Flood victims confronted damage from a record deluge in eastern Australia on Friday, returning to find their homes caked in silt, cars half submerged and streets littered with debris.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Thursday predicted a more intense Atlantic hurricane season this year -- even as the Trump administration moves to gut the agency's workforce and slash its budget.

Record floods stranded more than 50,000 people in eastern Australia on Thursday, killing three as a muddy tide swept through towns and swollen rivers cut off roads.

Swathes of northern and central China sweltered this week under record May heat, state media said Tuesday, with temperatures rising well above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in several major cities.

UK farmers are praying for rain as Britain suffers its driest spring in well over a century, which has left the soil parched and crops stunted from lack of water.

Global temperatures were stuck at near-record highs in April, the EU's climate monitor said on Thursday, extending an unprecedented heat streak and raising questions about how quickly the world might be warming.

The world's wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said on Wednesday.

Colonial powers once sought to wipe out cloves grown by locals on the eastern Indonesian island of Ternate to safeguard their monopoly over the prized crop. Today farmers say the gravest threat to their plants is climate change.

After decades spent pruning thorny bushes and working arduous harvests, Khalaf Allah al-Talhi has perfected the art of capturing the fragrant aroma of the desert rose in a bottle.