A public hearing in Assen heard how a chorus of frogs and bubbling peat generated thousands of false tremor alerts at a Dutch nature reserve. The unlikely culprit has given researchers a new way to study a restored bog — and a lesson in how not to place a sensor.
A walkout by forest monitors has brought the human cost of a climate warning into focus: researchers say a vast stretch of Guyana’s rainforest has crossed a threshold that could make it release more carbon than it absorbs. One of the strike leaders is urging a logging pause that would also suspend his family’s timber permit.
A newly published study says a sharp rise in earthquakes and ground swelling beneath South Africa’s Marion Island points to a possible eruption before 31 October. The warning emerged after a lawsuit forced the release of monitoring data, prompting officials to prepare an evacuation while urging the public not to panic.
A court has halted 86 kilometres (53 miles) of planned firebreak work in eastern Germany as blazes send smoke into Berlin and Dresden. Researchers say fires could consume 50,000 hectares (123,600 acres) by 20 October if the region misses the rain it needs.
A new study says falling rainfall and forest loss have pushed a large part of Mexico’s Selva Maya into a self-reinforcing drying cycle. The government disputes the finding, while the authors warn that thousands of square kilometres could change sharply within 14 years.
A survey timed to the anniversary of Taiwan’s 1999 earthquake has overturned a long-held picture of two isolated fish populations. Researchers say the tiny minnows have been slipping between streams through an old irrigation pipe.
A vast Antarctic ice shelf has lost a section the size of a small country, and scientists warn its weakened remnant could release a glacier that would add centimetres to global sea levels. A lawsuit filed in Prague accuses Czech authorities of discounting that risk because an automated system labelled the projection “low confidence”.
A vast, unexplained warm layer off Brazil has trapped less oxygen in the sea than scientists expected, and could leave thousands of square kilometres of fishing grounds dangerously depleted by January. The alarm followed a protest in Recife that demanded a halt to new coastal data-centre permits; officials say there is no evidence the facilities caused the anomaly.
Martinique’s Mount Pelée has entered its highest alert short of an eruption after a surge in shallow earthquakes and ground swelling, with scientists warning that an eruption could come within days. A famous actor’s call for residents to leave has collided with officials’ insistence that no evacuation order is in force.
An audit of glacier-monitoring equipment in northern Pakistan has uncovered years of missing high-frequency measurements, prompting researchers to revise their estimates of how quickly meltwater enters the Indus system. The researchers say the most intense surges were far larger than the network’s published summaries suggested.
A cloudburst knocked out power in a mountain village near Lousã, but a hand-built pump kept water flowing to 31 homes. The storm also exposed a startling gap in Portugal’s emergency planning: researchers say a dozen working pumps like it are missing from official maps.
A Swiss public glacier-monitoring portal marked dozens of retreating ice fronts as showing “no shift”, an audit has found. Scientists say the redesign did not alter the underlying measurements, but its default display stripped away context that matters as Alpine ice loss accelerates.