Parts of California are under water, the Rocky Mountains are bracing for more snow, flood warnings are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to make room for an expected bountiful spring runoff.

All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.

The majority of developing nations are set to miss out on the economic benefits of booming green technologies, slowing progress toward their climate goals and widening the inequality gap between rich and poor countries, a United Nations report warned Thursday.

The U.N.'s agency for trade and development, or UNCTAD, said that unless the international community and national governments actively tend to green tech industries in developing countries, the benefits associated with lower-emission technologies will be near inaccessible for many poorer nations particularly in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

Fires in heat wave- and drought-stricken Argentina have devoured some 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of forests in the northern Corrientes province in just days, officials reported.

Three fires continued to threaten while two others were burning but under control, according to the emergency command center of Corrientes.

Germany cut its greenhouse gas emissions by almost 2% last year, beating previous estimates but still falling far short of the cuts needed to meet its medium-term climate goals, officials said Wednesday.

Data published by the German Environment Agency showed the country released the equivalent of 746 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022, down from 760 million tons the previous year.

Climate change worsened flooding from a tropical cyclone that shut down much of New Zealand last month in one of the country's costliest disasters, scientists said, but they couldn't quite calculate how much it magnified the catastrophe.

A flash study Tuesday by 23 scientists from around the globe found that global warming from the burning of fossil fuels added to the downpours from Cyclone Gabrielle that included at least six hours of deluges of nearly an inch per hour (20 millimeters per hour) of driving rain. But normal methods to quantify how much climate change added to the disaster weren't conclusive enough for scientists because weather records there don't go back very far, the area affected was relatively small and the region is subject to naturally high weather variability.

Coastal communities around the world are adding a tropical twist to shoreline protection, courtesy of the humble coconut.

From the sands of the Jersey Shore to the islands of Indonesia, strands of coconut husk, known as coir, are being incorporated into shoreline protection projects.

Iraq's prime minister has promised sweeping measures to tackle climate change — which has affected millions across the country — including plans to meet a third of the country's electricity demands using renewable energy.

Climate change for years has compounded the woes of the troubled country. Droughts and increased water salinity have destroyed crops, animals and farms and dried up entire bodies of water. Hospitals have faced waves of patients with respiratory illnesses caused by rampant sandstorms. Climate change has also played a role in Iraq's ongoing struggle to combat cholera.

Poland's lawmakers have approved a new law relaxing the rules for installation of onshore wind turbines, a move that was urged by the European Union, which is holding up recovery funds for the nation over a number of legislative issues.

The law approved by the lower house, the Sejm, late Thursday allows for turbines to be built no less than 700 meters (765 yards) from houses — less restrictive than the previous rule of 10 times the turbine's height that was introduced by the current government in 2016.

La Nina seemed to treat Louisiana and the rest of the Southeast United States like a punching bag. Its three-year barrage of body blows has come to an end, but left behind a lot of scars from hurricanes and tornadoes among other weather disasters.

Experts caution that attributing any single event to La Nina or its better-known cousin, El Nino, is difficult as they pronounced Thursday that the La Nina weather phenomenon has come to an end. But they can say generally that tornadoes in the Southeast and hurricanes are more frequent during La Nina.

Surrounded by miles of dried land and what remains of his famished livestock, Daniel Lepaine is a worried man. Dozens of his goats in Ngong, a town in southern Kenya, have died after three years of harrowing drought in the east and Horn of Africa. The rest are on the verge of starvation as rain continues to fail.

"If this drought persists, I will have no livelihood and nothing for my family," Lepaine mourned. "We are praying hard for the rains."