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The Amazon is the driest it has been at the start of the dry season since 2002 — and that probably means the rainforest is in for a particularly nasty wildfire season, reports Mongabay

Conditions created by the strong El Niño event that warmed up Pacific waters in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world. In the Amazon basin, that meant reduced rainfall during the wet season, plunging some parts of the region into severe drought.

According to NASA, the Amazon is the driest it’s been at the start of the dry season since 2002 — and that probably means the rainforest is in for a particularly nasty wildfire season, according to Doug Morton, an Earth scientist with the U.S. agency and a co-creator of the Amazon fire forecast, which uses climate observations and active fire detections by NASA satellites to predict fire season severity.

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A SpaceX cargo rocket is bound for the International Space Station after a successful launch from Florida.

Turnbull names pro-nuclear Josh Frydenberg to head combined energy-environment portfolio, climate denier Matt Canavan to head resources.

Climate change envoy singles out both countries for subsidising the fossil fuel industry and says the UK has lost its position as a climate leader

Ban Ki-moon’s climate change envoy has accused the UK and Germany of backtracking on the spirit of the Paris climate deal by financing the fossil fuel industry through subsidies.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN special envoy on climate change and El Niño, said she had to speak out after Germany promised compensation for coal power and the UK provided tax breaks for oil and gas.

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The Bass Rock, East Lothian As more offshore wind farms are built, the scientists want to know how high the birds fly before diving down to fish

Just over a mile off the coast of Scotland, within sight of the Forth Railway Bridge, is a truly wild place. The Bass Rock, 100m at its highest point, is white with guano and ringed with a halo of constantly honking seabirds. This is the largest colony of gannets on a single island on Earth, with up to 250,000 crowding into its three hectares in summer.

Scientists from Leeds University are studying their foraging habits. Crucially, as more offshore wind farms are built, they want to know how high the birds fly before diving down to fish.

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The weekly round up of the electricity market. Plus: What if both Hazelwood and Portland closed down?

The price spikes that hit South Australia were once common place in Australia, but have now all but disappeared since the build out of wind and solar. But the conservatives don't want to know.

South Korean company with biggest share of Australian grid-connected battery storage market has released new range, from stackable 3.3kWh lithium-ion to 9.8kWh.

Richard Branson says all cars on roads in 15 years will be electric vehicles.

UK residential battery storage upstart Moixa has recently attracted the interest – and funds – of three former leaders of Britain's old energy order.

PHD student David Kainer believes the energy density of oils drawn from biomass and foliage of species like Mallee is not only fit for aircraft fuel, it could be grown and harvested sustainably.

Preliminary data from Fraunhofer’s Energy Charts project indicates that Germany will probably surpass its 2020 target for renewable electricity this year.

Greg Clark was appointed head of the new department during a dramatic cabinet reshuffle after the new prime minister axed the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Given the recent media attention, here are some charts on the relationship between clean energy installations and your electricity bills..

Agency application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 18 July 2016 until 15 August 2016

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 21 July 1916

I had no intention of commenting upon a highly sensational account of a “Lady’s Thrill” which appeared in one of the papers, but when it was copied into several others I felt that it was time to protest. The account stated that a lady, when bathing at Bull Bay, in Anglesey, was chased by a ferocious “sea lion.” The sea lion, which we may see diving, swimming, and catching fish which are thrown to it in the fine tank at Belle Vue, is commercially the most important of the fur-bearing seals; it inhabits the Pacific – and the Pacific only. Seal hunters do not care much about bathing in icy seas, but even if they did I doubt if the sea lion would attack a man in the water.

What apparently did happen at Bull Bay was that a grey seal reared its head out of the water and looked at the lady when she was bathing. Perhaps it yawned and showed its teeth, for they do not, as a rule, “project over the sides.” Possibly, too, seeing something with which it was unfamiliar in the water, and not suspecting the presence of a human being so far from the shore, it swam nearer for closer inspection. At any rate, there is no recorded instance that I know of, of the timid grey seal swimming after and attacking any bather.

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“Although I found the remains of this ancient settlement fascinating, I was constantly distracted by the array of birds along the beach”

From the way the bird was moving, it was obvious she was distressed. One wing held out at an awkward angle, tail fanned, she piped loudly to attract my attention. But I knew that despite appearances, this ringed plover was not injured, but using all her wiles to lure me away from her nest.

Moments later, we found the object of her concern: a tiny chick, so well hidden amongst the stones and pebbles we almost trod on it, before beating a hasty retreat.

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There are few frontiers in the world that can still be said to be unexplored. One of these terra incognita is the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets. Buried under kilometres of ice is a fascinating realm of canyons, waterways and lakes, which is only now being mapped in detail.

There are more than 400 known lakes in this harsh environment, and more are being discovered as technology advances. This water beneath the ice lubricates the interface between the ice sheet and its rocky bed, and thus controls the flow and behaviour of the ice itself.

Under such a large volume of ice, how is it possible for water to exist at all without freezing? The answer is pressure: when a large weight of ice is pushed onto water, it can stay liquid at temperatures well below the normal freezing point. What’s more, the large body of ice actually insulates the bed and protects it from the very cold air temperatures above.

The liquid water is created by heat from the Earth’s interior and from the friction generated as ice flows over the bedrock, which can melt the underside of the ice sheet. It is this water that flows into the subglacial lake basins and eventually into the ocean.

The network of lakes beneath Antarctica’s ice. Zina Deretsky/US NSF/Wikimedia Commons Huge water features

A tour around this subglacial landscape would take you first to the largest lake under the ice: Lake Vostok. At 12,500 square kilometres and with an average depth of 430 metres, Lake Vostok is the world’s sixth-largest lake by volume, but as it lies beneath some 3.5km of ice, it’s not easy to visit.

You can’t see it, but it’s there: Lake Vostok’s location in East Antarctica. NASA

Using ice-penetrating radar and seismic techniques, scientists have mapped Lake Vostok to understand its origins. They have found that it may be up to 15 million years old. The lake has circulation patterns driven by freezing and thawing of the overlying ice, and even has small lunar tides.

Lake Vostok was discovered decades ago, but what is thought to be the second-largest lake under the ice sheet was first observed only this year. It is in Princess Elizabeth Land, East Antarctica, known as the “last pole of ignorance” because until recently it was virtually unmapped.

This region is also home to a huge canyon system, which extends all the way from the ice sheet interior to the coast. The system is as deep as the Grand Canyon but 100km longer.

Map of subglacial lake locations and ice thickness. NSIDC (Blakenship et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2012) Dynamic environments

So far our tour has focused on the central regions of Antarctica, where ice and water are relatively stable. In contrast, at the ice sheet’s dynamic edges near the coast we find fast-flowing regions called ice streams. Many of these have subglacial lakes in their catchments.

Tens to hundreds of kilometres in length, these lakes are short-lived, growing and draining over a period of just a few years. Evidence of this drainage process comes from satellite measurements of the height of the ice sheet. The surface can be seen to rise and fall, as the lake swells and then ebbs away again.

So far, at least 130 of these “active” lakes have been discovered. More are being found every year.

One example is Lake Whillans, in West Antarctica. Covering about 60 square km, it’s small in comparison with the gigantic Lake Vostok, but is by no means insignificant. In January 2013, a US research expedition drilled into the lake, extracting clean samples that were later found to contain microbial life.

Such life thrives in this harsh environment without sunlight for photosynthesis. Instead, the microbes depend on the oxidation of methane and ammonia, derived from sediments that are hundreds of thousands of years old. This momentous discovery of life in such a harsh and unforgiving environment may provide scientists with critical information on the development of marine life cycles.

First view of the bottom of Antarctica’s subglacial Lake Whillans. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Wikimedia Commons Loose underpinnings

The water beneath the ice creates a mysterious and fascinating subglacial world, but it is also important because it lubricates the bed of the ice sheet and controls how fast the ice can flow. Where there is sediment under the ice, liquid water can make the ground unstable, while in other areas high pressure allows the ice to float on a pillow of liquid water. In both cases this reduces the friction at the base, allowing the ice to flow faster.

As scientists, we want to predict how the ice sheet will react to a warming climate. To do that, it is essential to pin down the role of water in the current flow rates of Antarctic ice. These fascinating lake and canyon features are therefore not only intriguing, but also play a crucial part in the future of the icy continent.

Christine Dow receives funding from the University of Waterloo and from a Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) fellowship.

Felicity Graham is funded by the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative for Antarctic Gateway Partnership.

Sue Cook works for the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, which is funded through the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science.

• Officials say a dead whale keeps floating to the southern coast
  
• The humpback whale’s body has already been towed back to sea twice

Officials say a dead whale that keeps floating to the southern California coast after being towed out to sea may have returned to the shoreline again.

Encinitas lifeguards say a whale body that came ashore Saturday at Grandview beach had been decaying in the water for about two weeks, KABC-TV reports.

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Andy Green says the Bloodhound 1,000mph supersonic car project has to file a mountain of paperwork before it can go racing in South Africa next year.