news 2024

Assumptions that tropical forest canopies protect from the effects of climate change are unfounded, say researchers. A severe risk is that species are no longer able to survive within tropical forests as climate change intensifies, further exacerbating the global extinction crisis and degrading rainforest carbon stocks.

Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. Research published in Nature Geoscience reveals a major shift in the Nile around four thousand years ago, after which the floodplain in the Nile Valley around Luxor greatly expanded.

Meeting UK air pollution targets by focussing on urban areas will maximise health benefits for the most deprived communities. A study led by Imperial College London researchers shows that reducing typically urban sources of fine-particle air pollution like roads, wood burners, and machinery would also reduce inequalities in how different communities suffer the health impacts.

Two decades of cuckoo research have helped scientists to explain how battles between species can cause new species to arise This exciting new finding could potentially apply to any pairs of species that are in battle with each other..the coevolutionary arms race could cause new species to emerge - and increase biodiversity on our planet Rebecca Kilner The theory of coevolution says that when closely interacting species drive evolutionary changes in each other this can lead to speciation - the evolution of new species.

Study says 'biodegradable' teabags don't readily degrade in the environment and can harm earthworms Researchers say labelling should be improved to make clear teabags shouldn't be thrown away in domestic compost heaps. Some teabags manufactured using plastic alternatives do not degrade in soil and have the potential to harm terrestrial species, a new study has shown.

City officials were more likely to maintain climate action during the pandemic in places with more climate-related health issues affecting residents. Cities around the world were more likely to maintain climate action and enact 'green recovery' long-term plans after the pandemic if local decision-makers were more alert to the health risks of climate change, a new global study has shown.

Scientists have used volcanic ash and ocean models to track the journey of huge mats of seaweed floating across the Atlantic and causing chaos in the Caribbean. They found chemical traces of volcanic ash from the eruption of a volcano on St Vincent, in St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, on sargassum seaweed that washed up four months later in Jamaica - 1,700 kilometres away.

A team of scientists from the USA and UK has used artificial intelligence (AI) to map the activities of seafloor invertebrate animals, such as worms, clams and shrimps, across all the oceans of the world. The research, led by Texas A&M University (USA) with investigators from the University of Southampton (UK) and Yale University (USA), combined large datasets, with machine learning techniques, to reveal the critical factors that support and maintain the health of marine ecosystems.

A new study in Australia has shown that shoppers making simple food and drink switches could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from groceries by 26%. Researchers from The George Institute for Global Health and Imperial College London's School of Public Health conducted the most detailed analysis ever on the environmental impacts of a country's food buying behaviour.

Research suggests that plastic pollution must be reduced by at least 5% every year to make progress towards UN targets by the end of the century. The study, a collaboration between researchers at Imperial College London and GNS Science, suggests that reducing plastic pollution by 5% per year would stabilize the level of microplastics - plastics less than 5 mm in length - in the surface oceans.

In The Conversation, Dr Ceri Shipton (UCL Institute of Archaeology) explores his new research that has found a large wave of migration reached the island of Timor not long after 50,000 years ago. Humans arrived in Australia at least  65,000 years ago , according to archaeological evidence. These pioneers were part of an early wave of people travelling eastwards from Africa, through Eurasia, and ultimately into Australia and New Guinea.

New research proposes the use of electrical blackouts, such as those experienced during loadshedding in South Africa, to enhance our understanding of how artificial light in urban areas may be affecting wildlife behaviours. Artificial light at night, known as ALAN among urban ecologists, has become ubiquitous worldwide, with a notable increase in recent years.

3D reconstructions suggest that simple marine animals living over 560 million years ago drove the emergence of more complex life by mixing the seawater around them It's exciting to learn that the very first animals from 580 million years ago had a significant impact on their environment, despite not being able to move or swim.

Researchers have found that heavily used shipping lanes pass through crucial whale shark feeding grounds, posing a threat to this endangered species. Research published in Science of the Total Environment has revealed areas where the sharks are at the highest risk of colliding with large shipping vessels by mapping the locations of whale shark aggregations and overlaying them with information on shipping traffic.

The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago, suggests a new study led by UCL and University of Vigo researchers. In the early 20 century, dinosaurs were considered slow-moving, "cold-blooded" animals like modern-day reptiles, relying on heat from the sun to regulate their temperature.

Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period. When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is Ulf Büntgen Although 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record, the instrumental evidence only reaches back as far as 1850 at best, and most records are limited to certain regions.

We're used to seeing the humble midge around the Scottish countryside, but now scientists are asking people in Scotland to be on the lookout for mosquitoes, as new research shows they can be found in many locations across the country. Mosquito Scotland - a collaborative project between the University of Glasgow, the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR), the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) - has established a surveillance project across the country, and has been collecting data on Scottish mosquitoes for a year.

The privatisation of land for renewable energy infrastructure in Brazil is leading to the appropriation of once-public and common lands by large international corporations because of poor oversight and lack of transparency, finds a new study involving UCL researchers. The study, published in Nature Sustainability, found that land privatisation is the dominant means for solar and wind companies to secure land for their power generation infrastructure, which includes the transfer of control of formerly public and common lands to often international companies.

Current methods to count plastic pollution in rivers are insufficient and do not account for the fragments which sink below the surface, a team of scientists have warned. These 'invisible' plastic particles can be suspended below the water line or sink to the riverbed where they are potentially harmful to the ecology of the river.

Climate tipping points can either result from a slow but linear development, or can "flicker" between two stable climatic states that alternate before a final, permanent transition occurs, finds a new study featuring a UCL researcher. The study, published in Nature Communications , confirms this alternating transition for the end of the African Humid Period, a time between about 14,000 and 5,000 years ago when northern Africa was much wetter, as it shifted to the pronounced aridity that is typical today.