Environment

Environment

It looks more like the past than the future. A vast chasm scooped out of a scarred landscape, this is a Cornwall the summer holidaymakers don't see: a former china clay pit near St Austell called Trelavour. I'm standing at the edge of the pit looking down with the man who says his plans for it will help the UK's transition to renewable energy and bring back year-round jobs and prosperity to a part of the country that badly needs both.

It was a race against nightfall. As he hurried across the sandy, bristling landscape of California's Carrizo Plain, ecologist Ian Axsom stopped every 10 yards to place an aluminum live trap on the ground, eventually distributing traps over an area the size of two baseball fields. Against the rolling playas and tawny mountains, the traps glinted with golden remnants of the September dusk.

One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government's deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people's return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood.

"Gusty winds will drop wind chill to -15° to -25° by Sunday morning." National Weather Service: 'Dangerously low wind chills are becoming more likely for this weekend' [Today] Temperatures warmer than what we've been seeing continue today, with highs generally around freezing for most. Light winds expected with continued dry conditions. Lows tonight fall back into the teens and single digits. #MAwx #RIwx #CTwx pic.twitter.com/O8KCXoztRU- NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) February 3, 2026

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are found in many devices we use every day, like smartphones, laptops, tablets, wireless earbuds, power tools, e-bikes, and electric vehicles. By 2023, there were more than 40 million electric vehicles on the road worldwide, and billions of portable electronics used Li-ion cells. These batteries are valuable for recycling, but they can be dangerous if not disposed of correctly.

"A dry January, which is historically the wettest month of the year in California, has now eroded the gains made at the start of the year and forecasts currently show no major precipitation in the next two weeks," California Department of Weather Resources spokesperson Jason Ince wrote in a Jan. 30 news release. The first month of the year certainly left the area warmer and drier than usual, weather officials confirmed.

In Emilio Pena Delgado's home, several photos hang on the wall. One shows him standing in front of a statue with his wife and oldest son in the centre of San Jose and smiling. In another, his two sons sit in front of caricatures from the film Cars. For him, the photos capture moments of joy that feel distant when he returns home to La Carpio, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Costa Rica's capital.

February heralds skunk mating season, and our striped friends have romance on their minds. Over the next several weeks, skunks will be seeking mates, and this activity always results in an uptick in the amount of skunk spray in the air. Male skunks spray each other when they fight over females, and females spray males they don't want as mates.

The idea is that oats break down and enrich the soil, while Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) top up magnesium to keep leaves green and glossy. Social media says a spoonful of each will pep up tired plants without the need for proper feed. The method The hack says unpot your plant and mix the old soil with 12 tablespoons of dry oats, a sprinkle of Epsom salts and a bit of fresh compost. Then pop the plant back in the pot, firm it around the roots and water it in.

Carbon markets are simultaneously promoted as an essential climate financing tool, and criticized as a license to pollute. A carbon market puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions via carbon credits that get bought and sold, almost like stocks. A credit represents one metric ton of CO 2 that has been avoided or removed through a specific project. A project could target emissions through agricultural practices, CO 2 capture or reforestation.

You have probably heard about voluntary carbon offset-if not from elsewhere, from buying plane tickets, where, after you have paid for the ticket, the tax, the seats, maybe the luggage fee, and the priority boarding, you have an option to also pay to offset your carbon footprint. Companies get to do this, too, and, unlike you, they get to brag about it.

Ice-sheet retreat lined up with low algae growth over the past ~500,000 years, implying less CO₂ uptake in parts of the Southern Ocean during warm periods. The study points to iceberg-delivered, iron-rich sediments from West Antarctica during warm intervals, not windblown dust. The iron-bearing minerals in these sediments were highly weathered and not readily bioavailable to marine algae. If WAIS keeps shrinking, similar sediment delivery could weaken Southern Ocean carbon uptake, creating feedback that could amplify climate change.

While cold-stunned iguanas fall from trees in Florida and videos circulate of frozen "exploding" trees in the Northeast, Southern California is working up a sweat. A midwinter heat wave has descended on much of the state and is expected to spike temperatures as much as 20 degrees above normal in the coming week. The summer-like heat is thanks to a ridge of high pressure lingering high in the atmosphere that extends through the San Francisco Bay Area and into the Pacific Northwest.

In the basement laboratory of the National Dendrological Park Sofiyivka, Larisa Kolder tends to dozens of specimens of Moehringia hypanica between power outages. Just months earlier, she and her team at this microclonal plant propagation laboratory in Uman, Ukraine, received 23 seeds of the rare flower. Listed as threatened in Ukraine's Red Book of endangered species, Moehringia grows nowhere else in the wild but the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine.

Groundhogs are not native to California, and are found mostly east of the Mississippi River. But if you want to hunt for groundhog-like critters, you're in luck. The Bay Area is home to cousins of groundhogs, the California ground squirrel. You can find them in a lot of parks and open spaces, but if it's an adventure you seek, try taking your son on a hike in the Mission Peak Regional Preserve.

Groundhogs are not native to California, and are found mostly east of the Mississippi River. But if you want to hunt for groundhog-like critters, you're in luck. The Bay Area is home to cousins of groundhogs, the California ground squirrel. You can find them in a lot of parks and open spaces, but if it's an adventure you seek, try taking your son on a hike in the Mission Peak Regional Preserve.

It's turned into an unusually dry winter for Northern California, and that pattern, thanks to a ridge of high pressure, is going to continue for at least the first 10 days of February. As the Chronicle meteorology team tells us, the dry and balmy conditions will be with us through Super Bowl Weekend and beyond, continuing a pattern that has left the Sierra snowpack mighty low.

Researchers used satellite data to see how much nitrogen dioxide was in California's air between 2019 and 2023. As the number of electric cars and plug-in hybrids rose, neighbourhoods had lower NO concentrations. Everybody knows that electric cars don't emit carbon emissions because they don't burn any fuel. And while there are some studies out there that show how zero-emission cars can improve the quality of air in urban areas, they weren't always definitive.

Parts of South Florida awoke Sunday to record low daily temperatures, the coldest in more than a century, according to the National Weather Service in Miami. At the national weather station near Miami International Airport, a preliminary report showed the temperature at 35 degrees Fahrenheit at 6:53 a.m. That's a degree lower than the city's daily record set in 1909 at 36 degrees.

On the Saturday night that the storm hit Mississippi, we had dripped our faucets for the temperature drop and stockpiled flashlights, groceries, extra blankets. By 11:30 p.m., my husband was pulling on his rain boots and heading outside to tarp our heating unit: "A branch has already fallen onto a power line in our backyard," he told me. Three hours later, I was shaken awake. "Mom, I think a tree just fell on our house," my 13-year-old son said.

A fierce barrage of storms from the Atlantic has drenched south-west England in January, saturating soils and supercharging rivers. It's deja vu, she said. The stress and anxiety is palpable in the community. We've all been here before, we know what happens and it shouldn't. But since 2014, the weather events are becoming more and more frequent and the rain just dumps now.

Coastal North Bay including Point Reyes National Seashore and San Francisco Peninsula Coast were placed under a beach hazards statement by the National Weather Service on Saturday at 4:04 a.m. The statement is in effect until Monday Feb. 2, at 9 a.m. The NWS San Francisco CA states to expect, An increased risk of sneaker waves and strong rip currents with breaking waves of 14 to 19 feet. Dangerous conditions are forecast along the shoreline.

We've been in this position before, and we've caught up in the past.

Up to 1.3 ft of inundation above ground level is possible in low-lying areas near shorelines and tidal waterways, can be anticipated according to the NWS San Francisco CA. At the San Francisco tidal gauge, high tide is expected to be: 1.3 ft above normal (7.20 ft MLLW) at 9:30 a.m. Saturday 1/31 and 1.2 ft above normal (6.96 ft MLLW) at 10:22 a.m. Sunday 2/1.

John did not want to give up beef entirely, but he feared the impact of the beef industry on the Paris agreement's limit of 1.5C of post-industrial global heating and the devastating effects of beef farming on deforestation. He compared the overconsumption of beef to the coolness of tobacco back in the day: Norms feel permanent, but norms can change and when they do it can be powerful, he said.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

A cool change this weekend is expected to bring an end to eight consecutive days of blistering temperatures above 40C in Australia's south-east. But before it does, the heat continued on Saturday. Heatwave warnings remained in place for parts of every state and territory excluding Tasmania, with Canberra forecast to reach a top of 41C and parts of inland New South Wales, including Broken Hill, expected to climb higher than 45C.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book called Meat in disarming fashion: I'm not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won't find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won't find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn't about policing your plate.

What's so incredible for us is that we succeeded at scale. We secured orders in multiple European cities, and the pumps started being installed, including in London,