28 Aug 2025
Image description: sunset over a peat bog in the Scottish Highlands. Image by K B / Unsplash To improve our understanding of the conditions needed to restore peatlands, Professor Graeme Swindles from the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University has been leading a team to calculate peat accumulation rates over the […]
24 Jun 2025
Image description: Wildfire with the silhouettes of people looking on. Image by Issy Bailey / Unsplash The planet’s remaining carbon budget to meet the international target of 1.5°C has just two years left at the current rate of emissions, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study published in the journal Earth […]
08 May 2025
Image description: Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, founder of the Thousand Year Trust, sitting on a tree trunk with his dog, wearing a blue shirt, jeans and brown hat. Photograph: Bex Aston/The Observer Scaling up and restoring the connections between Britain’s rainforests is key to their long-term survival in the face of climate change. Planting native trees […]
29 Apr 2025
When bottom trawls are dragged across the seafloor, they stir up sediments. This not only releases previously stored organic carbon, but also intensifies the oxidation of pyrite, a mineral present in marine sediments, leading to additional emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). These are the findings of a new study conducted by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre […]
03 Dec 2024
The UK has called for views on changes to its emissions trading system (ETS) that could see the shipping sector join its carbon market from 2026. Britain’s ETS is part of its wider efforts to meet climate targets and was launched in 2021 to replace its participation in the European Union’s ETS after it left […]
30 Oct 2024
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has offered advice on the level of the country’s 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the UK Government, at the request of Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Miliband. The CCC recommends that the UK’s NDC commits to reduce territorial greenhouse gas emissions by 81% from 1990 to 2035. This is based […]
24 Sep 2024
Small marine crustaceans, like Antarctic krill, are as valuable as key coastal habitats for storing carbon and should be similarly protected, according to new research. The study reveals that krill store comparable amounts of carbon to ‘blue carbon’ habitats such as mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses. Lead author Dr. Emma Cavan from Imperial College London said, […]
17 Sep 2024
The movement of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the surface of the ocean, where it is in active contact with the atmosphere, to the deep ocean, where it can be sequestered away for decades, centuries, or longer, depends on a number of seemingly small processes. One of these key microscale processes is the dietary preferences of […]
