The Guardian

A swimming jaguar, a new species of frog, and a racoon are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

They are one of the harshest environments on the planet and also one of the most important in terms of carbon storage. New research hopes to reveal the role these threatened bogs could play in the climate change story

Randy Kolka hands me a fist-sized clump of brownish-black material pulled up by an auger from a bog. It’s the color and texture of moist chocolate cake. When I look closely I can see filaments of plant material. This hunk of peat, pulled from two meters (7ft) below the surface, is about 8,000 years old. I’m holding plants that lived and died before the Egyptians constructed the pyramids and before humans invented the wheel. In my hand is history. And carbon gold.

A summit in Bali last week sought new strategies to help small scale fishers access global markets in an effort to alleviate poverty and improve sustainability

Experts gathered in Bali last week to address the growing plight of small scale fishers, who are being excluded from key global markets, as policy makers tighten fisheries regulations in a bid to improve transparency and sustainability.

Hosted by Indonesia based fisheries NGO MDPI with support from the Walton Family Foundation, Wageningen University and USAID Oceans, the thinktank brought together professionals from across the sector.

Smaller farms may be squeezed out if farmers switch to vast, intensive facilities due to the pressures the industry faces from leaving the EU, say farmers and campaigners

Leaving the EU is likely to lead to an increase in the number of megafarms dominating the British countryside, campaigners and farmers agree, with far-reaching effects for farms, consumers and those who live in the countryside.

The huge intensive farms, in which as many as 1.7 million animals may be kept on a single holding, are an increasingly common, but controversial, feature of UK agriculture. The pressures of Brexit on farming are likely to cause more farmers to move to such facilities in order to lower the costs of meat production, and may squeeze smaller more traditional farms out of the market, potentially changing the UK’s landscape forever.

Couples splash out an average of £3,245 on food but end up throwing about £500-worth away

Northamptonshire Canute’s queen would have known these fish but not the now local mink – or the roses that are taking over Denmark’s dunes

The broad river Nene is ponded by a substantial weir to the south-east of Northampton. The deep water is still, clear and, at present, sunlit. The northern side of the river supports extensive patches of lily pads; they blast out green as the sun sparks and flashes between them.

The open water to the south side is occupied by great herds of bream – big fish with pointed fins, vertically flattened bodies and jutting scaled heads.

Squid and anchovies are moving into warming waters in large numbers, a report finds, with the long-lost bluefin tuna also returning

Squid and anchovies, more commonly eaten by Britons holidaying abroad, are being drawn into UK waters in large numbers by climate change, according to major new report that suggests the nation’s long-lost bluefin tuna is also returning.

However, global warming is harming sea birds, such as puffins, fulmars, terns and razorbills, as the fish they rely on are driven north or deeper as waters warm. The analysis of the impact of climate on the UK’s seas, which draws on the work of 400 scientists, found a steady rise in water temperature.

Cuadrilla faces action for breaching planning permission after delivery to site near Blackpool

A company preparing to be the first to start large-scale UK fracking has breached its planning permission by delivering a drilling rig overnight, prompting the local authority to warn it is considering action against it.

Cuadrilla said that around 30 trucks had made deliveries to its Preston New Road site near Blackpool at 4.45am on Thursday. It has permission to frack at the site later this year.

Modern trophy hunters can shoot animals via the internet - but they argue that it is all conservation. The killing of Xanda - Cecil the Lion’s son - has sparked debate about what hunting really means

They’re known as canned hunts; captive mammal hunting ranches in the US which offer the chance to shoot a zebra or antelope or even a lion for several thousand dollars. The animals are fenced in and often unafraid of humans so the kills are easy, to the extent that some venues even provide the option of shooting them via the internet, with the use of a camera and a gun on a mount.

It’s estimated that there are more than 1,000 of them - completely legal. But many US hunters consider them a betrayal of every belief they hold dear. “I don’t consider that hunting,” said John Rogalo, a New Jersey hunter who has been stalking bears, deer and turkeys for nearly 50 years. “It’s a weird culture that has developed in this country in the past few years. I joke that you may as well ask the farmer if you could shoot his black Angus because at least you’d get more meat for it.”

Patagonia’s icefields, Australia’s changing tides, and volcanic activity in Alaska are among the images captured by Nasa and the ESA last month

Alaska’s remote Bogoslof Island volcano erupted in a series of explosions starting in December 2016, triggering the highest aviation alert as it shot ash plumes at least 35,000ft into the atmosphere. By monitoring the volcano via satellite and seismologic data, scientists can provide a warning of when further eruptions could pose a risk to aircraft. This image shows just a small puff of smoke rising from the volcano, while a sediment plume drifts towards the top left of the image, turning the Bering Sea a bright blue-green.

Met Office figures for 2016 also show long-term decrease in amount of frost, while last winter was the second wettest on record across the country

The winter of 2016 was the warmest for England and Wales in records that stretch back to 1910, the Met Office’s annual State of the UK Climate report revealed on Thursday.

The average temperature from December 2015 to February 2016 was more than 2C above the long-term average across the southern half of the UK. The report also found that, over the last decade, the number of air frosts has dropped by 7% and the number of ground frosts by 9%, compared with the average between 1981-2010.

Kevin Trenberth - recent award winner - is one of the world’s foremost climate scientists

The American Geophysical Union - the pre-eminent organization of Earth scientists - presents annual awards to celebrate the achievements of scientists. The awards, which are often named after famous historical scientists, reflect the contributions to science in the area of the award namesake. With the 2017 award winners just announced, it’s appropriate to showcase one of the winners here.

The 2017 winner of the Roger Revelle medal is Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth. One of the most well-known scientists in the world, he is certainly the person most knowledgeable about climate change that I know.

Here’s how to prepare for the 100-mile cycling event ...

Shortly before 6am on Sunday, the first of about 25,000 intrepid cyclists will set off from the Olympic Park in east London on a 100-mile trip through the capital and into the hills of Surrey, finishing on the Mall.

It is the fifth year of an event which has so far lived up to its billing of a London marathon for two wheels, part of a wider and much-enjoyed weekend of cycling activities in the capital, which has now spawned similar events elsewhere in Britain.

For 10 years, Nasa has been flying over the ice caps to chart their retreat. This data is an invaluable record of climate change. But does anyone care? By Avi Steinberg

From the window of a Nasa aircraft flying over the Arctic, looking down on the ice sheet that covers most of Greenland, it’s easy to see why it is so hard to describe climate change. The scale of polar ice, so dramatic and so clear from a plane flying at 450 metres (1,500ft) – high enough to appreciate the scope of the ice and low enough to sense its mass – is nearly impossible to fathom when you aren’t sitting at that particular vantage point.

But it’s different when you are there, cruising over the ice for hours, with Nasa’s monitors all over the cabin streaming data output, documenting in real time – dramatising, in a sense – the depth of the ice beneath. You get it, because you can see it all there in front of you, in three dimensions.

Sandy, Bedfordshire The Airlander 10 is a 92-metre hybrid airship-plane, full of helium and personality

Half an hour after appearing high over our washing line a giant followed us down to the pub. The church bells next door rang eight, the air was mosquito-still and then an all-consuming bass rumble filled the sky.

A puffed up grey cloud three times the length of a blue whale came overhead. People sitting at the neighbouring table glanced up, then went back to their drinks.

With the UK planning to ban petrol and diesel cars and vans in 2040 we asked you what it’s like to drive the vehicle of the future

Amid fears that rising levels of nitrogen oxides pose a major risk to public health, Britain plans to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040. As part of the government’s much-anticipated clean air plan it has said the move is needed because of the unnecessary and avoidable impact that poor air quality was having on people’s health.

With the inevitable demise of diesel and petrol vehicles we asked electric car drivers to tell us what it’s like to drive one, and why they are the future.

Second-biggest biosecurity operation in nation’s history sees $411m committed to eradicating invasive species that threatens agriculture, wildlife, tourism and outdoor lifestyle

They are one of the world’s worst invasive species, and now, more than two decades after they are believed to have arrived in Australia, the country is launching the second-biggest biosecurity operation in its history to eradicate red imported fire ants.

State, territory and federal agricultural ministers met in Melbourne on Wednesday and agreed to spend $411.4m over the next 10 years, endorsing a biosecurity operation second only in size and ambition to the country’s successful eradication of bovine tuberculosis, which started in the 1970 and took nearly three decades.

From how to charge them to whether they are really better for the environment

The first generation of electric-car buyers have been people with homes where it is easy to plug one in. “The vast majority of Nissan Leaf customers are [families with] 2.4 children, mums and dads, with off-street parking,” said Gareth Dunsmore of Nissan Europe. “Tomorrow that won’t be the case.”

A ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040 is a great vision for the future but does nothing to address a public health emergency happening right now

What a beautiful smokescreen. A UK ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040 conjures up the clean, green vision of an all-electric future and is absolutely the right thing to tackle climate change – emissions from transport are high and not falling.

But for the public health emergency of today, with most urban areas already having suffered illegal levels of air pollution for years, it does nothing at all.

Travellers are left to buy expensive and wasteful plastic bottles of water after passing through security, says consumer website MoneySavingExpert.com

More than half of the UK’s international airports do not have free drinking water fountains installed in their departure lounges, a leading consumer website has revealed.