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Sudden shifts from wet to dry weather, or vice versa, may foil typical drought- and flood-prevention measures
Rising temperatures may trigger a dangerous increase in “hydroclimatic whiplash” in rivers that would make traditional approaches to flood and drought planning insufficient, a study has found.
As temperatures rise owing to the worsening climate crisis, rivers will experience increasingly rapid transitions between heavy downpours and long dry spells – called hydroclimatic whiplash events – because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, intensifying rainfall extremes.
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London Tree Ring project aims to create corridors of plant and animal life around the city to strengthen its biodiversity
Harry Ewing is heaping branches and foliage from the forest floor on to a dead hedge, reinforcing the protective circle around his newly planted trees in Hadley Wood, north London. He is in a glade created by a fallen oak that was previously overrun with thick bramble.
“I feel very happy – the trees are growing already. It’s really nice seeing it when it starts,” says Ewing.
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Scientists are returning to a wartime solution that may be more sustainable than the traditional rubber tree
There is a global shortage of natural rubber and dandelions may be coming to the rescue. In the second world war there was such a severe shortage of rubber that the Allies used the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum koksaghyz, from Kazakhstan. Soviet scientists found the dandelion roots produced enough white milky latex to make natural rubber, but when the war ended producers returned to the traditional rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis.
But the demand for rubber is now increasing, with rubber trees suffering from a fungal disease and the impacts of extreme weather caused by the climate crisis. So, scientists are looking again at using dandelions, with the added benefit that they grow in temperate climates, are a sustainable crop that do not need pesticides and lots of water, and don’t lead to the deforestation common in tropical rubber tree plantations.
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Frome, Somerset: This much-maligned midsummer menace has few friends among humans, but look closely and you might find an orgy of eating and mating
Eyes smarting, throat tickling, nostrils dog-wet, I pick my way along a thready footpath up the combe, only half-prepared for the next irritation. Nettles, I am watching you. But not well enough it seems, for a sneaky one hidden under the skirts of encroaching grasses and umbellifers grazes the back of my bare calf. It induces that tingling somewhere between pain and pleasure – one that quickly develops into a needling throb.
It is hard to love a nettle. This much-loathed plant may be one of the first that many children learn to identify, for their own protection. It has a secondhand look, with wrinkly, crinkly jagged hearts for leaves. It has no sheen; it does not shine. Near-invisible fine hairs on the upper surfaces give the dulled green a dusty, soiled appearance.
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Nearly every indicator of climate change is flashing red. But we still hold the tools available to bring the planet back into balance
The ocean is running a fever. In 2025, the number of days of marine heatwaves – prolonged spells when the sea turns abnormally, dangerously warm – was more than triple what it was in the early 1990s.
These are not abstract statistics. A severe and persistent marine heatwave bleaches coral reefs, strips away the kelp forests that shelter young fish, empties fishing grounds and – if occurring frequently – can tip whole ecosystems past the point of recovery.
Karina Von Schuckmann is an IGCC author and senior adviser of Mercator Ocean International
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Two-thirds of Americans say they are worried about climate but level of media coverage does not reflect this
US political and media discourse has drifted away from the climate crisis amid a frontal assault by Donald Trump upon policies to limit global heating and the president’s pugnacious demands to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas.
Yet while elite attention on climate has waned, even among some previously vocal Democrats who have wound back on criticism of the fossil fuels that are overheating our planet, the American public remains concerned about the climate crisis and continues to favour action to deal with it, according to experts and polling.
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Sea ice is melting fast, worsening the climate crisis, but a bold attempt to rethicken it is showing early signs of success
‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.
“It’s incredibly different, the boundary – I mean, you can point to it,” he says. The difference is the result of a bold geoengineering experiment being conducted by Ceccolini’s company, Real Ice, funded by the UK government.
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Warmer winters and springs are drying out wetlands and the birds are missing out on an abundance of insects to eat
When we think of spring migrant birds, it is easy to focus on songbirds such as warblers, flycatchers and swallows. Yet during late spring, many are waders – passing through Britain on their way north to breed in the high Arctic from their winter quarters in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s regular migration blog, it has been a good year for waders: including more common species such as ringed and grey plovers, bar-tailed godwit, sanderling and knot.
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We are told the natural world is ‘breaking down’. But forests don’t work like aeroplanes or human hearts
The Amazon rainforest, according to a 2021 study, is losing its capacity as a carbon sink and now emits more than it absorbs. In the tropics, marine scientists are reporting that coral reefs are in decline, threatening fish stocks. Equally concerning is research into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that helps regulate the climate and is at risk of collapsing this century. The entire global ecosystem appears to be losing its ability to function.
We find this view in newspapers, magazines, technical reports and the journals of learned societies. But thinking about the environment in terms of its functions is also how many of us tend to understand the world. We may think that forests exist to produce oxygen, wetlands to filter water and bees to pollinate our crops.
Of special interest to humanity is the relationship of biodiversity to the variety of services provided by ecosystems and, in particular, to the stability of the flow of those services, such as the maintenance of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, preservation of soils, recycling of nutrients and provision of food from the sea.
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Many small-scale landowners now include conservation measures alongside everyday farming. But progress is precarious, and the threat of guerrilla violence and poverty remain whichever candidate wins
Like most people settling in the area, Pablo Peña was seeking to escape violence and make a living from a patch of land when he moved to Guaviare in central Colombia. While his life has been strongly marked by conflict and deforestation, more than 30 years on he now focuses on community work and conservation.
Peña first visited Guaviare during his mandatory military service. Years later, in 1994, he settled down to farm in Guaviare’s Calamar, a town in a remote corner of the Amazon.
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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
