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The injection of thermal energy comes amid an increasing rise in sea levels and continuing acidification
A record-breaking 23 zettajoules of heat was sunk into the world’s seas last year, leaving ocean waters hotter, higher and less hospitable, a report has found.
The explosive addition of thermal energy, which was almost 40 times greater than all the energy humanity used that year, comes amid far-reaching changes to the deep water bodies fundamental to life on Earth.
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Exclusive: Environment secretary Angela Eagle to make pledge as part of efforts to protect against extreme weather
Half a million trees will be planted across England in the next three years to protect against extreme weather, the environment secretary, Angela Eagle, will pledge on Wednesday morning.
Mayors, local authorities, charities and grassroots groups will be given new funding and responsibilities for restoring natural landscapes such as wetlands, river edges and meadows, which can provide natural flood management and reduce the damage done by droughts.
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Insects provide protection, sanitation and even shelter to vertebrates, making them a priority for conservation efforts
For many vertebrates, insects are more than a food source. As “little things that run the world”, insects provide critical functions such as protection, sanitation and shelter across ecosystems, according to a new study.
The study, published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity on Wednesday, sheds light on the various ways insects support vertebrates, ranging from birds and bats to reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
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Camborne, Cornwall: There will be more storms like Goretti and more fires next summer, but we can make the landscape more resilient
A grey wagtail flits at the stream’s edge, its flaxen underbelly matching the woodland’s autumn swatch. A few months ago, this bird may have struggled to catch a midge or water snail here, after the streambed nearly ran dry. Sitting by the water now, it’s easy to forget the damage this area suffered this year. But the land remembers.
Many months on from Storm Goretti, the entrance to these woods is still a battlefield of fallen trees, Scots pines and ageing oaks torn ungainly from the ground. Just over a mile away, a gorse break is still scarred from a late-summer wildfire that blackened the coastline. I stopped by the other day; the western gorse should have been blooming, delicate coconut notes luring in late pollinators. Instead, their petrified remains jutted lifelessly out towards the sea.
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National Trust says latest figures encouraging – with numbers of birds on the rise – but work still to be done
England’s most important tern colonies are showing signs of recovery after being hit by years of bird flu, flooding and increasingly unpredictable weather, new figures from the National Trust reveal.
The trust reported record numbers of little terns at Long Nanny in Northumberland, one of the UK’s most important breeding sites for what is the country’s second-rarest breeding seabird.
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District judge orders record fine for region and says incidents of pollution cannot be tolerated
A water company has been ordered to pay a record fine of almost £8m for hundreds of sewage spillsat popular bathing spots and sensitive habitats in Cornwall and Devon.
On one occasion, untreated sewage gushed through a harbour wall on a bank holiday weekend but South West Water (SWW) engineers took 10 hours to attend.
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Food and Agriculture Organization urges governments to make forest restoration a national priority
The world faces a “narrowing window” to restore forests essential for food security and resistance to the climate emergency, a United Nations report has warned.
More than 489m hectares (1.2bn acres) of forests have been cleared since 1990, while an even greater area is degraded, the world body said in a call for governments to make forest restoration a national priority.
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Fish and shellfish populations were falling rapidly as scallop dredgers devastated the seabed, but local activists and small-scale fishers battled hard to protect their coastline
Inside a bothy overlooking the Summer Isles, in the north-west of Scotland, the lilting tones of a traditional Gaelic duo fill a room full of musicians, storytellers, artists, local people and revellers, hung with fish-shaped lanterns and “Happy Birthday” signs.
It’s no ordinary birthday. The people in the small cabin have come together, on a windy night in Achiltibuie, a string of coastal hamlets and villages north of Ullapool, to celebrate an important milestone in the community’s history: a hard-won battle to protect their waters from the ravages of scallop dredging.
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More species are squeezing in an extra generation before colder weather arrives
Summer is over, most flowers were frazzled long ago and we might expect to see few butterflies beyond September. But it is not over yet.
The reverberations from one of the best butterfly seasons in Britain this century will continue if there is more autumn sunshine.
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Kalpana Nepali was seven months pregnant when the flash floods hit last month, while Pooja Pariyal spent three days on a hospital roof waiting to be rescued. Now, they are living precariously in temporary shelters
For three days, Pooja Pariyal waited on the roof of Trishuli hospital with her three-month-old daughter, Ridhika. On the ground below and around the building, most of her town had been destroyed and churned into a sea of mud in the catastrophic flash floods that surged through the Himayalan border region of Nepal and Tibet in August.
“Those three days were living hell for me, with no food, no working toilet and no one to help with the baby,” she says. “I had nothing to clean my baby’s soiled clothes. My milk supply had reduced because I was hungry and this poor little thing would cry her lungs out.
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