Winter 2016–17 temperatures in the Arctic are abnormally warm—as much as 35°F above normal on several occasions.

A crack in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf grows to 110 miles long. It will eventually shear off an iceberg the size of Delaware.  

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts a worst-case increase in global sea level of eight feet by the end of the century. 

Two weeks of torrential rains in January raise California's Lake Tahoe by a foot and a half. The Pioneer Cabin Tree, a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park that had been hollowed out to allow the passage of vehicles, topples in a storm. 

January 26 is the first day since March 2011 on which no part of the United States is in "exceptional drought."

Solar jobs in the United States increased by 25 percent in 2016, wind jobs by 32 percent.

Giraffes are now vulnerable to extinction, says the International Union for Conservation of Nature, due to habitat loss and illegal hunting. Their numbers have declined by up to 40 percent in the last 30 years.

Two Chinese companies want to build solar farms in Ukraine on land contaminated by the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In China, solar photovoltaic capacity doubled in 2016. 

The giant British chemical company Ineos plans to conduct seismic surveys under England's Sherwood Forest, a few hundred yards from the 800-year-old Major Oak, where Robin Hood and his men are said to have taken shelter. 

Irish lawmakers vote to divest their country's sovereign wealth fund from fossil fuels. 

All electric trains in the Netherlands are now powered by wind.

Isidro Baldenegro López, an anti-deforestation activist and a leader of the indigenous Tarahumara people in Mexico's Sierra Madre, is assassinated.

Solar photovoltaic panels were the largest source of new U.S. electric capacity in 2016. 

In southeastern Australia, thousands of dead bats rain from trees after temperatures hit 107°F and above. 

Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump's secretary of education, says that guns may be needed in schools to protect students from grizzly bears.

 This article appeared in the May/June 2017 edition with the headline "Up to Speed: Two Months, One Page."