"From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch." - Astronaut Ed Mitchell Our planet is our home; it provides all that we need to live. Our responsibility is to care for it so that it continues to be a safe home for us. Future generations depend upon us.
January brings torrential rain to south-east Asia more than 250mm fell in just two days in Singapore last year. This is because of the monsoon, a pattern of wind and rainfall, the name of which stems from the Arabic word for season. The monsoon is sometimes described in terms of a sea breeze, in which the wind reverses direction in the morning and evening as the relative temperature of land and sea change, blowing out to sea at first and then inland as the land cools.
If rain does come across the country - it's a bit uncertain, but if that does happen - the rain, as it meets the cold air, could fall as sleet or snow for a short time before it turns back to rain, he said.
In a move to restore vital marsh habitat and combat sea level rise, the East Bay Regional Park District has acquired 77-acres of the Hayward Regional Shoreline from the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District. The property transfer this week furthers East Bay Parks' vision to open the shoreline for public access along the San Francisco Bay Trail and revitalize the tidal marshes that existed there over a century ago, before industrial salt ponds peppered the San Francisco Bay shoreline.
Smit describedextreme political views as the roar of people fearful that they cannot control the future but he said they would fade when people realised that good things were around the corner. When people see that some of that future is going to be amazing, they'll cease to want to control it in quite the same way, he said. It's like people going out for a stag night and feeling stupid the following day, he said.
As sea levels rise, marshes should keep up with it, and so they can rise along with the sea levels, and they can continue providing those benefits decades out into the future,
recent scientific studies have recorded an average annual rise of seven millimeters over the past two decades. This is the second-highest sea level rise in the entire Caribbean, surpassed only by areas in southern Haiti. The underlying story is the same: greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated the melting of the polar ice caps. Consequently, the coastlines in some of these locations begin to subside in a geological process that poses a threat and a source of anxiety for residents.
She also keeps chickens and has planted quince and peach trees and grapevines, which are watered by a stream winding down the hills towards the Indigenous community of Copiapo. But now the huge British-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto has signed a deal to extract lithium, the white gold of the energy transition, from a salt flat farther up the mountains,
The stillness of a bitterly cold afternoon is broken by the swish, swoosh of three 50m-long blades, adjusting automatically to the tiniest shift in the direction of a dependable westerly wind that keeps them turning day and night. From here, up on a mountain ridge in rural Fukushima prefecture in north-east Japan, the wind turbines stretch for miles. In the distance, you can see the outlines of the reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which is in the slow process of being decommissioned at a cost so far of $35bn (26bn) almost 15 years since it suffered a triple meltdown after being struck by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and a 15m (49ft) tsunami.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
Temperatures between 4C and 8C are expected, before the weather gets colder for the weekend with sharp to severe frosts developing and some wintry showers mainly affecting the north and northwest. Friday will be a day of sunny spells, with some showers of sleet and snow possibly in the north. Highest temperatures will be between 3 to 7 degrees. Saturday and Sunday are set to be "very cold with wintry showers", mainly in the north and northwest.
Flooding has become the world's foremost climate hazard', according to experts. So what do we do about it? Devastating floods ravaged multiple regions of the world in 2025, from Southeast Asia to North America and the Middle East. We asked climate experts what is causing the devastation and what governments should be doing to prevent the situation from becoming even worse in the coming year.
More than 15 years in the works, Seattle's new park is a true reconnection of the city with its water. Once separated from downtown Seattle by the double-decker Alaskan Way Viaduct highway, the waterfront has been painfully and expensively restitched into the city after traffic was rerouted into a $3.35 billion tunnel and the surface level reconfigured as a boulevard.
Seeing the photos of trophy hunters gloating over their slaughtered bears has been deeply upsetting for all Floridians who love Florida's bears and want them protected. This bloody spectacle has been a heartbreaking way for Floridians to enter the holiday season, she said in a statement. To say FWC missed the mark on this might be the understatement of the year, and like the 2015 hunt, it will surely haunt our state for years to come.
Most monarchs live just a few weeks, but the super generation that overwinters in California lives six to nine months. For much of the year, the butterflies are solitary, but they cluster together at overwintering sites, sometimes by the thousands. Monarchs use the groves to rest, but when it's warm enough during the dayabove around 55 degrees Fahrenheitthey break out of those clusters to search for nectar.
The Bay Air Air District decided Tuesday to usher in 2026 with a directive: No burning wood. Such were the consequences from a Spare the Air alert the agency issued for Thursday, the first day of the new year. Personal fireworks and residential wood burning are expected to cause localized elevated pollution levels, the air district said in a social media statement announcing the alert.
They are creating their own financial ecosystem, and there is enough actual momentum in current AI efforts that I don't see the hyperscalers pulling back in 2026, Tom Chi, founding partner at At One Ventures, told TechCrunch.
California's largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, is at 123% of its historical average for this time of year, measuring at 72% capacity as of Monday, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The reservoir's current surface elevation is 1,019 feet, which is not far from its full capacity, according to Monday data from the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that oversees the reservoir. When Shasta is full, the elevation is 1,067 feet above sea level.
Lyn Cheedy, a Yindjibarndi elder, takes her grandson to the pool most afternoons. At first, the cold water is refreshing. Then a gust of wind hits. The wind burns you, she says. I have to keep splashing my face, and your hair is drying that quick it's like you're sitting in front of an oven. In the Pilbara, heat and cyclones are nothing new, says Cheedy. Her people have survived extreme conditions for millennia.
