Seven months after an El Niño associated with hotter and drier weather got under way, conditions have returned to neutral
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The Bureau of Meteorology has declared the El Niño weather event of 2023-24 to be over, with odds increasing that its cooler counterpart, the La Niña, will return by the coming spring.
Conditions in the central equatorial Pacific have now returned to neutral conditions, about seven months after the El Niño had got under way, the bureau said on Tuesday.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/16/2024 - 03:27
04/16/2024 - 02:39
Tanya Plibersek says two new agencies will be established but a commitment to rewrite national environment laws has been pushed back
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The Albanese government has further delayed a commitment to rewrite Australia’s failing national environment laws.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government would introduce legislation in coming weeks to create two previously announced bodies – an environment protection agency and a second organisation called Environment Information Australia, which will provide public data on ecosystems, plants and animals.
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04/15/2024 - 23:30
Scientists have recorded widespread bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef as global heating creates a fourth planet-wide bleaching event. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, 54% of ocean waters containing coral reefs have been experiencing heat stress high enough to cause bleaching
Global heating pushes coral reefs towards worst planet-wide mass bleaching on record
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04/15/2024 - 23:01
Supreme court ruling left more than 90% of state’s surface waters with no pollution protections, since they don’t run continuously
New Mexico’s rivers, which include the Rio Grande, Gila, San Juan and Pecos, are America’s most threatened waterways, according to a new report. This is largely due to a 2023 US supreme court decision that left more than 90% of the state’s surface waters without federal protections from industrial pollution, according to state officials.
“Virtually all the rivers in New Mexico are losing clean water protections,” said Matt Rice, the south-west regional director of American Rivers, the conservation group that publishes the annual list. “It has the most to lose, and the threat is particularly acute there.”
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04/15/2024 - 23:00
What can sound tell us about nature loss? Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Madeleine Finlay about her visit to Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, where ecologist Richard Broughton has witnessed the decline of the marsh tit population over 22 years, and has heard the impact on the wood’s soundscape. As species lose their habitats across the world, pioneering soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause has argued that if we listen closely, nature can tell us everything we need to know about our impact on the planet
Find more reporting from the Age of Extinction team here
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04/15/2024 - 12:54
Paris claims ban breaches UK-EU trade deal but environmentalists say dispute is ‘hypocrisy’, given Macron’s rhetoric on saving oceans
France has been accused of hypocrisy by conservationists over a fresh post-Brexit dispute with the UK over fishing rights.
France launched an official protest after the UK banned bottom trawling from parts of its territorial waters last month, with the aim of protecting vulnerable habitats.
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04/15/2024 - 11:03
Intense patches of cold water rising from the depths are killing sharks, rays and other creatures, researchers say
A climate-disrupted ocean is pushing sharks, rays and other species to flee ever-hotter water in the tropics, only for them to be killed by increasingly intense upwells of cold water from the depths, a study has found.
One of the authors of the paper described the “eerie” aftermath of a mass die-off of more than 260 marine organisms from 81 species in a singular event of extreme cold upwelling off the coast of South Africa in 2021.
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04/15/2024 - 10:00
The percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress is increasing by about 1% a week, scientists say
Global heating has pushed the world’s coral reefs to a fourth planet-wide mass bleaching event that is on track to be the most extensive on record, US government scientists have confirmed.
Some 54% of ocean waters containing coral reefs have experienced heat stress high enough to cause bleaching, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch said.
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04/15/2024 - 08:00
For the women who pick and prepare Maryland’s famous crab, the once profitable work is far more uncertain – and the climate crisis has had a damaging impact
In the evening light, Maribel Malagón stepped outside into a rain storm.
It was late October and Malagón, 53, had worked all day picking crab off the eastern shore of Maryland. That night, she and a handful of other seasonal workers walked to a neighbor’s house for an evening of prayer. On the way, Malagón clutched a pendant of St Judas, the patron saint of lost causes, that hung around her neck; she hoped he would hear her prayers for more work.
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04/15/2024 - 07:00
Lumbricus terrestris claims landslide victory with 38% of vote, while Asian or yellow-legged hornet comes in last with 0.8%
It’s a political earthquake! The common earthworm, the soil-maker, food provider and grand recycler, is the landslide winner of the inaugural UK invertebrate of the year competition.
Lumbricus terrestris, also known as the lob worm, dew worm and nightcrawler, took a mighty 38% of the popular vote after readers nominated it to be added to the shortlist for the Guardian contest.
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