The Guardian Climate Change

Pedro Sánchez orders largest ever peacetime troop deployment to deal with flooding that has killed 211 people

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest ever peacetime military deployment, announcing that another 5,000 troops will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions.

Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games.

Flash floods in Spain, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the New York Halloween parade: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

More than 200 deaths and widespread destruction in Valencia are the latest sign of danger in a warming world

The death toll from floods in Spain’s Valencia region has topped 200. A huge clean-up is under way amid desperate conditions, with severe weather warnings still in place. The storms which caused this devastation – with roads turned into muddy rivers, thousands of homes deluged and cars swept into piles – were unprecedented. The gota fría, or “cold drop”, is a regular occurrence when cold autumnal air moves over the warm Mediterranean, causing dense clouds to form. But this rain, according to the Spanish weather service, was 10 times stronger than a normal downpour.

Extreme weather in Spain, and the rest of southern Europe, is more commonly understood to mean dangerous heat, drought and wildfires. The regional government is under attack regarding the lack of sufficient warnings and there is no doubt that the severity of these floods came as a terrible shock.

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The heat is on

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Preserving previous year’s snow for start of season can combat increasingly unpredictable winters

Before the arrival of electric fridges and freezers, people across Finland would saw a block of ice from a river or lake before the spring thaw, thickly cover it in an insulating layer of sawdust and stack it in barns, pits or ice cellars to protect produce from the warm air of the summer months.

Amid global heating and increasingly unpredictable shorter winters, a modern twist on the traditional jään säilöminen (ice preservation) technique is now being touted as a way to save Europe’s struggling low- and medium-altitude ski resorts.

António Guterres says treaty will endure but urges US to remain amid reports of Republican plan to withdraw from the climate negotiating framework entirely

The world needs the US to remain in the international climate process to avoid a “crippled” Paris agreement, the UN secretary general has warned, amid fears that Donald Trump would take the country out of the accord for a second time.

António Guterres said the landmark 2015 agreement to limit global heating would endure if the US withdrew once again, but compared the prospective departure to losing a limb or organ.

Planned two-day protest that involves thousands of protesters poses a safety risk, police argue

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A plan by climate activists to shut down the Port of Newcastle for 50 hours has been challenged by New South Wales police who have argued in a court challenge against the protest going ahead.

Police are challenging the protest – which is planned for 19 November – in the supreme court. It’s the second time in a month police have challenged a protest in court.

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Locals in Valencia say alerts were sent out too late and deaths may have been avoided after devastating floods hit eastern Spain. The death toll from the floods has risen to more than 150, according to regional authorities and emergency services, with rescue teams still searching for missing people and working to recover the bodies of victims. 'The deaths we have now could have been avoided. If they had warned us, these deaths would not have happened,' local resident Laura Villaescusa said. 'Communications took place very late, too late'

• Spain floods death toll passes 150 as country begins three days of mourning

Decline over 2023, helped by switch to renewable power, means greenhouse gas pollution is now 37% below 1990 levels

The EU’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 8% last year, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has found, as the continent continues to close down coal-fired power plants and make more electricity from sun and wind.

The steep drop in planet-heating pollution in 2023 is close to the fall recorded in Europe at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions grounded planes and shuttered factories.

As wildfires become more frequent and intense due to the climate crisis, combining the First Nations practice with western techniques is ‘crucial’

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Indigenous cultural burning practices halved the shrub cover across south-east Australia thousands of years before colonisation, reducing the intensity of bushfires, new research suggests.

The study’s authors argue that “wide-scale re-integration” of cultural burning practices, in combination with western fire management techniques, is “crucial” at a time when wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense due to the climate crisis.

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Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat is a backer of the controversial Willow oil drilling project

The administration of Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, awarded at least $1m in state funds to a group claiming to represent a consensus of Indigenous support for new Arctic oil drilling, new research shows.

The group, called Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat (VAI), had just months earlier communicated with the governor’s office on ways to counter other Alaska Native groups opposed to new drilling.

In The Loney and Starve Acre, the novelist has tapped into a rich seam of rural menace. As his new collection Barrowbeck is published, he considers how today’s fictions are haunted by climate anxiety

From the earliest pagan offerings to the metaphysical peaks of the Romantic poets, the natural world has always been a repository for our dreams and nightmares. Alienated from our fellow creatures, we see nature as something “other”, full of hidden powers, magic, threats, portents and meanings that we can’t quite fathom. And in an era of species extinction and climate emergency, the yearning to understand our place in the natural world seems more pressing now than ever given the abundance of nature writing published in the last couple of decades.

Glancing at the shelves of my local bookshop, I find the usual classics – Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Roger Deakin’s Waterlog, The Goshawk by TH White. There are books about specific animals: hedgehogs, wolves, moths, homing pigeons, gannets. Two volumes on owls. Five on bees. Another category comprises what we might call the nature-as-healer narrative – Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, Nature Cure by Richard Mabey, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. Some writers have concerned themselves with the hidden things of natural world – The Secret Network of Nature by Peter Wohlleben, The Secret Life of Fungi by Aliya Whiteley. There are a great many books on rewilding, conservation and foraging.

Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Palestine and Haiti rated at level of highest concern in latest six-monthly analysis

Acute food insecurity is expected to worsen in war-stricken Sudan and nearly two dozen other countries and territories in the next six months, largely as a result of conflict and violence, an analysis by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme has found.

The latest edition of the twice-yearly Hunger Hotspots report, published on Thursday, provides early warnings on food crises and situations around the world where food insecurity is likely to worsen, with a focus on the most severe and deteriorating situations of acute hunger.

Parts of north-east and Great Lakes regions to surpass 80F as thunderstorms predicted from Indianapolis to Louisiana

Do the undead sweat? If they do, this year’s Halloween could be a taxing time for them across parts of the north-east and Great Lakes regions of the US, where temperatures are set to soar above 80F (27C) in some areas.

On Thursday, CNN reported that nearly 50 daily high temperature records may fall, with temperatures rising more than 20F above normal.

At least 95 people have been killed as more rain is forecast for the flood-hit region of Valencia

• Death toll expected to rise amid anger over preparedness
• People in Spain: have you been affected by flooding?

Experts have been giving their reaction to yesterday’s disaster - sounding a warning about our preparedness and ability to cope.

Extreme weather events are becoming more intense, are lasting longer and are occurring more frequently as a result of human-induced climate change, scientists say.

Victims say ‘water was already here’ by the time warning was issued, as military prepares to start searching worst-hit areas

• Spain floods – latest updates

Rescue workers in Spain are searching for more victims after deadly floods, as questions are raised about how one of the world’s most developed nations failed to respond adequately to such an extreme storm.

Torrential rains that began at the start of the week led to flooding that has left at least 95 people dead, the deadliest such disaster in the western European country since 1973.

Set up to conserve traditional seeds, the Genetic Resources Research Institute is now helping smallholders diversify with crops resilient to the rapid changes in climate

On a winding road in the densely forested Kikuyu highlands of south-central Kenya lies a nondescript government building: the Genetic Resources Research Institute. Opened in 1988, during the country’s “green revolution”, this little-known national gene bank was set up to hold and conserve seeds from the traditional crops that were in danger of disappearing as farmers and agricultural industry moved to higher-yield varieties.

For decades, it has collaborated with researchers studying crop genetics and others working to develop improved varieties. But as the climate crisis worsens food insecurity, the repository of about 50,000 seed and crop collections could become a lifeline for farmers.

Fears raised that biodiversity summit not addressing countries’ failure to meet a single target to stem destruction of natural world

Governments risk another decade of failure on biodiversity loss, due to the slow implementation of an international agreement to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, experts have warned.

Less than two years ago, the world reached a historic agreement at the Cop15 summit in Montreal to stop the human-caused destruction of life on our planet. The deal included targets to protect 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade (30x30), reform $500bn (then £410bn) of environmentally damaging subsidies, and begin restoring 30% of the planet’s degraded ecosystems.

Residents describe impact of floods and downpours – with some places hit with a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours

• Spanish flash floods – live updates

The gratitude that greeted Tuesday’s dawn downpours was short-lived in Utiel. When the longed-for rains finally reached the town in the drought-stricken eastern Spanish region of Valencia, they were merciless in their abundance.

“People were very happy at first because they’d been praying for rain as their lands needed water,” said Remedios, who owns a bar in Utiel. “But by 12 o’clock, this storm had really hit and we were all pretty terrified.”

A report by BoM and CSIRO checks ‘vital signs of Australia’s climate’ – and shows temperature trends will only worsen

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“It is a wicked problem,” says Dr Karl Braganza at the Bureau of Meteorology, after running through Australia’s latest State of the Climate report.

The effects of rising heat on land and in the oceans, coupled with rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are changing Australia’s climate rapidly and “flowing through to how our society, economy and other things operate”.

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