Author: Natalie Dillon

A farmer named Hajj Thomson typically harvests about 150 sacks of grain per season in a field of maize close to Salima, Malawi. He receives five during a powerful El Niño. Not fifty. Five. More than any climate model or policy document, that figure illustrates the true risks as scientists observe the eastern Pacific Ocean starting to warm to levels not seen in decades. The world is already getting hot, and a potentially strong El Niño event—possibly a “super” one—is forming. Fundamentally, El Niño’s mechanics are surprisingly straightforward. The trade winds that typically drive warm Pacific surface water westward start…

Every political narrative has a point at which the contradiction is too great to ignore. Beneath parliamentary procedure and procedural language, that moment arrived quietly in Westminster last week, but its ramifications are anything but. A Conservative amendment that would have allowed for new North Sea oil and gas drilling licences was rejected by the House of Commons by a vote of 323 to 108. The same government declared it would relax sanctions to permit the import of jet fuel and diesel made in Russia just hours after that vote. Even if you tried, you couldn’t create an optic that…

In Queensland, May is meant to be a calm month. Towns along the Gold Coast hinterland experience the kind of dry, mild autumn that locals quietly cherish as the wet season ends and the humidity decreases. This year, Natural Bridge, a well-known swimming hole located approximately 45 kilometers west of the Gold Coast, recorded 214 millimeters of rainfall from Sunday morning alone, shattering that assumption somewhere over the Numinbah Valley. The creek that typically flows beneath the well-known rock arch changed completely. By most accounts, what happened in southeast Queensland in the middle of May 2026 was truly unusual. The…

In Overland Park, Monday mornings seem almost too simple. The air is clear, and before sunrise, the temperature is comfortably in the upper teens. By afternoon, it is rising steadily to a high of about 29°C. On this Memorial Day, residents who leave early find the skies open and leisurely, with gentle winds barely registering from the southeast. It’s the kind of morning that gives you confidence in the coming week. As it happens, that trust might be a little misplaced. Because the weather in Overland Park tends to provide a nice start before making things much more difficult. Tuesday…

Standing on the seafront in Bournemouth on a late May morning and realizing that the temperature has already reached 29 degrees before lunchtime has a subtly surreal quality. On days like this, the beach fills up early. Teenagers spread out across the sand in groups, families arrive with cool boxes, and the whole scene seems more like a place you’d need a passport to get to than the south coast of England. The weather in Bournemouth on this Bank Holiday Monday was almost extraordinary, with temperatures approaching 30°C, almost constant sunshine, and conditions that the Met Office itself described as…

This is not how the ocean should feel. If you ask anyone who works in the field of sea surface temperature research, you’ll notice a certain level of fatigue in their descriptions of the past few years. It’s not exactly panic, but rather the weariness of being correct too frequently. Global sea surface temperatures outside of polar regions hit 21 degrees Celsius in April 2026, which was the second-highest temperature ever recorded for that month. Two years ago was the warmest April on record. The difference between them is getting smaller as the numbers continue to rise.Fundamentally, ocean temperature is…

A room full of deep-sea biologists exudes a subtle defiance. These individuals dedicate their careers to researching environments that the majority of people will never see, organisms that survive in extreme darkness that makes blindness seem commonplace, and pressures that would crush steel. There was every reason to anticipate a dry conference when 141 of them convened for the 6th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in Copenhagen during the summer of 1991. That was not the case. Under the resolute leadership of Torben Wolff and his co-organizers Ole Tendal, Jorgen Kirkegaard, and Reinhardt M. Kristensen, the gathering attracted attendees from eighteen nations,…

Last June, over forty marine scientists from eleven different countries gathered in a crowded conference room at a hotel in Nice to discuss a problem that has been building for decades: we are actively working to protect areas of the Atlantic Ocean that we have never really seen. Governments are required by law to safeguard vulnerable marine ecosystems in areas where they are known or likely to occur. Professor Kerry Howell of Plymouth Marine Laboratory made it clear that day that the key word is “known.” Conservation efforts currently end at the boundaries of what has already been documented by…

Moon jellyfish hover in a tall, neon-lit aquarium in a darkened lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their translucent, bell-shaped bodies expand and contract in a slow, rhythmic pulse. They appear to be nearly weightless. Nearly serene. When it comes to an invertebrate that hasn’t changed in over 500 million years, Nicole Xu watches them with what can only be called true affection. However, since she was a graduate student, Xu has been fascinated by the movement of moon jellyfish, and what she has developed around that fascination is one of the most surprising ocean research projects going on…

The report, which was created by over 100 scientists and subjected to peer review, was released in late September 2025. It was based on decades of in-situ ocean measurements, satellite data, and deep-sea instruments. It was painstakingly created, comprehensive, and detailed. Additionally, it landed in a news cycle full of other stories, and the majority of what it contained—nine distinct warnings about the current state of the ocean—barely made an impression outside of specialized circles. Correcting that seems worthwhile. Every year, the Copernicus Marine Service and Mercator Ocean International publish the ninth edition of the Copernicus Ocean State Report, which…