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Temperatures did not fall below 21.3C on Monday night at Kenley airfield in south London and fire crews were called to a blaze at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh
• Tell us: how are you coping in the UK heatwave?
The UK experienced a “tropical night” on Monday as the record for highest daily minimum temperature in May was broken for the second consecutive day.
Temperatures did not fall below 21.3C on Monday at Kenley airfield, in south London, after the UK recorded its hottest May day since Met Office data began, the forecaster said.
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High unemployment and a lack of support mean life can be tough in Grimsby, but 19-year-old Cohen is determined to make the best of life in this coastal town
It’s mid-afternoon in the Lincolnshire seaside town of Cleethorpes and Cohen is sitting in the back seat of a car putting on an Easter bunny outfit. A group of teenagers nearby stare in amusement. Cohen isn’t fazed. He is hoping we can take some new photographs that he can use to advertise his mascot business for the upcoming holidays.
Cohen, 19, lives with his parents a couple of miles down the road in neighbouring Grimsby and set up Co Co Mascots last year as one of his many attempts to find work. People can hire him in one of the outfits for birthday parties, events and doorstep surprises for children. He’s done a few paid gigs so far, which has been a boost for his confidence, he says, but what he really wants is a permanent job.
Cohen, who is looking for a permanent job, makes money as a mascot at birthday parties and events
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Campaign comes as Duchy of Cornwall announces plan to expand small pockets of ancient woodland at two sites
Along a steep-sided valley, with the West Okement River roaring at its floor, the woodland emerges like an oasis in a closely grazed bare landscape.
Squat, tightly clustered, with root systems heavily covered in thick lichens and mosses, the oak trees of Black-a-Tor copse are a tiny surviving cluster of European temperate rainforest dating back to the bronze age.
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Animal and Plant Health Agency forced to release reports showing scale and cause of deaths on some fish farms
Millions of fish deaths caused by accidental poisoning and suffocation on Scottish salmon farms have been revealed after the inspection agency was forced to share its reports.
The UK government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) had refused to release inspection reports, claiming it would cause “significant detriment” to companies, including to their reputations.
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Lack of Pfas regulations raised in parliament after Guardian revealed former Miteni plant bought by Indian company
Protests over the production of cancer-linked Pfas chemicals have spread across India, after an investigation revealed that an Italian factory shut down due to an environmental scandal was bought by an Indian company and partly rebuilt.
At the end of last year, the Guardianrevealed that the former Miteni plant in Vicenza had been acquired by the Indian company Laxmi Organic Industries. The factory produced Pfas and was shut down in 2018 after being linked to one of Italy’s worst environmental contamination scandals.
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People sleep outside because their houses are too hot to inhabit, water is scarce and supermarkets are for the wealthy
If you think the temperature uncomfortable today, let me take you to the last day of July 2052, the rays of the climbing sun reveal a city still sweltering in the residual heat of the day before. From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city’s residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the way.
Half-hearted attempts to upgrade insulation across the country’s housing stock ran out of steam and cash decades earlier, and most homes still have few barriers to the infiltrating heat. Almost all the country’s electricity is now from renewables, which has brought the cost down, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has driven an ever-deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but can’t afford to run it.
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Biebrza marshes, Poland: It’s not just the abundance of elks, orchids and eagles that sets the mind racing, it’s the wild interactions between the ‘exotic’ and the familiar
Have I made a mistake in visiting Biebrza national park? Not that I mind encountering more bird species in a day than I do in a year at home. Nor do I regret meeting a young elk, all gangle and improbable proportions; or kneeling before a clump of lady’s slipper orchid in jaw-droppingly ostentatious bloom among Solomon’s seal and a carpet of lily of the valley. I definitely appreciate the homely clatter of the neighbourhood white storks, and the constant soundtrack of cuckoos and golden orioles. I certainly have no objection to watching the sunset from a wood-fired hot tub, listening to corncrakes as bats emerge and a beaver cruises past.
But something shifts in me when, in the space of a few minutes in an observation tower, we watch three species of marsh tern hanging like precision-engineered angels to tweezer insects from the water’s surface, and a white-tailed eagle hunting greylag geese then settling with its mate in a dead tree to watch a train of common cranes in the field below meeting a lone fox, all leaping as if in mock surprise, before going unconcernedly on their way.
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Like so many Britons, I usually consult a weather app before venturing out of the house – and often cancel plans if I don’t like what I see. Here’s what happened when I went cold turkey for a week
When I heard on the radio that more than half of British people would consider cancelling an outing if they saw a 40% chance of rain all day on their weather app, I felt seen. I, too, am a slave to my app. Not that I would ever make a decision based on one whole-day percentage. I pore over three-hourly breakdowns for chances of rain versus minutes of sunshine. If rain is on the cards, I check the probable millimetres. Less than one? I may well throw caution to the wind. Speaking of which, wind speed and direction must also be considered, along with overall and “feels like” temperatures. For the cherry on top, I’ll compare notes with a loved one’s app if they use a different one, quietly mistrusting theirs, and simmering in silent rage if theirs wins.
I’ll admit, though, that my compulsion to check my app (I long ago chose WeatherPro, which I knew nothing about, but liked its layout and name) is borderline neurotic; I fret over probabilities and outfit appropriateness, when I could simply step outside for real-time hyper-local accuracy. I can lose procrastinatory hours consulting long-range forecasts, or checking the weather in Melbourne (where my sister lives) and holiday destinations I have no immediate plans to visit.
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Jay Morris denies experts’ claims that he violated ethics rules over land deals near the site of Meta’s Hyperion datacenter
This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action
For more than two years, John “Jay” Morris, a Louisiana state senator, helped pave the way for Meta to build one of the world’s largest datacenters, called Hyperion, in Richland Parish.
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The state saw 33 tornadoes last year and severe flooding as researchers say links to climate change are undeniable
The tornado hit west Ann Arbor at 1.45am on 15 April, passing through Veterans Memorial park, where it knocked several mature oak trees and ripped up baseball field fences before setting its sights on a local ice rink.
“It came up through the parking lot and, in that time, the pressure differential between the tornado and the air inside the rink collapsed the wall,” said Scott Spooner, a manager at Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation.
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