New study finds proposed Irish climate targets protect methane emission privileges at the expense of poorer nations' development.

The transition to a sustainable and equitable food system is being undermined by a new approach to climate target setting by livestock exporting countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, an international study by climate scientists has warned.

The study led by University of Galway in partnership with the University of Melbourne, University College Cork and Climate Resource has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The scientists have called out the new “temperature neutrality”, also known as "no additional warming", which allows Ireland to maintain a high share of global agricultural methane emissions while claiming to meet its climate targets.

This approach dramatically reduces the level of ambition needed for overall greenhouse gas emission reduction. The resulting targets have been proposed to the Irish Government by the Climate Change Advisory Council, in part to reduce potential disruption from Ireland’s legal commitment to achieve national climate neutrality by 2050.

According to the 35th annual State of the Climate report, greenhouse gas concentrations, the global temperature across land and oceans, global sea level, and ocean heat content all reached record highs in 2024, and glaciers lost the most ice of any year on record. The authoritative international yearly review of the world’s climate, published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), is based this year on contributions from 589 scientists in 58 countries.

Since the mid-1990s, the Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass, leaving only three floating tongues remaining. One of these, Nioghalvfjerdsbræ or the 79°N Glacier, is already showing the first signs of instability. In addition to the warm ocean water, which is increasingly thinning the ice from below, the runoff of meltwater on the surface is also playing an increasingly significant role. In a new study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute investigated how - caused by global warming -  a 21 km2 large meltwater lake formed and developed on the surface of the 79°N Glacier. They observed that over the years, this lake has caused gigantic cracks and the outflowing water is lifting the glacier. Their findings have been published in the journal The Cryosphere. 

An international research team headed by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne (MPIPZ) has developed a new and very precise method for identifying so-called genomic regulatory switches. These switches are responsible for the manifestation of plant traits. In the scientific journal Nature Genetics, the researchers describe that, although these regulatory switches make up only a small fraction of the genome, they can have a significant influence on plant traits. The team demonstrated the method on regulatory switches relating to drought stress, identifying promising starting points for the breeding of new maize varieties adapted to e.g. climate change.

A new method for enhanced oil recovery proposed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin is showing promising results in modeling studies — producing more oil, storing more carbon, and doing so more safely than conventional enhanced oil recovery methods.

Rapidly melting glaciers are surging water volume in at least 10% of rivers in High Mountain Asia, including large rivers like Yangtze, Amu Darya and Syr Darya, according to a comprehensive new study of the region published today in AGU Advances. In parts of upstream rivers, water flow nearly doubled over the course of a decade. Communities that depend on the rivers for power could benefit from the increase in river power, but additional sediment carried in the water may clog infrastructure.

North American monarch butterflies use magnetic fields to migrate to and from their overwintering sites - using cold temperatures to tune how they use magnetic fields - per experimental study, which might be disrupted under climate change

A drought lasting 13 years and several others that each lasted over three years may have contributed to the collapse of the Classic Maya civilisation, chemical fingerprints from a stalagmite in a Mexican cave have revealed.

Researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Staiton have found the first evidence that drought and insect herbivory can create lasting, transgenerational effects in soybeans. The stressors not only affect the parent plants but alter the traits and defenses of their offspring. The research demonstrates some of the positive and negative impacts the stressors have on a plant’s progeny and could be used to develop more resilient crops in the same season.