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Bird organisations say more research on the species needed to control impact on other wildlife
In the past 20 years, the soundscape in the ancient wild, rolling landscape of Richmond Park has been transformed. Once you would have heard the chirrup of the stonechat, the chirp of the greater spotted woodpecker or the song of the skylark. Today, the auditory power of one bird dominates.
The bright green ring-necked parakeet increased 25-fold from 1994-2023 in the UK. They are still mainly based in the skies, parks, and woodlands around London and suburban areas in the south east, but in recent years they have made their way to northern cities including Manchester and Newcastle.
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Mean temperature for year was 10.09C, surpassing 2022 record, and 1,648.5 hours of sunshine were recorded
2025 was the UK’s warmest and sunniest year on record, the Met Office has confirmed.
The UK’s three hottest years on record have now all been in this decade, which meteorologists say is proof of a rapidly changing climate. All of the top 10 warmest years have happened in the past two decades.
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Tebay, Cumbria: Small farms like ours contribute to society, but we need help to survive. A huge cloud has lifted over our future
Just before Christmas I attended a farmers’ conference near Penrith, which included a presentation on the inheritance tax rules for agricultural land. An accountant worked through an example of a typical hill farm like ours: the bill worked out as £59,000 every year for 10 years.
Between the farm and our off‑farm jobs, we can’t generate that kind of profit, so this terrified me – we didn’t know what would happen to the farm if we had to pay that bill. We sought advice from a solicitor, but, thank goodness, there was a surprise announcement from the government on 23 December that the threshold on land and assets was raised from £1m to £2.5m.
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Defenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worried
During a golden sunset in Memphis in May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk’s flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired turbines that power the world’s biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky.
“It was jaw-dropping,” said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI’s Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant. “Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”
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Exclusive: Critics say removing battery installation requirement will reduce amount homebuyers save on energy bills
Ministers are poised to allow homes in England to be built without carbon-cutting technology in what experts have said is a climbdown after pressure from housebuilders.
The future homes standard (FHS), due to be published in January, will regulate how all homes are built and is expected to enforce tough new regulations such as mandating solar panels on nearly all houses and high standards of insulation and heat pumps in most cases.
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In this week’s newsletter: From geopolitics to populism, multilateralism is under pressure – but climate action cannot succeed in a fractured world
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January might seem a bit too early to propose a word of the year, but I know mine already: multilateralism – the principle that common problems should have common solutions. It rests on the idea that all countries and people have a stake in the future of the planet we share, and that their rights should be respected. That cooperation beats competition, or going it alone.
Multilateralism is what has kept the UN process of climate diplomacy going, but now the principle is under threat as never before, amid a rising tide of populism and conflict. The US, under Donald Trump, explicitly rejects multilateralism, in favour of carve-ups between great powers. But if we are to stave off climate breakdown, only multilateralism will work.
‘Cities need nature to be happy’: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife
EU’s new ‘green tariff’ rules on high-carbon goods come into force
Renewable energy project approvals hit record high in GB in 2025, data shows
Multilateralism faces a toxic brew of debt, climate crisis and war. It’s time for a reboot | Mo Ibrahim
The ‘new world order’ of the past 35 years is being demolished before our eyes. This is how we must proceed | Gordon Brown
Into the void: how Trump killed international law
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New year plant hunt shows rising temperatures are shifting natural cycles of wildflowers such as daisies
Daisies and dandelions are among hundreds of native plant species blooming in the UK, in what scientists have called a “visible signal” of climate breakdown disrupting the natural world.
A Met Office analysis of data from the annual new year’s plant hunt over the past nine years found an extra 2.5 species in bloom during the new year period for every 1C rise in temperature at a given location during the previous November and December. This year’s hunt started on Thursday and runs until Sunday.
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The monsoon season is crucial for agriculture, making up 80% of annual rainfall, but also extremely destructive
January brings torrential rain to south-east Asia – more than 250mm fell in just two days in Singapore last year. This is because of the monsoon, a pattern of wind and rainfall, the name of which stems from the Arabic word for “season”.
The monsoon is sometimes described in terms of a sea breeze, in which the wind reverses direction in the morning and evening as the relative temperature of land and sea change, blowing out to sea at first and then inland as the land cools.
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Extreme heat and drought has destroyed 70% of Jordan’s olive crop, endangering livelihoods of 80,000 families and a centuries-old tradition
Abu Khaled al-Zoubi, 67, walks slowly through his orchard in Irbid, northern Jordan, his footsteps kicking up dust from the parched earth beneath centuries-old olive trees. He stops at a gnarled trunk, its bark split and peeling from months of unrelenting heat.
He points out that the branches should be sagging under the weight of ripening fruit, but instead they stretch upward, nearly bare, with only a few shrivelled olives clinging to the withered stems.
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The Colla Indigenous people claim Rio Tinto’s plans to extract the key mineral will harm fragile ecosystems and livelihoods
Miriam Rivera Bordones tends her goats in a dusty paddock in the russet mountains of Chile’s Atacama desert. She also keeps chickens and has planted quince and peach trees and grapevines, which are watered by a stream winding down the hills towards the Indigenous community of Copiapó.
But now the huge British-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto has signed a deal to extract lithium, the “white gold” of the energy transition, from a salt flat farther up the mountains, and she fears the project could affect the water sources of several communities in the area.
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