When Benson Wanjala started farming in his western Kenya village two and a half decades ago, his 10-acre farm could produce a bountiful harvest of 200 bags of maize. That has dwindled to 30. He says his once fertile soil has become a nearly lifeless field that no longer earns him a living.

Like many other farmers, he blames acidifying fertilizers pushed in Kenya and other African countries in recent years. He said he started using the fertilizers to boost his yield and it worked — until it didn't. Kenya's government first introduced a fertilizer subsidy in 2008, making chemical fertilizers more accessible for smaller-scale farmers.

Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country's entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year's harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

On Sunday, the Earth sizzled to the hottest day ever measured by humans, yet another heat record shattered in the past couple of years, according to the European climate service Copernicus.

Copernicus' preliminary data shows that the global average temperature Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), beating the record set just last year on July 6, 2023 by .01 degrees Celsius (.02 degrees Fahrenheit). Both Sunday's mark and last year's record obliterate the previous record of 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), which itself was only a few years old, set in 2016.

Floyd County keeps flooding and the federal government keeps coming to the rescue.

In July 2022, at least 40 people died and 300 homes were damaged when the eastern Kentucky county flooded. It was the 13th time in 12 years that the rural county was declared a federal disaster. These are disasters so costly that local governments feel they can't pay for it all, so the governor asks the president to declare a disaster freeing up federal funds.

At least a half-dozen homes lay in ruins after one of many dangerous wildfires in the West suddenly swept into a Southern California neighborhood during a blistering heat wave.

Six homes were ravaged and seven damaged when the fire sparked by fireworks erupted Sunday afternoon in a hilly area of Riverside, a city about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, authorities said at a media briefing Monday evening.

At least 157 people were killed in mudslides in a remote part of Ethiopia that has been hit with heavy rainfall, many of them as they tried to rescue survivors of an earlier mudslide, local authorities said Tuesday.

Young children and pregnant women were among the victims of the mudslides in the Kencho Shacha Gozdi district of southern Ethiopia, said Dagmawi Ayele, a local administrator.

Malayan tigers and Aldabra tortoises are native to hot and humid lands, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy a frozen treat on a hot Florida summer day.

Temperatures in South Florida this month have reached the upper 90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) with humidity reaching 70%, combining for "feels like" temperatures regularly exceeding 100 F (38 C).

A man died after being struck by lightning near the summit of Germany's highest peak, police said Monday.

The 18-year-old German resident was one of a group of three young men who took the mountain railway up the Zugspitze late Sunday afternoon and then continued to the summit, which is a climb of about 80 meters (260 feet) from a terrace used by many visitors.

Rescuers on Monday were searching for dozens missing after heavy rains caused flash flooding and a bridge collapse in different parts of China, killing at least 25 people.

Flash flooding tore through a village in southwestern Sichuan province in the middle of the night Saturday, and rescuers said 10 people died and they were searching for another 29 missing. Days of heavy rain swelled the river that runs through the village of Xinhua in Hanyuan county. The water swept away 40 houses on the riverbank, according to local media, while also breaking bridges and cutting off roads.

To harvest tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, to clip herbs, to prune and propagate succulents, people work in oppressive heat and humidity. Some wring out shirts soaked with sweat. Some contend with headaches, dizziness and nausea. Some collapse. Some hover on the brink of exhaustion, backs straining, breathing heavily.

Many do so not out in farm fields, but indoors – under the roofs of greenhouses. In structures designed to control the growing environment of plants, some workers described humidity with temperatures sometimes soaring past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 38 degrees Celsius).