Europe is facing growing climate risks and is unprepared for them, the European Environment Agency said in its first-ever risk assessment for the bloc Monday.

The agency said Europe is prone to more frequent and more punishing weather extremes — including increasing wildfires, drought, more unusual rainfall patterns and flooding — and it needs to immediately address them in order to protect its energy, food security, water and health.

Two backcountry skiers have died in a mountain avalanche on Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido, according to news reports.

The dead in Monday's avalanche on the 1,898 meter (6,227 feet) Mount Yotei were from New Zealand, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Across much of America and especially in the normally chilly north, the country went through the winter months without, well, winter.

In parka strongholds Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Maine, the thermometer never plunged below zero. The state of Minnesota called the last three months "the lost winter," warmer than its infamous "year without a winter" in 1877-1878. Michigan, where mosquitos were biting in February, offered disaster loans to businesses hit by a lack of snow. The Great Lakes set records for low winter ice, with Erie and Ontario "essentially ice-free."

A group of climate activists on Monday blocked the entrance to the Swedish parliament, advocating for sweeping reforms to tackle climate disasters.

Some 40 activists including Greta Thunberg held signs reading "Climate Justice Now" as they sat in front of at least two entrances to the 349-seat Riksdagen, including the main doorway. Swedish media said lawmakers used other entries into the assembly.

A religious procession in downtown Barcelona celebrated the appearance of long-awaited rain, after nine days of praying for relief from a severe drought.

Around 100 local people took part in the Catholic ceremony on a rainy Saturday evening.

Rescuers recovered more bodies as waters began to recede after flash floods and landslides caused by torrential rains on Indonesia's Sumatra island, which have killed at least 26 people and left 11 missing, officials said Monday.

Monsoon rains and rising rivers have submerged nine districts and cities in West Sumatra province since Thursday. Late Friday, a major mudslide caused a river to breach its banks and tear through mountainside villages in Pesisir Selatan district.

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.