US president Barack Obama has asked Congress to double funding for clean energy research — a request that will be formally made in his final budget on Tuesday. This would see research spending increase from $6.4bn to $12.8bn by 2020. It is the third time that Obama has indicated he will use the budget to push his climate agenda, reports the Guardian — but unlike his proposed $10-per-barrel oil tax, Obama said that he hopes will Republicans in Congress will at least consider his latest proposal. The Hill also has the story.

This year’s El Niño is the strongest on record, according to a new study by Jan Null, a meteorologist at Golden Gate Weather Services in California. His analysis backs earlier analysis by US federal agency NOAA that the event would break records previously set in 1997, when they revealed that water temperature in the central Pacific had reached 3.1C above average, compared to 2.8C above average in 1997. Null finds that the past three months have scored 2.31 on the oceanic Niño index, compared to 2.26 in 1997. The Daily Mail also covers the story, while the Guardian has a story about an “unprecedented survey” by NOAA and NASA to examine the El Niño.

Britain will still need power from coal after 2025 — the year by which the government has pledged to shut down all coal-fired power plants — unless there are more efforts to encourage other forms of fuels. This is the view of Andy Koss, chief executive of the Drax power station in North Yorkshire, which is half powered by coal and half by biomass. Climate and energy secretary Amber Rudd has said that the 2025 goal would only be met if there is enough alternative forms of power to ensure the security of electricity supply.

Croatia is unlikely to go ahead with a new coal-fired plant in the northern Adriatic, according to the country’s environment minister, Slaven Dobrovic. “We need a new energy strategy in line with the European Union plans on boosting renewable energy and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Such plants don’t fit in,” he said. Croatia has got a new centre-right government since the decision was taken to build the plant by its former centre-left government. Dobrovic said that obligations towards the Japanese company with which they were in partnership on pulling out “cannot be compared to the potential damage, economic and environmental, from such a plant”.

A new study in the journal Scientific Reports has compared country emissions to vulnerability to climate change, and found that it is those who contribute the least who suffer the most. The analysis involved the comparison of two datasets: one of present day emissions from the World Resource Institute, and another called the Climate Vulnerability Monitor by humanitarian group DARA. TIME also covers the story.

At a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Montreal this week, the US and Europe will try to bridge differences to establish new rules for carbon dioxide emissions from aircrafts – the first such demands on the aviation industry. The regulations could impact Boeing and Airbus’s production of the largest jetliners and freighters, and could force upgrades and the halting of the production of certain models as early as 2023, according to Reuters’ sources.

Total has opened up a huge new gas plant that will service the vast West of Shetland area, which contains almost one fifth of the UK’s remaining oil and gas reserves, reports the BBC. The project is part of a £3.5bn investment by the French oil company, and is the biggest construction project in the UK since the London Olympics. A pipeline will take the gas from Shetland back to the UK mainland and into the national gas grid, and is expected to provide around 8% of the UK’s gas needs.

Shell has topped the list of companies that receive the most criticism from NGOs for the fourth year running, with its drilling programme largely to blame. Five of the ten most criticised firms were energy companies, which demonstrates the conflict between NGOs and companies whose models depend on the extraction of fossil fuels. While other companies have been praised for cleaning up their act, companies like Shell are considered “beyond the pale” for NGO engagement.

Two biologists recount their research trip to the Arctic last May, in what was the hottest year on record, and where they experienced the impacts of climate change on the Arctic first hand. They reflect on the implications of climate change, including how to decide what animals to save, and the difficulties of making decisions when many of the impacts are unexpected. “We can no longer be satisfied to watch and document these changes,” they write. “We must predict and prevent them.”

National inventory estimates indicate no significant trend in US methane emissions from 2002 to present, yet a new study suggests they have increased by more than 30%. Researchers used satellite data and land-based measurements to estimate emissions between 2002 and 2014. The increasing trend is largest in the central US, but the researchers were unable to attribute it to any specific source type. The rise in US methane emissions could account for 30–60% of the global growth of atmospheric methane seen in the past decade, the paper says.