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Natural climate variation is most likely reason as global heating due to fossil fuel burning has continued
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic has slowed dramatically in the past 20 years, scientists have reported, with no statistically significant decline in its extent since 2005.
The finding is surprising, the researchers say, given that carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to rise and trap ever more heat over that time.
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Only 28 countries have submitted carbon-cutting proposals to the UN, with some of the biggest emitters yet to produce plans
Brazil has issued an urgent call for all countries to come forward with strengthened national plans on the climate, in a last-ditch attempt to meet a key September deadline.
Only 28 countries have so far submitted carbon-cutting proposals to the UN, with some of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases – including China and the EU – still to produce their plans.
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With the number of very hot days rising as well as average temperatures, more and more animals are vulnerable. But while some species can adapt, others are seeing huge population declines
The residents of Tecolutilla, Mexico, knew the heatwave was bad when they heard the thuds. One by one, the town’s howler monkeys, overcome with dehydration and exhaustion, were falling from the trees like apples, their limp bodies smacking the ground as temperatures sizzled past 43C (110F) in spring last year.
Those that survived were given ice and intravenous drips by rescuers. At least 83 of the primates were found dead in the state of Tabasco, though local veterinarians estimated hundreds throughout the region probably perished.
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Research shows steep increases over past 30 years, after summer of strandings across Europe
The number of marine mammals stranded in Scotland has risen dramatically in the past 30 years, a study has found.
From 1992 to 2022, 5,147 cetaceans died on Scottish shores, and a new paper shows steep increases in the rate of strandings of up to 800% in some species, continuing exponentially every year.
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Hot summer also causing trees to shed their leaves as concerns raised over ‘food gap’ for wildlife in autumn
Autumn is the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, according to the poet John Keats – but anyone hoping for a glut of blackberries this September may be sorely disappointed.
In many parts of the UK brambles have been bursting with fruit since mid-summer, with some now bearing only shrivelled berries. And it is not the only hallmark of autumn that appears to have come early: trees are dropping their leaves, apples are ripe and acorns are hitting the ground.
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Triggerplants in particular live up to their name with a rapid response when touch-sensitive stamen are nudged
Flowers are surprisingly touchy, especially their male parts, the stamens, with hundreds of plant species performing touch-sensitive stamen movements that can be endlessly repeated. Insects visiting Berberis and Mahonia flowers to feed on nectar get slapped by stamens that bend over and smother pollen on to the insect’s face or tongue. This unwelcome intrusion scares the insect into making only a short visit, so the flower avoids wasting its nectar and pollen. The insect then finds another flower where it brushes the pollen off on receptive female organs and cross-pollinates the flower.
An insect landing on the flowers of the orchid Catasetum gets a violent reception – whacked by a pair of sticky pollen bags shooting out at such great speed the insect gets knocked out of the flower with the pollen bags glued to its body.
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The scourges of picnics have arrived early and in greater numbers amid ideal conditions for colonies to thrive
If dodging swooping gulls trying to steal your chips wasn’t already enough, you might be spending your bank holiday trying to keep wasps away from your ice cream too.
Britain is in the middle of a wasp boom. Not only have they arrived earlier than expected, but there are more of them than in recent summers. Experts say 2025 is an excellent year for them.
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Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying
Daniel Rothman works on the top floor of the building that houses the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, a big concrete domino that overlooks the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rothman is a mathematician interested in the behaviour of complex systems, and in the Earth he has found a worthy subject. Specifically, Rothman studies the behaviour of the planet’s carbon cycle deep in the Earth’s past, especially in those rare times it was pushed over a threshold and spun out of control, regaining its equilibrium only after hundreds of thousands of years. Seeing as it’s all carbon-based life here on Earth, these extreme disruptions to the carbon cycle express themselves as, and are better known as, “mass extinctions”.
Worryingly, in the past few decades geologists have discovered that many, if not most, of the mass extinctions of Earth history – including the very worst ever by far – were caused not by asteroids as they had expected, but by continent-spanning volcanic eruptions that injected catastrophic amounts of CO2 into the air and oceans.
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After three years of negotiating, talks over a global plastics treaty came to an end in Geneva last week with no agreement in place. So why has it been so difficult to get countries to agree to cut plastic production? Madeleine Finlay hears from Karen McVeigh, a senior reporter for Guardian Seascapes, about a particularly damaging form of plastic pollution causing devastation off the coast of Kerala, and where we go now that countries have failed to reach a deal
Clips: Fox News, BBC, 7News Australia, France 24, DW News, CNA
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Herring gulls have learned the easiest meal comes from robbing humans rather than at sea
In a flurry of wings, the predator was off with its prize: a steaming pasty snatched from the hands of a day tripper from Birmingham. “What do you want me to do about it?” her unsympathetic husband said. “I can’t fly.”
Such a scene has become an almost daily spectacle on the Scarborough seafront, said Amy Watson, a supervisor at the Fishpan restaurant, where hungry herring gulls lurk for their quarry.
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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
