Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered officials Tuesday to send in reinforcements to fight forest fires that continue to tear through Siberia. 

Wildfires have ripped through Siberia's forests with growing intensity in recent years, which Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and underfunded forestry management services. 

China insisted Tuesday it was implementing its climate commitments, while signaling no new policies following a U.N. report warning much more urgent action was needed to fight global warming.

Many world leaders responded to Monday's report, which said climate change was occurring faster than estimated, by calling for decisive and immediate moves to curtail fossil fuels.

Dozens of small island states most vulnerable to the effects of climate change have called on the world to save "our very future" after a landmark U.N. report said accelerating global warming and rising sea levels threaten their existence.

The call to action comes after the climate report warned that catastrophic global warming is occurring far more quickly than previously forecast, an assessment met with horror and hopefulness by world leaders and green groups.

We ignored the warnings, and now it's too late: global heating has arrived with a vengeance and will see Earth's average temperature reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago, according to a landmark U.N. assessment published on Monday. 

Firefighters tried Monday to prevent fires from reaching key communities and a thick forest that could fuel an inferno that one official said has destroyed hundreds of homes in seven days on the Greek island of Evia.

Hundreds of Greek firefighters fought desperately Sunday to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest, destroyed homes and forced tourists and locals to flee.

Thousands of homes have been damaged in Sudan after torrential rains caused heavy flooding, with many streets in the capital Khartoum deep in water, AFP correspondents said Sunday.

Eva Gorman says the little California mountain town of Greenville was a place of community and strong character, the kind of place where neighbors volunteered to move furniture, colorful baskets of flowers brightened Main Street, and writers, musicians, mechanics and chicken farmers mingled.

Now, it's ashes.

France's wine output this year will go on record as one of the worst in history, if not the worst, after severe spring frosts devastated vines, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.

France, the world's second-largest wine producer after Italy, is likely to see its production drop between 24 and 30 percent in 2021, taking it to a "historically low" level, the ministry said.

Hundreds of firefighters battled a blaze on the outskirts of Athens on Friday as dozens of fires raged in Greece in what the prime minister dubbed a "critical situation," while neighboring Turkey came under increasing pressure over its handling of wildfires.

Greece and Turkey have been fighting blaze upon blaze over the past week, hit by the worst heatwave in decades, a disaster that officials and experts have linked to increasingly frequent and intense weather events caused by climate change.