Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Temperature swings have left crops across the Plains in terrible conditions, with some farmers opting not to harvest Merrill Nielsen’s wheat crop looked healthy after he planted it in the fall on his 2,500-acre farm in north-central Kansas, about 50 miles west of Salina, the plants benefiting from higher-than-normal November rainfall. But an abnormally warm and dry winter, followed by extreme temperature variability, stressed the developing wheat. In the winter-to-spring transition, temperatures fluctuated from 70 to 80F on some days and lows in the teens or low 20s on other days. Continue reading...

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Water minister Rose Jackson calls drying in Gwydir region ‘devastating’ as bill passes upper house Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Water flows to parched New South Wales wetlands where an urgent rescue mission to save dying wildlife unfolded are a step closer to resuming after legislation passed the state parliament’s upper house. The water minister, Rose Jackson, told the parliament on Thursday night the impact of a halt to environmental flows in the internationally significant Gwydir region had been “devastating” as she introduced legislative amendments she said would allow flows to resume. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

There will still be a need to have gas in the wings to keep the lights on, so the financials stack up on Severn plant purchase The eye-catching non-Hormuz news in energy-land last month was that Great Britain is set for a record-breaking summer for wind and solar power generation. The national energy system operator even thought there could be periods – a sunny weekend or a bank holiday afternoon of low demand, for example – when more renewable power would be available than the electricity grid needed. So, on the face of it, it is an odd moment for Centrica, the owner of British Gas, to fork out £370m to buy a 16-year-old combined-cycle gas turbine plant in south Wales. After all, the government’s clean power plan imagines that, come 2030, Great Britain’s entire fleet of gas plants will be used to generate only 5% of its electricity, down from 31.5% in 2025. Continue reading...