Climate, in brief

Hurricane Simon's top winds reached 150 mph on Saturday morning, a strong Category 4. [1] It was then about 115 miles off Manzanillo, Mexico's biggest Pacific port. [1][2]

Early on Friday Simon was only a Category 1, with winds of 90 mph. [3] By Friday afternoon it had 110 mph, and early on Saturday 140 mph. [4][5]

"Simon has strengthened incredibly quickly," said Dan Pydynowski, a forecaster at AccuWeather, a private weather company. [1]

The US National Hurricane Center expected Simon to reach the coast late on Saturday or early on Sunday, and said it could still grow stronger. [1]

A hurricane warning covers the coast south of Puerto Vallarta, including Manzanillo and the Islas Marias islands offshore. [1][2] A weaker storm watch runs further south, towards Lazaro Cardenas. [1]

The center expects 10 to 20 inches of rain across south-western Mexico, and up to 30 inches in parts of Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco. [1] It warned of floods and mudslides, worst on steep ground. [2]

In Puerto Vallarta, a beach city of nearly 300,000 people, shops boarded up windows and stacked sandbags at their doors. [4][6][2] Residents and tourists went about their day under cloudy skies as they waited. [6]

Simon is the 18th named storm in the eastern Pacific this year. [7] If it reaches Category 5, it would be the first time four Category 5 hurricanes have formed in the central and eastern Pacific in one season. [8]

A second Pacific storm, Tropical Storm Rachel, was heading for Baja California, the long Mexican peninsula south of California. [3][8] Storm watches went up for parts of southern California. [8]

Rachel's waves broke through a sea wall in Long Beach, California, on Friday and flooded homes and streets. [9] Its gusts and high tides left about 7,000 people in California without power on Saturday. [10]

Forecasters see a moderate risk of sudden floods from San Diego to Las Vegas. [8] Rachel's cloud may also break a long heatwave in southern California. [8]

The eastern Pacific has had more storms than usual this year, because of a strong El Nino, the natural warming of the tropical Pacific. [3] A week earlier Hurricane Polo hit Baja California as a Category 2. [1]

Why it matters. Watch where Simon comes ashore and how much rain falls on the mountains behind the coast, because the hurricane center says the rain, more than the wind, brings the floods and mudslides. [1]

Hurricane Isaias killed four people, two in Florida and two in Alabama, after coming ashore on Friday. [11][21] Two were killed by trees falling on their homes, and one man died from fumes from a generator running in his garage. [10][11] By midday Saturday about 670,000 homes and businesses in four states still had no power, 420,000 of them in Florida. [10] The storm then weakened and moved inland, and forecasters warned of landslides in the Southern Appalachian mountains. [21]

Why it matters. An insurance analyst at Bloomberg put the insured losses at between one and ten billion dollars, held down by Florida's stronger building rules. [22] Florida's governor said no one had called for search and rescue after landfall. [10]

On Friday Donald Trump said Russia would send more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel at once, then 500,000 tonnes in November and 1 million after that. [23][24] The US had banned Russian oil since the war in Ukraine began. [24] Analysts at Quantum Strategy and Geonomics said those three amounts equal 60%, 100% and 200% of Russia's diesel exports. [23] Russia banned its own diesel exports in July after Ukrainian drones hit its refineries. [24]

Why it matters. US diesel cost about $6.28 a gallon on Friday, against $3.68 a year ago, and it moves lorries, tractors and farm goods. [24] Germany's government said on Saturday it will keep its own sanctions on Russia. [25]

The UNDP, the UN's development agency, warned this weekend that poorer countries face three shocks at once: dear energy, El Nino and high borrowing costs. [19] Its report says government help has shielded up to 130 million of the world's poorest from high fuel prices since the Iran war began. [19] Its head, Alexander De Croo, said many governments now have no money left and are letting prices rise. [19]

Why it matters. Borrowing now costs developing countries about 9% a year, De Croo said, so they cannot easily borrow to keep the help going. [19] The IMF and World Bank, the two big global lenders, meet in Bangkok this week. [19]

Iran's Revolutionary Guard, its most powerful military force, said a sea mine hit a supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz and caused a "massive explosion". [16] It accused the ship of taking an unapproved route with its tracking switched off. [16] On Sunday UKMTO, a British agency that tracks attacks on ships, said another tanker leaving the strait was hit and caught fire. [17] Its crew was safe. [17]

Why it matters. Ships near Ras Al Khaimah, in the UAE, were told by radio to leave their anchorages. [17] Separately, the UAE's coast guard rescued 22 crew from an oil tanker that caught fire in the Gulf. [18]

Rescuers found a young orangutan called Novita clinging to a bare tree in a burning forest in Central Kalimantan, on Borneo. [13] Her hands and feet were burned, and she is being treated at a rescue centre. [13] Indonesia's forestry ministry says more than 270 wild animals there have been rescued or moved to safer land. [13] A British charity, International Animal Rescue, says fire came within a few hundred metres of its own centre, and it has moved 46 orangutans. [26]

Why it matters. Indonesia's government counts 202,000 hectares burned from January to July, while a satellite project counts about 896,000 by the end of August. [13] Smoke from the fires has reached the Philippines, more than 800 km away. [13]

Two tornadoes struck Marsala, a coastal town in western Sicily, on Friday, after forming as spinning columns of water out at sea. [12] At least 11 people went to hospital, and a man of 70 was in a critical condition. [12] One tornado hit a school with 273 pupils inside, and six children had small cuts. [12] The nearby town of Petrosino was hit too. [27]

Why it matters. Scientists say warmer seas give storms in the Mediterranean more energy, and more storms were forecast across the central Mediterranean. [12][27]

A panel of 35 experts for The Lancet, a leading medical journal, listed 17 big threats to human health over the next 75 years. [28] It measured each threat in years of healthy life lost. [28] Nuclear war and the harmful use of AI topped the list, and climate breakdown is among the threats it calls catastrophic. [28] Its findings are being shared on Sunday at the World Health Summit in Berlin. [28]

Why it matters. Holding warming to about 1.8C instead of 4.4C would save 1.89 billion years of healthy life, the panel found. [28] Cuts to foreign aid could cost up to 1.5 billion, about 70% of them in sub-Saharan Africa. [28]

Daniel Kebede, head of the National Education Union, Britain's biggest teaching union, wants a national plan to refit schools for heat. [15] This summer some classrooms passed 40C. [15] At least 760,000 pupils in England and Wales missed lessons when schools shut in the June heatwave. [15] He also suggested earlier school days and moving exams out of the hottest weeks. [15]

Why it matters. Most of Britain's schools are in Victorian buildings or ones from the 1960s and 1970s, built for cooler summers, Kebede said. [15] He said the heat lands hardest on children in poorer areas, sent home to hot flats. [15]

Josephine Kihu has grown coffee in Nyeri, in central Kenya, for 30 years. [14] Long dry spells forced her to switch to a tougher coffee bean, and she now pays someone to water her young trees. [14] Nearby, Charles Ndung'u lost 40 goats in three months to a dry spell and a disease outbreak. [14] A psychologist in Nyeri says about a third of his patients are farmers worn down by repeated losses. [14]

Why it matters. Farmers spend money on a crop with no certainty of a harvest, and the psychologist wants mental health added to farm support. [14] He also wants more irrigation, so farms rely less on the rain. [14]

Mauritania's prime minister resigned on Friday over a report into two fires in August at power substations, where high-voltage power is stepped down for local wires, in Nouakchott, the capital. [20] The fires cut power to large parts of the city for three to five days. [20] Mauritania's president reappointed him hours later and asked him to form a new government. [20]

Why it matters. The report blamed electrical connectors that did not meet the required standards, brought in by a private company. [20] It held that company and officials at Mauritania's energy ministry responsible. [20]

Ethiopians have planted more than 47 billion tree seedlings in seven years, aiming for 50 billion by 2030. [29] By 1989 forests covered less than 3% of the country, and with the trees gone, wind and rain stripped about a billion tonnes of soil a year from its highlands. [29] Ethiopia's government says forest cover rose from 17.2% in 2019 to 23.6% in 2023. [29] In Abijata-Shalla National Park, terraces, trees and grasses let more rain soak into the ground, and the lakes began to rise. [29]

Why it matters. Not every tree lives: a study of 176 projects in Asia found about half of planted trees died within five years. [29] But a 2026 study in southern Ethiopia found about 80% of 44,500 seedlings had survived. [29]

In Murcia, in south-eastern Spain, researchers grow peppers, grapes and dragon fruit under solar panels. [30] The idea, called agrivoltaics, uses the same land for food and power. [30] The panels' shade cuts how much water dries off the soil, and peppers given little water grew better under them than well-watered ones. [30] Amazon and Apple have agreed to buy power from over 150 megawatts of these projects in southern Italy. [30]

Why it matters. About 86% of roughly 775 million euros in Italian public money went to large projects, some owned by foreign companies, a newspaper review found. [30] An Italian farmers' union calls it a shortcut that takes land from farmers. [30]

The Indus, Pakistan's biggest river, has destroyed Basti Kanjal, a village of more than 500 houses near the city of Layyah, this flood season. [31] News reports say about 100,000 people have been displaced. [31] Writing in Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, a professor from Taunsa says satellite images show the river's wide bed has shrunk to a third since the 1990s. [31]

Why it matters. He blames a canal, a dam-like barrage and long earth banks, built with Asian Development Bank and World Bank money, for squeezing the river eastward. [31] He says the river is now 200 metres from its old channel by Layyah, whose flood bank stops 3.5 km short. [31]

Nio, a Chinese electric carmaker, swapped 1,192,221 car batteries at its stations from 1 to 7 October, China's National Day holiday. [32] At its swap stations a machine takes out a car's empty battery and fits a charged one, so the driver does not wait to recharge. Nio has about 4,100 such stations, and the daily average was nearly 22% higher than a year earlier. [32]

Why it matters. Holiday traffic on China's motorways drove much of the demand, which used more than 24.8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. [32] Electrek, an electric-car news site, says it shows swapping can match petrol stations at that scale. [32]

BYD, China's biggest electric carmaker, built its 150,000th electric or hybrid commercial vehicle this week, at its lorry plant in Huai'an. [33] The milestone vehicle was a Q3 electric lorry with a 600 kWh battery that can pull heavy loads about 200 miles. [33] BYD sold 6,848 such lorries in September, 113% more than a year before. [33]

Why it matters. Electric lorries let the firms that run them cut diesel use and pollution sharply, Electrek says. [33] BYD says the Q3 charges from 20% to 80% in 30 minutes. [33]

Sunbooster, an Austrian company, has won a European patent for solar strips that slide into wire fences in place of privacy slats. [34] The panels stand upright and catch light on both faces, so they make more power in the morning and late afternoon. [34] A 2-metre strip makes 62 watts and costs 619 euros. [34] Its first French fence, 20 metres long in Aix-en-Provence, makes 3.7 kilowatts. [34]

Why it matters. The patent covers 18 EU countries, and the company now wants to sell through fence makers and big shops. [34]

Researchers at the University of Patras, in Greece, heated the small sprouts left over from malting barley for beer into a charcoal called biochar. [35] Water run through sand mixed with 10% biochar lost about five times as much E. coli, a gut bacterium, as water run through sand alone. [35] The charcoal holds on to germs as they pass, rather than only blocking them. [35]

Why it matters. It could one day help protect groundwater from farm and sewage waste, though it has only been tested in a lab. [35] An outside chemist asked whether the charcoal works more than once. [35]

About 300 people rallied in Caernarfon, in north-west Wales, against a data centre, a big building full of computers, planned on a 101-acre site nearby. [36] More than 22,500 people have signed a petition against it. [36] The developer, Canolfan Ddata Menai, says it would bring 900 building jobs and 200 lasting ones. [36]

Why it matters. Opponents fear for the Menai Strait, the sea channel beside the site. [36] Liz Saville Roberts, the local member of parliament, said communities must benefit and data centres must be in the right places. [36]

Scientists searched nearly 1,700 coral reefs and found more than a dozen with far more fish than expected. [37] They call such places bright spots. [37] One is Muluk, a village in Papua New Guinea where elders close a stretch of reef to fishing every few years. [37] A new study of more than 70 research papers looked for what bright spots share. [37]

Why it matters. It found three things recur: a fix that suits the place, people able to adapt, and rights to manage their own land or sea. [37] In Papua New Guinea, the constitution gives coastal villages the right to manage their reefs. [37]

Scientists measured gases rising from a part of New York for a summer and a winter. [38] They tracked chemicals that evaporate from paints, sprays, plants and homes and help make smog. [38] In summer twice as many kinds came off, and the amounts were two to four times higher. [38] Ethanol alone made up about a quarter. [38]

Why it matters. The official estimate matched summer to within 40%, but counted more than two and a half times the real winter amount. [38] The authors say pollution plans must allow for heat raising these emissions. [38]

A study in a Nature journal finds the Arctic Ocean and the seas off Norway were cut off from the Atlantic during some past ice ages. [39] Scientists measured two forms of a rare chemical element, beryllium, in seabed mud. [39] The readings were more than ten times lower than in the Atlantic at the same time. [39] That fits a sea sealed off from the Atlantic. [39]

Why it matters. Earlier work proposed that a thick shelf of ice blocked the shallow sills between Greenland and Scotland. [39] The authors say the link between the two oceans changed far more than thought, with open questions about world climate. [39]