The Guardian

The battle for Mosul, the ongoing violence in Syria, the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week

WARNING: this gallery includes images that some might find distressing

Borrowdale, Lake District Borrowdale is thriving following an era of being successfully farmed by generations of Westmorland hill farmers

Several faces, mottled black and white, glance up as I alight from the car. On seeing no dog, these Rough Fells – burly ewes with horns – return to grazing the open fell, unalarmed.

Following the A685 Kendal road south from Tebay in the Lune Gorge, I had turned off through woodland of rowan, alder, birch and holly, and parked along a byway running for nine miles west towards Shap summit through the “other” Borrowdale. This is Howgills country, lonely and mysterious and devoid of the crags and lakes that bring the tourists to the Borrowdale near Keswick. Yet in a reshuffle of the boundaries, it too has recently become part of the Lake District national park.

The suggestion that the previous government failed to address questions surrounding air quality (Report, 20 October) does not reflect the progress that has been made on the issue since December 2015. Since then, the government’s air quality plan, updated modelling undertaken by Heathrow and an independent study by Cambridge University have all shown that baseline air-quality levels around the airport will have significantly improved by the time a new runway is built, as the nation’s vehicle fleet gradually becomes cleaner.

The Airports Commission’s analysis concluded that a third runway at Heathrow can be delivered in accordance with EU air-quality limit law, and would have less impact on health receptors (where people live and work) than a runway at Gatwick would have on the community in that area. A new runway at the UK’s hub airport represents an opportunity to deliver significant improvements to air quality around Heathrow: the redesign of local roads, support for sustainable transport and the opportunity to introduce an airport emissions charge all have the potential to bring improvements in air quality.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Experts say fin whales are normally found on south or west coasts of UK, not on east coast

Mystery surrounds how a rare 12-metre (40ft) fin whale came to be washed up on a beach in Norfolk.

The enormous creature was already dead when it was washed up on Holkham beach, on the north Norfolk coast, on Thursday afternoon.

During the spring harvest season, a group of traditional Malaysian honey hunters travel to the rainforest near the Thai border to collect honeycombs from giant bees – and risk their lives climbing 200ft trees

An inquisitive polar bear, blue-footed boobies and autumn colours are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Solar expected to almost triple in less than three years by 2017 as coal continues to fall, solidifying gas as country’s chief electricity source, reports Climate Central

Solar power capacity in the US will have nearly tripled in size in less than three years by 2017 amid an energy shakeup that has seen natural gas solidify its position as the country’s chief source of electricity and coal power continue to fade, according to monthly data published by the US Department of Energy.

Cutting carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants is a major part of the US strategy for tackling climate change as the country seeks to meet its obligations under the Paris climate agreement and keep global warming from exceeding more than 2C (3.6°F).

Number of nesting Manx shearwaters almost triples in three years after a project, backed by Prince Charles, sucessfully kills off the rats that eat the birds’ chicks and eggs

A scheme to kill rats on two of the Isles of Scilly, backed by Prince Charles, has led to a resurgence in rare sea birds.

The number of Manx shearwaters has risen to 73 nesting pairs this year, the highest in living memory and almost triple the number of nesting birds just three years ago. The birds appear to be breeding successfully, with 30 chicks spotted on the popular holiday islands. Another species of rare ground-nesting birds, storm petrels, have also returned to the Scillies.

We will soon see a three-peat of record hot annual global temperatures

We know the world is warming – no factor can explain it aside from human emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite this, people who deny the basic facts of climate change have tried to argue that the Earth is either not warming or is only slowly heating. Well that just isn’t true anymore. The last three years are the nail in the coffin of the deniers of climate change. We have enough data this year to call 2016 as the hottest year ever record – and we have three more months left to go.

So, just how hot is 2016? Well my early predictions are shown in the graph below. I have taken temperature data from NASA and superimposed my predictions for 2016 – it isn’t even close. And by the way, it doesn’t matter whose data you use (NASA, NOAA, JMA, Hadley Centre) the results are the same. 2016 is going to blow 2015 out of the water.

Imagine Project sets out to cut waste in the industry by renting rather than selling bikes, which can then be returned and refurbished when the child outgrows them

The idea had been nagging at her for years, but Isla Rowntree went to the ends of the earth before she was finally ready to go ahead with something she hopes will revolutionise the way the bicycle industry is run.

This is the Imagine Project, currently being developed by Rowntree’s eponymous firm making children’s bicycles, Islabikes. It offers a simple but hugely innovative solution to reducing waste – bikes will be rented to customers rather than sold, and returned to the factory for refurbishment when their young rider outgrows them.

Rother valley, Derbyshire The malign dragon’s breath ceased, the air cleared, then a corner of the vast works became a nature reserve

As a boy, rushing south from Chesterfield on the train, I remember how the farmland was interrupted by the Avenue coking works breathing fire and acrid smoke like a malign dragon. Eight hundred people worked there, producing fuel for steel works, along with sulphuric acid and tar, in one of the most contaminated industrial sites in Europe.

Related: How industrial sites can play a key role in wildlife conservation

Websites pushing climate science denial are growing their audience in an era where populist rhetoric and the rejection of expertise is gaining traction

For years now geologists have been politely but forcefully arguing over the existence or otherwise of a new epoch – one that might have started decades ago.

Some of the world’s most respected geologists and scientists reckon humans have had such a profound impact on the Earth that we’ve now moved out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene.

Figure of 220-450 annual deaths could be even higher, as killings by poachers or farmers often go undetected in the remote mountains of central Asia

Hundreds of snow leopards are being killed every year across the mountains of central Asia, threatening the already endangered big cat, according to a new report.

There are as few as 4,000 of the solitary and elusive cat remaining and numbers have fallen by a fifth in the last 16 years.

International Whaling Commission meeting in Slovenia follows Japan’s recent slaughter of more than 300 minke whales

Australia has thrown its weight behind a bid to outlaw large-scale commercial and so-called “scientific” whaling at a summit next week.

The International Whaling Commission meeting in Slovenia follows Japan’s recent slaughter of more than 300 minke whales, many of them pregnant, when they resumed so-called scientific whaling after a hiatus because the International Court of Justice ruled the hunts were not scientific and should cease.

Spiders can control their web’s tension and stiffness to help them identify potential partners as well as prey, study shows

Spiders can control the tension and stiffness of their webs to optimise their sensory powers, helping them locate and identify prey as well as partners, according to researchers at Oxford University.

Much in same way that notes travel along a plucked guitar string, spider silk transmits vibrations in different frequencies, sending information back to the spider.

It is easy sometimes to wonder whether our governments care about anything except money; yet they refuse to put a monetary value on those aspects of life that lend enchantment (Mary Dejevsky, Quality of life has a price. The frackers should pay it, 17 October). A beautiful view is one of these; so is peace and quiet. So is the ability to keep one’s windows open at night.

These blessings are disappearing at great speed, as the skies fill up, and as lorries, cars and machines are added to our beloved landscapes. We are told that “those affected by fracking” might be compensated, but I do not believe that many people would rather have £10,000 than the peace and quiet, and the grassy view that will vanish, with their clean drinking water, as the frackers appear. It is generally noise that provides the majority of council complaints. For example, between January and September 2014, councils in the UK received 200,220 noise complaints, almost half the total number (Report, 18 March 2014).

The European Union’s push away from fossil fuels toward renewables, along with falling costs, has seen offshore wind thrive with turbines being installed from the Irish to the Baltic Seas, reports Environment 360

On a sunny October morning, our boat passes the run-down relicts of Liverpool’s maritime past and heads down the river Mersey and into the Irish Sea. As we steam offshore, I see in the distance a cluster of tall structures that soon reveal themselves to be towers of a wind turbine array. Arriving at the windfarm, six miles offshore, the turbines rise as high as 650ft, taller than the tallest church in the world. Each of the turbines’ three shiny metallic rotor blades is nearly 300ft long.

“A single rotation of an eight-megawatt turbine will cover the daily electricity consumption of an average British household,” says Benj Sykes, vice president of Dong Energy Wind Power, the company that is constructing and co-owns this wind project, as the boat rocks in five-foot swells.

The Ogoni leader and son of renowned Niger delta environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa has died from a stroke in London, aged 47

The president of Nigeria has joined politicians, environmental activists and others to pay tribute to Ken Wiwa, the Ogoni leader and critic of Shell and other western oil companies in the Niger delta, who has died from a stroke in London.

Wiwa, the eldest son of Nigerian author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed in 1995 after leading a peaceful uprising by the Ogoni people to stop Shell from polluting their oil-rich area of the delta, was a journalist with the Guardian who later became an adviser to three Nigerian presidents.

Munganga Nzonga Jacques died in a region of Kahuzi Biega national park previously believed to be safe for the gorillas, Mongabay reports

On October 4, a park ranger was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi Biega national park while trying to protect the park’s rare Grauer’s gorillas.

The ranger, Munganga Nzonga Jacques, died at the age of 26. He was killed in the Tshivanga region of the park — an area that was previously believed to be safe for the gorillas, according to a statement by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).