The Guardian

Flash flooding is a far greater threat to homes, railways and roads than river or coastal floods but is completely excluded from government plans to deal with increased rainfall

Flash flooding, which struck a swathe of southern and eastern England on Friday, is a greater threat to homes, roads and railways than river or coastal flooding. Yet it was completely excluded from the government’s National Flood Resilience Review, published last week.

Worse, the risk of flash flooding is rising, as climate change leads to more intense, more frequent rainstorms: the Met Office has shown that extremely wet days have become more common. On Friday, half a month’s rain was dumped in one day.

Inexpensive over-the-counter product could help millions of people avoid worst health effects of breathing toxic air, say scientists

An inhaler that protects the lungs against air pollution has been developed by scientists and could help the many millions of people affected by toxic air to avoid its worst effects.

The inhaler delivers a molecule, first found in bacteria in the Egyptian desert, which stabilises water on the surface of the lung cells to form a protective layer. It is expected to be available as an inexpensive, over-the-counter product.

‘Tremendous loss’ of ice reinforces clear downward trend towards ice-free summers due to effects of climate change

Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite, with scientists saying it is another ominous signal of global warming.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 4.14m sq km (1.6m sq miles). That’s behind only the mark set in 2012, 3.39m sq km.

Paula Kahumbu: The latest satellite tracking technology is helping to keep elephants safe from poachers— and away from farmers’ crops

On a beautiful sunny day in Amboseli National Park, against the backdrop of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, a small group of cars was gathered at a safe distance around the prostrate bull elephant. The elephant lay still in the dust, head on the ground, his enormous tusks and trunk stretched out in front of him. Tension rose among the onlookers as the minutes passed.

Then the huge elephant flapped his ear, got up gently, shook his head vigorously in a vain attempt to dislodge the strange object around his neck, and walked off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The operation to attach a tracking collar to Tim had gone perfectly.

Parrtjima festival will see art beamed onto a 2.5km area of the MacDonnell Ranges, raising concerns for a struggling species

Concerns that a light festival in central Australia could affect a vulnerable population of rock wallaby has led to more than a thousand people signing a petition calling for it to be stopped, and to the federal Department of the Environment and Energy examining the festival’s plans.

Parrtjima – A Festival in Light is planned to go for 10 days at the end of September. Each night a four-hour light show will project Indigenous art onto a 2.5km stretch of cliff in the MacDonnell Ranges.

Stanton Moor, Derbyshire A landscape seamed with neolithic stone circles and burial sites made this one of Britain’s first official ancient monuments

There’s a dog-eared feel to Stanton Moor, but in a good way. It’s a much loved scrap of high country between Bakewell and Matlock, sacred ground in the neolithic and bronze ages, its geomantic potency derived from long views and its proximity to the confluence of the rivers Derwent and Wye. And it’s fairly sacred even now, after a fashion.

Related: Country diary: Langsett, Peak District

Exclusive: Bob Bea, who investigated Deepwater Horizon, blasts BP and Australian regulators, calling their response to concerns about faulty equipment an ‘early warning sign’ of a potential disaster

A leading global expert on oil disasters has said the response to concerns about potentially faulty equipment in offshore drilling planned for the Great Australian Bight by BP is an early warning sign of problems that could potentially lead to disasters.

Bob Bea, an emeritus professor and founder of the center for catastrophic risk management at Berkeley, said what BP, its subcontractor Diamond Offshore Drilling and the Australian regulator had said in response to concerns about faulty bolts was “very alarming”.

It’s refreshing to read a Guardian editorial describing the benefits of GM crops (The Guardian view on GM cotton: handle with care, 5 September). However, we disagree with the article regarding our relationship with farmers and technology pricing.

Related: The Guardian view on GM cotton: handle with care | Editorial

Indonesia will become the first country in the world to export wood products to the EU that meet new environmental standards to curb illegal logging

Indonesia will in November become the first country in the world to export wood products to the European Union meeting new environmental standards in a move aimed at bolstering transparency and curbing illicit logging.

Officials from both parties unveiled measures on Thursday to ensure timber exports to the trade bloc, valued at roughly $1bn a year, are sustainable and harvested within the law.

Government creates marine protected areas around four islands in the Pacific and Atlantic, with commercial fishing banned in some areas

The UK is to ban commercial fishing from a million square kilometres of ocean around British overseas territories, the government said on Thursday.

In total, the government is creating marine protected areas around four islands in the Pacific and Atlantic, including the designation this week of one of the world’s biggest around the Pitcairn Islands.

The business secretary, Greg Clark, says the Hinkley Point deal will have a ‘series of measures to enhance security’ after Theresa May gave the green light to the construction of Britain’s first new nuclear power plant in two decades on Thursday. The plant will be financed by a Chinese nuclear power provider and French energy group EDF

• Hinkley Point C nuclear power station gets government go-ahead

If global temperatures rise more than 1.5C, the Marshall Islands will disappear. The thin atolls scattered across the Pacific Ocean are already seeing regular flooding and droughts directly related to climate change. More Marshallese are leaving in search of dry land, with nearly one-third of the population currently in the US. Many fear that with the exodus, their culture will be lost to a country that has already taken so much from them

The numerous atolls that make up the island nation are now regularly swamped due to sea level rise. But as more people flee for the US, many fear their culture will be lost to a country that has already taken so much from them

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There may be music in the roar of the sea, as Byron eulogized, but the waves can also bring creeping unease. On low-lying fragments of land like the Marshall Islands, the tides are threatening to take away what they previously helped support: life.

Energy investment fell 8% in 2015, reflecting low oil and gas prices, but falling costs and government policy shift spending towards clean energy, data shows

Global investment in energy fell by 8% last year to $1.8tn (£1.4), reflecting low oil and gas prices and cost falls in the sector, new data shows.

Nearly half of the decline was accounted for by the US, where plunging oil prices and a recent boom in shale gas, along with cost deflation in the energy sector, have played an increasing role.

Move aims to protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England

President Barack Obama will establish on Thursday the first national marine monument in the Atlantic, a move that’s designed to permanently protect nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the coast of New England.

The White House said the designation will lead to a ban on commercial fishing, mining and drilling, though a seven-year exception will occur for the lobster and red crab industries. Also, recreational fishing will be allowed within the monument.

Beautiful yet terrifying, Edward Burtynsky’s aerial photography is a reminder of just how much human activity has affected the planet – as industry and agriculture leave indelible scars everywhere

A report by Swiss NGO Public Eye says businesses in Europe are exporting highly polluting, high-sulphur diesel to the African market that could never be sold at pumps in their home countries, exploiting weak fuel standards there

All photographs: Carl De Keyzer/Magnum Photos

Doñana wetlands in Andalusia is home to thousands of species but has lost most of its natural water due to industry and faces ‘danger’ listing by Unesco

A Spanish wetland home to 2,000 species of wildlife – including around 6 million migratory birds – is on track to join a Unesco world heritage danger list, according to a new report.

Doñana is an Andalusian reserve of sand dunes, shallow streams and lagoons, stretching for 540 square kilometres (209 square miles) where flamingoes feed and wild horses and Iberian lynx still roam.

Blanchland, Northumberland The sexton beetle can detect ‘the irresistible bouquet of death’ from a mile away

As we climbed the hill the low cloud thinned then became wisps of mist. Patches of blue sky began to appear. Soon the heat of the rising sun would dry the droplets of water clinging to hawkbit seed heads beside the path, and their parachute of hairs would expand, carrying them away to join a blizzard of downy thistle and willowherb seeds drifting on the breeze.

The aroma of September, of damp earth and decaying grass, hung in the air, though there was, as yet, no hint of autumn colour in the trees. Fungi, the great recyclers, were already at work.

Attribution studies are letting researchers respond quickly to questions about human influence – before the news cycle turns elsewhere

Is it still true to say you can’t point to any single extreme weather event and claim you can’t link it to human-caused climate change?

Plenty of people seem to think this is still the case. But a rapidly evolving field of climate science suggests that it’s not.