The Guardian Climate Change

An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem

On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.

This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”

The late illustrator’s elephant hero is to star in a new ecological fable after the discovery of a rough manuscript and drawings

From the depths of his extraordinarily vibrant imagination, he famously conjured up Mr Benn, Not Now, Bernard, King Rollo and Elmer the patchwork elephant.

Now a manuscript and rough sketches for a new illustrated story about Elmer has been in the archive of the late British children’s author and illustrator David McKee. It will be published next year by his family.

The ongoing war in Gaza, an earthquake in Hualien, Holy Week in Havana and a tornado in Tennessee: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

New director Jenny Niven calls controversy over lead sponsor Baillie Gifford’s fossil fuel links ‘the nature of the beast’, but activists are still calling for authors to boycott the event

Before last summer’s Edinburgh international book festival (EIBF) had even begun, it was already the subject of a high-profile boycott and petition.

In July, Scottish investigative news site the Ferret calculated that the festival’s lead sponsor, investment management firm Baillie Gifford, had up to £5bn invested in companies profiting from fossil fuels. Days later, Greta Thunberg pulled out from her scheduled talk, accusing Baillie Gifford of greenwashing. Soon, more than 50 authors and event chairs including Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and Katherine Rundell had signed a letter calling on the company to stop investing in fossil fuel-linked businesses. If that demand wasn’t met, the group said that Edinburgh should find a new sponsor – and if it didn’t, authors should boycott the 2024 festival.

Letitia James’s lawsuit accuses JBS of deceiving customers about being climate-friendly – and the implications could be far-reaching

When the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced that it would be suing the world’s largest meat company, JBS, for misleading customers about its climate commitments, it caused a stir far beyond the world of food. That’s because the suit’s impact has the potential to influence the approach all kinds of big businesses take in their advertising about sustainability, according to experts.

It’s just one in a string of greenwashing lawsuits being brought against large airline, automobile and fashion companies of late. “It’s been 20 years of companies lying about their environmental and climate justice impacts. And it feels like all of a sudden, from Europe to the US, the crackdown is beginning to happen,” said Todd Paglia, executive director of environmental non-profit Stand.earth. “I think greenwash[ing] is actually one of the pivotal issues in the next five years.”

Regulator faces accusation of acting unlawfully in its investigation of Global Warming Policy Foundation

The Charity Commission is facing a legal challenge by MPs over its failure to investigate campaigning by a thinktank that questions climate science.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, Labour’s Clive Lewis and Green MP Caroline Lucas, supported by the Good Law Project, have sent a legal letter to the regulator over an unresolved complaint they made in October 2022.

Masses of ephemeral organisms known as ‘by-the-wind sailors’ wash up in a ‘blue tide’ on the west coast most years but warmer winter seas could be increasingly their numbers

From Oregon to California, blankets of alien-like blue creatures are washing up on rocky beaches. They are Velella velella, tiny colonies of organisms with a sombrero-esque fin sticking out the top and tentacles dangling down.

Millions have been spotted along the US west coast this spring, much to the surprise and delight of beachgoers who have gleefully posted footage on social media. Some call it a “blue tide” and it happens most springs – but not always to the same degree of abundance.

In the state of La Guajira, ambitious plans to transition to renewables are beset by bureaucratic delays and anger from many local Indigenous people, who see it as ‘new colonialism’

• Photographs by Charlie Cordeiro

A few years ago, as age began to take its toll, Rosa Velásquez decided it was time to leave the restaurant she owned in the coastal town of Cabo de la Vela and move back home for a peaceful retirement.. However, when she returned to the tiny rural community of Jotomana, on the arid plains of Colombia’s northernmost tip, she found the place she and her ancestors had called home for generations littered with giant wind turbines.

Towering white turbines punctuate the horizon a few miles from Cabo de la Vela. The region, in the northern state of La Guajira, is home to all of Colombia’s windfarms and its largest Indigenous population, the Wayúu.

Lending to meat, dairy and feed corporations led to ‘significant proportion’ of banks’ emissions, Friends of the Earth found

American banks are “sabotaging” their own climate commitments by financing meat, dairy and feed corporations, according to a report.

The report analysed funding from 58 US banks to animal protein and feed companies in the form of loans and underwriting, such as share and bond issuance guarantees.

Despite major progress in Brazil and Colombia, deforestation led by farming still cleared an area nearly equal to Switzerland

The destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate in 2023, despite dramatic falls in forest loss in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, new figures show.

An area nearly the size of Switzerland was cleared from previously undisturbed rainforests last year, totalling 37,000 sq km (14,200 sq miles), according to figures compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. This is a rate of 10 football pitches a minute, often driven by more land being brought under agricultural cultivation around the world.

Analysis reveals many big producers increased output of fossil fuels and related emissions in seven years after Paris climate deal

A mere 57 oil, gas, coal and cement producers are directly linked to 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since the 2016 Paris climate agreement, a study has shown.

This powerful cohort of state-controlled corporations and shareholder-owned multinationals are the leading drivers of the climate crisis, according to the Carbon Majors Database, which is compiled by world-renowned researchers.

Researchers applaud move away from fossil fuels but say more must be done to mitigate effects on endangered species

Up to a third of Africa’s great apes are threatened by a boom in mining projects for minerals required for the renewable energy transition, new research shows.

An estimated 180,000 gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees are at risk due to an increase in demand for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt, a study has found. Many of those minerals are required for clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric cars. Researchers say the boom in demand is driving destruction of tropical rainforests which are critical habitats for Africa’s great apes.

While Toyota falls in line on vehicle emission standards, an expert takes a dim view of ‘solar sunshot’ and the carbon offsets that aren’t

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The news cycle moves fast. There was a cascade of climate news as the country slowed down for Easter last week.

Here’s some of what you might have seen, what you might have missed, and a look at what it means.

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Rate of decline in 2023 thought to be linked to climate breakdown as UK-wide survey shows mixed picture across 58 species

The small tortoiseshell butterfly has suffered its worst year on record in England, and has declined by 82% across the UK since 1976, according to the annual scientific count of butterfly populations.

The sharp decline in numbers of the once-common garden butterfly has puzzled scientists, but it is thought to be linked to climate breakdown. It had its worst year on record in England, its second worst in Wales and its joint-fifth worst in Scotland in 2023 but did well in Northern Ireland, logging its second-best year.

She was just 15 and her friends couldn’t save her from the rising waters. For her family and everyone in this flooded region of Belgium, nothing will ever be the same again

It was not a river. It was scarcely a stream. The Ruisseau des Quartes, Marcourt, Belgium. An unlovely and unremarkable tributary of the Ourthe, itself a tributary of the mighty Meuse, which thunders from France through Belgium and the Netherlands and on to the chilly oblivion of the North Sea. It was barely 2 metres wide, boggy in places, just 5cm deep in others. The parents dropping off their children at the United World Colleges summer camp on 10 July 2021 hopped over it as they lugged bags to the dormitories.

Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts was nervous on the drive down. He would have to take a Covid test on arrival and he worried it would be positive. Belgium was beginning to relax restrictions and Benjamin was desperate to socialise with other teenagers. But the test was negative; soon, Benjamin was dropping off his things in his dorm and meeting his other campmates. And there was Rosa.

After years of swinging extremes, state snowpack is at rare average of 110%, setting up good water savings account for year ahead

On Tuesday morning California officials trekked into the mountains to share some exciting and unusual news: the state’s snowpack measurement is just about average. Across the state, the snowpack came in at roughly 110% – a measurement that is exceedingly rare in a changing climate.

The fourth survey of the year, conducted at the beginning of April, is considered one of the most crucial. It serves as an indicator for how the state’s water supply will fare through the drier, warmer seasons ahead. The snowpack acts as a water savings account for the state, supplying roughly 30% of California’s water and slowly refilling reservoirs, pumping rivers and streams and wetting soils during the dry, warm seasons as it melts. April typically marks the shift out of the precipitation season, which is why this snowpack measurement carries so much weight.

Modelling points to ‘huge’ soil emissions in interior rangelands, which are more sensitive to a warming climate

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Intensifying extreme heat and drought due to climate change will make Australia’s soil a net emitter of carbon dioxide, impeding the country from reaching its climate goals, new analysis has found.

Soil carbon sequestration has been identified as a way to help Australia meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of 43% by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

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Recent $74m investment made alongside assessment that 10% of electricity could be generated by geothermal by 2050

A limitless supply of heat exists beneath our feet within the Earth’s crust, but harnessing it at scale has proved challenging. Now, a combination of new techniques, government support and the pressing need to secure continuous clean power in an era of climate crisis means that geothermal energy is finally having its moment in the US.

Until recently, geothermal has only been viable where the Earth’s inner heat simmers near the surface, such as at hot springs or geysers where hot water or steam can be easily drawn to drive turbines and generate electricity.

Reducing cattle populations and restoring native ecoystems is our best chance to tackle global heating. Here’s one way to do it

There is a simple, cost-effective and scientifically sound way to turn back the clock on global warming and reverse the catastrophic collapse of biodiversity: pay ranchers to raise trees instead of cattle.

By mass, the world’s 1.7 billion cows are the dominant animal species on Earth, far outweighing the human population, and outweighing all the wild terrestrial mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians left on Earth by more than 15-fold. More than a third of Earth’s land is used to feed livestock.

Saving Alnmouth from rising seas and coastal erosion complicated by links course being on private land

For most golfers, the most damage a furious wind can do is to your handicap – and, if you are really unfortunate, your car windshield.

But visitors to Alnmouth village golf club in Northumberland have to contend with the prospect of storms and rising sea levels consigning the oldest nine-hole links course in the country to history.