Climate Change

Published: 02 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online For generations, the glasshouses at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh have offered rare and vulnerable plants protection from Scotland’s often unforgiving weather. Yet the structures designed to shelter those collections have increasingly become a source of danger themselves, with ageing glass, storm damage and deteriorating infrastructure threatening both plants and the people responsible for caring for them. That...

Published: 02 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online As summer temperatures rise across European cities, residents of Berlin are finding an increasingly simple way to help protect one of the most valuable parts of their urban environment: street trees. Through an open-source digital platform known as Gieß den Kiez, residents can identify trees in need of water, record when they have been watered and coordinate with...

Published: 02 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Europe has endured one of its most severe summers on record, with prolonged heatwaves, drought, wildfires and dangerously high temperatures affecting large parts of the continent. A new assessment from the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service shows that western Europe experienced surface air temperatures from June to August that were 2.5C above the recent 10-year average, making...

Published: 01 October 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Switzerland is undergoing a dramatic transformation of its Alpine landscape as glaciers continue to lose ice at an accelerating rate, with new research showing that the country has lost almost one-fifth of its glacier volume in just five years. Scientists monitoring the Swiss Alps say the scale and speed of the retreat are becoming increasingly difficult to compare...

Published: 29 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Britain’s insurance industry has warned that thousands of homes being built in areas vulnerable to flooding could face serious difficulties obtaining affordable insurance in the future, as the country experiences growing concern over the impact of increasingly severe weather. Amanda Blanc, chief executive of Aviva, one of Britain’s largest insurers, said the threat posed by flooding was “absolutely...

Published: 29 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online The world is facing a narrowing opportunity to restore forests that are vital to food security, climate resilience, biodiversity and the livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new warning from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The organisation has urged governments to make forest and landscape restoration a national priority, warning that delays could increase...

Published: 28 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Bangkok has been declared a disaster zone after days of relentless rainfall left parts of Thailand’s capital submerged under waist-high flood water, while the weather system responsible for the extreme conditions has shifted north-westwards, bringing some relief to the city but continuing to affect other parts of the country. The flooding developed after an area of low pressure...

Published: 26 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Three-quarters of the UK’s top-selling plug-in hybrid electric vehicles cannot use rapid public chargers, raising fresh questions about how effectively the increasingly popular vehicles can function as a practical bridge between petrol-powered motoring and full electrification. An analysis of the 20 most popular plug-in hybrid electric vehicle models sold in the UK found that only 26% of vehicles...

Published: 25 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah has used his address to the United Nations General Assembly to deliver a forceful warning about the consequences of climate change, arguing that last month’s devastating flash flood in the Himalayas should serve as a wake-up call for governments around the world. Speaking before world leaders on Thursday, Shah described the disaster as...

Published: 24 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online. A proposed environmental levy on housebuilders in Norfolk is facing criticism from environmental lawyers, ecologists and conservation professionals, who argue that the charge is too low to adequately address the damage that could result from thousands of new homes being built in and around the protected Norfolk Broads. The draft Environmental Delivery Plan, prepared by Natural England under...