Saudi Arabia remains defiant against the floundering oil price, vowing to keep production at record levels and insisting the Kingdom won’t cut its output until Russia and other oil producing nations accept their faire share of the burden. Boss of Saudi oil producer Aramco, Khalid Al-Falih, also dismissed the role of renewable energy in cutting emissions and the deal reached in Paris, telling the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday, “I don’t think renewables or pressures from climate change are going to significantly reduce the long-term demand for oil. If electric vehicles take over, where does the electricity come from?” The Financial Times reports Al-Falih’s comments describing the collapse of oil prices to below $30 as “irrational,” saying he expected the market to recover in 2016 despite high production. A separate article in the Financial Times takes a closer look at the return of Iranian oil to the global market.

In what’s being labelled a big victory for the Obama administration, a federal court has rejected the attempt by 27 states to block the Clean Power Plan, which aims to lower carbon emissions from power plants by 2030 to 32 percent below 2005 level. A judge ruled the states, led by West Virginia, “have not satisfied stringent requirements” to put a judicial stay on the regulation, says The Hill. Yesterday’s decision has been welcomed as a “good sign” by the White House and advocates of the plan, but it won’t be the last word on the matter. The appeals court will hear oral arguments on June 2 before deciding whether the regulation is lawful though it is widely expected to be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court in 2017, reports the New York Times.

Farmers may receive funds drawn from EU grant money to help manage their land to prevent flooding in town and cities, including returning pasture land to woodland in vulnerable areas. Details are still hazy but Environment Secretary Liz Truss has told the BBC that officials are studying how the scheme could work in some river catchments in Cumbria and Yorkshire. While environmentalists have welcomed the incentives, some argue the requirements to receive funds must be stricter, currently amounting to being paid “for little more than owning land”. A WWF spokesperson told the BBC, “Solutions need to be underpinned by scientific evidence and not just instant reactions whenever floods occur.”

Continuing analysis of the news this week from UK and US meteorological agencies that 2015 topped the chart as the hottest in the modern record. The Economist says the record-breaking warmth shows “the world is getting hotter, even without El Niño’s handiwork”, though Kevin Trenberth of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research explains how the weather phenomenon did play a role in pushing temperatures higher than they were in 2014. Elsewhere, NASA GISS director, Gavin Schmidt, runs through some of the numbers that didn’t make the media reports at Real Climate while Ars Technica looks at how thermometer and satellite data is adjusted, and why it’s necessary.

Europe is trailing behind in the global effort to cut emissions from aviation, pushing for a far less ambitious carbon emissions standard for new production after 2020 than the US. Aircraft emissions, which are not covered by the Paris agreement signed in December, are responsible for about 5% of the world’s global warming and with current growth, the industry could account for 22% of global emissions by 2050, says The Guardian.

A lake high in the Bolivian plains was officially declared evaporated in December, with little chance of recovery. Water is thought to be down to 2% of its former level in Lake Poopo, the country’s second largest body of water, driven at least in part by the disappearance of Andean glaciers. German glaciologist, Dirk Hoffman, tells The Guardian “This is a picture of the future of climate change.” TIME also carries the story.

Mary Creagh, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, says strong progress towards a sustainable future are put at risk if the UK votes to leave the EU. She says: “The EU has more influence globally with the UK as a member. And as a member, we have more influence globally: our voice in the Paris climate change talks was amplified because we were part of a club of 28 countries.”

The fact that 2015 was the hottest year on record confirms what we already knew – that what we need now are not trends in efforts to tackle climate change but step changes, says University of Southampton academic James Dyke. “In 12 months time we will receive the same memo. We have a rapidly decreasing amount of time to respond to it.” Dyke notes that while 2016 may prove to be even warmer, the fact that temperatures may drop a little in individual years could still be seized upon by people wishing to dispute the urgency of climate action.

Since the 1960s, high latitude regions of the northern hemisphere have seen increases in the seasonal fluctuation of atmospheric CO2 levels. Combining data on atmospheric CO2, vegetation cover and CO2 uptake by plants with model simulations, a new study finds the enhanced cycle is caused by increases in vegetation from climate warming. The results indicate that plant CO2 intake is increasing at northern latitudes, while ecosystem respiration (release of CO2) is decreasing.

A special issue of Environmental Research Letters has a series of papers on the topic of “Focus on Climate and Climate Impact Projections for Adaptation Strategies”. The papers aim to provide climate change and adaptation information for a wide range of societal areas – with a particular focus on the lower parts of the deltas of the Rhine and Meuse rivers in the Netherlands.