The Guardian

Exclusive: Australia needs the expertise to predict changes which have a major impact across the country, a review finds

A government-backed review of Australia’s climate science capability has identified “critical gaps” in the nation’s ability to understand the processes that underpin climate change, with atmospheric modelling lagging other countries.

It found Australia was in danger of losing “critical expertise” needed to predict changes in major climate patterns, such as El Nino and the Indian Ocean Dipole, that have a major impact across the continent.

Deadly heatwaves, floods and rising hunger far greater threat to world than coronavirus, scientists say

The world is “way off track” in dealing with the climate emergency and time is fast running out, the UN secretary general has said.

António Guterres sounded the alarm at the launch of the UN’s assessment of the global climate in 2019. The report concludes it was a record-breaking year for heat, and there was rising hunger, displacement and loss of life owing to extreme temperatures and floods around the world.

Large biomes can break down like Jenga bricks once tipping point reached, research finds

Even large ecosystems the size of the Amazon rainforest can collapse in a few decades, according to a study that shows bigger biomes break up relatively faster than small ones.

The research reveals that once a tipping point has been passed, breakdowns do not occur gradually like an unravelling thread, but rapidly like a stack of Jenga bricks after a keystone piece has been dislodged.

The climate crisis can’t be averted, it’s here. And with human suffering now a reality, governments can no longer stand idly by

You may have read that there are just eight, or 10, or 12 years to save the world from the climate crisis. There are not. It is already here, gaining strength every day as carbon emissions pour into the atmosphere. It is a slow-motion disaster. Action to avert the worst should have started last week, last year, last decade.

This is not a message of despair, though, but one of measured hope. The gap between the action we could take to reduce global heating and the action we are actually taking can be measured by a brutally simple metric: human suffering. That means every action that closes that gap, however small, is meaningful.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world

Exclusive: carbon from most harvested wood soon ends up back in atmosphere, says study

Commercial tree plantations in Britain do not store carbon to help the climate crisis because more than half of the harvested timber is used for less than 15 years and a quarter is burned, according to a new report.

While fast-growing non-native conifers can sequester carbon more quickly than slow-growing broadleaved trees, that carbon is released again if the trees are harvested and the wood is burned or used in products with short lifespans, such as packaging, pallets and fencing.

First seagrass restoration in Britain will capture carbon rapidly and offer habitat for lost marine life

“We think this whole bay was once carpeted with seagrass,” says Evie Furness, waving across the sparkling, sunlit waters of Dale Bay in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

The underwater meadow is long gone though, a victim of past pollution and shipping. So from a boat half a mile from shore, Furness is feeding a long rope into the water, which carries a little hessian bag of seagrass seeds every metre. “We’ve passed the 800,000 seed mark now,” she says.

Researchers believe the Indian Ocean Dipole is more clearly influenced by climate change than previously thought

Indian Ocean surface temperatures that helped drive hot and dry conditions in eastern Australia last year were more clearly influenced by climate change than previously thought and are likely to worsen in future, researchers have found.

Scientists studying a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole say their observations suggest Australia could experience future conditions even more extreme than those that elevated the bushfire risk during the 2019-20 fire season.

At a herring processing plant in Rügen, continued access for trawlers to British waters is crucial for the business to survive

When a Danish trawler docks on the island of Rügen in the early hours of a stormy Thursday morning, the Euro-Baltic plant at Sassnitz-Mukran suddenly jolts to life.

Via a network of subterranean tubes, 1,400 tonnes of slippery North Sea herring are pumped from the belly of the ship and belched out onto an assembly line inside the factory on Germany’s largest island, where the silvery-blue fish are blow-dried, weighed, gutted and either sliced into fillets or chopped into bite-sized chunks.

Wildfires are ravaging California and Australia – and local fire departments are alarmingly underfunded and underprepared

In the wake of the devastating Australian bushfires, Jeff Bezos announced last month that he will donate $10bn to fight the climate crisis. As a resident of California and the former president of The Sierra Club Foundation, I welcome any contribution toward the struggle against our changing climate. That said, my home state, like all communities with Amazon facilities, would be far better off if Bezos simply paid his taxes.

If Amazon’s properties in California were taxed at their current value, the added tax could help bolster our underfunded firefighters and fix our crumbling fire access roads. Contributing vast sums to the global effort is wonderful, but climate change is a local issue too. Our communities need to be well-funded if we’re going to face this threat head-on.

Global emissions down by 2% amid mild winter and reduced use of coal-fired power plants

Carbon emissions from the global electricity system fell by 2% last year, the biggest drop in almost 30 years, as countries began to turn their backs on coal-fired power plants.

A new report on the world’s electricity generation revealed the steepest cut in carbon emissions since 1990 as the US and the EU turned to cleaner energy sources.

By using public money to protect California homes from climate change, the state is transferring wealth from working-class people of color to white property owners

Even by the standards of overpriced San Francisco, the Sea Cliff neighborhood is astronomically expensive. Nestled between two gorgeous parks and with what a realtor might describe as commanding views of the Golden Gate, it could hardly be different. Homes in the area routinely go for more than $10m. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and the payment service Square, recently bought a place here for $21.5m – next door to his $18m present home. The 0.62 acre compound is recessed from the street and perched on a cliff overlooking the beach.

Related: The Clean Water Act was a staggering bipartisan achievement. Now Trump is gutting it | Blan Holman

President of preservation society says councils are failing in duty to protect heritage as craze for exploring derelict buildings grows

Griff Rhys Jones, the president of the Victorian Society, has urged councils to protect derelict buildings that are of huge importance to Britain’s industrial heritage. His intervention followed a surge in vandalism at such sites, triggered in part by the new-found popularity of exploring abandoned buildings.

Last month it emerged that Shotton steelworks in north Wales – one of the society’s 10 most endangered buildings in 2018 – had been badly damaged. According to reports, vandals had knocked down partition walls, destroyed ornate panelling, and kicked in walls. Several fires had been lit and tiles thrown off the roof.

Report challenges justification for government underwriting of up to five new gas-fired generators

Australia’s existing gas power plants are running well below capacity, challenging the justification for a Morrison government program that may support up to five new gas-fired generators, according to a new report.

Energy analyst Hugh Saddler, from Australian National University’s Crawford school of public policy, found the combined-cycle gas plants in the national grid – those expected to be available near constantly, sometimes described as “baseload” – ran at just 30% capacity across the past 18 months.

Pre-eminent Australian wildlife photographer Doug Gimesy has dedicated his career to the protection and conservation of some of the country’s most vulnerable species. He gets up close and personal with exquisite native animals to reveal them in perfect detail. All these species have suffered big losses during the recent drought, bushfires and floods. All captive animals were photographed under close supervision from wildlife experts.

Feelings of powerlessness and despair for the future are evident in letters written for a six-year ‘passion project’

In 2014, Joe Duggan started reaching out to climate scientists to ask them a question: how did climate change make them feel?

“I was just blown away when I started getting the letters back,” he says.

Environmental groups fear link between huge ships and spikes in dolphin deaths

Brexit offers the perfect opportunity to ban industrial supertrawler fishing boats from UK waters, according to campaigners.

The factory-sized ships can be hundreds of feet long and have been criticised for indiscriminate fishing as they catch hundreds of thousands of fish in short periods. Environmentalists fear their presence correlates with spikes in numbers of dolphins washing up dead.

Campaigners press chancellor for clear signal UK government is taking Cop26 seriously

Climate campaigners are urging the government to set out a clear plan for a low-carbon future in next week’s budget, despite the chancellor’s decision to pull a major plank of climate policy at the last minute.

The budget will determine much of the government’s work this year, and campaigners fear that a failure to send clear signals on meeting the 2050 net zero emissions target would play badly with other countries looking to the UK for leadership as host of the vital UN climate talks, called Cop26, later this year.

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including swimming cheetahs and an albino orangutan

Freshwater predatory cod species to make comeback after 50-year absence

Forget dreams of wolves, bears or lynx – the next animal to be restored to the British countryside could be a river bottom-dwelling fish that resembles a giant tadpole.

The burbot, much-maligned for its unprepossessing appearance with a fleshy appendage dangling from its chin, was last sighted in British rivers in 1969.