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Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards north pole
Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average on Sunday, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.
Temperatures north of Svalbard in Norway had already risen to 18C hotter than the 1991–2020 average on Saturday, according to models from weather agencies in Europe and the US, with actual temperatures close to ice’s melting point of 0C. By Sunday, the temperature anomaly had risen to more than 20C.
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Research looking at tissue from postmortems between 1997 and 2024 finds upward trend in contamination
The exponential rise in microplastic pollution over the past 50 years may be reflected in increasing contamination in human brains, according to a new study.
It found a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024. The researchers also found the tiny particles in liver and kidney samples.
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Mountaineers now scaling more peaks for first global study of nanoplastics, which can enter lungs and bloodstream
Particles from vehicle tyre wear are the biggest source of nanoplastic pollution in the high Alps, a pioneering project has revealed.
Expert mountaineers teamed up with scientists to collect contamination-free samples and are now scaling peaks to produce the first global assessment of nanoplastics, which are easily carried around the world by winds.
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Open-net farms to continue despite numbers of wild fish halving as minister looks for ‘acceptable’ pollution levels
Norway’s environment minister has ruled out a ban on open-net fish farming at sea despite acknowledging that the wild North Atlantic salmon is under “existential threat”.
With yearly exports of 1.2m tonnes, Norway is the largest producer of farmed salmon in the world. But its wild salmon population has fallen from more than a million in the early 1980s to about 500,000 today.
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As commercial monocultures increase, ecologists are calling for the remaining splinters of native woodland to be identified, protected - and expanded
- Photographs by Rob Stothard
“This could almost be part of Lapland, up here,” says retired researcher John Spence, approaching a clearing in the Correl Glen nature reserve in Fermanagh, near Northern Ireland’s land border with the county of Leitrim. “You could make a Nordic movie here and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Spence pauses to point out oak, hazel, birch, ash and alder trees, along with a series of rare “filmy” ferns, wild strawberry bushes and honeysuckle. There are well over 100 species of lichen in this small patch of temperate rainforest alone.
A path leads towards a sitka spruce forest in Glenboy, near Manorhamilton, in Leitrim
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Newbury, Berkshire: From tracks in the snow to musky scent markings to vixens screaming in the night, it is hard to ignore fox mating season
The sensory presence of foxes is woven through my days and nights lately – sightings, sound, smells, evidence. It is the mating season and, being largely solitary creatures, they are advertising their presence to one another in a manner hard to ignore; in a way that carries across dark, silent miles or cuts through the fumes of urban traffic. Foxy scent markings – musky notes of singed fur, sandalwood, spice and hawthorn flowers – bring me up sharp at a hole in a hedge, by a gatepost or anywhere down the lane.
In snow, or in the creamy chalk soil that has washed out of gateways in recent storms, tracks give away encounters. Paw prints, narrower than a dog’s, that you can draw a kiss through without touching the pads, track slightly sideways, printing a straight, tacking running stitch across the land. Occasionally, tracks cross and run alongside one another for a while, or pool in a coming together.
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Many homes are seriously damaged after torrential rain but residents know it could have been much worse and that they were ‘pretty lucky’
Like anyone who has grown up and spent their life in the wet tropics of far north Queensland, Sonia Pollock is used to a bit of precipitation.
“So we just thought it was rain at first,” she says of the torrential downpour around her flat in south-west Townsville.
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Antamina, in the Andes, makes billions thanks to the green tech boom. But locals say they are being poisoned by arsenic, losing their water and sinking further into poverty
A chilly breeze passes along the shore of Lake Contonga, 4,400 metres up in the Peruvian Andes. Julio Rimac Damian, from the nearby village of Challhuayaco, points to the mud under his feet. “All this used to be covered with water,” he says.
A canal running from the lake that is supposed to carry water to lowland villages has also run dry. Damian says the water began to disappear two years ago when a mining company started exploratory drilling in Peru’s highlands.
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CJ Taylor was pushing back a fire front when a wind change almost killed him. A new exhibition aims to recreate a flashover – and disturb the public into action
The roar of an advancing bushfire, for those who have heard it, is often described as being as loud as an aircraft or an approaching freight train. “But my recollection was the opposite,” says volunteer firefighter and visual artist CJ Taylor, of the moment a fire burned over him. “Everything went quiet.”
It was November 2019, and Taylor and a group of fellow South Australian Country Fire Service volunteers had been deployed to north-eastern New South Wales, near the Guy Fawkes River national park. They were trying to push back a fire front but a sudden wind change meant it was gaining ground too quickly.
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Critics say Trump is using every presidential power possible against clean power in sharp turn after Biden investments created jobs
For several years, Republicans accused Joe Biden of waging a “war on energy” even as the Untied States drilled more oil and gas than at any time in its history. Now, a more tangible assault is gathering pace under Donald Trump – aimed squarely at wind, solar and other cleaner forms of power.
In the first two weeks of his return as president, Trump has, like his first term, issued orders to open up more American land and waters for fossil fuel extraction and started the process to yank the US from the Paris climate agreement. “We will drill, baby drill,” said Trump, who has promised to cut energy and electricity prices in half within 18 months.
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