Our World in Data

New data reported by BBC News indicates the current El Niño is the strongest ever recorded, accompanied by a major shift in global weather patterns. The findings point to intensified ocean warming with wide-reaching consequences for rainfall, drought and temperature extremes across different regions of the world.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have seized a US submarine drone in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the operation was carried out for data recovery, according to NDTV. The incident marks a new flashpoint between Tehran and Washington in the strategic waterway, through which a large share of the world's oil passes, and comes amid ongoing tensions over naval activity in the Gulf.

A World Health Organization pandemic agreement has been signed by countries, yet it remains in limbo over unresolved details, notably financing and how nations will share vaccines and pathogen data. Questions are being raised about what is holding up its implementation, with observers pointing to political and logistical obstacles ahead of countries actually putting the treaty into effect.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains below its 10-day average following the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28. Before the conflict, the strait typically handled around 125 large commercial vessels a day, including tankers, gas carriers, bulkers and container ships. The continued shortfall points to lingering disruption and caution among shipowners in one of the world's most important oil transit routes.

New data on global electricity generation shows coal remained the world's largest single source in 2024, producing about 34% of all power. Wind and solar together supplied 15%, a sharp rise from just 4% a decade earlier. The figures, presented in charts drawn directly onto an interactive map, are drawing attention for how clearly they show both coal's persistence and renewables' rapid growth.

SpaceX carried out the fourteenth flight test of its Starship rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. The test flight is part of the company's iterative development program for the spacecraft intended for missions to the Moon and Mars. Each launch gathers data on the vehicle's performance, and the progress of the Starship program continues to draw widespread attention from space industry watchers and the public.

Elon Musk has given a new full interview to CMG, China's state broadcaster, covering a broad range of topics. The discussion touches on Xi Jinping, the Tesla Shanghai factory, the Cybercab rollout, the pace of AI breakthroughs, Grok, SpaceX and Tesla data for real-world AI, and Chinese AI models and the compute gap. The interview is drawing attention for Musk's engagement with Chinese leadership and industry at a moment of high US-China tech tensions.

An analysis by Our World in Data examines how current immigration to the United States compares with earlier periods of the country's history. It places recent inflows alongside historical migration waves, offering context for today's debate over border policy and immigration levels. Readers are weighing whether present-day immigration is genuinely unprecedented or consistent with past American experience.

A new report confirms that China continues to hold its position as the world's largest market for industrial robots, maintaining its lead over other major economies in industrial automation. The finding underscores the country's sustained investment in robotics across manufacturing sectors, reinforcing its central role in the global robotics industry.

Researchers at the University of Arizona used satellite data to show that the world's drylands are growing greener, but in an increasingly volatile pattern of sharp booms and busts rather than steady vegetation growth. The findings suggest that while rising carbon dioxide and shifting rainfall are boosting plant life in arid regions, the gains come with escalating instability, complicating assumptions about how dryland ecosystems will respond to climate change.

Railway companies in Tokyo have reported online security breaches, according to NHK World-Japan. The incidents involve unauthorized access or cyberattacks targeting the operators' systems, though details on affected services or data remain limited. The reports come amid heightened attention to cyber threats against critical transport infrastructure in Japan.

Google has announced Project Suncatcher, an initiative to test its AI chips in space for the first time. The plan points to putting data-processing hardware aboard satellites, a step that could eventually move parts of AI computing off Earth. The announcement is drawing attention across the tech and semiconductor world, with observers weighing the engineering challenges of running chips in orbit and what it could mean for the future of data centers.

Researchers publishing in Nature describe a physics-informed machine learning approach for calibrating wearable electrochemical sweat biosensors used to monitor metabolites. The method combines physical models of sensor behaviour with data-driven learning to achieve robust calibration and physiological validation, aiming to make wearable biochemical monitoring more reliable in real-world conditions.

Niantic Spatial is adapting the spatial mapping technology behind Pokémon GO into spatial AI designed for robots, according to a report by South Korea's Chosun Ilbo. The move signals the company's push beyond mobile gaming into robotics, leveraging years of real-world 3D mapping data collected from players. The announcement is drawing attention in robotics circles as spatial intelligence becomes a key area of competition.

Generalist AI is pursuing an approach in which robots acquire skills the way modern AI models learn, rather than through hand-coded behaviours. The company argues that scaling data and training methods, as done in language and image models, can be applied to robotics. The idea is drawing attention because it could reshape how robots are built and commercialised, though questions remain over data availability and real-world reliability.

While public attention stays on AI debates, Meta is moving forward with a massive subsea cable project stretching roughly 4,300 miles across the ocean floor. The infrastructure aims to carry enormous volumes of internet traffic between continents, giving Meta greater control over the pipes that carry its apps' data. Observers note the project underscores how tech giants now build core internet infrastructure themselves, rivaling traditional telecom consortiums.

A new commentary argues that while satellites now give the world a near-real-time view of forests being cleared, detection alone does not save them. Monitoring technology can flag deforestation as it happens, but enforcing protections still depends on governments, rangers, funding and political will on the ground, a gap that continues to hinder conservation efforts worldwide.

Meta's data center expansion is drawing construction and operations workers to communities near its facilities, and purpose-built workforce housing is emerging to accommodate them. Reports describe how these housing developments serve the influx of employees tied to large-scale data center projects, highlighting the local economic ripple effects of the tech industry's infrastructure boom.

Food Tank argues that data and AI technologies can accelerate responses to climate change, but should support rather than replace existing climate action. The piece emphasizes that tools like data analytics and artificial intelligence are complements to established environmental strategies, helping speed up decision-making and implementation, not substitutes for the fundamental work of reducing emissions and adapting to a warming world.

Startup Midcentury has raised a $15 million seed round to build training data for physical AI systems such as robots and autonomous machines. The funding signals continued investor appetite for startups supplying high-quality data to the physical AI sector, where collecting real-world sensor and motion data is considered a key bottleneck for training capable models.

A newly announced AI tool can combine different types of biological data into a single integrated analysis, according to a report by Labroots. The tool is aimed at helping researchers draw connections across datasets such as genomics and other biological measurements. Details about its developers, capabilities, and real-world applications remain limited in early coverage.

A British startup is turning video game controller inputs into training data for AI models designed to navigate the physical world. The idea is that human gameplay, including mistakes and clumsy manoeuvring, offers rich examples of how people learn to control complex systems, which could help robots and other embodied AI improve. The approach is drawing attention as a cheaper alternative to real-world data collection.

The America First Policy Institute has published a report on Loudoun County, Virginia's 'Data Center Alley', the world's largest concentration of data centers, framing it as a case study in how the America First agenda intersects with the digital economy. The piece draws lessons on infrastructure, energy demand and economic development from the region's boom, and how policymakers might balance growth in digital infrastructure with national interests.

OpenAI's AI agents were found retrieving United Nations data through an unnecessarily circuitous path, raising questions about how autonomous systems navigate online information sources. The Register reports that the agents did not take the most direct route to the data, prompting discussion about the reliability and efficiency of agentic browsing when tasked with pulling information from major institutional datasets.