Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Sadiq Khan’s heat-ready plan for London is a sensible strategy for adaptation that should provide a roadmap for other cities “Our ability to trust that our homes will keep us safe from the outside is under threat,” the geographer Sam Johnson-Schlee writes in Hot House, his recent book on how heat has transformed domestic life. This summer, high temperatures have become inescapable. People have coped with makeshift solutions: keeping curtains drawn, placing foil over windows or – for those who can afford one – plugging in an air-conditioning unit. Planning experts warn that, with only about half of councils requiring new buildings to include cooling strategies, many homes will become “death traps” as temperatures rise. Britain’s homes weren’t built to cope with this. The country’s historically mild climate allowed developers to build houses without insulation, while industrialisation supplied plentiful coal to burn when temperatures dropped. Many homes are consequently drafty in winter and sweltering in summer. Unlike those in Mediterranean climates, British homes lack shutters and shaded communal spaces. While Ildefons Cerdà, Barcelona’s masterplanner, was designing housing blocks with cool courtyards and chamfered edges to allow breezes to flow, Britain’s Victorian builders were throwing up rows of terrace houses – many without cross-ventilation – and giving little thought to the movement of the sun. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Some parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normal, with air temperatures above 44C expected in Spain Brutal heat torching southern Europe has forced nearly 20,000 people to flee wildfires in France as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that “Dantesque” scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen. A “particularly intense” wildfire on France’s southwestern Atlantic coast prompted the evacuation of more than 18,800 people, including thousands of tourists from campsites and holiday homes, as firefighters struggled to control the blaze. Continue reading...

In Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve local people are making a living from trees at the same time as increasing forest cover, showing nature is best protected by those who depend on it The low rumbling grows louder until a huge harvester crashes into the open, dragging a 15-metre trunk of mahogany in its wake. The tractor manoeuvres before releasing its load and shovelling it like a matchstick on to a growing pile of lumber at the edge of the clearing. Then, with a crunch of gears and a belch of diesel, it turns and lurches back into the forest. This is sustainable forestry at its most brutal, yet in a few weeks’ time silence will return to this pocket of tropical forest in Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve (MBR). Nature will be left to reclaim the land and chainsaws won’t return for at least four years, as part of a strict management plan that is helping to buck the trend of rampant deforestation. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Analysis of NHS England data reveals stark impact of air pollution in deprived areas Children living in the poorest areas across England are 40% more likely to be admitted to hospital for respiratory infections, an analysis of NHS England data shows, with experts raising the alarm on the impact of air pollution on young people’s health. The analysis, based on data obtained via freedom of information requests by the charity Impact on Urban Health, revealed 1,941 out of every 100,000 children living in the most deprived fifth of England were admitted to hospital for respiratory illnesses in 2024-25. Continue reading...