The month of August tied with July as the hottest month since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NASA data released on Monday. An increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a strong El Niño contributed to temperature increases in 2016. The New York Times looks at how the new records being set continue to stack up, including how every month since October 2015 has set a new monthly high-temperature record. NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt cautioned against putting too much significance on monthly rankings, however, emphasising that the long-term warming trend is more telling. With this year on track to be the third consecutive hottest year on record, separate piece looks at how the oceans are taking up most of the excess heat. Climate Central has more on the August record.

Brazil ratified the Paris climate agreement Monday, making it the third-largest emitter to do so, after the U.S. and China. Still Latin America’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Brazil has cut its emissions significantly in the last decade by reducing deforestation in the Amazon and ramping up the use of energy from hydropower, wind, solar and biomass. During a signing ceremony in Brasilia, President Michel Temer said Brazil’s ratification would be presented formally to the U.N. later this month. The Washington Post has more on why Brazil’s ratification is significant.

The world’s first large scale tidal energy plant has been officially launched in the Pentland Firth outside Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. The turbine, measuring 15 metres tall with blades 16 metres in diameter, is the first of four to be installed, each with a capacity of 1.5 megawatts. Hailed as a significant moment for the renewable energy sector, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, called on the UK government to end the uncertainty around subsidies for similar schemes, reports The Guardian. According to a report released today by the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s advisers on climate and energy, Scotland is outpacing the rest of the UK in terms of reducing emissions. Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.6% in 2014, to almost 40% below 1990 levels, reports Climate Home.

The former UN climate chief and architect of the 2015 Paris climate deal has pulled out of the race to succeed Ban Ki-moon as the UN’s secretary general. Figueres hoped her success in Paris would convince governments to lend her support but a series of straw polls among the UN Security Council showed her receiving the backing of just two countries. With an appointment due by December, Carbon Brief has a summary of where the nine remaining candidates stand on climate change.

Swedish energy company Vattenfall won a tender yesterday to build two offshore wind farms for Denmark, but the plug could still be pulled on the project if the government decides the cost of renewable energy subsidies is too high. The winning bid was to produce power from two wind farms off the west coast of Denmark for $0.0716 per kilowatt-hour but with wholesale power prices well below that, the shortfall would come out of the taxpayer purse. The project has the support of a majority in parliament but is opposed by the minority government. Energy Minister, Lars Lilleholt, said on Monday, “By not erecting the mills, we can cut the large bill from the green transition.”

A new plan unveiled by the mayor of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, aims for the city to become carbon neutral by 2040 by imposing strict limits on urban sprawl and improving the efficiency of public transport. Similar to Oslo and Helsinki, Reykjavik’s own climate ambitions surpass the national targets agreed by global leaders at the COP21 summit held in Paris last November, putting these Nordic cities at the forefront of global efforts to tackle climate change, says Reuters. In a foreword to the report, Mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson said: “Cities play a key role in the fight against climate change. They can react quickly … and are more often than naught far more progressive than the world’s governments.”

BusinessGreen takes a look at a new survey by Friends of the Earth of 60 UK research and academic institutions and how they are meeting the challenge of a 1.5C world: “Climate change – like Brexit, unaffordable housing and prog rock – sits on a long list of issues younger generations feel they have been lumped with by their parents and grandparents.” The main findings are that UK universities are outpacing other sectors on climate action but that many universities could still be doing much more.

While the BBC no longer gives climate denial and science equal air time, it continues to struggle with creeping false balance, says Supran, a PhD candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. The “ongoing work” to fix the false balance problem for which the BBC has repeatedly come under fire feels more like a “triumph of the middling” than a reform, he says: “As a scientist and a citizen, I still feel let down by its continually careless handling of climate denial – most recently two weeks ago. This nod to mediocrity is a disservice to science, to public trust, and to the biggest news story in the world. And it is a huge, missed opportunity.”

A new type of battery that supporters say could revolutionise the global renewables sector is about to be installed on the Isle of Gigha in Scotland, already the site of Scotland’s first community-owned grid-connected wind farm. The size of a shipping container, this is not just any old battery, says Dickie. He talks to the developers of the technology, who say the trial will demonstrate that “vanadium redox flow battery” technology is now commercially viable.

A global temperature rise of 1C could see worldwide wheat yields fall by 4.1-6.4%, a new study says. Researchers used three different approaches to assess the impact of climate change on wheat, and found they came to similar conclusions. The research doesn’t include the effect of CO2 fertilisation or adaptation in its methods. The three approaches are consistent in projecting that warmer regions are likely to suffer greater yield loss than cooler regions. The study “significantly improves confidence in estimates of climate impacts on global food security,” the researchers conclude.

A new study reports on a survey of 163 of the world’s foremost wind experts on the future costs of onshore and offshore wind. The experts anticipate a median reduction of 24–30% by 2030 and 35–41% by 2050. Future costs could be even lower though, with experts also predicting a 10% chance that reductions will be more than 40% by 2030 and more than 50% by 2050.