El Niño events linked with extreme weather around the world – and can increase risk of bushfires in Australia and coral bleaching on Great Barrier ReefFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe Bureau of Meteorology has officially declared an El Niño – the phenomenon linked to hotter and drier conditions for Australia – is now locked in place in the tropical Pacific Ocean.The bureau warned climate change would amplify the effects on Australia, including the risk of extreme heat and bushfires. Continue reading...

Thinktank says decoupling electricity from gas prices has also helped shield Spain from hikes caused by Iran warSpanish households save €10 a month on electricity bills because of wind turbines and solar panels installed in the last five years, a report has found.Typical energy bills would be 19% more expensive if electricity costs were still as tightly coupled to gas prices as in 2021, according to Ember, a climate thinktank. It found Spain’s “strategic” expansion of renewables since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 has shielded Spanish households from the latest rises in fossil fuel prices caused by the Iran war. Continue reading...

JAKARTA — Climate change has become a direct threat to the survival of the world’s rarest great ape, according to scientists, after landslides triggered by an unusually intense storm killed an estimated 58 critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans (Pongo tapanuliensis) in Indonesia’s Batang Toru ecosystem. The estimate comes from a new study published in Current Biology,

The short-tailed roundleaf bat was feared extinct until scientist Iroro Tanshi found one in Afi sanctuary in Nigeria, and set out to protect the only confirmed roosting colonyJust after sunrise, a cacophony of whoops and chatter can be heard over the verdant forests of the Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary. Nestled within the Cross River rainforest in south-east Nigeria, and spanning an area about the size of central Paris, the steep sanctuary is a haven for endangered gorillas, drill monkeys, the grey-necked rockfowl – and the short-tailed roundleaf bat.The Nigerian biologist Iroro Tanshi remembers the moment she first spotted the endangered bat in 2016, during a field expedition for her PhD research. “We were trapping near a roost that night, so we caught a lot of bats,” says Tanshi. But, she adds: “This looked very, very different. Big-eared.” She promptly turned to her identification guide, which revealed that the tiny furry creature she was holding between her fingers was Hipposideros curtus, better known as the short-tailed roundleaf bat, last recorded in the wild in the 1970s. Continue reading...

Tech is helping to identify and save new specimens and could open ‘genomic goldmine’ of fungi dataThe rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the “race against extinction” faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.New technology is enabling scientists to track how flowering times have shifted by weeks around the world, rapidly identify new specimens and even get crucial genetic data from 180-year-old fungus specimens, potentially opening a “genomic goldmine”. Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south. Continue reading...

Almost every child, including those from high-income countries, is now exposed to at least one hazardHalf of the world’s children are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards threatening their health, education and survival, according to a Unicef report.Globally, children face increasing threats from heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts as the climate crisis worsens, with more than one billion facing at least three of these at once. Continue reading...

Following a grueling 14-day trek, a team of mountaineers and conservationists has photographed the elusive blue-fronted lorikeet in the highlands of eastern Indonesia’s Buru Island. This is only the second photographed record of the parrot in more than 100 years, according to bird conservation groups. The blue-fronted lorikeet (Charmosynopsis toxopei) is a small species found

Rivers are known to naturally meander, change courses, braid and branch. But as rising temperatures melt glaciers and thaw frozen ground, the courses of Himalayan rivers are shifting and changing shape much more rapidly than before, according to a new study published in the journal Science. The rising instability of the rivers could pose a

The Nebraska Sandhills—the largest system of sand dunes in the Western Hemisphere—stretch across about one-quarter of the state. The post Nebraska’s Wide, Rolling Domain appeared first on NASA Science.

In a forest reserve in northeastern Bangladesh, two Chinese pangolins rescued from trafficking have been given a second chance at life in the wild. As poaching pushes the critically endangered species toward extinction, the releases aim to do more than boost flagging local populations. With the help of tiny radio transmitters, scientists are tracking each

PhysCOS Activities at AAS 248 – Tuesday 16 June 2026 The post PhysCOS Activities at AAS 248 – Tuesday 16 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

Celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites the public to its campus at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California for an open-house event, Explore JPL. On Oct. 10 and 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT, visitors will get the chance to visit JPL’s most iconic facilities and explore four thematic areas: Missions That Changed the World, Moon to Mars, In The post Explore JPL to Take Place Oct. 10, 11 appeared first on NASA Science.

GW SIG Seminar. The Deci-hertz Interferometer Space Antenna. Speaker: Jacob Slutsky, NASA / GSFC The post GW SIG Seminar, 17 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

This webinar will be on the ASTRA initiative, as the deadline for white paper submissions approaches (June 26th). The post CRN SIG Seminar, 17 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

The 16th International LISA Symposium. College Park, Maryland. 21-26 June 2026 The post 16th International LISA Symposium, June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

1-3 September 2026. The Community Science (Ad ASTRA) Workshop is organized by the NASA Astrophysics Division. The post Community Science (Ad ASTRA) Workshop, Sept 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

In the American South of the late 1950s, segregation was part of the daily architecture. Airports had separate facilities. Restaurants barred Black customers or served them apart. Schools, buses, waiting rooms, and lunch counters carried the same instructions. The system depended on law, custom, and the expectation that most white people would accommodate it. Resistance

Speaker Bogdan Pastrav (Institute of Space Science) Seminar Connection Please visit the P-CAST webpage https://prima.ipac.caltech.edu/page/p-cast for a link to join and to see all of our upcoming speakers! The post IR STIG PRIMA Seminar, 22 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

Our Spotlight Series highlights recent advances in AGN science, with a strong emphasis on participation from early-career researchers, and includes plenty of time for community discussion following the presentations.  The post AGN SIG Spotlight Series, 23 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

Cosmic Origins Science in the New Landscape of Space Astrophysics. Speaker: Swara Ravindranath, Deputy Chief Scientist of NASA’s Cosmic Origins Program (NASA GSFC) The post DGCE SIG Seminar, 25 June 2026 appeared first on NASA Science.

Fungi are living below your feet. Roughly 110 quadrillion kilometers of living fungal threads are woven through the world’s soils. Stretched end-to-end they would cover a distance nearly a billion times that from Earth to the sun. Now, scientists have mapped where those networks are, how dense they are, and what threatens them. Last year,

On June 5, Australian authorities announced that they confiscated more than 100,000 live exotic cockroaches from an unnamed commercial breeder in Bathurst, a town in New South Wales (NSW), about 200 kilometers (124 miles) west of Sydney. It was the largest bust of illegal invertebrates ever made in the country. The insects were estimated to

SEATTLE (AP) — Lawmakers are demanding the National Science Foundation stop dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386 million ocean monitoring network being wound down under President Donald Trump’s administration. House Democrats on two committees call the action illegal. Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley says he’s drafting legislation to freeze the removal of instruments until a

In recent weeks, two outbreaks captured international attention: a hantavirus cluster linked to a cruise ship and an escalating outbreak of Bundibugyo ebolavirus in Central and Eastern Africa. How the world reacted to these outbreaks tells us more about inequity than about epidemiology. The Andes hantavirus outbreak aboard a luxury cruise ship generated extensive evacuation

Your refreshing smoothie bowl might be silencing the white-throated toucan and the razor-billed curassow.

Food packaging ranks among the top plastic pollutants littering the world’s coastlines, a new study confirms. The study, published May 20 in the journal One Earth, analyzed data from 112 nations, including 5,300 shoreline litter surveys, to produce the first global index of macroplastic pollution by usage type. Based on 355 peer-reviewed studies, it found

Suriname remains an outlier in the Amazon Basin: more than 90% of the country is still covered by rainforest, making it one of the few nations in the world that remains a net carbon sink. But a wave of development proposals — from large-scale agriculture and Mennonite farming settlements, to mining projects and new carbon

Residents of West Oakland, which suffers from toxic waste and high pollution rates, rally against a coal export facilityWest Oakland, a California neighborhood known for its rich history of Black activism from the Pullman Porters’ union to the Black Panthers, might not seem like the site of the country’s next great coal project.But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is pushing for – with the injection of $75m to build a sprawling coal export terminal in the nearby port of Oakland. Continue reading...

Legal courtrooms are becoming a new battleground in the fight to save whales. In New Zealand, the proposed Tohorā Oranga Bill could recognize whales as legal persons — building on Pacific Indigenous efforts like He Whakaputanga Moana. This push to obtain legal rights for whales is part of the fast-growing ‘Rights of Nature’ movement. But

Move is part of broad effort to open public lands to industry and other uses, threatening wildlife and ecosystemsThe Trump administration is executing a controversial plan to allow dirt bikes, ATVs, trucks, snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles to drive through tens of millions of acres of public lands and national parks, which environmental groups warn threatens endangered species and the environment.The plan’s opponents say the impacts will be wide-ranging and that the vehicles will likely destroy sensitive habitats, harm waterways, drive large predators like grizzly bears into contact with humans, and otherwise damage pristine public lands and parks. Continue reading...

About 80% of 115 products tested show levels of Pfas that comply with rules – but some firms still exceeding limitsState laws banning Pfas in clothing and textiles have significantly reduced the amount of toxic “forever chemicals” used in the products, which public health advocates say marks a major public health win and underscores the value in protective policy.However, some companies appear to have ignored the laws as their products still contain high levels of Pfas. Continue reading...

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For the Karajarri people of Kimberley in northwestern Australia, the coastline, reefs, wetlands, beaches and desert-edge country form one estate, held through law, memory, work and obligation. That relationship now has new recognition, reports Mongabay’s John Cannon. In

NIGRE, Côte d’Ivoire — The village of Nigré in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire sits — like much of this part of West Africa — in a landscape of rice and cassava fields, oil palm plantations and stands of rubber trees that have replaced the forests that once clothed the landscape. Chief Djahi Bertin and his attendants

A Mexican long-tongued bat, featured above, flies into the blooms of an agave plant, a feeding and pollination technique used to reach nectar. The bats (Choeronycteris mexicana) have unusually long tongues to access nectar while their impact spreads pollen grains everywhere to pollinate nearby agave. Peter Hudson, a professor of biology at Penn State University,

Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms, conservationists want to create the region’s first underwater protected areaThe harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact. Continue reading...

Water samples are assessed for pollution levels and any impact climate pressures may be having on the river system.

The project will allow volunteers to help defend red squirrels by monitoring footage remotely.

The project's long-term goal is to reintroduce the wetland insect to more sites.

A new book from Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta of Australia explores how human narratives dictate how modern society governs itself and, crucially, how it exploits or protects the natural world. “It’s a terrible thing to … misrepresent things, make false claims, bear false witness in a way that is bending story, the story that everybody

We spent a day out in the city with a thermal camera, recording surface temperatures indoors and outdoors.