California's water use jumped dramatically in March, state officials have said, as one of the driest stretches on record prompted a wave of homeowners to start watering their lawns earlier than usual in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsom's pleas for conservation amid a severe drought.

Newsom last summer asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15% compared to 2020 as climate change intensified a drought that threatened to drain the state's reservoirs to dangerously low levels. Water conservation increased gradually through December, aided by some intense fall and early winter storms that reduced water demand.

More than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed this year was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world's largest coral reef ecosystem, Australian government scientists said.

Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef's first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report released late Tuesday that found 91% of the areas surveyed were affected.

The frequency and duration of droughts will continue to increase due to human-caused climate change, with water scarcity already affecting billions of people across the world, the United Nations warned in a report Wednesday.

The U.N. desertification agency, which is currently hosting a conference of parties in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, estimates that roughly one third of the world's population — 2.3 billion people — is already facing water scarcity, with that number expected to double by 2050.

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged authorities on Tuesday to take stronger action to prevent wildfires and increase coordination between various official agencies in dealing with them.

Speaking in a video call with federal and regional officials, Putin emphasized that wildfires that hit Russia last year were the biggest in years and asked local governors to report on measures that were taken to increase fire safety across the country.

Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organizations, together with some companies, are urging the United States to come through with promised funding for forest protection and deal directly with people who live in the forest, have protected it and, they say, "are directly affected by the escalating deforestation."

More than 330 organizations and companies signed a letter released late Monday ahead of a hearing scheduled for Thursday in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss a bill introduced in November by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The bill, known as Amazon21, would create a $9 billion fund administered by the U.S. State Department to finance forest conservation and natural carbon absorption in developing countries.

Schoolchildren in a northern New Mexico community that had been threatened by a wildfire were expected to resume in-person classes Tuesday while residents on the fire's northern edges remained under evacuation orders.

The West Las Vegas School District said exceptions would be made for students still displaced by what's the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. or those whose health has been affected by the smoke.

The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted.

With human-made climate change continuing, there's a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 1800s at least once between now and 2026, a bright red signal in climate change negotiations and science, a team of 11 different forecast centers predicted for the World Meteorological Organization late Monday.

Deforestation detected in the Brazilian Amazon broke all records for the month of April, and that followed similar new records set in January and February, reflecting a worrisome uptick in destruction in a state deep within the rainforest.

Satellite alerts of deforestation for April corresponded to more than 1,000 square kilometers (nearly 400 square miles), the highest figure for that month in seven years of record-keeping and 74% more than the same month in 2021, which was the prior record.

In the course of a single year, University of Maine climate scientist Jacquelyn Gill lost both her mother and her stepfather. She struggled with infertility, then during research in the Arctic, she developed embolisms in both lungs, was transferred to an intensive care unit in Siberia and nearly died. She was airlifted back home and later had a hysterectomy. Then the pandemic hit.

Her trials and her perseverance, she said, seemed to make her a magnet for emails and direct messages on Twitter "asking me how to be hopeful, asking me, like, what keeps me going?"

Dangerous, gusty winds were expected to continue Monday across northeast New Mexico, complicating the fight against wildfires that threaten thousands of homes in mountainous rural communities.

The region's largest city — Las Vegas, New Mexico, home to 13,000 people — was largely safe from danger after firefighters mostly stopped a blaze there from moving east. But the northern and southern flanks of the wildfire proved trickier to contain as wind gusts topped 50 mph (80 kph).