Climate phenomenon cools surface of Pacific but won’t stop human-induced climate change increasing temperatures and exacerbating extreme weather
The cooling La Niña weather phenomenon may return between September and November, but even if it does, global temperatures are expected to be above average, the United Nations has said.
La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that cools surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It brings changes in winds, pressure and rainfall patterns.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/02/2025 - 03:08
09/02/2025 - 02:48
Heysham 1 in Lancashire and Hartlepool in Teesside to continue operating until March 2028
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The lifespan of two UK nuclear power stations that power more than 4m homes a year has been extended by France’s EDF and the British Gas owner Centrica.
Heysham 1 in Lancashire and Hartlepool in Teesside will continue generating until March 2028, a year longer than planned.
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09/02/2025 - 00:16
First observed in Sydney in 1860, the ‘magical’ phenomenon has become more common in Australia’s warming waters since the 1990s
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Beachgoers in Melbourne have been treated to the “cosmic and magical” sight of bioluminescent algae off St Kilda beach this week.
Richard Pensak, a marine biologist at local environment group Earthcare St Kilda, spotted the bright pink-coloured cloud in the water on Sunday, and immediately knew what it was.
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09/01/2025 - 21:00
In the last continent to remain untouched by the virus, hopes are being pinned on immunisation as migration season approaches
It is easy to imagine how it could happen. A petrel, flying east from the Indian Ocean at the end of the Austral winter, makes landfall at New Zealand’s southern Codfish Island/Whenua Hou. Tired from its long journey, the petrel seeks refuge in the burrow of a green kākāpō: a critically endangered flightless species that is the world’s fattest parrot.
If the seabird intrudes when the kākāpō is primed to breed, the male parrot may attempt to mate with the smaller petrel, accidentally smothering it in the process.
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09/01/2025 - 10:07
Pedro Sánchez says country’s deadly August wildfires show society needs to mobilise and take immediate action
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: “If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener.”
Sánchez said August’s heatwave-fuelled wildfires – which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza and required “the biggest human and technical deployment” ever seen in Spain – showed that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.
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09/01/2025 - 10:05
Unprecedented average temperature made about 70 times more likely by human-induced climate change, says agency
The UK has had its hottest summer on record, the Met Office has said, after the country faced four heatwaves in a single season.
The mean temperature for meteorological summer, which encompasses the months of June, July and August, was 16.1C (60.98F), which is significantly above the current record of 15.76C set in 2018.
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09/01/2025 - 06:49
Conservationists hope that in 15 years species will no longer be at risk of extinction in Mexico – but challenges remain
In 2010, Gerardo Ceballos and a group of other researchers set out to answer a burning question: how many jaguars were there in Mexico? They knew there weren’t many. Hunting, loss of habitat, conflict with cattle ranchers and other issues had pushed the population to the brink of extinction.
Ceballos and his team from the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation (ANCJ) thought there were maybe 1,000 jaguars across the country. They decided to carry out the country’s first census of the animal to find out exactly how many there were. They found 4,100.
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09/01/2025 - 04:00
Most of these little-known but already endangered fish have never been seen alive in their natural habitat, but are under threat from bottom trawling and deep-sea mining
Three years ago I was running a research project from a bottom trawler off Namibia about deep-sea sharks – all of which live under enormous water pressure, close to the seafloor and are rarely seen by humans.
These sharks were being brought up in the trawler’s nets. By the time they were brought to the surface, they had experienced such a dramatic change in pressure that they had undergone barotrauma, so they were internally damaged and unlikely to survive.
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09/01/2025 - 02:00
Frontrunner Zack Polanski has dismissed claims of a ‘hostile takeover’ but contest has been unusually fractious
The Green party will name its next leader on Tuesday after a fiercely fought leadership contest that has exposed tensions over tone, strategy and the party’s ambitions on the national stage.
The frontrunner, Zack Polanski, has pitched himself as a bold communicator able to turn rising support into a mass movement. He is facing the joint candidates Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay, two impactful Green MPs elected last year who are seen as offering a steadier, more targeted route to growth.
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09/01/2025 - 01:00
Weather services of UK, Ireland and Netherlands chose list of 21 names from 50,000 suggestions by the public
Meteorologists in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands have announced this year’s north Atlantic winter storm names, chosen after 50,000 suggestions were submitted by the public.
Amy, Bram and Chandra will be the first named storms of winter 2025-2026, the Met Office said on Monday.
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