Hundred-and-fifty-year-old Wych elm in Newcastle, Co Down has grown sideways owing to strong winds
The “astonishing and bizarre” Bendy Tree in Northern Ireland has been crowned the winner of this year’s tree of the year competition.
The wych elm tree, located in Newcastle, County Down, owes its name to its near horizontal trunk, which has grown sideways owing to the strong seaside winds coming off the Irish Sea.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/07/2026 - 18:01
10/07/2026 - 18:01
Recovery of tigers, tuna and green sea turtles show nature loss can be reversed when action taken, charity says
Conservation comebacks for wild tigers, tuna and green sea turtles prove that global nature loss can be reversed, scientists have said. But a report warns food production must be the next “positive tipping point” if the world is to avert biodiversity collapse.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) analysed nearly 36,000 animal populations and more than 5,000 species, producing the largest ever database of vertebrate wildlife. Scientists found populations had declined by an average of 73% since 1970, showing that “nature continues to be degraded at an alarming scale”, with “no sign of losses slowing”.
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10/07/2026 - 10:40
This year’s harvest expected to be down 2% on mediocre yield in 2025, when production was lowest in nearly 70 years
France’s wine industry is facing a historic low harvest after the country was hit by a series of summer heatwaves.
At about 35m hectolitres, the total harvest would be down 2% on a mediocre 2025 yield and 14% below the 2021-2025 average, according to estimates published on Wednesday by the ministry of agriculture.
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10/07/2026 - 10:00
Chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island in Antarctica down by two-thirds since 2011, probably due to climate crisis
The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed.
Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse.
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10/07/2026 - 09:30
A mix of natural disasters could all befall the state at once as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the climate phenomenon
On a cloudless autumn afternoon, sunlight sparkled on the water that had quietly swallowed a busy intersection to the north of San Francisco, as the surrounding rush-hour traffic slowed to a painful crawl.
There were no crashing waves or storm surges to blame for the flood. Marin county was one of many areas up and down the California coast affected by high tides last week, as parts of the Pacific swelled with excess warmth.
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10/07/2026 - 09:14
Pennon slashes dividend and launches £550m cash call ‘to drive improved outcomes for customers and communities’
Burnham, take note: water shareholders have their uses
The owner of embattled South West Water has slashed its dividend and launched a cash call to investors as it attempts to fund infrastructure investment, days after it was hit by a record £7.9m fine for hundreds of sewage spills.
London-listed Pennon said on Wednesday it would tap investors for £550m, as part of a £1bn investment “to drive improved outcomes for customers and communities”.
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10/07/2026 - 07:03
Inquest under way into why President Lula’s success in curbing Amazon deforestation has not led to success at polls
More fire, more ash, more crime, more death. And a globally important ecosystem driven ever more rapidly towards a point of no return. That is the prospect for the Amazon rainforest for at least the next four years if Flávio Bolsonaro holds on to the lead he established this week in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.
This appears to be of far more concern to the outside world than to voters in Latin America’s biggest, richest and most biodiverse nation.
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10/07/2026 - 06:00
A farm labor contractor exposed laborers on H-2A agricultural visas to heat-related health hazards, but is still bringing hundreds of migrant farm workers to North Carolina
It was 4pm and 90F (32C) when Carlos Vargas Moreno and other farm workers set out to weed a watermelon field in Goldsboro, North Carolina, on 19 July 2022.
The work day had begun at 7am and included two 15-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch eaten outdoors. The heat index – what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature – was 98.3F. It was the kind of day that a heat safety app created by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh) defined as “hazardous” for outdoor workers.
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10/07/2026 - 06:00
As well as books, the new facility in Colorado offers hundreds of kits to connect people with the natural world. We asked five of the first visitors what they thought of it
Mark Fink knows exactly why he opened the first public nature library in the US. “There are a lot of barriers for people to access nature here. We want people to learn about the birds and the plants in their own back yard and to appreciate that you don’t need a three-day camping trip in the mountains to experience nature.”
The library offers people in Colorado’s Adams county the opportunity to borrow books and equipment to help them to engage with the natural world – for free.
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10/07/2026 - 03:52
Guardian reporters Jonathan Watts and Gabrielle Canon answered your question climate and extreme weather, from what to expect this winter in the UK to the increasing risk of natural disasters
funkymentalist asks: Unrelated to El Niño, what is the likelihood of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) shutting down?
Jon says: I don’t think these two things are unrelated. Everything is affected by climate breakdown. And both El Niño and the slowdown of AMOC are related to the staggeringly huge amounts (see this article on zettajoules which I also referred to above) of extra energy that the oceans are being forced to absorb as a result of greenhouse gas burning.
Quick refresher for any readers who are unfamiliar with this topic: “Amoc, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics.”
Gaby says: The name “El Niño” actually harkens back to long before forecasters used the phenomenon to track global weather patterns. Fishermen off the coast of South America began to track unusually warm water that would show up every few years right around Christmas - thus “The Little Boy” referring to the Christ child in Spanish. Scientists adopted the name, and added “La Niña” as its counterpart (when sea surface temperatures cool), and together they became ENSO - the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This year, though, feel free to call it “El Monstruo Gordo!” It’s going to be a big one.
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