Rain expected to ease but no respite from cold nights in New South Wales and Victoria until well into July, with just 1C forecast for Melbourne on Wednesday
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Many Australians will be weathering cold winter nights well into July before rising daytime temperatures bring averages up, after parts of the country’s east coast faced their coldest start to the season in decades.
Melbourne is forecast to record its coldest day yet this year on Wednesday, with residents expected to wake up to a brisk 1C morning, followed by a string of sub-4C overnight temperatures.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/01/2024 - 02:56
07/01/2024 - 00:00
Exclusive: Analysis of social media posts, including by candidates projected to win seats, finds multiple mentions of ‘hoaxes’ and ‘the Illuminati’
At least 30 Reform UK candidates have posted material or made statements that cast doubt on the validity of human-induced global heating, a Guardian analysis can reveal.
A suite of the party’s prospective parliamentary candidates have publicly cast doubt on the existence of the emission-caused climate crisis.
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07/01/2024 - 00:00
Rainfall is down 40% since 2003 and experts predict a third of Sicily will be desert by 2030
Every morning, as soon as he wakes up, Luca Cammarata looks to the sky in the hope that some clouds on the horizon will bring a few drops of water. On his farm in the Sicilian interior, it hasn’t rained for months. Cammarata’s 200 goats graze on a parched landscape resembling a lunar surface, forced to eat dry weeds and drink from a muddy pond.
The 53-year-old has never experienced a drought like it. “If things continue like this,” he said, “I will be forced to butcher my livestock and close down my farm.”
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06/30/2024 - 22:21
Rescue operation run by specialised whale disentanglement crews cut off ropes and buoys to let it swim freely again
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A humpback whale that became tangled in 800kg of fishing equipment has been rescued off Victoria’s Gippsland coast, almost a week after it was first seen to be in trouble, while in Queensland a whale was saved from a shark net.
The whale was spotted near Loch Sport in central Gippsland on Sunday 23 June by a commercial helicopter but then disappeared until Friday, when it was seen near Lake Tyers off the south-east coast.
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06/30/2024 - 22:20
The full-size adult whale was first spotted a week earlier with approximately 200 metres of rope and fishing buoys wrapped around it. In a multi-agency operation, rescuers were able to free the animal of 800kg ropes and buoys. However, because of how the rope was wrapped around the whale and safety concerns for rescuers, the crew were not able to disentangle all of the rope. Ellen Dwyer, an incident controller in the rescue team, says they are 'pleased' they have been able to 'successfully remove a significant amount of weight and rope from the whale'
Humpback whale tangled in rope rescued off New South Wales coast – video
Low-flying drones could disrupt whale migration off Australia’s east coast, experts warn
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06/30/2024 - 21:56
Bilbies have the biggest genome of any marsupial, which could be down to how it evolved its incredible sense of smell
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Genetic research has revealed the threatened Australian native bilby – with its ridiculously oversized ears and stretched snout – does not only look odd from the outside.
“Bilbies are weird and cool. The genome has been fascinating,” said Prof Carolyn Hogg, of the University of Sydney, who led research that sequenced the greater bilby’s genome for the first time.
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06/30/2024 - 08:00
Absorption through skin could be ‘significant source of exposure’ to toxic forever chemicals, study shows
New research “for the first time proves” toxic PFAS forever chemicals are absorbed through human skin, and at levels much higher than previously thought.
Though modeling and research has suggested the dangerous chemicals are absorbed through skin, University of Birmingham researchers say they used lab-grown tissue that mimics human skin to determine how much of a dose of PFAS compounds can be absorbed.
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06/30/2024 - 07:41
There are just 300 electric HGVs in the 500,000-strong lorry fleet – and only one public charging point, says RHA
The road haulage industry is calling on the new government to urgently tackle investment in infrastructure for electric trucks, after pointing out there is just one public charging point for HGVs in the whole of the UK.
Takeup of electric cars is soaring, with about 1.1m fully battery-powered cars on British roads and about 63,000 charging units in 33,000 locations, according to Zapmap data.
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06/29/2024 - 12:00
Crowdfunding scheme salvages ‘imperfect’ fruit and veg following the country’s wettest autumn, winter and spring on record
When 31-year-old Dutch farmer Bastiaan Blok dug up his latest crop, the weather had taken a disastrous toll. His onions – 117,000 kilos of them – were the size of shallots.
“We had a very wet spring and a dry, warm summer, so the plants made very small roots,” said Blok, who farms 90 hectares in Swifterbant, in the reclaimed province of Flevoland. “Half of them were less than 40mm and normally at this size they aren’t even processed. We would have probably sold them for very little for biomass, or maybe to Poland for onion oil. It’s either far too wet and cold, or far too warm and dry, and there’s no normal growing period in between.”
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06/29/2024 - 04:00
Angela Richardson accuses campaigners against polluted water of putting Conservative MPs in danger
The Conservative party deputy chair Angela Richardson called the sewage crisis a “political football” and claimed opposition parties and activists had put Tory MPs in physical danger by campaigning on the issue.
Richardson, who is standing for re-election in Guildford, where the River Wey was recently found to have 10 times the safe limit of E coli, also suggested the only reason people were talking about the problem was “because the Conservatives let everyone know it was happening”.
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