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Blocking highs and jet stream kinks
New studies suggest that the weather in far off Greenland, one of the fastest warming parts of the Earth, is affecting the rainfall patterns in Britain. This is linked to the extremely wet summers of 2007 and 2012.
Sheffield University, checking data back to 1851, found that since the 1980s there has been an increase in the number of summer high pressure blocking systems that become anchored over this vast island ice sheet. The result has been to drag warm air over Greenland causing melting on a much-increased scale.
Continue reading...Feast of cat shown on eagle cam scares feline owners: 'Nature isn't pretty'
Footage from a live web camera nest shows bald eagles serving up a cat to eaglets – but the Audubon Society determines dead cat was not preyed upon
Cat owners have been warned of the dangers their feline companions face when venturing outdoors after video emerged of bald eagles feasting on the body of a dead cat near Pittsburgh.
Footage from a live web camera mounted at the Hays bald eagle nest, located a few miles from the center of Pittsburgh, showed the eagles serving up the cat to hungry eaglets. Concerned cat owners bombarded the local Audubon Society about why the eagles had preyed upon the cat.
Continue reading...Benjamin Law explores 'Tang: treasures from the Silk Road capital'
While Europe was deep in the Dark Ages, Asia’s Tang Empire was the richest and most powerful political unit in the world. Benjamin Law looks at treasures from the golden age of China alongside latest art world innovations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Pure Land: inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang (2012/16), created by Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw at City University Hong Kong in partnership with the Dunhuang Academy. Installed for Tang: 唐 treasures from the Silk Road capital by the Laboratory for Innovation in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, University of New South Wales
National eNews - Rapid transition to low carbon economy, Engineering in a +2C world, Limits, Risks, Education
Carp in the Murray-Darling Basin and Commonwealth environmental water
Unchecked pollution and bad food ‘killing thousands in UK’
Thousands of people are dying each year because of the government’s failure to tackle food poisoning, health and safety breaches and pollution, a thinktank is warning.
A new report from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) claims that lax regulation and weak enforcement are failing to hold businesses in check and are tantamount to state-facilitated “social murder”.
Continue reading...Britain's best places to take off on a butterfly safari
The purple emperor and chequered skipper await, whether you just fancy a flutter or metamorphose into a full-blown spotter
The purple emperor butterfly, a rather eccentric 1950s schoolmaster called Ian Heslop once declared, is the ultimate “big game”. A renowned collector, he boasted of catching as many emperors as he had shot elephants (four) but said that no exotic African beast gave him “so much joy as the seeing of my first emperor safely in the net”.
It is no longer acceptable to shoot elephants or catch purple emperors but Heslop was on to something – the overlooked adrenal pleasure of a butterfly safari. Chasing butterflies, to photograph or simply to enjoy, may seem like a whimsical pastime but can be surprisingly thrilling.
Continue reading...Has the Chernobyl disaster affected the number of nuclear plants built?
Thirty years on from one of the worst radiation leaks in history, several countries have moved to phase out nuclear energy production altogether, and experts say another accident would kill the industry
Related: Chernobyl nuclear disaster 30th anniversary – in pictures
This week marks 30 years since an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine led to a huge leak of radiation across eastern Europe.
Continue reading...Sea lion found on farm 50 miles inland dies after release into ocean
The 160kg animal swam and waddled its way to the ranch in Washington state but has failed to survive the sea, biologists say
A sea lion that baffled scientists after being found in the driveway of a cattle ranch about 80km (50 miles) from the ocean in Washington state has been found dead two weeks after being released into the sea.
The male California sea lion was released into Puget Sound on 15 April after it apparently swam and waddled its way to the ranch near Oakville, the Tacoma News Tribune reported.
Continue reading...Genes linked to increased chance of having non-identical twins identified
VW and Shell accused of trying to block EU push for electric cars
Industry giants’ call for biofuels over electric and fuel-efficient cars puts Europe’s carbon emissions targets at risk, say experts
VW and Shell have been accused of trying to block Europe’s push for electric cars and more efficient cars, by saying biofuels should be at heart of efforts to green the industry instead.
The EU is planning two new fuel efficiency targets for 2025 and 2030 to help meet promises made at the Paris climate summit last December.
Continue reading...Rowan Williams calls on Cambridge University to divest from fossil fuels
Former archbishop of Canterbury says the university should withdraw its £5.8bn fund from from oil, coal and gas on ethical and financial grounds
Rowan Williams has called on the University of Cambridge to divest from fossil fuels, arguing that climate change is “a life-and-death question”.
The former archbishop of Canterbury and master of Magdalene college made his comments in a foreword to a 74-page report on divestment by student campaign group Cambridge Zero Carbon Society.
Continue reading...Secret of how peacocks hypnotise the ladies revealed
Invitation to comment on listing assessment for Fregata andrewsi (Christmas Island frigatebird)
Teeth marks evidence that early humans were eaten by animals
Could carbon farming be the answer for a 'clapped-out' Australia?
Farmers signing up for the carbon emissions reduction fund have to meet strict guidelines but there is significant profit and energy savings to be made
This week the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) will hold the third emissions reduction fund auction and farmers across Australia will move to the forefront of efforts to rescue a “clapped-out” country.
Australian farmers have long bought and sold their wares at auction. Sale yards were the hub of country towns and the din of a moleskin-clad auctioneer shouting over the bleating and mooing of fattened livestock has long been a familiar rural backdrop.
Continue reading...Montserrat's last two mountain chicken frogs to be reunited to save species
Conservationists pin hopes of the species’ survival on breeding the Caribbean island’s last known male and female in the wild
In what could be a fairytale ending, conservationists are hoping to reunite the last two remaining wild mountain chicken frogs living on Montserrat and help their species breed on the Caribbean island for the first time since 2009.
A project led by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust will next month take the last remaining female and “translocate” her into the territory of the last remaining male as part of a 20-year recovery plan for the species, one of the world’s largest and rarest frogs that exists on just two Caribbean islands, Montserrat and Dominica.
Continue reading...It's getting steamy in the hedgerow
Wenlock Edge Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronze
Cuckoo pint, lords and ladies, Jack-in-the-pulpit – these names are medieval nudges and winks about genitalia and sex. They belong to wild arum, a trick flower that jumps out of the earth with a bawdy country humour that mocks the righteous and revels instead in the rude phwoar! of April. The cruellest month, according to T S Eliot, and maybe we’ll pay for these few glorious sunny days, but we’ll make the most of them until then.
It’s getting steamy in the hedgerow. For months, trees stood in companionable silence throughout a blowy winter that leaked into a dour early spring; now they fizz with a green static as buds pop and a million leaves inflate. Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronze; blackthorn has been snowing for weeks, and the purple dangles of ash are out. Small birds, skirmishing through disputed branches, travel in song between trees in the neutral air.
Continue reading...Single cell slime mould can 'learn'
Monster black hole formed by trio of colliding galaxies stuns scientists
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