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The Australian wave energy company’s new hub is the world’s largest and most advanced for developing offshore renewable energy technology

Carnegie Wave Energy’s offshore energy-generating infrastructure is purposefully inconspicuous. Its patented CETO buoys, which resemble large circular tanks, are tethered to an anchor in the seafloor and remain fully submerged, out of sight.

It’s a design feature that prioritises long-term survival in the ocean over efficiency in converting energy, says Michael Ottaviano, Carnegie’s managing director.

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Kelp forests are declining around the world and in Australia, according to two new studies.

The first, a global study published in the journal PNAS, found that 38% of the world’s kelp forests have declined over the past 50 years.

The second, published in the same PNAS edition, investigated one cause of the declines. Kelp forests in eastern Australia are losing out to tropical species as the seas warm.

Together the studies show that we need local and global solutions to prevent our underwater forests from vanishing.

Deep trouble

Satirist Jordan Shanks recently argued that marine biologists may well have the worst job on Earth. Although most people think we spend our days diving in crystal-clear blue waters, spotting whales and sailing into the sunset, this is actually quite far from the truth.

More often than not, our job unfortunately involves documenting the depressing deterioration and decline of precious marine habitats.

While bleaching of coral reefs worldwide has been front and centre in the news over the past year, in fact all of our coastal ecosystems have been affected by human impacts.

One such ecosystem is the underwater forests formed by the large seaweeds known as kelp, which dominate temperate, coastal rocky shores worldwide.

Kelp forests are found in waters off all continents, and around Australia they form the Great Southern Reef which stretches from the Queensland border to near Kalbarri in Western Australia, and contributes more than A$10 billion annually to the Australian economy.

Although this year’s global coral bleaching event has been most featured in the media, we should be at least equally concerned about the loss of kelp forests in cooler waters. Clockwise from top left: A. Vergés, Creative Commons, J. Turnbull, A. Vergés A health check for global kelp forests

In the first study, the authors provide the first ever global “health check” for kelp forests. A team of international experts compiled and analysed a data set of kelp abundance at more than 1,000 sites across 34 regions around the globe.

While 38% of the world’s kelp forests have declined, it isn’t all bad news. Just over 25% of kelp forests have actually increased in abundance.

But there is another big problem: there are many regions where kelp exists, but we have no data and simply no idea how it’s doing.

A kelp forest in South Africa. The species Ecklonia maxima is one of the few kelps that are expanding its distribution. This species is ‘the giant cousin’ of the common kelp in Australia, Ecklonia radiata. T. Wernberg

Unfortunately, Australia’s kelp forests feature heavily among the declining populations. Kelp forests have declined in Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. The causes of this loss are diverse, but share a common factor: people.

In Western Australia kelp forests were wiped out during an extreme marine heatwave, which was probably a consequence of climate change. In South Australia, the kelp has succumbed to years of pollution from nutrient-rich wastewater.

And in Tasmania, warming has enabled a kelp-eating sea urchin to jump from the mainland and graze on local kelp forests. This was compounded by overfishing of large lobsters, which normally eat the urchins.

Turning tropical

The second paper shows that a phenomenon known as “tropicalisation” of ecosystems is now threatening kelp forests in New South Wales, and potentially globally.

Tropicalisation occurs as ocean waters warm and tropical species start making a home in habitats previously dominated by cold-water species. In the case of NSW kelp forests, these tropical intruders are herbivorous fishes that eat the kelp – sometimes down to the ground.

Our initial research has shown that, over ten years, lush kelp forests have completely disappeared in some key offshore sites at the Solitary Islands Marine Park. This region is famous for bringing together a unique mosaic of tropical and temperate habitats, but our data clearly shows that tropical species are winning and starting to take over.

Screen grabs from Baited Remote Underwater Videos collected by Dr Hamish Malcolm, showing dense kelp beds back in the early 2000s that completely disappeared from 2010 onwards. Hamish Malcolm

We were able to quantify the year-by-year decline of kelp using a long-term video dataset collected by Hamish Malcolm from the NSW Department for Primary Industries.

The video footage revealed not only the gradual decline of kelp, but also helped us identify fish as central culprits behind this disappearance. Between 2002 and 2012, we saw both an increase in the number of fish bite marks on kelp and a clear rise in the abundance of warm-water seaweed-eating species.

We also ran a series of kelp transplant experiments, which identified two warm-water fish species that rapidly consumed transplanted kelp within hours: a rabbitfish and a drummer.

Interestingly, however, the species that we think had the greatest effect, surgeonfish, did not actually feed on the adult kelp. Instead, the surgeonfish rapidly consumed smaller carpet-forming seaweeds. This suggests these “tropicalising” fishes maintain deforested reefs by removing kelp while they are tiny, before they start making large fronds.

These NSW findings are by no means an isolated phenomenon. Voracious consumption by invading warm-water fish have also been linked to the loss or failure to recover of kelp forests in Japan and in Western Australia.

Frenzied feeding on transplanted kelp by a school of rabbitfish (Siganus fuscescens) is only briefly interrupted by a large predator in the Solitary Islands, eastern Australia. What can we do?

Both studies found a net decline in the abundance of kelp forests, from both local (nutrients, fishing) and global (ocean warming and its effects) effects of humans. If we want to arrest these declines, action is therefore required at both local and global scales.

Locally, water quality around some major cities has been improved. When coupled with active restoration efforts of damaged seaweeds, this can lead to conservation success stories like the return of crayweed forests to Sydney. Marine reserves, where fishing is prohibited, can also reduce the ability of warm-water species to colonise cooler habitats.

But of course, ultimately, global action is needed to prevent further climate change impacts. That includes reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions, in Australia and around the world.

Adriana Vergés receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Peter Steinberg receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Thomas Wernberg receives funding from The Australian Research Council and The Hermon Slade Foundation.

Indigenous rangers have joined efforts to get to the bottom of this year's unprecedented mass dieback of mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

An exceptionally rapid melt this summer has led to unusually high water temperatures in the Arctic Sea, slowing the progress of fresh ice formation

Residents of the Alaskan city of Barrow (due to change its name to Utqiaġvik on 1 December) would normally be looking out across a frozen harbour by now, but this year the sea is reluctant to freeze.

Barrow’s average temperature for October 2016 was a balmy -1C, significantly warmer than the long-term average of around -8C. And over the North Pole the air has been a full 10C warmer than average of late.

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Energy efficiency is the 'cheapest and cleanest' form of fuel—and countries are increasingly realising it's a resource they haven't tapped into, says the International Energy Agency.

Deforestation near Coffs Harbour coincided with 0.6C temperature rise, which had ‘catastrophic’ effect of attracting fish

Herbivorous tropical fish have destroyed kelp forests in northern New South Wales, showing that even small increases in ocean temperature can lead to kelp deforestation, an Australian study has found.

The University of NSW study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, found that the disappearance of kelp from waters near Coffs Harbour coincided with a threefold increase in the number of tropical fish in the region.

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Election of climate science denier Donald Trump could speed up talks to preserve elements of the Paris agreement

“People were walking around looking pretty shellshocked,” says Dr Bill Hare, perched on a chair in the cavernous media tent at the United Nations climate talks in Morocco. “If you hugged an American there was a good chance they’d burst into tears.”

Donald Trump’s triumph in the US elections cast a shadow over the first week of the 22nd round of talks here in Marrakech. The president-elect has pledged to pull the US out of the global climate agreement – signed by all countries in Paris last year to keep global warming “well below 2C”.

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Calls for a tax on meat and dairy products (Report, 8 November) are misguided and would increase, not decrease, overall emissions from agriculture. Instead we should improve production systems by taxing nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides, the underlying causes of environmental damage associated with food systems.

Something close to mass hysteria has developed in relation to cattle and other ruminants since the publication in 2006 of Livestock’s Long Shadow, by the Food and Agriculture Organisation. This report and its successor in 2013 are both flawed and misleading. They conflate the emissions from the destruction of virgin land in South America, the root cause of which is not chicken production, but our insatiable demand for vegetable oils, with the actual emissions from ruminants. They also failed to balance this by including emissions from the conversion of land to grow crops for human consumption, or the carbon sequestration associated with the planting of forests in parts of the world, such as the UK, that was taking place at the same time.

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Sydney Renewable Power Company to sell 519 shares after International Convention Centre deal to buy all electricity produced

The company responsible for Australia’s biggest CBD solar installation has invited public investment, making it the first community renewables project in Australia with a public share offering.

Sydney Renewable Power Company’s 520kW solar installation on top of the new International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour is the size of 12 tennis courts and will generate enough electricity to power about 100 homes each year.

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While prestigious routes are well-maintained, smaller footpaths under the care of local councils are suffering from budget cuts - and it’s these we need the most

The largest ever survey of footpaths in England and Wales has found that almost half are in need of improvement, with a tenth of the 140,000-mile network in serious disrepair. For anyone, like me, who considers a decent yomp a staple of any good weekend, those results won’t seem in the least bit surprising.

Of the 59,000 problems reported by the 3,250 citizen surveyors who took part in the Ramblers’ Big Pathwatch, a third were for missing signposts that can quickly turn a pleasant country stroll into an epic trudge as the detours mount up. But most were for obstructions, like barbed wire and collapsed bridges, or footpaths made impassable by flooding and overgrowth that would likely force you to abandon your walk altogether.

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ClimateHome: Failings on the part of the bank contributed to ‘real and often severe harm’ to villagers around the Sibovc mine, says leaked report

The World Bank broke its own rules and contributed to the suffering of hundreds of Kosovans who were forced from their homes to make way for a coalmine, a leaked report reveals.

The giant state-owned Sibovc mine has swallowed communities as it expanded. It would supply the only coal power plant on earth the World Bank is considering backing.

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From drought-hit Nigeria to wine-growing Finland, we hear from people whose lives have already been changed by a warming world

• 2016 will be the hottest year on record, UN says

In the displacement camps of north-east Nigeria, most residents have the same answer for why 2.6 million people have been forced from their homes in this region. They are running from Boko Haram, the jihadist militants who still control significant parts of the Lake Chad basin.

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Native Americans fear that the Dakota Access oil pipeline – a $3.7bn project that would carry crude oil from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery in Patoka, Illinois – would contaminate sacred lands and their water supply from the Missouri river. Here, protesters at a camp near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation give their views on what the election of Donald Trump might mean for their campaign

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An investigation reveals the social media site is acting as a shopfront for a multimillion dollar trade in animal parts, centred in a small village outside Hanoi

Wildlife traffickers from a small, sleepy village in Vietnam are using Facebook to offload large amounts of illegal ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts, an investigation has revealed.

The results of an 18-month sting by the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) – shared with the Guardian – will be presented at a public hearing on 14 and 15 November at the Peace Palace in the Hague. They will show how social media sites such as Facebook are allowing traders greater access to customers.

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2016 is set to be the world’s hottest year on record. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s preliminary statement on the global climate for 2016, global temperatures for January to September were 0.88°C above the long-term (1961-90) average, 0.11°C above the record set last year, and about 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels.

While the year is not yet over, the final weeks of 2016 would need to be the coldest of the 21st century for 2016’s final number to drop below last year’s.

Record-setting temperatures in 2016 came as no real surprise. Global temperatures continue to rise at a rate of 0.10-0.15°C per decade, and over the five years from 2011 to 2015 they averaged 0.59°C above the 1961-1990 average.

Giving temperatures a further boost this year was the very strong El Niño event of 2015−16. As we saw in 1998, global temperatures in years where the year starts with a strong El Niño are typically 0.1-0.2°C warmer than the years either side of them, and 2016 is following the same script.

Global temperature anomalies (difference from 1961-90 average) for 1950 to 2016, showing strong El Niño and La Niña years, and years when climate was affected by volcanoes. World Meteorological Organization Almost everywhere was warm

Warmth covered almost the entire world in 2016, but was most significant in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Some parts of the Russian Arctic have been a remarkable 6-7°C above average for the year, while Alaska is having its warmest year on record by more than a degree.

Almost the whole Northern Hemisphere north of the tropics has been at least 1°C above average. North America and Asia are both having their warmest year on record, with Africa, Europe and Oceania close to record levels. The only significant land areas which are having a cooler-than-normal year are northern and central Argentina, and parts of southern Western Australia.

The warmth did not just happen on land; ocean temperatures were also at record high levels in many parts of the world, and many tropical coral reefs were affected by bleaching, including the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

Global temperatures for January to September 2016. UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre

Greenhouse gas levels continued to rise this year. After global carbon dioxide concentrations reached 400 parts per million for the first time in 2015, they reached new record levels during 2016 at both Mauna Loa in Hawaii and Cape Grim in Australia.

On the positive side, the Antarctic ozone hole in 2016 was one of the smallest of the last decade; while there is not yet a clear downward trend in its size, it is at least not growing any more.

Global sea levels continue to show a consistent upward trend, although they have temporarily levelled off in the last few months after rising steeply during the El Niño.

Droughts and flooding rains

El Niño was over by May 2016 – but many of its effects are still ongoing.

Worst affected was southern Africa, which gets most of its rain during the Southern Hemisphere summer. Rainfall over most of the region was well below average in both 2014-15 and 2015-16.

With two successive years of drought, many parts are suffering badly with crop failures and food shortages. With the next harvests due early in 2017, the next couple of months will be crucial in prospects for recovery.

Drought is also strengthening its grip in parts of eastern Africa, especially Kenya and Somalia, and continues in parts of Brazil.

On the positive side, the end of El Niño saw the breaking of droughts in some other parts of the world. Good mid-year rains made their presence felt in places as diverse as northwest South America and the Caribbean, northern Ethiopia, India, Vietnam, some islands of the western tropical Pacific, and eastern Australia, all of which had been suffering from drought at the start of the year.

The world has also had its share of floods during 2016. The Yangtze River basin in China had its wettest April to July period this century, with rainfall more than 30% above average. Destructive flooding affected many parts of the region, with more than 300 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

Europe was hard hit by flooding in early June, with Paris having its worst floods for more than 30 years.

In western Africa, the Niger River reached its highest levels for more than 50 years in places, although the wet conditions also had many benefits for the chronically drought-affected Sahel, and eastern Australia also had numerous floods from June onwards as drought turned to heavy rain.

Tropical cyclones are among nature’s most destructive phenomena, and 2016 was no exception. The worst weather related natural disaster of 2016 was Hurricane Matthew. Matthew reached category five intensity south of Haiti, the strongest Atlantic storm since 2007. It hit Haiti as a category 4 hurricane, causing at least 546 deaths, with 1.4 million people needing humanitarian assistance. The hurricane then went on to cause major damage in Cuba, the Bahamas and the United States.

Other destructive tropical cyclones in 2016 included Typhoon Lionrock, responsible for flooding in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea which claimed at least 133 lives, and Cyclone Winston, which killed 44 people and caused an estimated US$1.4 billion damage in Fiji’s worst recorded natural disaster.

Arctic sea ice extent was well-below average all year. It reached a minimum in September of 4.14 million square kilometres, the equal second smallest on record, and a very slow autumn freeze-up so far means that its extent is now the lowest on record for this time of year.

In the Antarctic, sea ice extent was fairly close to normal through the first part of the year but has also dropped well below normal over the last couple of months, as the summer melt has started unusually early.

It remains to be seen what impact the summer of 2016 has had on the mountain glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere.

While 2016 has been an exceptional year by current standards, the long-term warming trends mean there will be more years like it to come. Recent research has shown that global average temperatures which are record-breaking now are likely to become the norm within the next couple of decades.

Blair Trewin is a staff member of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations' specialized agency on the state and behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather and climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources. 191 countries and territories are members.

With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will break the record for warmest year on record.

World Meteorological Organisation figures show global temperature is 1.2C above pre-industrial levels and will set a new high for the third year running

2016 will very likely be the hottest year on record and a new high for the third year in a row, according to the UN. It means 16 of the 17 hottest years on record will have been this century.

The scorching temperatures around the world, and the extreme weather they drive, mean the impacts of climate change on people are coming sooner and with more ferocity than expected, according to scientists.

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Rural white men support Trump and oppose stopping climate change; the opposite is true of urban minorities

The world is shocked that America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. Exit polls show that the country is sharply divided on Trump along the same lines as its sharp divisions on climate change.

Political ideology was the single strongest determining factor in the election. 90% of Republicans voted for Trump, while 89% of Democrats voted for Clinton. Ideology is also the primary factor associated with acceptance or denial of human-caused global warming, as climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained eloquently in this video:

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European scientists set out for Antarctica this week in a bid to find deeply buried ice that contains an ancient record of Earth's climate.

Chief medical officer for England Prof Dame Sally Davies to carry out study into health impacts of tiny particles of plastic consumed by fish

The government is to conduct an investigation into the impact on human health of microplastic particles found in shellfish and other marine animals.

The study by the chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, is to be carried out as part of a wider, year-long review of the health effects of pollution.

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