With Nature

Return of winds and extreme heat threaten firefighters’ attempts to bring blazes under controlNearly 4,000 people have been evacuated from tourist sites on France’s Atlantic coast as the return of winds and extreme heat jeopardises firefighters’ battles to contain wildfires raging in France and Spain.The precautionary evacuation order in France, which covers campsites, holiday villages and other tourist accommodation around the resort of Lacanau to the west of Bordeaux, exacerbated a wildfire emergency described by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the “toughest” situation the country had dealt with since the second world war. Continue reading...
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The Earth keeps getting hotter and experts fear this year's El Niño, nicknamed 'Godzilla' because of its predicted intensity, could raise global temperatures by up to 3.6C. Environment correspondent Damien Gayle spoke to climate scientists to understand how the weather phenomenon and the climate crisis pose a huge threat to the planet‘Super’ El Niño could cause global food price shock lasting into 2028, analysts sayEl Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries Continue reading...
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Temperatures up to 35C forecast, triggering heat health alerts and pleas to take care in parched parks and rural areasParamedics and firefighters are braced for emergencies across the country this week after UK forecasters predicted a fourth heatwave of the year.Temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 35C by Wednesday, triggering heat health alerts and an appeal from fire chiefs to take care in parched parks and rural areas. Continue reading...
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Intensive nature of modern chicken farming creates ideal conditions for campylobacter, allowing bacteria to evolveIndustrial chicken farming is accelerating the spread of the world’s most common bacterial cause of diarrhoea, scientists have found.The study found a dramatic increase in the exchange of campylobacter strains between wild birds and chickens as farming has intensified, creating the ideal conditions for the bacteria to mix, spread and acquire new traits. There has also been a rise in antimicrobial resistance traits in circulating strains, raising concerns that serious illness in people will be more difficult to treat. Continue reading...
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North Yorkshire: It’s been a remarkable breeding season for these gorgeous creatures with ripped physiques and all-seeing eyes“Just seen a gorgeous hare and thought of you. They’ve had an unbelievable breeding season.”Like most farmers, my friend Richard is always busy and often exasperated. But he’s also refreshingly cognisant of his privilege and determined not to blow the opportunity to make a difference. Nature is always part of his management, and now and then I get a message sharing a wildlife update and take it as a cue to visit. Continue reading...
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Experts who helped Burnham draw up Manchester carbon neutral pledge say backtracking would send wrong message amid wildfires and heatwavesLeading climate scientists who created Greater Manchester’s carbon neutral by 2038 commitment are urging Andy Burnham to unequivocally reject new drilling in the North Sea.In a letter to the prime minister they said he, as mayor of Greater Manchester, had unveiled one of the UK’s most ambitious local climate programmes that tackled housing, green growth and public transport. Continue reading...
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From Afghanistan to Taiwan, unprecedented deluge highlights devastating impact of climate breakdown“It rained for 10 days and 10 nights, non-stop – I’d never seen anything like it,” says Anar Gul, a construction worker who lives in the remote district of Dur Baba in eastern Afghanistan.The houses in his village are built from stone and mud, which makes them extremely vulnerable to heavy rains. After days of rain, Gul’s kitchen collapsed and his neighbour, Sayed Afsar Sadat, saw a large part of his house completely destroyed. “Rains like this are coming heavier and earlier each year,” says Sadat. “They are destroying the roads and washing away our crops. It’s impacting us directly.” Continue reading...
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Conservationists are thrilled at the arrival of three juvenile birds at Willington Wetlands, hoping more will followA long orange beak poked curiously out from its wooden crate, followed by a sleek head and slender body. Then the first white stork of the morning flapped its wings and took to the air. Moments later a second emerged tentatively to stalk through the long grass, followed closely by a final sibling who stretched its wings and explored the length of the enclosure.The trio of juvenile white storks have just arrived at their new home in Willington Wetlands in Derbyshire and conservationists are hopeful that their presence will kickstart the return of the birds to the Midlands after an absence of more than 600 years. Continue reading...
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The daily dread pushed me to enroll in a standup class. Could I channel my despair into something lighter?If you had told me six months ago that I would soon be performing standup comedy to dozens of strangers, I would have assumed it was a bad dream.Public speaking ranks about as high as driving in rush hour traffic through downtown Boston on my list of favorite activities. That I would choose to do standup, with its potential for public humiliation, is basically unimaginable. Continue reading...
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Matthew Myerscough’s remarkable find is one of many detailed in his new book. But his journey into fossil hunting began years earlier, when he was caught in an avalancheWhen Matthew Myerscough walks along a beach, he cannot help hunting for fossils. “I think my fossil radar is always on – even if I’m not looking, it’s hard sometimes to not see things,” says the 40-year-old civil engineer, who has discovered thousands of fossils on British beaches.It was while he was “not looking” on Lavernock beach near Penarth, south Wales, that he recently stumbled across the fossilised bone of an early type of plesiosaur, a marine reptile that roamed the oceans while dinosaurs stalked the land during the early Jurassic period. Continue reading...
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The jaguar, known as Gaspar, having his GPS collar fittedLeandro SilveiraA male jaguar has made an unprecedented trek, skirting 2100 kilometres of the southern edge of the Amazon rainforest. The journey – which crossed highways, farms, ranches and other human-modified landscapes – expands our knowledge of what these big cats are capable of.The previous dispersal record for a tagged jaguar was about 60 to 100 kilometres, says Jon Morant at University College Dublin in Ireland. Knowing these animals are capable of travelling much longer distances reveals further challenges in protecting them. “Individuals that are travelling so far are more exposed to human-related risks like hunting or killing because of attacks on livestock,” says Morant. Read more Jaguar breaks records by swimming at least 1.3 kilometresHe and his colleagues have been tracking jaguars in Brazil via GPS collars as part of a larger ongoing project that started in 1999. The researchers wanted to better understand how jaguars use their environments along the Araguaia river, a potential wildlife corridor connecting the Cerrado grasslands with the Amazon. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }They captured the male, dubbed Gaspar, as part of this work, fitting him with a collar on 11 November 2024. The 8-year-old jaguar then spent some time in his established range, about 700 square kilometres along the Araguaia river, before setting out on a massive southward trek, skirting the border of the Amazon to inland Cerrado. Subscriber-only newsletter Sign up to Editor’s Highlights Sign up to newsletterThe researchers recorded that Gaspar travelled 2122 kilometres, until his collar stopped transmitting locations in late Novemeber 2025, but that is as the crow flies. The actual distance is probably much more, says Morant.While Gaspar mostly stuck to forested areas, he also crossed through heavily modified human landscapes, such as farms, ranches and roads. Dispersals, albeit shorter ones, are common in individuals aged 1 to 3 years old that are looking to establish a new territory, but it is unclear why an older adult like Gaspar made this move. He might have been searching for better food resources, mating opportunities or a better habitat in general, says Morant. A three-legged lion has learned to hunt in a completely unexpected way Jacob, an 11-year-old lion, has defied expectations by surviving for years after losing a leg – now we know his success is down to an innovative hunting strategy“Beyond the extraordinary distance travelled, I find [it] especially intriguing that he apparently did not establish a territory despite more than a year of continuous movement through areas that were, at least in part, potentially suitable for jaguars,” says Jose Garcia Herrera at the Spanish National Research Council.The findings also reveal an additional challenge in protecting such wide-ranging cats. In these human-modified areas, jaguars face threats from poaching, as ranchers often kill them to protect livestock. “Maybe we need to rethink how protected areas are framed and organised,” says Morant.Gaspar’s fate is now uncertain. He may have been shot or poisoned, or the collar may have just stopped working, says Morant, which could mean Gaspar is still traversing the Brazilian landscape.Journal reference: Ecology DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70441 Jaguar and wildlife adventure in the Pantanal: Brazil Explore the Pantanal on an intimate expedition, encountering jaguars, giant river otters and rich birdlife across the world’s largest tropical wetland. Find out more
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Rats are a scourge on island wildlife all over the world. But an island off the coast of Ireland is showing how to successfully gain the upper hand 
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Climate change is affecting the yields and flavour of the traditional Japanese tea matcha, but studying its seedlings' genetic tolerance for heat could future-proof the crop
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The Chicxulub asteroid brought the age of the dinosaurs to an endROGER HARRIS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYThe asteroid strike 66 million years ago caused a planetary-scale firestorm that burned dinosaurs to a crisp all over the world, according to simulations of the impact.The so-called Chicxulub asteroid, which was 10 to 15 kilometres wide, landed in what is today the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Read more Why dinosaurs lived much more complex lives than we thoughtUntil now, it has been thought that most of the worst effects of heat and fires would have been relatively regional, and global extinctions were mainly caused by a “nuclear winter”, where dust blocks out the sun causes dramatic cooling. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }Brandon Johnson at Purdue University, Indiana, and his colleagues analysed geological observations and impact simulations in the laboratory, which showed around five times more material was vaporised by the strike than previously thought.The new work suggests that in the aftermath of the impact, a plume of rock vapour was blasted tens of thousands of kilometres into space and ended up being distributed high above the entirety of the planet. Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Sign up to newsletter“After the impactor first strikes the Earth, it only takes about a second for much of the kinetic energy to be converted to heat, vaporising over 1000 cubic kilometres of rock,” says Johnson. Just seconds later, the vapour plume expanded above much of Earth’s atmosphere into space, he says, leading to both dust and glassy, metallic beads called spherules, condensing from the vapour.This immense vapour cloud ultimately turned into 1.6 trillion tonnes of dust, which blanketed the planet, sealing in heat, the study found. Meanwhile, the heavier spherules slammed back into the atmosphere.“As this material re-enters the atmosphere over the coming hours, friction decelerates and heats the spherules, creating an approximately hour-long pulse of thermal radiation,” says Johnson.“This would kill off creatures that were unable to shelter from it and was intense enough to ignite forest litter like grass and pine needles and may have even been enough to ignite trees.” Read more Dinosaur-killing asteroid impact site stayed hot for millions of yearsThe geologic record suggests the ensuing fires may have lasted for years and would have been reminiscent of the bushfires currently gripping Europe, except on a global scale, he says.“The Cretaceous animals would have received 17 times the dose of thermal radiation that is 100 per cent lethal to humans,” says Johnson. “That should be enough to kill off even thick-skinned dinosaurs.”Craig O’Neill at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia says the study shows that the dust layer encircling the planet was essentially opaque to infrared and visible light, trapping the heat.“Every joule of heat created by incoming spherules is turned into a thermal pulse that bakes the surface of the Earth,” says O’Neill. “For about 30 minutes, the land is turned into history’s largest barbecue.”However, this isn’t the whole story, he says. For example, life in the oceans was also badly affected by the event, driving many marine animals such as mosasaurs and ammonites extinct. This is better explained by the effects of a nuclear winter blocking out the sun on photosynthesising organisms, rather than an atmospheric thermal pulse, says O’Neill.  “We tend to think of mass extinction events as a murder mystery – if we can just find the murder weapon, we could solve the case. But mass extinctions seem more like a cascading system of failures,” he says.Journal Reference: Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences DOI: 10.1029/2026JG009837
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A pyrocumulonimbus cloud seen near the village of Saumos in FranceSDIS33/HANDOUT/EPA/Shutt​erstockA pyrocumulonimbus cloud, a looming thunderstorm generated by an intensely hot wildfire, has been observed with radar in France for the first time. These deadly “fire clouds” of rising hot air, smoke and moisture, which accelerate blazes with strong winds and soaring embers, are expected to become more common in Europe as wildfires there get bigger.  “You have this tilted column that is sucking air and then propagating embers in front, and it also creates lightning. That’s another way of lighting up fuels in front of the fire, so these cells are unstoppable,” says Jean-Baptiste Filippi at the University of Corsica, France. “You cannot stop a thunderstorm, and neither can you stop a firestorm, a strong pyrocumulonimbus.”Alongside huge blazes in Spain, France has been suffering a wildfire in the Gironde region, which President Emmanuel Macron has called the country’s most severe crisis since the second world war. The fire has burned more than 420 square kilometres since last week, coming within 15 kilometres of the city of Bordeaux and forcing around 220,000 people to evacuate. It generated a pyrocumulonimbus cloud on 24 July and another on 25 July, according to regional officials. Embers and lightning ignited new fires around the original inferno. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); }“We faced another firestorm, the same incredible, unprecedented, unknown phenomenon as the one we saw on Friday, when we realised we were entering a new dimension,” Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas told journalists.It is a miracle this pyrocumulonimbus-fuelled fire hasn’t claimed any casualties, Filippi says.Sometimes called the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”, pyrocumulonimbus are typically generated by massive wildfires in the forests of North America, Siberia and Australia. They’ve spurred on infamous fires like the Black Saturday bushfires that killed 173 people in Australia in 2009 and the conflagration that razed the Canadian oil city of Fort McMurray in 2016. Canada’s record-breaking wildfires in 2023 generated 142 of these storms.In Europe, however, there have been only a handful of confirmed pyrocumulonimbus in Spain and Portugal, including one during Portugal’s devastating Pedrógão Grande fire in 2017, which destroyed hundreds of homes and killed 66 people. But that appears to be changing.“You have to have two things happening at the same time: an extreme heat source and an unstable atmosphere that interacts with the fire,” says Francesca Di Giuseppe at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “If… the heat from the fire increases, like it’s projected to increase from our studies, then yes, you should see more of these events.”This firestorm begins to take shape when temperatures as high as 800°C send a plume of smoke into the sky. As the hot air rises and cools, water vapour condenses onto the ash to form pyrocumulus clouds, like the fluffy white clouds you might see on a summer day, only brown or grey.  If the plume is hot enough and the atmosphere is unstable enough, the cloud can keep rising to reach the upper troposphere at 10,000 metres, the cruising altitude of a passenger plane. It sometimes reaches the stratosphere, spreading as much smoke as a moderate volcano. It becomes a pyrocumulonimbus when the static electricity from colliding ice particles sparks thunder and lightning.Although rain from the cloud often evaporates in the hot air, this kind of thunderstorm nonetheless creates its own weather system. The cloud’s updraft pulls in air, fanning the flames with winds reaching 160 kilometres per hour and accelerating the fire’s spread by up to five times, according to Filippi.Meanwhile, strong downdrafts create erratic gusts that carry embers off to start new fires. Dozens of lightning strikes can ignite blazes as far as 100 kilometres ahead of the main fire. It can also create fire tornadoes of twisting flames. As the winds, embers and lightning strengthen and expand the wildfire, it releases more heat and smoke, a feedback loop that can amplify the rising cloud for many hours.Both wind shear higher in the atmosphere and erratic gusts at the ground can take the fire in unpredictable directions, making it nearly impossible to contain its acceleration or plan targeted evacuations.“The fire front is constantly shifting. We cannot fight it directly. It’s a David-versus-Goliath scenario,” Eric Brocardi of the National Firefighters Federation of France told local media about the Gironde fire on 2 August.  Wildfire plumes have expanded in height since 2003 in the western US, creating more pyrocumulonimbus clouds, an increase that’s projected to continue.Pyrocumulonimbus will have more chances to occur in Europe as well, as the fastest-warming continent experiences more extreme heat, such as the record-breaking heatwave in June, and wildfires. Increasing “climate whiplash” could also contribute, such as when a wet spring last year boosted vegetation growth on the Iberian peninsula, only for record summer heat to dry it out. This led to Europe’s worst-ever wildfires, including a pyrocumulonimbus fire in Spain.“We need to adapt, so get prepared,” Filippi says. “Burn-proof and reduce the amount of fuel around your house.”
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The Environment Agency is  taking action to protect  water supplies, wildlife, agriculture and navigation as dry weather  puts pressure on river levels.
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Emmersons Transport LTD has been ordered to stop crushing waste until the risk of pollution has been removed.
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A weakening Atlantic current could supercharge California’s atmospheric rivers while leaving Greenland with fewer snow-producing storms. The changes could raise flood risks, strain infrastructure, and reshape water supplies far beyond the Atlantic.
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A new analysis has precisely dated paintings in France’s Font-de-Gaume cave for the first time. Scientists discovered charcoal inside black pigments once thought to contain only minerals, allowing them to use radiocarbon dating. The results show that a bison was painted about 13,000 years ago, while sections of a mask-like figure were added during several widely separated periods.
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10923-8Editorial Expression of Concern: Carcinoma-produced factors activate myeloid cells through TLR2 to stimulate metastasis
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10931-8Entangled dual-site migration via boracycle rearrangement
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02346-2Values in science go beyond politics
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02349-zDeserts face unprecedented flash flooding
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02304-yTextile made from fungal filaments can repair itself and is biodegradable.
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02347-1Use AI, but don’t mask it
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02104-4How crimps form in the coats of sheep, and the history of the word ‘ionosphere’, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02333-7Infernos ravaged continental expanses of ferns during mass extinction of land and sea animals.
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02348-0Conversational AI: align commercial incentives with public interests
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Nature, Published online: 28 July 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01935-5Researchers are alarmed that the procedure, which has not been rigorously studied, is advertised by clinics around the world.
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It is the highest number of elephant deaths to be recorded in this area of southern Kenya in decades.
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