President Joe Biden on Monday announced an executive action that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.

Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.

US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

The ban covers the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.

It is the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions by the Biden administration ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House.

This year is now almost certain to be the hottest year on record, data shows. It will also be the first to have an average temperature of more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels, marking a further escalation of the climate crisis.

November was Earth’s second-warmest month in 175 years of record-keeping, and the year is all but certain to be the warmest on record, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Average worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures for the month were 2.41 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 55.2-degree average in the 20th century. Only last November, which was 0.14 degrees warmer, surpassed this year.

Earth just experienced its second-warmest November on record — second only to 2023 — making it all but certain that 2024 will end as the hottest year ever measured, according to a report Monday by European climate service Copernicus.

Water temperatures in and around Australia's Great Barrier Reef have risen to their warmest in 400 years over the past decade, placing the world's largest reef under threat, according to research published on Thursday.

The reef, the world's largest living ecosystem, stretches for some 1,500 miles (2,400 km) off the coast of the northern state of Queensland. The research is rare in putting the effects of man-made climate change into historical context, as other surveys on damage to the reef have a shorter time frame.

A series of videos posted online Monday and Tuesday reveal the brutal aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, the first major summer storm of 2024.

Hurricane Beryl made landfall in the early hours Monday morning along the Texas coast, bringing “life-threatening” conditions to millions of Americans. Footage shared online shows the aftermath of the storm, which is believed to have killed eight people, according to the BBC.