A scorching summer that dried up rivers and killed tens of thousands across the European Union from Portugal to Hungary has shown that the bloc needs to develop new tools to meet a worsening climate, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday.

She said that this instability led her to propose a new European Heatwave Plan as well as a future European firefighting fleet of airplanes. Currently, the EU operates a small fleet itself but coordinates a network of aircraft, water trucks and volunteers that move across the 27-nation bloc as fires ignite.

About 12.5 trillion tons (11.3 trillion metric tons) of ice from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have melted since 1979, which is enough frozen water to stack ice 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep across the continental United States, according to a major scientific report.

A warming Earth is accelerating the melting of the planet's two major ice sheets, with five-sixths of the melt not coming from hotter air, but from warmer waters eating away at the ice sheets from below and the sides, with glaciers flowing into the oceans, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Scientific Data. That's bad news for future sea level rise, the study's authors said.

As Paris emerges from months of oppressive heat, cooler autumn temperatures are welcomed back like a long-lost friend. But images of France's hottest summer remain etched in memories — and in the artwork of illustrator Marina Antonova.

Paris is admired worldwide for aesthetic beauty, but the city kept hitting the news for another reason in recent months as record-breaking highs climbed beyond 40 C (104 F) on the roasting streets.

The farmers who paid David Nabutsilili money to summon rain were angry when they received so much of it that their vegetable gardens were left flooded. They chased him up and down the hills, stopping when he fell upon a rock and broke a femur. That was his punishment.

Sixteen years later, the rainmaker still feels pain in his leg. Many of those who pursued him regularly seek his spiritual help when they need rain, especially during the planting season, but also when they seek to block it. If he fails to meet their expectations, he must temporarily flee his home for his own safety, Nabutsilili told The Associated Press during an interview in his village in eastern Uganda.

Thick smoke from forest fires has disrupted airline flights for several days in Indonesia's West Kalimantan province as an intensifying El Niño weather pattern and a prolonged dry season worsen the impact of blazes.

Since Friday, a thick white and yellowish haze has blanketed the city of Pontianak, reducing visibility to less than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles).

The Atlantic is quiet — record quiet — this hurricane season thanks to an enormous El Nino that crushes storms before they get going.

No Atlantic hurricanes have formed yet this year and none are likely to form for at least another week, even though this would normally be the peak of the season, according to the National Hurricane Center. Only five relatively weak and brief tropical storms have spun up this season.

European leaders were meeting Monday to discuss growing competition in the Arctic, where global warming is opening new shipping routes, governments are vying for vast natural resources and a Russian military buildup is heightening security concerns.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen were among leaders expected for the European Arctic Summit in Rovaniemi, Finland, a city perhaps best known for its Santa Claus village.

On a beach of a small Greek island in the Ionian Sea,  tourists frolick in the azure waters like most visitors do in the popular Mediterranean country at this time of year.

A Japanese military transport ship docked on the island of Borneo on Thursday as part of a disaster relief mission to help fight wildfires in Indonesia that are causing a toxic haze impacting people's health in other countries.

Japan deployed 300 crew members, landing ship JS Kunisaki and three CH-47 helicopters, which arrived in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.

The EU climate monitor said Thursday that August was the hottest single month ever recorded globally and that summer in western Europe was the warmest it had measured.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service said global average air temperatures in August were 16.96C -- surpassing by 0.01C the previous high set in July 2023 -- and that western Europe endured its "warmest summer on record".