Why is the Ozone hole suddenly getting bigger again?

Our showcase today is an article by Shivali Best of the Mail, who reports that this September has seen a disquietingly fast opening of the ozone “hole” over the Antarctic. [1] It’s disturbing for two reasons. One, obviously: the ozone layer is what protects us all from ultra-violet radiation, which would otherwise cause skin cancers and many other inconvenient forms of disease. Secondly, closing the hole in the ozone layer since is one of the few successful examples of collective action we can point to . So what’s going on?

Shivali adduces two statements which art first sight seem to contradict each other. Firstly, the sudden depletion of ozone is probably due to a sudden cooling at high altitude over the extreme Antarctic. The increase in stratospheric clouds begins to thin the ozone which overlies them, by processes which you can read about in the article. The second, quite rightly, is that August 2026 was the hottest month ever recorded. To quote Shivali

The average temperature last month was 16.96°C….. even higher than the previous record holder, July 2023, which had an average temperature of 16.95°C …..

So: is it getting hotter, or colder? Depends where. Essentially, greenhouse gases heat up the Troposphere, that thick dense lower layer of the atmosphere where we all live. This actually acts like a blanket, wrapping in the heat on the surface, while stopping it rising up into the stratosphere. The result is a cooling at higher altitudes-which would exactly cause the Ozone effects which have been observed.[2] [3]

Somewhere this week some of you will meet a strongly opinionated person who has skimmed the headlines, absorbed them uncritically, bounded to conclusions, and declared to you: “ De Antartic is gettin’ cooler, mate! That PROVES there’s no such fing as global warmin!” Now you know why they’re wrong.

[1]The ozone hole has burst open: Analysis reveals how the opening over Antarctica has ‘increased sharply’ this month – and is set to get even bigger | Daily Mail Online

[2]Chabrillat et al. (2025), Modelling stratospheric composition for the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Geoscientific Model Development (Copernicus Publications

[3]WMO Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion (2022

#global warming #ozone layer #stratosphere #troposphere #cliamte change #fossil fuels #antarctic #ocean

Why El Niño is like smoking cigarettes

Our showcase today, (in three languages, folks!),is two stories on the soi disant Super El Niño which is now forming in the Pacific, and which threatens to wreak havoc on the entire planet. One from the Guardian, [1]the other from Nature Briefing,[2] they’re basically factual accounts, very well written of course, and we have linked them below, But what we really wanted to ask was: what has all this got to do with global warming? We don’t know about you, gentle readers: but every so often we still come across the sort of person who attributed last summer’s infernal heat to El Niño: as if that somehow gave them an excuse not to face the facts about climate change. (the fact that some of these sceptics are also enthusiastic smokers may, or may not, be pertinent) So in order to fulfil our mission to inform and enlighten we attempted a little fact checking. And we came up with two of them: quite enough for one day’s assimilation by anyone’s standards.

1 El Niño is a natural phenomenon, as this link to Wikipedia makes clear[3]

2 But human induced climate change is having a profound effect upon its behaviour, as this 2021 review from Nature Reviews Earth & Environment makes equally clear.[4] As global temperatures rise, the Pacific Ocean holds more heat, which means each El Niño event starts from a warmer baseline and therefore pushes global temperatures higher than it used to. Recent research shows that warming oceans are amplifying the intensity and global impact of strong El Niños, helping drive record‑breaking heat years.

Medical doctors warn of the consequences of smoking tobacco. People who ignore the warnings or deny their admonitions will face certain consequences. Climate scientists, meteorologists and others are like doctors to the whole planet. We may now see the consequences of ignoring them for far too long.

[1]Here’s Bill McGuire for the Guardian The incoming ‘super’ El Niño will create chaos around the world – and we are far from ready for it | Bill McGuire | The Guardian

[2]And here’s Nature Briefing How this year’s El Niño will be different

This year’s El Niño weather event is forecast to reach unprecedented strength. It’s also the first strong El Niño to form in the eastern (rather than central) Pacific since the late 1990s, when the Earth was cooler. These facts, combined with the climate crisis, make El Niño’s effects hard to predict, experts say. So far, the impacts resemble those of previous strong events, and are far-reaching:Drought conditions in Central America have slowed shipping traffic on the Panama Canal.The anchovy harvest at a fishery off the coast of Peru, one of the most productive in the world, was cancelled early as fish fled warm waters.Tens of millions of people in parts of southern and East Africa are predicted to experience acute food insecurity because of dry weather combined with high prices for fuel and fertilizer.Nature | 7 min read

Read more: The United Nations cultural organization UNESCO has released an online tool for heritage professionals and policymakers to prepare for the impact of El Niño on cultural sites.

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation

[4] [4] Nature Revie#PAws Earth & Environment (2021) — “Changing El Niño–Southern Oscillation in a warming climate”

# El Niño #Pacific ocean #southern ocean #climate #meteorology #global warming #geography #food #flood #drought #hurricane

Carbon Brief: What a website for all things Global Warming!

Readers, contributors, even our downtrodden staff, we apologise wholly and unreservedly for not telling you before about Carbon Brief. Because what a website it is, ladies and gentlemen! For here you will find everything you need in what is rapidly becoming the only issue of our soi-disant times, clear and present climate breakdown due to human induced global warming. But do not despair For Carbon Brief [1] has in depth coverage of climate science, policy, newsletters analysis and a handy Fact Check custom made to refute all the hot air opinions you’ll hear in the Dog and Duck this weekend. Has Mr Trump got it entirely 100% right about the IPCC? Can you think of nine myths about oil in the North Sea? What is really keeping UK energy prices so high (if you’re a mum with a family you might find that last one especially poignant) Answers to these and many more canards are to be found in this excellent section of the website. But of course there is much, much more.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, once more we can only apologise. For we have tried our best, our level best here on Climate change. But to be frank, compared to this lot we “am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal”, as St Paul memorably observed in his notable e mail to the Corinthians. From now on we honestly and humbly advise you to check out Carbon Brief wherever and whenever you need facts and balanced reason on the whole catastrophic matter. Teachers in particular might find swarms of subjects for lesson plans. Those enduring social visits from cantankerous relatives, or who have to deal with the opinions of elderly neighbours over the garden fence will find even more. We will end with an even more relevant extract from that same e mail from theat same wily old scribe from Damascus:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” That’s 1 Corinthians 13:12, to you and me.

Even if you’re not a Corinthian, click on Carbon Brief now. What are you waiting for?

[1] Home – Carbon Brief

#carbon brief #global warming #climate change #fossil fuels #coal #oil #ecological collapse

These fires are predictions coming true: so what about the future?

Europe burns: June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded in western Europe, driving temperatures to the highest levels seen in more than a century. In France, drought, low humidity and repeated heatwaves have turned forests into kindling; wildfires have already burned 35,400 hectares, four times the usual area for this point in the season, while Spain has lost 55,128 hectares, double its average. Across the continent, extreme heat is desiccating lakes, soils and crops at rates made many times more likely by human‑driven warming. Rivers across Europe are running so shallow that cargo ships are restricted, hydropower is curtailed, and Danube and Rhine river‑boat holidays are being cancelled because the Alps did not produce enough snow to melt into summer water levels.

Beyond Europe, the world’s high places are breaking too. In the Himalayas, the 2026 monsoon outlook warns of a dangerous paradox: long droughts punctuated by sudden cloudbursts, raising the risk of flash floods, landslides, and glacial‑lake outbursts across Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Pakistan. North America is enduring its own climate convulsions. The United States — where the cultural refrain “drill, baby, drill!” still echoes in parts of the political landscape — has been hit repeatedly by record‑strength heat domes, driving temperatures past human‑health thresholds and straining power grids from California to the Midwest. Canada, meanwhile, continues to reel from unprecedented wildfire seasons, with boreal forests burning at scales once considered impossible.

As early as the 1990s, researchers warned that rising temperatures and shifting rainfall would intensify fire regimes, especially in regions where drought and heatwaves coincide. By 2001, the IPCC’s landmark report Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [1] had already catalogued the pattern: climate change would alter “disturbance regimes” in forests, increasing the frequency and intensity of fires as ecosystems dried and heat extremes sharpened. It noted that major fire events in the 1990s — from the Amazon to Indonesia — were early signals of a climate‑driven shift, and that future warming would make such events more common and more severe. These were predictions, not scare stories, made by scientists who understood the physics, ran the models, and told us plainly what was coming. Remember: making accurate predictions is one of the signs of good thinking. Yet we also remember the barrels of scorn and opprobrium poured upon them by various well‑oiled journalistic and political machines that helped avert any meaningful action.

And the latest predictions? If we continue on our present path, the IPCC projects that by the 2030s and 2040s vast regions of the world will shift into permanent fire weather, with fire seasons lengthening by one to two months in southern Europe, western North America, and Australia. The World Meteorological Organization expects 1.5°C of warming to be locked in during the 2030s [2], a threshold at which extreme heat becomes annual, drought becomes structural, and forests lose their ability to recover between burns. By the 2040s, climate models show Mediterranean Europe facing megafires every few years, Canada’s boreal forests transitioning into a fire‑dominated ecosystem, and the American West experiencing summers where smoke becomes a chronic public‑health hazard, not an occasional crisis. The Himalayas, meanwhile, are projected to lose up to half their glacial mass, destabilising rivers and increasing the risk of catastrophic glacial‑lake floods. None of this is speculative; it is the median outcome of the world we are building. The scientists have already run the numbers. Will you still let a politician or a journalist tell you these scientists have been wrong all along? [3][4]

[1] Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability — IPCC

[2] WMO Global Climate Update; IPCC AR6

[3] Royal Society: Evidence & Causes of Climate Change

[4] IPCC AR6: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

#Nepal # Bhutan # India #Pakistan#United States #canada #spain #france #climate change #fossil fuel #global warming #alps #snow

New batteries offer more hope on Climate Change

Ever since climate deniers lost the argument on basic science, they have spent their time sneering at every new sustainable initiative. Targets of their scorn include solar panels, windfarms and of course batteries, which will never be big enough/stable enough/environmentally friendly enough for their liking. That last bit always makes us laugh; so should their reaction to this new development in sodium-ion batteries as explained by Nature Briefing in this excellent piece called The Battery that could change everything

Sodium-ion batteries promise to be cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly than the lithium-ion cells that currently dominate technologies such as electric cars. And the sea-change could finally be here: CATL — the world’s largest battery producer — has announced that it will start mass-producing sodium-ion batteries by the end of the year. A swell of interest from battery makers and researchers has helped to solve longstanding challenges, such as a lack of durability. Nature | 10 min read

There’s so much to like here that we don’t know where to begin. Sodium is so much more abundant and easier to mine than lithium: so that’s the environmental and cost bases covered in a nutshell. Sodium batteries[1] will be safer, and better in cold weather than their lithium-ion cousins that we use so much now, Yes, they will be heavier and have lower energy densities. But that will not matter in most applications such as short-range cars, domestic and industrial power storage, the delivery market and back up of all kinds. Lithium will still probably win out in areas of high performance like luxury long distance EVs and aircraft propulsion. But- energy technology is not about final winners, it’s about horses for courses.

And there’s a final, Devil-whispers-in-our-ear warning for fans of Geopolitics. Note once again how the initiative in all this is coming from China. One hundred years ago, America was the home of all that was new. Now it seems determined to stick to the old methods of fossil fuels as if the blissful moment of its perfection can somehow be preserved forever. Not a happy choice.

[1] Sodium-ion battery – Wikipedia

#sodium ion batteries #lithium batteries #climate change #renewables #global warming #energy #sustainability

Will Global Warming be the final blow for the High Street?

Photo by Timothy Huliselan on Pexels.com

At LSS we bring our readers an eclectic range of stories: medical research, energy technologies, geopolitics, cocktails… all human life is here, you might say. Yet one subject dear to our heart has been a little neglected, even though we first covered it six years ago (LSS 6/4/20): the good old British High Street — those lines and streets of shops, cafés, community buildings, pubs and whatever else that once made us feel we belonged, had place, and time, and even, dare we say it?-a little agency. It’s had a battering lately: rising rents, falling business confidence since 2016, and of course online shopping, which has taken such a juicy slice of the retail spending pie. No wonder everyone complains about empty shops and “hollowed‑out High Streets”. No wonder so many political parties make hopeful promises to restore the old place to its 1960s glory.

So all the old place needed was a fresh blow — the latest British Retail Consortium figures for July, which showed a 3.4% fall in visitors to British shops in June. In fact the headline number masks a worse result for High Streets, with footfall down 6.2%, while retail parks and shopping centres got off more lightly (0.3% and 2.5% respectively). And the reason? The weather: the heatwave, which was England’s hottest on record and the UK’s second hottest. A grim explanation which nevertheless seems widely accepted.

Which made us wonder: what other parts of the economy are already starting to suffer losses due to climate change? A quick survey allowed our Research Department to suggest that winter sports, coastal leisure, outdoor festivals, gardening and horticulture, recreational fishing and boating, heritage tourism, wine production, and amateur community sport are all showing measurable economic losses as climate change disrupts seasons, damages landscapes, raises insurance costs, and forces cancellations across activities people once assumed were stable, perennial — and rather fun.

How ironic, then, that some parties who call most loudly for the restoration of the traditional High Street are also those demanding the reversal of policies designed to mitigate climate change! They argue that the projected costs of adaptation are too high to bear. But the actual costs are already very real — and rising. However, you have a remedy, gentle reader. The next time someone moans to you about the state of the High Street, you may agree that the Government must take action. Starting with policies to slow and reverse global warming.

[1] UK shopping trips fall in June as heatwave takes toll, BRC says

[2] Impact of climate change on global economy: A comprehensive review – ScienceDirect

#economics #climate change #global warming #high street #retail #shopping

Has Global Warming happened to you yet?

Photo by Guduru Ajay bhargav on Pexels.com

Everyone can choose how they learn about global warming. For some it is to read the science by consulting sites such as the Royal Society[1] , NOAA,[2] the Met Office [3] and other adults in the room. The second is to wait until it happens to you. Increasingly, people are choosing the second option because the climate is now delivering personal tutorials: a fire that shouldn’t have burned, a flood that shouldn’t have reached that high, a heatwave that shouldn’t have been possible at this latitude. We’ve got three examples for you today, which we present with due apologies and sympathy to the victims( it really isn’t their fault).

A. The 2022 UK 40°C heatwave

Most people who lived in Southern England that year can share memories like driving around the M25 through clouds of smoke from the burning heaths of Surrey, or seeing our beloved green South Downs turn the colour of chamois leather. Attribution studies conclude climate change made it at least 10 times more likely.[4]

B. The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave

You’d think the cool, rainy Pacific Coast would be the last place to expect a catastrophic climate change event. But this one was described by scientists as “virtually impossible” without global warming. [5]

C. The 2023–24 Canadian wildfires

The largest in Canadian history; attribution work shows climate change made the conditions significantly more likely and more severe.[6]

We could go on- but at this point there pops up the usual man from the Dog and Duck who yells “these are only (expletive deleted) probabilities! Just models! No one has PROVED these were caused by climate change!” To which we reply:

If you refuse to act until science gives you 100% certainty, you’ll never act on anything. Climate attribution uses the same probability standards we rely on for medicine, insurance, and engineering — the ones we trust every day without complaint. When scientists say “an event was made ten times more likely by climate change”, that’s not vague. That’s the same level of evidence we use to approve drugs, design bridges, and set insurance premiums. If you accept probability‑based evidence when it keeps planes in the sky and hospitals running, but reject it only when it concerns climate change, that’s not a scientific position — it’s a political one. It’s also disingenuous. But above all, it is very short term.

[1] Evidence & Causes of Climate Change | Royal Society

[2] Climate Change | NOAA Climate.gov

[3] Climate – Met Office

[4] UK heat scientific report

[5]Philip et al. (2022), “Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021.” Earth System Dynamics, 13, 1689–1713.

#global warming #climate change #fossil fuels #fires #floods #droughts

No more plants, no more antibiotics

Photo by Chokniti Khongchum on Pexels.com

Losing plants and fungi to climate change is a quiet catastrophe for antibiotics and medical research in general because these organisms are our undiscovered pharmacy. A huge share of existing drugs — from penicillin to paclitaxel — came from obscure species that someone happened to find before they vanished. As habitats heat, dry, burn, or shift faster than species can move, we’re not just losing biodiversity; we’re losing chemical ingenuity that evolution spent millions of years perfecting. Every extinct fungus is a potential new antibiotic gone forever, every vanished plant a missed anti‑cancer compound, every collapsed ecosystem a library burned before we even opened the first book. The tragedy is not only what we lose now, but what we will never get the chance to discover.

Fortunately, the Royal Botanic gardens at Kew in London (one of the world’s most enlightened and learned places) is on the case as the erudite Damien Carrington makes clear for this article in the Guardian. The vital, almost neuralgic need, is to identify new plants before they are destroyed forever under a concrete miasma of shopping malls, motorway interchanges and cheap hotels. To say nothing of climate change: if you want proof of that, the flowering time for plants has been changing by 2.5 days a decade for the last hundred years or so, according to this article But the RBG are at last deploying the wonders of AI to speed up identification and classification, so the task of exploring the pharmaceutical cornucopia can be made much easier

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, reports Damian They are even getting genomic data from 180 year old fungi, potentially opening a completely new line of research But read the lot for yourselves gentle readers, by clicking on Damian’s lucid article

Now we could tell you much about how the foregoing cheers us on behalf of our pet project, antibiotic research or even for medical science in general; for we know some of you have wider concerns and interests. But we won’t. Instead we shall close with a naked, unashamed plug for that self-same Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.[2] Easily reached by bus , train or licenced London Taxi, it contains a formidable treasure of plants from the entire globe cunningly arranged in some spectacular displays Plus some delightful lakes full of fish and water fowl, pleasant lawns and excellent cafes and souvenir shops. If in London, visit it we say. Personal note: we remember from more than 30 years ago an excellent bar on Kew Gardens station where they sold excellent cold lager to compensate for the hard slog around the tropical greenhouses Does anyone know if it is still there?

[1] AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists | Plants | The Guardian

[2] https://www.bing.com/alink/link?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.kew.org%2f&source=serp-local&h=9bhqK4eCioVZh7YfDibjFqdXtmBATJUp73lhpA8kti0%3d&p=lw_magsmlt&ig=

#botany #pharmacology #medical research #royal botanic gardens kew #ecology #plants #fungi

Chikungunya: another potential Climate Change epidemic?

News that we’re in for a record El Niño[1] this year brings a depressing thought is Climate Change going to deliver a whole new wave of tropical diseases alongside all those floods. fires and migrations? We’ve touched on this before (LSS 25 10 21,14 11 23, 2 10 25) but had rather hoped that it had all gone away. It hasn’t, as this excellent article by Shivali Best of the Mail [2] explains in forensic detail. And it’s her work we’ll be riffing on today, with a little help other sources.[3]

Shivali takes Chikungunya virus as her theme. It’s a nasty little disease caused by an alphavirus of the Togaviridae group. Discovered in Tanzania in 1952 it delivers a painful cocktail of symptoms including fever and severe joint pains: the latter may be extremely debilitating and long-lasting. But the real problem lies in its vectors, the famous yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti and the scarily named tiger mosquito (a. albopictus) Do they call it that because of its bite? Not only does climate change allow these insects to spread to lands where the cold had formerly precluded their presence. The same warming allows the virus to breed up to five times faster inside the mosquito. Before you ask: there are vaccines of sorts underway: but progress has been slowed because most of the money has been spent on wars and shopping malls.

And so Chikungunya joins the long sorry list of diseases spreading due to global warming. To which we could append Malaria, Dengue, Zika, Lyme, Tick Born Encephalitis, Vibrio group……..enough! LSS readers are a well-informed lot. They know what’s happening. They know why. The real task before us all is how to clear up the damage, and make those culpable pay for it

[1]Prepare for El Niño, UN warns – it could be the strongest in decades – BBC News

[2]Chikungunya virus is heading for Europe: Scientists warn mosquito-borne tropical disease could spread to major cities thanks to climate change | Daily Mail

[3]Chikungunya fact sheet

#chikungunya #malaria #climate change #disease #vector #epidemic #health #mosquito

Round Up for Bank Holiday Weekend: Climate Migrants, Migrating whales, Wales’ climate-and more

Stories we liked but never had time to cover this week

Every Immigrant an Emigrant If you’re really serious about migration, tackle the causes, we say. This article from the Conversation makes our point rather well. Economics and ecology: tackle those and you will have solved the problem.

https://theconversation.com/who-moves-away-when-climate-change-hits-the-hidden-household-politics-of-migration-281470?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversa

Wandering whale The immense migrations that some animals make have always impressed us none more so than the journeys of this remarkable humpback whale as chronicled by The Guardian. Incidentally, cetacean fans will be delighted by the forthcoming edition of that remarkable magazine Sussex Local, which carries a tour de force of in-depth reporting on dolphins and other large mammals in the English Channel. Don’t miss it!

Twenty-two years and 15,000km later: fluke discovery sets new record for humpback whale journey | Marine life | The Guardian wandering whale

Was T Rex fairly armless? Sorry we couldn’t think of a single Marc Bolan gag that we could decently publish here, so we’ll let you read this article about one of the more famous unsolved puzzles in science.

Why did T. rex have such small arms? Scientists finally SOLVE the mystery – and say the answer may lie in their giant heads | Daily Mail Online

How long can a civilisation last anyway? If you’re one of those types who thinks “I don’t give a monkey’s about climate change, I’ll be dead before it happens” then this article from EL País may give pause for thought.(note-in Spanish)

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2026-05-20/cuanto-tiempo-puede-vivir-una-civilizacion-antes-de-colapsar-las-utopias-estables-son-los-escenarios-menos-probables.

Fortress Britain People in Britain used to sneer at the disasters-climatic, political, economic-which befell less fortunate countries. Not any more, as climate change erodes their complacency in many forms, including biting insects, burning summers and flashing floods. Even in cool green Wales, as this link from the BBC makes clear

‘Negligence’ not to prepare for climate change emergencies in Wales – BBC News

Basically, it’s reckless indulgence in our beastly pleasures that have brought the climate crisis upon us. Shakespeare had this to say

“Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack… that thou hast forgotten to demand that which thou wouldst truly know.” — Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 1, Scene 2)

#climate change #global warming #whales #dolphins #dinosaurs #economics #sociology