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Oceans absorb 90% of global heating, making them a stark indicator of the relentless march of the climate crisis
The world’s oceans absorbed colossal amounts of heat in 2025, setting yet another new record and fuelling more extreme weather, scientists have reported.
More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s carbon pollution is taken up by the oceans. This makes ocean heat one of the starkest indicators of the relentless march of the climate crisis, which will only end when emissions fall to zero. Almost every year since the start of the millennium has set a new ocean heat record.
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Plant Heritage says gardening trends mean many species in danger of disappearing as they are no longer offered for sale
More than half of garden plants previously grown in the UK are no longer offered for sale as flower fashions and modern gardening trends have reduced the diversity of blooms.
Plant Heritage is asking the public to choose unusual plants for their gardens, and maybe even start their own national collections of rare blooms, in order to stop some cultivated plants from dying out.
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Cars that emit fumes closer to pavement result in pedestrians experiencing 40% more pollution
Some vehicles are much more polluting than others and the design of exhaust pipes could affect how much air pollution we breathe when we walk along a busy road, research has found.
Diesel vehicles still dominate exhaust pollution 10 years after the International Council on Clean Transportation revealed that many diesel cars were highly polluting, emitting far more nitrogen oxides on the road than in official testing.
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For much of the last 30 years, the rest of the world has been forced to persevere with climate action in the face of US intransigence
Donald Trump’s latest attack on climate action takes place amid rapidly rising temperatures, rising sea levels, still-rising greenhouse gas emissions, burgeoning costs from extreme weather and the imminent danger that the world will trigger “tipping points” in the climate system that will lead to catastrophic and irreversible changes.
The US president’s decision to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the world’s leading body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will not alter any of those scientific realities.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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Vast swathes of the country’s trees have been killed off by droughts and infestations, in a trend sweeping across Europe. A shift towards more biodiverse cultivation could offer answers
Even the intense green of late spring cannot mask the dead trees in the Harz mountains. Standing upright across the gentle peaks in northern Germany, thousands of skeletal trunks mark the remnants of a once great spruce forest.
Since 2018, the region has been ravaged by a tree-killing bark beetle outbreak, made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves. It has transformed a landscape known for its verdant beauty into one dominated by a sickly grey.
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North Sands, Salcombe, Devon: They’re my daughter’s favourite find, and I’ve never seen such a concentration. These ones have only just hatched
It’s two hours to high tide, and the beach has been reduced to a half moon of smooth sand. The sea is grey, grey-blue and green, and even here in the estuary it’s lined with ragged swell. Winter swimmers in trunks and swimming costumes are wading in, hunching their bare shoulders.
Without much sand to run on, my four-year-old, Nina, decides we’re playing mountain goats on the boulders at the back of the beach. They are a jumble of awkward shapes and irregular angles: sometimes I have to hold a hand – sorry, hoof – but mostly she finds her own balance. A rock pipit (Anthus petrosus) seeps at us then flutters away. Nina bleats at it. A wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) whirrs away into a crevice, a tiny ball of fox-red feathers. Nina bleats again.
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In this week’s newsletter: Conservationists have seen nests raided around the country to match demand from the Middle East
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Earlier this week we published an investigation that found hundreds of UK peregrine falcon nests have been raided in the past decade, in order to feed a growing appetite to own prized birds for racing and breeding in the Middle East.
This piece has been a year in the making, working with a great team of reporters from Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) to shed light on a multimillion-dollar industry that stretches around the world.
Germany’s dying forests are losing their ability to absorb CO2. Can a new way of planting save them?
The LA wildfire victims still living in toxic homes: ‘We have nowhere else to go’
‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate?
How demand for elite falcons in the Middle East is driving illegal trade of British birds
‘It’s soul destroying to find nests have failed’: inside the battle against Scotland’s falcon thieves
Global wildlife crime causing ‘untold harm’, UN report finds
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At the Oxford farming conference there were signs the government has much to do to win back farmers’ trust
Few symbols were more potent than the wooden coffin bearing the inscription “RIP British agriculture, 30th October 2024” that greeted Labour’s environment minister at the annual Oxford farming conference.
It marked the date of Rachel Reeves’s first budget, when she announced plans to levy inheritance tax on farms. For the chancellor’s cabinet colleague Emma Reynolds, it underlined the anger among Britain’s farmers.
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Sandbanks can shift position during winter storms, but sonar mapping means charts can now be updated immediately
Offshore sandbanks are a particular navigation hazard because, unlike rocks and reefs, they have a habit of shifting position during winter storms.
The Goodwin Sands is a 10-mile (16km) bank off the coast of Deal in Kent, close to the busy shipping lanes of the Dover strait. The sands have claimed about 2,000 vessels over the years. In 1634, two lighthouses were set up on South Foreland for sailors to follow a safe route through.
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