Record typhoons, biblical floods, heatwaves, landslides and earthquakes: this summer, Japan really has seen it all and images of the destruction caused have been beamed around the world.

The Czech capital Prague has experienced its hottest summer since records started in 1775, the weather institute said on Thursday.  

Norway has completed the frame of the world's tallest timber building, which is being lauded for being environmentally friendly and fire resistant.

The strongest typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years made landfall Tuesday, the country's weather agency said, bringing violent winds and heavy rainfall that prompted evacuation warnings.

A Canadian court on Thursday quashed the government's approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline to the Pacific, siding with indigenous people worried about increased tanker traffic harming whales along the coast.

French President Emmanuel Macron once promised to "make our planet great again", but the shock resignation of his popular environment minister has put his mixed record on green issues under the spotlight.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air threaten to sap wheat, rice, and other staple grains of valuable nutrients, raising the specter of mass malnutrition, researchers have warned.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making clear that she opposes setting new, more ambitious European emissions reduction targets for 2030. She says the continent needs to concentrate on fulfilling the aims it has already set.

The European Union wants to achieve a 40 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. Last week, EU climate chief Miguel Arias Canete told Germany's dpa news agency that he plans to propose increasing that to 45 percent.

With a gaping hole in the ground and tangled corn stalks strewn across Yves Rolland's field, it looks as if it has been hit by a tornado. He already knows who the culprits are.

Torrential rain pounded Hawaii on Friday as Hurricane Lane, now downgraded to a tropical storm, crawled toward the island state, triggering landslides and "catastrophic" flooding, and forcing thousands to seek emergency shelter.