Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Africa’s forests have undergone a shocking reversal, switching from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters after 2010. Researchers found that heavy deforestation in tropical regions has led to massive biomass losses, far outweighing any gains from regrowth elsewhere. This change could seriously undermine global efforts to slow climate change. Scientists warn that protecting forests is now more urgent than ever.

Experts say climate pattern could supercharge extreme weather events and push temperatures to record highs There is a high likelihood that the phenomenon known as “El Niño” will emerge this summer – and it could be exceptionally strong. A so-called “super El Niño” could supercharge extreme weather events and push global temperatures to record heights next year if it develops, according to experts. Meteorologists are keeping a close eye on the climate patterns developing in the Pacific Ocean that will enable stronger predictions about what’s to come in the year ahead. Continue reading...

I’ve just watched another of my neighbours rip up everything green and growing around their home. It’s enough to make David Attenborough weep It’s noisy outside. I forget over winter how loud the garden gets when the imperatives of shagging, fighting for territory, then raising babies become urgent – the sparrows are kicking off, the tits are fighting a turf war and competing wood pigeons are cooing to seduce Susan, the escaped wedding dove who lives on our roof. When I sat in the sun yesterday, the industrious buzz of bees tackling the dregs of cherry blossom was lawnmower-loud, accompanied by “back off” peeps from blackbirds nesting in the ivy. There was another noise too, though: the rumble of a mini-digger ripping up a nearby garden. They started with the hedge – I thought, actually, that was all they were going to do, because it happens around here a lot. It would have been the third case I’ve spotted in a matter of weeks. The first was proudly pointed out to me by the owner; the second I only saw in the aftermath – a bare row of jagged stumps where there used to be dense leaves. But this time, I realised they had bigger plans: when the hedge was out, they kept digging, clearing away bushes, plants, trees, every inch of anything that ever lived there. By evening, all that remained was a scraped-back trench of bare earth and a skip full of uprooted branches, skeins of ivy, clumps of grass. In the space of one beautiful warm April day, what used to be a garden is not any more. Continue reading...

Study identified eight areas that can sustain a population and government has given £1m for recovery programme “The world is grown so bad that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.” So wrote Shakespeare in Richard III, in a line of social commentary that feels ever more relevant with age. A note of good news then, in a world of so much bad, that the eagles the Bard was probably referring to could finally be reintroduced to England after more than 150 years. Continue reading...