Sacred site of the Arabana people could get its most significant top-up in a generation as floods spread across the outback
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A pulse of flood water has surged into Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in what could be the most significant top-up in a generation.
The sacred site of the Arabana people is home to rivers and creeks that drain towards the second largest salt lake in the world. Its surrounding basin sprawls across 1.2m sq km , or just under one-sixth of Australia’s landmass.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/08/2025 - 10:00
05/08/2025 - 07:00
With less than a month before the start of the 2025 hurricane season, residents are still recovering from catastrophic damage from the past two years
Idalia. Debby. Helene.
Not visiting friends, not neighbors. All hurricanes that have not yet faded into memory for the residents of Taylor county in Florida, where all three powerful storms hit in just two years.
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05/08/2025 - 04:06
Commoners say restrictive grazing may be raising risk of fires like one that scorched 500ha of moorland
The spot where the wildfire broke out could hardly have been worse. Cut Hill is one of the remotest and highest peaks on Dartmoor, miles from any road, a place of tussocky, ankle-turning terrain.
And the weeks of hot weather meant the molinia, the moorland grass, was as tinder dry as farmers can remember it at this time of year. Once it took hold, on Sunday, the fire raged.
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05/08/2025 - 04:01
The University of Queensland system is intended to give policymakers idea of how species traverse the oceans and what it will take to save them
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Off the east coast of Florida, female loggerhead turtles swim more than 1,000km north, hugging the edge of the continental shelf to get to feeding grounds.
Humpback whales move through Moreton Bay off the Brisbane coast in Australia, on their way to feed around the Balleny Islands more than 4,000km away off the Antarctic coastline, where wandering albatross circle above, travelling 1,000km a day.
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05/08/2025 - 02:00
Study finds human-caused climate change made four-day rainfall across central Mississippi valley 40% more likely
The four-day historic storm that caused death and destruction across the central Mississippi valley in early April was made significantly more likely and more severe by burning fossil fuels, rapid analysis by a coalition of leading climate scientists has found.
Record quantities of rain were dumped across eight southern and midwestern states between 3 and 6 April, causing widespread catastrophic flooding that killed at least 15 people, inundated crops, wrecked homes, swept away vehicles and caused power outages for hundreds of thousands of households.
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05/08/2025 - 00:59
Fossil fuel company retains chosen board members, with former Shell executive Ann Pickard re-elected at meeting interrupted by whistle-blowing activists
Australia news live: latest politics and federal election updates
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Woodside Energy has withstood a rebuke by shareholders of its climate plans by garnering sufficient support to retain its chosen board members and approve executive pay plans at a fiery annual general meeting on Thursday.
A diverse group of investors, including fund managers and governance organisations, opposed the re-election of high-profile Woodside director Ann Pickard, a former Shell executive who chairs the committee responsible for overseeing climate risk at the Perth-headquartered oil and gas company.
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05/07/2025 - 23:00
Fast and unplanned growth of cities providing ideal conditions for the creatures to thrive, say researchers
Scorpions are “taking over” Brazilian cities, researchers have warned in a paper that said rapid urbanisation and climate breakdown were driving an increase in the number of people being stung.
More than 1.1m stings were reported between 2014 and 2023, according to data from the Brazilian notifiable diseases information system. There was a 155% increase in reports of stings from 2014 to 2023, according to research published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.
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05/07/2025 - 21:53
Mount Augustus snail, among largest in world, can live for decades and eats slugs and earthworms
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A large rare carnivorous New Zealand snail has been filmed laying an egg from its neck for the first time, in a delightfully icky stroke of luck.
The department of conservation, which has been managing a captive population of Powelliphanta augusta, or the Mount Augustus snail, for almost two decades, was undertaking a routine weight check when a small, white egg started emerging from a snail’s neck.
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05/07/2025 - 18:07
New York Times reports Elon Musk’s Doge agency has created spreadsheet of federal grants earmarked for cuts
The Trump administration is reportedly eyeing dozens of grants across the National Park Service for termination, according to reporting from the New York Times, one of several moves destabilizing the US’s investment in public lands.
According to the newspaper, staff members at Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” have created a spreadsheet of federal grants earmarked for cuts, with total funding cuts amounting to some $26m.
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05/07/2025 - 14:10
Exposure to small particulate matter from fires contributes to thousands of annual deaths in US, according to study
Wildfires driven by the climate crisis contribute to as many as thousands of annual deaths and billions of dollars in economic costs from wildfire smoke in the United States, according to a new study.
The paper, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment, found that from 2006 to 2020, the climate crisis contributed to about 15,000 deaths from exposure to small particulate matter from wildfires and cost about $160bn. The annual range of deaths was 130 to 5,100, the study showed, with the highest in states such as Oregon and California.
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