As our world continues to warm, a multidisciplinary group of researchers from the University of Exeter and the UK Health Security Agency encourage consideration of potential interactions between urban green spaces, vector-borne diseases, and climate change as we work to increase public health benefits and reduce risks.

The central north Amazon, with extensive areas of high forest cover, natural savannas and vast and important indigenous territories, was not previously considered as being the most affected by climate change.

However, this region, which is considered critical to Amazonia’s cultural and biodiversity wealth has unexpectedly found itself at the forefront of rapid growth in climate extremes, a new study reveals.

Findings, published today in Communications Earth & Environment, identify Amazonia as experiencing rapid growth in extreme temperatures and water stress – with 10% of the basin, an area larger than 700,000 square kilometres (bigger than Afghanistan), witnessing increases in extreme temperatures during the dry season of at least 0.75°C a decade and more than 3.22°C since 1981.

A nationwide survey in Japan suggests cultural worldviews are more strongly linked to support for climate policies than to support for biodiversity conservation measures. While hierarchical worldviews were linked to lower perceived climate risks and weaker support for climate measures, these associations were weaker for climate-related biodiversity conservation approaches and not clearly observed for stand-alone conservation policies, pointing to potential common ground.

A research team led by Vicent Arbona Mengual from the Department of Biology, Biochemistry and Natural Sciences at Universitat Jaume I has secured a European project under the EIC Pathfinder Challenges programme whose main objective is to generate genetically modified citrus lines with greater resilience to adverse conditions caused by climate change and its exacerbating effects on pests and diseases. The project will focus primarily on sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) and mandarin (Citrus reticulata).Citrus fruits are functional foods that combine nutritional value with health-promoting properties thanks to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and cardioprotective effects. In addition to introducing genetic modifications to improve resilience to climate change, the project also aims to promote the biofortification of citrus fruits in order to enhance their nutritional properties by increasing both naturally occurring compounds (flavonoids and furanocoumarins) and non-native compounds (resveratrol). The latter, a stilbene found in grapes and cocoa, has been selected because of its cardioprotective and anti-ageing properties.

Climate change is driving rapid declines in seaweed forests globally, outpacing restoration efforts and undermining seaweed restoration as a viable carbon dioxide removal strategy, according to an essay by Karen Filbee-Dexter at the University of Western Australia, and colleagues, publishing September 8^th in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

Researchers at The University of Manchester have developed a physics-based artificial intelligence framework that, for the first time, enables global-scale predictions of dissolved organic carbon cycling between seawater and marine sediments. The approach reveals a previously unquantified component of Earth's carbon cycle and could improve climate models, support research into ocean-based climate mitigation strategies, and provide new insights into the long-term storage of carbon in marine environments.

Meltwater rivers flowing from Svalbard glaciers are carrying ancient methane from rocks beneath the ice into the open air, new research shows. 

The findings reveal a natural feedback loop that may worsen as the Arctic continues to get warmer. Melting glaciers can open hidden pathways for methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Put simply, the more glaciers melt, the more methane they are likely to release.

Researchers from the School of Biological Sciences and Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with Adelaide University, have called for marine heatwaves to be recognised as a public health issue.