A diplomatic row is brewing between Prince Charles and Donald Trump, as the latter is set to make a trip to the UK. Charles is likely to bring up the subject of climate change, say royal aides, which Trump’s inner circle have warned will be counterproductive, and that Trump could “erupt” if pushed. Several government figures say that Charles is now one of the key “risk factors” for the visit. The story was picked up in numerous places, including the Independent, the Guardian and the Times.

Membership fees to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate-sceptic thinktank, have dropped by 60% over the past five years, from £14,300 in 2011 down to £5409 in 2016. Members are supposed to donate at least £100 a year to the foundation, which suggests a paying membership of 55, although the GWPF said it continued to have about 300 members. “There hasn’t been a decline in membership, quite the opposite. It’s more a decline in individual members paying up,” said the head of the organisation, Benny Peiser. He added that the GWPF has enough funding for at least the next two years.

A number of ageing coal plants are likely to win contracts to provide energy to the UK grid in the latest government subsidy auction being held on Tuesday. The scheme has been criticised for enabling these plans to stay open, despite a policy to phase out all such stations by 2025. The four day bidding process is taking place because the National Grid says there is a need for extra capacity next winter. Separately, Steve Holliday, who ran the National Grid for a decade, has said that the UK should not fear blackouts, and that headlines to this effect need to stop, reports the BBC.

The government is facing legal action from NGO ClientEarth because of its failure to come up with a plan to meet the UK’s commitments to tackle climate change. The government’s Emissions Reduction Plan was supposed to have been ready at the end of last year, but the publication date was delayed to February and then till March. Now, the government is no longer standing by the March deadline either, which ClientEarth has said could prompt legal action.

Donald Trump could clash with Rex Tillerson over whether to pull the US out of the UN Paris climate deal, according to Myron Ebell, who led the Environmental Protection Agency transition for the new administration. “We’ll have to see who wins that particular debate, the president or the secretary of state,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. He said that the US would have to withdraw, as it wouldn’t be able to meet its commitments once it had fulfilled its campaign promise to dismantle the Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

A letter from the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, to the Commons environmental audit committee has sparked a fresh row over plans for a third Heathrow runway. The letter suggested that ministers might ignore climate advice from the Committee on Climate Change — namely, that aviation emissions need to stay at 2005 levels until 2050 to achieve the UK’s greenhouse gas targets. He also suggested that the UK could use a “future global carbon market” to deal with aviation emissions, also against the advice of the CCC. Grayling has previous said that the runway could be delivered within carbon budgets.

A feature in the New York Times examined how climate change is being tackled in America’s heartland by people who are not overtly concerned with climate change as an issue, or by people who don’t even believe in it. By focusing on the benefits of environmental protection, and taking the political sting out of the discussion, many people are more willing to take action, suggests the article.

The main rivers running off the Mediterranean Andes provide freshwater for around 10 million people, but the region is facing one of its worst recorded droughts. A new study examining factors controlling variability in the region between 1910-2011 finds two hydroclimatic subregions; to the north, the El Nino Southern Oscillation has a stronger effect whereas variability caused by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation is stronger in the south. The authors suggest the northern region is more vulnerable to changes in climate and that drought has increased, in general, since the 1950s.