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Winds of Melissa’s strength are now five times more frequent due to the climate crisis, research says
Every aspect of Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful storm ever to hit Jamaica, was worsened by the climate crisis, a team of scientists has found.
Melissa caused widespread devastation when it crunched into Jamaica as a category five hurricane on October 28, with winds up up to 185mph.
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Report calls for scaling-up of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors to limit peak of global heating
There is still a chance for the world to avoid the worst ravages of climate breakdown and return to the goal of 1.5C if governments take concerted action on greenhouse gas emissions, a new assessment argues.
The Climate Analytics report says governments’ goals are inadequate and need to be rapidly revised, and calls for the rapid scaling-up of the use of renewable energy and electrification of key sectors including transport, heating and industry.
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Decision is bitter blow to Brazil ahead of fund’s launch at Cop30 – and an embarrassment to Prince William
The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit.
Keir Starmer flew to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, on Wednesday to join the summit of world leaders hosted by Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva.
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After it was found most offsets did not represent real carbon reductions, the money dried up. But successful schemes such as Kasigau in Kenya now face a stark future
Solomon Morris Makau checks the fallen tree for snakes before he wraps a tape measure around the trunk. The early morning sun is overwhelming in the dryland forests of the Kasigau corridor, which separates the east and west Tsavo national parks in southern Kenya. Two guards keep watch for elephants and lions. There is little sign of green among the sprawling acacias, which stand silently in their punishing wait for the end of the dry season. Despite the threat from puff adders, Makau and his team have a job to do: measure the trees and shrubs in this 50 sq metre area to calculate their growth and change in carbon stock.
“This one is lying dead,” says Makau, of one of the trees pushed over by elephants – but tens of thousands around it are still alive, stretching out in the distance as far as the eye can see.
Solomon Morris Makau, right, leads a team of environmental technicians in gathering bio data from natural vegetation
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Cwmtydu, Ceredigion: The tree has been laid low by dieback, but the treasures nearby bring to mind miniature brains, the smell of leather and bread-and-butter pudding
As I reach the top of the cliff, a lone raven soughs south on an errand, flying at head height. In the bronze and iron ages, headlands like Castell Bach and Ynys Lochtyn in Ceredigion were used as summer camps for festivals and coastal foraging. This holiday season is drawing to a close as I scramble off the Wales Coast Path on to Banc Pen y Parc to visit a favourite tree.
Even though it should be wizened by the prevailing westerlies and dieback – which is rampant in this valley – this huge ash hasn’t lost its ambition. I pace out its dimensions: 18 yards (16 metres) for the trunk, 23 yards for the crown. Its lichened trunk grows horizontally, leaning on its elbow, so I can perch in branches that should be inaccessible. It kicks in the wind like a boat in water, while goldcrests fuss in the gorse.
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Lawyers challenge €4bn Project One development, saying emissions and health impacts vastly underestimated
The deaths from pollution caused by Europe’s biggest plastic plant, which is being built in Antwerp, will outstrip the number of permanent jobs it will create, lawyers will argue in a court challenge issued on Thursday.
In documents submitted to the court, research suggests the air pollution from Ineos’s €4bn petrochemical plant would cause 410 deaths once operational, compared with the 300 permanent jobs the company says will be created.
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University of Queensland modelling says reef will suffer ‘rapid coral decline’ in coming decades but could still recover if targets met
The Great Barrier Reef will undergo “rapid coral decline” until 2050 but could recover if global heating is kept below 2C, according to the most detailed modelling so far of the future of the world’s biggest coral reef.
The finding contradicts a widely held view that the decline of the oceanic gem would become irreversible as global temperatures rise above 1.5C, with one report last month suggesting the world’s tropical corals had already reached a tipping point of long-term decline.
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According to folklore, the weather on St Martin’s Day is a glimpse of the winter ahead and geese are said to sense it first
St Martin’s Day, 11 November, is associated with feasting and the beginning of preparations for winter. Like St Swithin’s Day, Martinmas was believed to indicate the weather ahead.
Saint Martin, who is understood to have lived in fourth-century France, was associated with geese, having supposedly hidden in a goose pen to avoid being made bishop, only to be given away by their honking. Weather predictions from his day tend to have a flavour of goose.
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Eucalyptus production is dominated by large multinationals that convert farmland and forest into monoculture plantations
Razor-straight rows of eucalyptus clones flank the Baixa Verde settlement in north-eastern Brazil. The genetically identical trees are in marked contrast to the patches of wild Atlantic forest – one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth – that remain scattered across the region.
Surrounded by nearly 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of eucalyptus plantations, Baixa Verde is a rare example of a local victory over a multinational in Brazil. The rural settlement owes its existence to nearly two decades of legal battles over land rights – but the fight is not over yet.
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Experts find artefacts left behind in Caral showing how population survived drought without resorting to violence
Archaeologists in Peru have found new evidence showing how the oldest known civilization in the Americas adapted and survived a climate catastrophe without resorting to violence.
A team led by the renowned Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady, 78, concluded that about 4,200 years ago, severe drought forced the population to leave the ancient city of Caral, and resettle nearby.
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pub. Verso, London, New York, 2012
pub. Random House, 2006
