AFP UK

Scientists say that bumblebees have lower heat tolerance than smaller bees and are more threatened by climate warming than other bees

Warmer and wetter weather linked to climate change appears to stress out bumblebees and make their wings more asymmetrical, which could ultimately affect their future development, according to UK scientists in a new research paper.

“With hotter and wetter conditions predicted to place bumblebees under higher stress, the fact these conditions will become more frequent under climate change means bumblebees may be in for a rough time over the 21st century,” scientists at Imperial College, London, wrote in the Animal Ecology journal on Wednesday.

The large furry bees, known for their distinctive buzz, only feed on flowers, making them vulnerable to changes to the countryside due to intensive farming. 

Their population has declined in Britain over the past century, with two species becoming extinct, according to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

The Imperial College scientists looked at more than 6,000 bumblebee specimens in natural history museums, collected across Britain during the 20th century.

The scientists examined the right-left symmetry between the bees’ four wings, because asymmetry is an indication that the insect experienced stress during development.

They found that bees from the second half of the 20th century consistently had a higher average rate of asymmetry. 

Asymmetry was also “consistently higher in warmer and wetter years,” according to the paper’s senior co-author Richard Gill.

“Overall, these results could suggest bumblebees experienced increasing stress as the century progressed and that aspects of climate change could have contributed to this trend,” the paper said.

The weather conditions linked to wonky wings “will likely increase in frequency with climate change”, it continued.

In April, scientists in the United States who studied more than 20,000 bees in the Rocky Mountains found that bumblebees had lower heat tolerance than smaller bees and were “more threatened under climate warming than other bees”.

Insects are facing a huge impact from both warming climate and intensive agriculture.

Another study released in April in the journal Nature found that these factors cause insect populations to plummet by nearly half compared to areas less affected by temperature rises and industrial farming.

Over 1,000 firefighters were still mobilised around the Serra da Estrela blaze

Massive wildfires in Portugal and Spain were largely under control Thursday after forcing thousands from their homes and destroying large swathes of land. 

The fires in both countries followed punishing heatwaves and long dry spells, leaving forests parched and primed to burn.

In Portugal, over 1,000 firefighters were still deployed in the Serra da Estrela national park, but the blaze was mostly contained after days of burning out of control.

With more hot weather forecast, however, there were fears it could flare up again. 

“The fire is under control, but it is not extinguished. Consolidation work will continue in the coming days,” civil protection commander Miguel Oliveira told TSF radio. 

“It is always possible, and very likely, that there will be new reactivations, but we hope that they do not take on worrying proportions,” he said.

The huge fire in central Portugal was brought under control last week, only to restart again Monday. 

More than 25,000 hectares (nearly 61,800 acres) of land is estimated to have been scorched by the fire in the UNESCO-listed park, home to diverse wildlife species including wildcats and lizards. 

Forecasts are predicting a fresh heatwave on Saturday, the latest in a string of hot spells in Portugal this year. July was the hottest on record in nearly a century. 

Interior Minister Jose Luis Carneiro said Wednesday “we will experience increased risks” of fires in the coming days due to hot and dry conditions. 

– ‘Some good news’ –

In neighbouring Spain, rain and lower temperatures eased pressure on firefighters who for days have been battling two major fires in the eastern Valencia region, officials said Thursday. 

“Finally, some good news: the rain and the drop in temperatures have helped to contain the fire in Vall d’Ebo,” regional leader Ximo Puig tweeted late Wednesday. 

He hoped the conditions would also “help stabilise the fire in Bejis” further north. 

By Thursday morning, there were “few visible flames left”, Puig told Cadena Ser radio, as the emergency services said the rain had almost completely put out the fires.

The two wildfires had forced the evacuation of 3,000 people and burnt their way through some 25,000 hectares. 

So far this year, Spain has been hit by 391 wildfires, which have destroyed over 283,000 hectares of land in total, the latest figures from the European Forest Fire Information System show.

This year’s fires in Spain have been particularly devastating, destroying more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in the whole of 2021, which totalled over 84,000 hectares, the figures show.

In Portugal, some 92,000 hectares have burned this year, according to the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests, in the worst fires since 2017 when around 100 people were killed. 

Experts say climate change driven by human activity is boosting the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. 

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A road is damaged after a flash flooding caused by a sudden downpour triggered mudslides in Datong county, Xining city, in China's northwestern Qinghai province on August 18

Sixteen people were killed and many left missing in flash flooding in northwest China, state media reported Thursday, as the country battles extreme weather that has shuttered factories and caused rolling power cuts.

The deluge comes during a summer of soaring temperatures and torrential rains in China, with multiple cities clocking their hottest days on record and floods causing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.

Floods hit this week in a mountainous region of Datong county in Qinghai province, affecting more than 6,200 people from six villages, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Photos of the aftermath showed roads covered in mud, uprooted trees, damaged homes and rescue workers carrying shovels.

“As of noon on the 18th, 16 people have been killed,” added CCTV, saying that rescue work was ongoing.

At least 18 people are missing and 20 have since been rescued, and a “frontline headquarters” has been set up to organise the emergency response, according to state media reports.

“The rescue work is progressing in an orderly manner,” the report said, adding that sudden heavy rainfall Wednesday night had triggered the situation.

– Extreme weather –

Scientists say extreme weather across the world has become more frequent due to climate change, and will likely grow more intense as temperatures rise.

Severe flooding in southern China in June displaced more than half a million people and caused an estimated $250 million in damage.

On Wednesday, Chinese authorities warned that heavy rains were also expected to hit northern regions of the country including the capital Beijing and its neighbouring Tianjin and Hebei.

Earlier this week, President Xi Jinping called on officials in the northeastern Liaoning province to “ensure the safety of people’s lives in flood control”, state media reported.

Meanwhile, millions of people in southwest China are facing rolling power cuts after a crushing heatwave led to an electricity supply crunch that has forced factories to halt work.

Sichuan province relies heavily on dams to generate its electricity but the heat has caused reservoirs to dry up, exacerbating the energy shortage.

On Thursday, Sichuan authorities ordered employers to stop requiring staff to perform outdoor work when temperatures are forecast to hit 40 degrees Celsius or above.

Water volume in the province’s major rivers has fallen by around 20 to 50 percent in the absence of rain as well, impacting hydropower generation, state news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday citing provincial energy officials.

The China Meteorological Administration said the country was going through its longest period of sustained high temperatures since records began in 1961, with 64 straight days of heat warnings in various regions starting in June.

More than a third of weather stations in China recorded extreme heat this summer, with 262 of them reaching or surpassing previous records, the administration said.

NASA's SLS rocket with an Orion capsule at its tip on launchpad 39B in Cape Canaveral in Florida ahead of the planned launch of the Artemis 1 uncrewed flight to the Moon

NASA’s giant new SLS rocket arrived at its launchpad Wednesday in Cape Canaveral ahead of a planned flight to the Moon in less than two weeks.

It will be the maiden voyage of the Artemis program — America’s quest to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

The Artemis 1 mission, an uncrewed test flight, will feature the first blastoff of the Space Launch System rocket, which will be the most powerful in the world.

It will propel the Orion crew capsule into orbit around the Moon, and the spacecraft will remain in space for 42 days before returning to Earth.

Starting in 2024, astronauts will travel aboard Orion for the same trip, and the following year, at the earliest, Americans will once again set foot on the Moon.

The SLS rocket, in development for more than a decade, is 98 meters (322 feet) tall.

On Wednesday it stood at historic launch complex 39B, after a 10-hour overnight crawl from the assembly building.

“To all of us that gaze up at the Moon, dreaming of the day humankind returns to the lunar surface, folks, we’re here. We are going back,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this month.

The Orion capsule will fly to the Moon and 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) beyond it — further than any previous crewed spacecraft.

On the way back through Earth’s atmosphere, traveling at 40,000 km per hour (25,000 mph), Orion’s thermal shield will have to withstand a temperature that is half that of the surface of the sun.

Liftoff for the Artemis 1 mission is scheduled for August 29 at 8:33 am (1233 GMT). If it has to be postponed due to bad weather, the backup dates are September 2 and 5.

After the 42-day trip, the capsule is supposed to splash down in the Pacific and be picked up by a US Navy vessel.

In 2024, an Artemis 2 mission is scheduled to take astronauts up to orbit the Moon but without landing on it. That honor is reserved for Artemis 3, a mission scheduled for 2025 at the earliest.

The last time people walked on the Moon was with the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

While the Apollo program featured only white male astronauts, NASA says the Artemis missions will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.

The hope is to use the Moon as a staging ground to develop technologies for sending humans to Mars.

Portugal has been battling its worst forest fires since 2017 when around 100 lives were lost

More than 1,200 firefighters struggled Wednesday to control a huge forest fire in Portugal’s Serra da Estrela park, which resumed just days after being brought under control.

Strong winds have been hampering attempts to combat the spread of the fire, one of 195 that have ravaged some 92,000 hectares of land across Portugal this year amid record temperatures.

The fire in the UNESCO-designated park restarted Tuesday after being brought under control five days earlier, and is estimated to have already consumed around 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of land.

It is still posing a sizeable challenge even if “90 percent of this fire’s perimeter is now under control”, said civil protection agency head Andre Fernandes.

July proved to be Portugal’s hottest in nearly a century, with the country battling its worst forest fires since 2017 when around 100 lives were lost.

Scientists say human-induced climate change is contributing to extreme weather events, including wildfires and heatwaves. 

Neighbouring Spain has also been battling a wave of forest fires in recent weeks after also recording soaring temperatures.

The Serra da Estrela fire started on August 6 outside the central town of Covilha and authorities say they have deployed 390 fire engines and 14 planes and helicopters in efforts to control it.

Firefighters, who hope to keep the fire from spreading further before temperatures are forecast to rise again Friday, have thrown a 160-kilometre (95-mile) cordon around the area, Fernandes told reporters.

The blaze has left 27 people injured, including three seriously, while 45 people have been evacuated as a precaution since Monday. 

Residents in the village of Orjais in the foothills of the mountain range helped fight back the flames which came within a few dozen metres (feet) of their homes.

“It was chaos”, Fatima Cardoso, 62, told AFP.

Authorities are concerned about the impact of the fire on wildlife, as Serra da Estrela is Portugal’s largest natural conservation area known for its animal diversity, including wildcats and lizards.

“We have not yet reached the end of this critical period for fires,” Interior Minister Jose Luis Carneiro warned after meeting with meteorologists.

The upcoming heatwave is forecast to last into September, which Carneiro said was set to be drier and hotter than usual.

Freya had made headlines since July 17 when she was first spotted in the waters of the Norwegian capital

An online campaign has raised over $20,000 to build a statue in Norway for Freya, a beloved walrus that was euthanised by officials at the weekend. 

The walrus gained global attention after she was spotted basking in the Oslo fjord, attracting large crowds keen to spot the 600-kilogram (1,300-pound) marine mammal. 

She was put down on Sunday after officials said she was showing signs of stress and feared she was a threat to the public, who did not keep their distance as requested. 

On Wednesday, an online campaign had so far raised 210,000 Norwegian krone ($21,600) to build a statue in the young walrus’s honour. 

The campaign’s organiser said the statue should serve as a reminder for future generations to protect animals. 

“The culling of Freya sends the extremely negative message that Norway, and in particular Oslo, is not able to make room for wild animals,” Erik Holm said on the fundraising website Spleis.no. 

“By erecting a statue of the symbol that Freya has become in such a short time, we will remind ourselves (and generations to come) that we cannot and should not kill or erase nature when it is in our path.”

Freya, estimated to be around five years old, had already been sighted in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden and chose to spend part of the summer in Norway.

She had made headlines since July 17 when she was first spotted in the waters of the Norwegian capital.

The walrus is a protected species that normally lives in the even more northerly latitudes of the Arctic.

Between long naps in the sun — a walrus can sleep up to 20 hours a day — Freya had been filmed chasing a duck, attacking a swan and dozing on boats struggling to support her bulk.

Despite repeated appeals, curious onlookers continued to approach the mammal, sometimes with children in tow, to take photographs.

Walruses do not normally behave aggressively towards humans, but they can feel threatened by intruders and attack.

Critics said the decision to put the animal down was rushed and did not take her well-being into account.

Officials said sedating Freya and moving her to a less populated area would be too complex an operation. 

The freighter's breakdown came as water levels in the Rhine had dropped to critical points at several locations

A stranded cargo ship caused traffic to be halted Wednesday at the Rhine river in western Germany after suffering a technical fault, authorities said, at a time when water transport was already ailing from a drought.

The vessel is stuck at St Goar and Oberwesel, in between the cities of Mainz and Koblenz, water police said, adding that they were expecting to clear the stricken ship within the day.

The machine damage came as water levels in the Rhine had dropped to critical points at several locations, including at nearby Kaub — a known bottleneck for shipping where the river runs narrow and shallow.

The gauge at Kaub stood at 34 cm (13 inches) on Wednesday, well below the 40-cm reference point. 

While vessels are still able to navigate at low water levels, they are forced to reduce their loads to avoid the risk of running aground.

About four percent of freight is transported on waterways in Germany, including on the Rhine, which originates in Switzerland and runs through several countries including France and Germany before flowing into the sea in the Netherlands.

Transport on the Rhine has gained significance in recent months because among cargo moved on the river is coal, now all the more necessary as Germany seeks to wean itself off Russian gas.

Germany’s biggest companies have already warned that major disruptions to river traffic could deal another blow to an economy already beset by logistical difficulties.

The 2018 drought, which saw the benchmark depth of the Rhine in Kaub drop to 25 cm in October, shrank German GDP by 0.2 percent that year, according to Deutsche Bank Research.

2021 was one of the worst years for forest fires since the turn of the century

Forest fires supercharged by climate change are burning twice as much global tree cover as 20 years ago, according to a data Wednesday showing the equivalent of 16 football pitches are now lost every minute.

The research showed in unprecedented detail how wildfires have progressed over the past two decades, with the blazes claiming an estimated three more million hectares each year — an area the size of Belgium — compared with 2001.

The study showed that the majority of tree cover loss is occurring in the boreal forests that blanket much of Russia, Canada and Alaska, which are among the largest storers of carbon on Earth. 

Researchers from the University of Maryland used satellite imagery to map areas of tree cover lost, including that burned by what are known as stand-replacing forest fires. 

These are fires that kill all or most of the forest’s canopy and which cause long-term changes to forest structure and soil chemistry. 

The data showed 2021 to be one of the worst years for forest fires since the turn of the century, causing 9.3 million hectares of tree cover loss globally. 

That was more than a third of all the forest lost last year, according to the data, compiled by Global Forest Watch and the World Resources Institute research group.

“Forest fires are getting worse worldwide,” James McCarthy, research analyst at Global Forest Watch, told AFP. 

The European Union’s satellite monitoring service said last week that western Europe had experienced record fire activity so far in 2022, with tens of thousands of hectares of forest lost in France, Spain and Portugal.

The researchers said that climate change was likely a “major driver” in increased fire activity, with extreme heat waves that render forests tinder dry already five times more likely today than a century and a half ago. 

These drier conditions lead to higher emissions from fires, further exacerbating climate change as part of a “fire-climate feedback loop”, they said.

– ‘Best defence’ – 

The vast majority — some 70 percent — of fire-related tree cover loss over the last two decades occurred in boreal regions, likely because high-latitude regions are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet. 

Last year, Russia lost 5.4 million hectares of tree cover due to fires, the highest on record at an increase of 31 percent over 2020. 

“This record-breaking loss was due in part to prolonged heatwaves that would have been practically impossible without human-induced climate change,” said the study.

The team warned that increased changes to climate and fire activity could eventually turn boreal forests from a carbon sink into a source for carbon emissions. 

“In these boreal regions carbon has accumulated in the soil over hundreds of years and has been protected by a moist layer on top,” said McCarthy.

“These more frequent and serious fires are burning off this top layer and it’s exposing that carbon in the soil.”

This century, fire-related tree cover loss in the tropics has increased round five percent — some 36,000 hectares — a year, the study showed. 

Fire is not the principal cause of forest loss in these regions, with deforestation and forest degradation the main drivers. 

But the researchers said that forest loss from deforestation was making it more likely that forests would be lost to fire, as the practice leads to higher regional temperatures and drier vegetation. 

They called on governments to improve forest resilience by ending deforestation and limiting local forest management practices that include controlled burning, which can easily burn out of control particularly during dry spells. 

“Forests are one of the best defences we have against climate change,” said McCarthy.

Fierce winds and rain lashed the Herault region along the Mediterranean coast of France on Tuesday

The French weather service warned Wednesday of flash flooding risks across much of the south, where a historic drought has parched the rugged Mediterranean hills, a day after fierce rainstorms lashed much of the country.

Alert levels remained in effect for five southern departments hit by storms overnight that dumped two to four centimetres (0.8-1.6 inches) of rain in less than an hour, with some areas reporting up to seven or nine centimetres.

With the ground hardened by this summer’s extreme drought — July was the driest month recorded since 1961 — much of the rain could not be absorbed by the soil and instead overflowed into streams and roads.

No injuries were reported, but public transport was disrupted including in Paris, where videos of inundated metro stations swamped social media.

“The storms are making their way east… and can be violent with intense rain that in some places could see up to eight centimetres fall in a short amount of time” and potentially causing tornado-like conditions, the Meteo France weather agency said.

Authorities also urged people to postpone travel plans if possible, and to avoid waterways or trying to seek shelter under trees.

“Just 30 centimetres of water is enough to sweep away a car,” the prefecture of the Var department on the French Riviera said.

The rain was nonetheless a relief for firefighters who have been battling a string of wildfires across France, in particular in the southwest, with most blazes now contained after burning thousands of hectares.

Indonesia plans to build its new capital over tracts of rainforest in Borneo

Indonesia celebrated its first independence day at its future capital in the ancient rainforests of eastern Borneo on Wednesday as the nation plans a move away from slowly sinking, traffic-clogged Jakarta.

Nusantara, which is 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) from Jakarta, is set to become the new political centre of the world’s fourth-largest country. 

It is a legacy project of President Joko Widodo but environmentalists have warned it could accelerate the destruction of tropical jungles home to long-nosed monkeys and orangutans.

The government is preparing to ramp up infrastructure projects to open the doors to the city –- which will cover about 56,180 hectares (216 square miles) on Borneo island -– by the time Widodo leaves office in 2024. 

“The main point (of the ceremony) is to take the spirit of the 77th Independence Day to strengthen our resolve and spirit to build the new capital,” said State Capital Authority head Bambang Susantono, who will govern the new city. 

After the national flag was hoisted by officials to mark the occasion, workers at the site cheered in unison that they were “ready to develop Nusantara”, which means archipelago in Indonesian.

Jakarta is home to 30 million people in its greater metro area and it has long been plagued by serious infrastructure problems and flooding exacerbated by climate change.

It is sinking as much as 25 centimetres (10 inches) a year in some areas — double the global average for major coastal cities — with some experts predicting up to a third of the megalopolis could be underwater by 2050.

Government officials say the new capital will take decades to be fully completed and inhabited by its planned population of two million people and will help spread economic growth to an underdeveloped region.