For the ninth straight month, Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole and the world's oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus.

The latest record-breaking in this climate change-fueled global hot streak includes sea surface temperatures that weren't just the hottest for February, but eclipsed any month on record, soaring past August 2023's mark and still rising at the end of the month. And February, as well the previous two winter months, soared well past the internationally set threshold for long-term warming, Copernicus reported Wednesday.

For years, Fatima Mhattar has welcomed shopkeepers, students, bankers and retirees to Hammam El Majd, a public bath on the outskirts of Morocco's capital, Rabat. For a handful of change, they relax in a haze of steam then are scrubbed down and rinsed off alongside their friends and neighbors.

The public baths — hammams in Arabic — for centuries have been fixtures of Moroccan life. Inside their domed chambers, men and women, regardless of social class, commune together and unwind. Bathers sit on stone slabs under mosaic tiles, lather with traditional black soap and wash with scalding water from plastic buckets.

Women who run farms and rural households in poor countries suffer more from climate change and are discriminated against as they try to adapt to other sources of income in times of crises, the United Nations warned Tuesday.

A new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, "The Unjust Climate," found that female-headed rural households lose on average 8% more of their income during heat waves and 3% more during floods, compared to male-headed households.

Abraham "Snake" Ah Hee rides waves when the surf's up and dives for octopus and shells when the water is calm. The lifelong Lahaina, Hawaii, resident spends so much time in the ocean that his wife jokes he needs to wet his gills.

But these days Ah Hee is worried the water fronting his Maui hometown may not be safe after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century scorched more than 2,000 buildings in August and left behind piles of toxic debris. He is concerned runoff could carry contaminants into the ocean where they could get into the coral, seaweed and food chain.

A major highway was closed and ski resorts were shut down Sunday as the effects of a powerful blizzard continued to cause problems across the Sierra Nevada, and forecasters warned that more heavy snow was on the way for Northern California.

Sections of Interstate 80 to the west and north of Lake Tahoe were made impassable by blowing snow piling up in lanes, with no estimate for reopening, the California Highway Patrol said.

Strong winds spread flames and prompted at least one evacuation while airplanes dropped fire retardant over the northern Texas Panhandle as firefighters worked to stop the largest wildfire in state history.

As of Sunday afternoon, the Smokehouse Creek fire was 15% contained and two other fires were 60% contained. Authorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.

A fertilizer-laden cargo ship, which sank in the Gulf of Aden after it was damaged by missiles from Yemen's Houthi rebels, poses an environmental risk, the U.S. military warned.

The Houthis claimed the February 18 attack against the Rubymar, a cargo ship flying a Belizean flag and operated by a Lebanese firm, which transported combustible fertilizers.

Off the charts "crazy" heat in the North Atlantic ocean and record-smashing Antarctic sea ice lows last year are far more severe than what Earth's supposed to get with current warming levels. They are more like what happens at twice this amount of warming, a new study said.

The study's main author worries that it's a "harbinger of what's coming in the next decades" and it's got him not just concerned, but wondering why those two climate indicators were so beyond what was expected.

Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to potentially cool an overheating Earth: Fiddle with the upper atmosphere to make it a bit drier.

Water vapor — water in its gas form — is a natural greenhouse gas that traps heat, just like carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and gas. So researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA figure if they can just inject ice high up in the air, water vapor in the upper atmosphere would get a bit drier and that could counteract a small amount of the human-caused warmth.

The central African nation of Congo is offering 30 oil and gas blocks around the country for auction. It's a prospect that concerns environmentalists and some of the people who live near the drilling that has so far been limited to a small area near its far western border on the Atlantic Ocean.

The Associated Press visited Moanda territory, including two villages near drilling sites, and heard from residents who said air and ground pollution has hurt their crops and caused health problems. They say Perenco, the French-British company that began drilling in 2000, has failed to address those problems, and advocacy groups say they want to see changes before drilling expands.