now Greenland ice cores -- a glimpse into long-running temperatures before thermometers -- hadn't shown much of a clear signal of global warming on the remotest north central part of the island, at least compared to the rest of the world. But the ice cores also hadn't been updated since 1995. Newly analyzed cores, drilled in 2011, show a dramatic rise in temperature in the previous 15 years, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature.

Researchers say efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere aren't being scaled up fast enough and can't be relied on to meet crucial climate goals.

A report published Thursday by scientists in Europe and the United States found that new methods of CO2 removal currently account for only 0.1% of the 2 billion metric tons sucked from the atmosphere each year. That compares with roughly 37 billion tons of annual CO2 emissions.

Droughts, flooding and a shrinking Lake Chad caused in part by climate change is fueling conflict and migration in the region and needs to be better addressed, a report said Thursday.

Human rights group Refugees International called for the issue to be central to a high-level international conference on the Lake Chad basin next week in Niamey, Niger's capital.

As Californians tally the damage from recent storms, some are taking stock of the rainwater captured by cisterns, catches, wells and underground basins — many built in recent years to provide relief to a state locked in decades of drought.

The banked rainwater is a rare bright spot from downpours that killed at least 20 people, crumbled hillsides and damaged thousands of homes.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres skewered oil firms on Wednesday for having "peddled the big lie" about their role in global warming, telling the World Economic Forum that they should be held accountable.

A tiger which escaped from a farm and roamed the countryside outside of Johannesburg for four days, attacking a man and killing several animals, was euthanized on Wednesday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met Wednesday with her Chinese counterpart and pledged an effort to manage differences and "prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict" as the two nations try to thaw relations.

Yellen's first face-to-face meeting with Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich is the highest-ranking contact between the two countries since their presidents agreed last November to look for areas of potential cooperation.

A polar bear has attacked and killed two people in a remote village in western Alaska, according to state troopers.

Alaska State Troopers said they received the report of the attack at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Wales, on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, KTUU reported.