Author: staff

A cocktail of extreme weather events is turning California’s wildfires into a deadly urban conflagration. Southern California is experiencing its most devastating winter fires in more than four decades. Fires don’t usually blaze at this time of year, but specific ingredients have come together to defy the calendar in a fast and deadly manner.Behind many of them lies human-induced climate change. Scientists have calculated that global warming has contributed to a 172 per cent increase in areas torched by wildfires in California since the 1970s, with a further spread expected in the coming decades.What is causing winter wildfires in California?A…

A keen trail runner discovers a new high in the French Alps: running at night on dark snowy mountains. With music blaring, I was surrounded by hundreds of people excitedly jumping up and down, waving their hands in the air. You might be picturing a packed nightclub or a sweaty music festival but no: it was 6pm on a mid-January night. Temperatures hovering around minus four celsius, stars blinking in the inky sky and the snow beneath my feet crisp and white.I was waiting, along with 500 other runners, at the start line of the inaugural Trails des Gets Hiver,…

Experts say the world is now ‘teetering on the edge’ of passing the crucial 1.5°C warming limit. 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first calendar year where the global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).Scientists had suspected 2024 would clinch the record and now it has been confirmed.Each of the last 10 years – from 2015 to 2024 – was one of the 10 warmest on record, according to the EU climate monitoring service. Its 2024 Global Climate Highlights report outlines the exceptional conditions the world experienced last year.…

Most species don’t have just one threat putting them at risk of extinction, but many threats acting together. Nearly a quarter of animals living in rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources are threatened with extinction, according to new research.“Huge rivers like the Amazon can appear mighty, but at the same time freshwater environments are very fragile,” said study co-author Patricia Charvet, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Ceará.Freshwater habitats – including rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and wetlands – cover less than 1 per cent of the planet’s surface, but support 10 per cent of its animal species, said…

Yeast and white rot fungus could have a small but ingenious role to play in the energy transition. Fungi could be used to power batteries in remote regions thanks to a new breakthrough by Swiss researchers.Their fungal battery invention is 3D-printed – with fungal cells mixed into the printing ink – and has the unique advantage of being biodegradable. Once it’s served its purpose, the battery digests itself from the inside.It adds to the growing body of research using fungi – a vast and “under-utilised” kingdom of life – to make everything from our clothes and homes, to meat alternatives. Here’s…

More than 700,000 cups were returned here last year. Could deposit machines be coming to more of Europe’s streets? I slide the thick white plastic cup with its blue lid into the hole, and continue to follow the instructions written on the deposit machine.Placing my credit card on the designated card area, a tingle tells me that in a few moments, five Danish crowns (around 70 euro cents) will be returned to my bank account.In January 2024, the Danish city of Aarhus launched a three-year trial project to curb the number of disposable coffee cups. Instead of chucking them away,…

Katowice hopes to serve as an example to other industrial cities wanting to move away from fossil fuels. Katowice, once the heartland of Poland’s huge coal industry, has joined a group pushing to accelerate the phase-out of coal power in favour of green energy. It is the country’s first major city to join the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) and Katowice hopes it can serve as an example for others wanting to move away from fossil fuels. By joining the alliance, the city has committed to phase out coal-fired power generation. To ensure this transition is just, it will need the cooperation…

British growers have been surprised to find their crops coming up early, after a mild autumn and winter. UK shoppers may find broccoli, cauliflower and other brassicas harder to come by this spring due to multiple impacts of climate change.Growers say that an unusually mild autumn and winter have caused the crops to flower early, meaning there will be fewer to go around during the country’s so-called “hungry gap” from April to June, when very few home-grown crops are ready to eat. This is compounded by vegetable shortages from the rest of Europe, after climate-fuelled floods hit many key growing areas…

The UAE is lending technology and expertise for the project. Italy, Albania and the United Arab Emirates signed a three-way clean energy cooperation deal on Wednesday.It calls for the Gulf country’s expertise to be put to use in Albania to produce solar, wind and other renewable energy, some of which would then be transferred to Italy via an underwater cable across the Adriatic Sea. Albania has been working to increase its renewable energy capacity, upping generation by around 500 MW in the last two years. The deal will strengthen existing power connections which stretch “430km along the Adriatic seabed, linking…

As Donald Trump prepares to become the 47th president of the United States, what will his first actions be on climate and energy, and how will they impact the rest of the world? With days to go until America’s 47th president is sworn in, the world is holding its breath, waiting to see what happens first.On climate and environmental matters, the outlook appears fairly bleak. Donald Trump first entered the White House in 2017 determined to break down many climate change policies installed during the Obama administration. But that was just the start. The 45th President slashed a lot of what he…