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Increased heat will supercharge extreme weather events, warns UN agency as Cop31 climate summit begins
Heat is accumulating in Earth’s systems at an accelerating rate, the UN’s weather agency has reported as the Cop31 climate change summit begins in Turkey, with 2026 on track to be one of the four warmest years on record.
The imbalance between incoming energy from the sun and energy leaving Earth reached its highest level since monitoring began, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its State of the Global Climate update.
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Exclusive: Louise Haigh likely to weaken mandate for sales that forms key part of emission reduction plan
Ministers are expected to make steep cuts to the government’s electric vehicle (EV) targets this week, in a move that will relieve carmakers but alarm many Labour MPs who are worried about the government’s commitment to the green agenda.
Louise Haigh, the de facto deputy prime minister, will finalise the plan after a crunch meeting in Downing Street on Wednesday to settle a long-running dispute between the transport, energy and business departments.
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Neso issues ‘electricity margin notice’ for gas power plants on Britain to fire up and boost generation this morning amid energy shortfall
The government body tasked with keeping the lights on has issued a rare call for more electricity supplies this morning due to low wind power generation forecasts across Europe on Monday.
A notice issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) on Sunday night said it faced a “shortfall” of almost 1,400 megawatts in its electricity supply margins from 6am until 11am on Monday.
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Hexham, Northumberland: Revelations aplenty as we embark on a spider hunt with a man called Fran who knows his arachnids
We gathered at the bandstand, an elegant Edwardian building in the abbey grounds, all slender ironwork and tented top. Fran Garcia was leading a spider walk and our group of 10 included two children, one of them my granddaughter. Fran is a member of the British Arachnological Society and communicates knowledge with lively humour.
As an introduction to spiders he explained their anatomy and web building using a bizarre range of items: wire and ropes of varying thicknesses, a bottle of glue, a folding knife to demonstrate tarantula jaws. Then Fran passed around an egg sac from a wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, a species found in southern England but moving north. Teardrop-shaped and papery, it was subtly marked in grey and beige to blend with grasses.
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Ineos is driving exports with potentially far-reaching environmental and social repercussions
“My children started getting sick,” says Lois Bower-Bjornson,a campaigner at the Clean Air Council in Washington County, Pennsylvania.
“My oldest son had rashes all over his body. His ears, his eyelids, everywhere. My youngest had terrible nosebleeds, it was so bad that he became anaemic and would almost pass out. He would wake up bleeding.”
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Delegates from more than 190 countries are gathering in Turkey for climate talks, but the US will be absent
As the planet faces unprecedented human-caused global heating, heads of government are meeting for the next fortnight for the latest round of climate talks. We ask why it matters and what is likely to be achieved.
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Naturalists divided over potential impact of proposals to increase number of wild raptors in England and Wales
White-tailed eagles reintroduced into England and Wales imperil endangered seabird populations and risk wiping out some colonies, ecologists and conservationists are warning.
Puffins, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and kittiwakes are among the birds for which breeding populations could collapse if large numbers of white-tailed eagles are released, according to some academics and conservationists.
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Jeff Lee had spent decades as an investigative journalist. But when he upped sticks with his wife to buy a farm in rural British Columbia, he didn’t just change jobs – he found a different way to live
Jeff Lee became interested in beekeeping in his late 50s after his wife, Amanda, took part in a “beard of bees” event at Science World’s “science of fear” exhibition in Vancouver, Canada, where they lived. She stepped into a Perspex booth, a caged queen bee was placed beneath her chin and thousands of bees climbed her neck – hence the “beard”. She was so calm that the stallholder was impressed. “You should keep bees,” he said.
Lee had a small collection of books on the insects – “the idea of homesteading and having something of an independent life, rather than a rat-race life, always appealed to me” – and the pair enrolled on a beekeeping course. Before long, they had put two hives in their back yard. Fast-forward to 60 and he and Amanda had moved 300 miles east to rural British Columbia to buy a bee farm. For Lee’s part, however, he didn’t just acquire a business. The bees taught him a completely different way to live.
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US government will have no official presence at UN’s annual climate summit, this year’s Cop31 held in Antalya, Turkey
The US will be absent from key UN climate talks that start on Monday, a further sign of Donald Trump’s scornful dismissal of the climate crisis. But Democrats’ crushing win in the US midterm elections has delivered a timely shot of optimism to countries now looking beyond the Trump era of climate obstruction.
For the second year in a row, there will be no official US government presence at the annual climate summit, this year known as Cop31 and held in Antalya, Turkey. While almost every other country in the world sends delegations to the talks, Trump has derided the climate crisis as a “hoax” and “bullshit” and triggered the withdrawal of the US from the entire international climate framework.
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Mother tells of desperate efforts to keep her five-month-old son healthy as residents of Palangkaraya flock to clean-air ‘safe houses’ to escape toxic haze
Every day in Palangkaraya starts with an air quality check. For people who can afford one, a handheld device can test the air for toxic particles floating into their lungs. For others, a look out the window will reveal skies turned orange with smoke.
But for those closest to the fires ravaging this part of Indonesia, the check is done before they even open their eyes, with the acrid smell and the hacking cough that comes as they wake.
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