The first heat wave of the season has arrived earlier than usual across much of the U.S. Southwest, with dangerously hot conditions that produced triple-digit temperatures on Tuesday.

Forecasters say temperatures are likely to top 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) in some areas by Thursday.

The rate Earth is warming hit an all-time high in 2023 with 92% of last year's surprising record-shattering heat caused by humans, top scientists calculated.

The group of 57 scientists from around the world used United Nations-approved methods to examine what's behind last year's deadly burst of heat. They said even with a faster warming rate they don't see evidence of significant acceleration in human-caused climate change beyond increased fossil fuel burning.

In a lush jungle at the foothills of a volcano in Indonesia's Aceh province, the song of gibbons in the trees mixes with the laughter of the seven forest rangers trekking below them. An hour into their patrol, the rangers spot another mammal in the forest with them.

"Where are you going? What are you doing?" they pleasantly ask a man walking past, farming tools in hand. "Remember to not cut down trees wherever you go, OK?"

Brazil has hundreds of millions of cows, but one in particular is extraordinary. Her massive, snow-white body is watched over by security cameras, a veterinarian and an armed guard.

Worth $4 million, Viatina-19 FIV Mara Movéis is the most expensive cow ever sold at auction, according to Guinness World Records. That's three times more than the last recordholder's price. And — at 1,100 kilograms (more than 2,400 pounds) — she's twice as heavy as an average adult of her breed.

A woman's body has been recovered from a car that sank into floodwater in Bavaria, police said Tuesday, bringing the confirmed death toll in flooding across southern Germany to five.

Persistent heavy rain led to widespread flooding over the weekend. While the situation has now eased in southwestern Germany, water levels remained high in parts of Bavaria, particularly on the Danube and in the Rosenheim area in the southeast. Some major railway lines, including several leading to Munich, were still blocked or disrupted.

The death toll in floods across a large part of southern Germany rose to two on Monday as the body of a missing woman was found. Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the flooded region and officials warned that water levels could rise further in some areas.

The body of the 43-year-old, whom rescuers had been looking for since Sunday morning, was found in a basement in the Bavarian town of Schrobenhausen, police told German news agency dpa. A firefighter was found dead in nearby Pfaffenhofen on Sunday after an inflatable boat he and colleagues were using capsized.

California firefighters made significant progress Sunday to tame a wind-driven wildfire that scorched thousands of acres 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of San Francisco, burned down a home and forced residents to flee the area near the central California city of Tracy.

The fire erupted Saturday afternoon in the grassy hills managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country's key centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under investigation.

Sri Lanka closed schools on Monday as heavy rain triggered floods and mudslides in many parts of the island nation, leaving at least 10 people dead and six others missing, officials said.

The education ministry announced that the reopening of schools would depend on how the weather develops.

As climate change makes disasters such as cyclones, floods and droughts more intense, more frequent and striking more places, fewer people are dying from those catastrophes globally because of better warning, planning and resilience, a top United Nations official said.

The world hasn't really noticed how the type of storms that once killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people now only claim handfuls of lives, new United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Kamal Kishore, who heads the UN's office for disaster risk reduction told The Associated Press. But he said much more needs to be done to keep these disasters from pushing people into abject poverty.

Pakistan's mangoes are normally a source of national pride and much-needed income, but farmers are blaming climate change for the parasites and extreme weather ruining much of this season's crop.