The UK government will enshrine in law a commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions – a key element of the Paris agreement accepted in December last year. Energy minister Andrea Leadsom told MPs that the Government wanted to capture “the momentum of Paris” and would seek to commit future governments to the pledge. Leadsom was responding to former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s call to put the target into law, says the Guardian. Miliband welcomed the government’s decision: “It is essential we build on the success of the Paris agreement and do not squander it, and I hope other countries will now follow the example of the UK.” However, many will be “baffled by what they see as a schizophrenic attitude to climate change from the government,” says Roger Harrabin at the BBC. “While pledging their allegiance to very demanding CO2 cuts, ministers have made a slew of policy changes that are predicted to increase emissions,” he says. Carbon Pulse also has the story.

US coastal areas with a future population of 13 million people will be at risk of being inundated by the sea under a worst-case climate change scenario, new research predicts. The study provides a glimpse into how growth in coastal population in the US will place greater numbers of people at the frontline of sea level rises. The states most at risk of are almost all in the south of the country – such as North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana and California, reports Mail Online. Speaking to theNew York Times, the lead author says rising sea levels may disrupt the lives of millions: “We could see a huge-scale migration if we don’t deploy any protection against sea level rise.” TIME has an interactive map of how many people are at risk in individual counties around America’s coasts, while Reuters, Climate Central, New Scientist and Ars Technica all cover the research – as does Carbon Brief.

The Obama administration is expected to put virtually all of the Arctic and much of the Atlantic off limits for oil and gas drilling until 2022 in a decision that could be announced today. The five-year drilling plan was originally expected to block oil exploration proposals for the Arctic only, but may now also seal off large areas of the Atlantic coast following protests against new projects from coastal communities in the Carolinas and Georgia. The new proposal will be open to public comment and will likely be made final by the end of the year, says The Hill. Elsewhere, the BBC reports that oil prices have fallen by nearly 3% after Iran delayed plans to join nations proposing a freeze on production.

There has been continued coverage of the new data from Nasa showing the Earth’s surface temperatures in February saw the biggest month-on-month rise in global warming on record. The story makes the Independent’s front page with the headline “February 2016 smashes multiple climate records.” February 2016 was not only the warmest month ever measured globally, at 1.35C above the long-term average, but that it was more than 0.2C warmer than January 2016, which itself had held the previous monthly temperature record, the Independent says. Reuters spoke to a number of scientists about the records, including David Carlson, director of the World Climate Research Programme, who said: “”It’s startling… It’s definitely a changed planet… It makes us nervous about the long-term impact.”. The story has been covered around world, in the Times, MailOnline, Telegraph, Washington Post, Express, the Hindu, the Christian Science Monitor and Mashable – to name a few.

European Union renewable energy targets may have increased greenhouse gas emissions because the biofuels can produce up to three times the emissions of diesel oil. Europe’s aim of sourcing 10% of its transport fuel to “renewables” by 2020 – mostly biodiesel – will likely mean growing crops on 6.7m hectares of land that is currently forest or grassland, the new study says. Once the loss of trees is factored in, the emissions from biodiesel made from palm oil or soybean oil rise above those of diesel oil, the researchers say.

In an opinion piece, Prof Orrin Pilkey, professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, along with his daughter Linda and son Keith, asks why we’re still building houses in areas that are bound to flood in the future. “The question is not if we will retreat from the coast, but when. Still, the rush to develop the coast occurs at a maddening pace,” they write. After running through an extensive list of developments currently planned along America’s coastlines, they conclude that the “time has passed for such foolish projects.” Instead, they say, “It is time for a profound new outlook – where we construct smaller, less expensive and perhaps mobile structures and do not replace buildings destroyed and damaged in storms.”

Last week, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates participated in debates in Florida. A group of 21 Florida mayors wrote to the debate moderators to argue it would be “unconscionable for these issues of grave concern for the people of Florida [climate change and sea level rise] to not be addressed.” The moderators of both debates duly obliged, and Dana Nuccitelli has pulled together all the candidates’ responses

Communicating climate change in a way that reduces the feeling that it is a faraway problem, an uncertain prospect that will affect future generations, increases climate change concern and support for engaging in activities that reduce emissions, according to a study of Australian citizens. The attitudes of the 333 people tested were fully mediated by which group they were randomly assigned to, one designed to increase the “psychological distance” or one designed to reduce it.

Scientists are now able to predict the onset of the Indian monsoon two weeks earlier than previously possible. The team used certain geographical locations as early warning signals, alerting them to the beginning stages of the transition into or out of the monsoon. Being able to accurately forecast the monsoon arrival and departure are critical for more than one billion inhabitants of the subcontinent, say the authors.

Temperatures in China rose 1.44C between 1961-2013, with about a third of the warming a consequence of rapid early development since the 1970s. These are the results of a new study, which concludes that urbanisation has “‘considerably exacerbated” the warming experienced by the Chinese population. The other two thirds is explained by human-caused and natural factors, and is similar in magnitude to the 1.09C warming observed in global mean land temperature between 1951-2010.