Please welcome @Sophia Garcia and @Kendra Cigdem Hi to both of you and welcome to this strange group. The aim of the group is to provide background data on the Climate Crisis so that you can speak with an informed voice on the subject. The next step is to look at how the crisis is affecting each of us in our different parts of the world. Since I am in the UK I am doing a lot of work to identify how the climate crisis is affectring us in the 6th wealthiest country and, for me in Hampshire, how it affects us in one of the wealthiest counties. I am finding that the effects are all around us. And after five heatwaves over the summer we are seeing changes to our countryside, to our local farmers and to our local wildlife. Changes that are, in some cases, irreversable. As a result of this work I am now contacting local action groups to see how we can identify actions that are impactful. I have two in my sights. The first is that we are running out of water during our summer months. Not only for household use but also for the trees in our towns. The idea of needing to "water" our trees is alein to us. But without doing this, we will lose our Silver Birches, our Beach trees and maybe even our Oak trees. My suggestion is that we build new reservoirs to capture the increased winter rainfall and store it until we need it during our long dry spells in the summer. We don't have the money, reservoirs are not on the local council's radar (especially for trees!) and we do not have the land. If we do not do this we will lose the trees that provide cooling in the summer, the benefits of their air purification and carbon sequestration services. We are planting new trees, beacuse we have been told this is a good idea, but we are not doing enough to protect them during the early years and many are dying. So I have put forward the idea of Eco-Guardians, allocating groups of trees to nearby residents. As water supplies dwindle, the cost of water is increasing. Do we supply these guardians with payments to cover their costs?

We’ve had plenty of rain. So why are our ponds drying up, streams running low and landscapes becoming increasingly stressed? That question led me to Article 2 of our Water Stress series. The problem isn’t simply how much rain we get. It’s when it falls, how it falls — and what happens to it afterwards. Increasingly, we face an extraordinary contradiction: 🌧️ Too much water in winter. ☀️ Too little water in summer. Heavy rain can rush off dry or saturated land, overwhelm drains and flow downstream. Then, months later, we find ourselves worrying about drought and water supplies. Which leads to a deceptively simple challenge: How do we move water through time? How do we hold onto some of the water that falls during wet periods so it is still available during increasingly hot, dry summers? Reservoirs, wetlands, healthy soils, aquifers, rain gardens, water butts and water recycling are all, in different ways, attempts to answer that question. In Article 2: Where Has All the Water Gone?, I explore what is changing and why our existing water systems may no longer match the climate they were designed for. But I also want your help. 👀 Notice — Where does rain go when it falls where you live? 📣 Speak Up — What are people saying locally about flooding, drought and water supplies? 💡 Suggest Ideas — How could we keep more winter rainfall for the summer? 🌍 Share Stories — Have you seen somewhere else doing this particularly well? Add your observations and ideas below. The solutions we need may already exist somewhere. We just need to find them, connect them — and work out what could work in our own communities. Find the article here 👉

The Vostok ice core — drilled from the Antarctic ice sheet between 1980 and 1998 — extends 3,623 meters into the ice and contains a climate record spanning 420,000 years. The EPICA Dome C core, completed in 2004, extends this record to 800,000 years. These cores contain trapped air bubbles — actual samples of ancient atmosphere, preserved at depth by the accumulating weight of snow above them — that allow scientists to measure the precise composition of the atmosphere at the time each layer was deposited. The data they contain is not a proxy, not an inference, not a model output. It is a direct measurement of ancient air. The air from 800,000 years ago is in those bubbles. You can analyze it. The analysis is reproducible. It has been reproduced by multiple independent research groups using multiple independent methodologies. The results are always the same. The result that matters most: In 800,000 years of atmospheric record, CO2 concentrations never exceeded 300 parts per million. The natural cycle of ice ages and warm periods produced CO2 fluctuations between approximately 180 parts per million during glacial maxima and 280 parts per million during warm interglacial periods. This range — 180 to 280 — is the range within which the climate system that produced every ecosystem on Earth, every species currently alive, and every human civilization ever built operated. The current atmospheric CO2 concentration is 421 parts per million. It crossed 300 for the first time in human history in approximately 1912. It crossed 400 for the first time in approximately 3 million years in 2013. The rate of increase — approximately 2.5 parts per million per year currently — is 100 times faster than any natural rate of change in the 800,000 year record. We have taken the atmosphere outside the range it has occupied for 800,000 years and we are moving it further outside that range faster than anything in the geological record. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Every biological adaptation — every physiological process, every ecological relationship, every seasonal cycle of every species on Earth — evolved within that 180 to 280 range. The timing of flowering, the navigation of migratory species, the coral bleaching threshold, the snowpack that feeds rivers — all of it calibrated to a climate system operating within a range that no longer exists.

For the farmer, it's the moment when they finally discover whether a year's worth of investment has paid off. Seeds, fertiliser, machinery, fuel, labour, weather, loans and uncertainty all come long before a single pound of income arrives. In this latest Stories from the Farm article, I explore the economics behind growing wheat and why a successful harvest doesn't always mean a profitable year. Understanding the financial pressures farmers face helps us have better conversations about food, prices and the future of farming. I'd love to hear your thoughts after you've read it. Find it here 👉

There is a difference between Climate Change and Weather. The first is all about long-term trends and patterns. Temperature changes that used to take place over hundreds of years are now occurring over decades. The second is what the forecast is for today or this week. Weather is fascinating in its own right; it makes for amazing sunsets and cloud formations, it waters out gardens and crops, and it changes what we wear. If you love the experience of weather and want to understand it better, here is the Skool for you: The Weather Watchers Community