Australia’s beloved animals are again under threat as the H5N1 strain of bird flu spreads, with more mass deaths expected. Scientists are bracing for another wave of ecological loss and are particularly concerned about rare and threatened species.

It’s normal to find this news overwhelming, especially in the wake of a growing list of environmental disasters: from algal blooms to coral bleaching, and floods and fires that devastate wildlife and ecosystems.

We research ecological grief – the deep sadness people feel about the loss of nature – and climate emotions – human feelings in response to the climate crisis. We have listened to hundreds of people talk about their feelings about our environment, and their fears and hopes for its future. Some describe sadness, anger or concern. Others try to avoid bad news.

These responses are rarely simple. They are often rooted in particular places and species we love, and in the memories, identities and relationships attached to them. Because of this, grief can co-exist with feelings like awe, pride, belonging and care.

Here, we share some ways to make space for your feelings and find connection and support.

What is ecological grief?

Grief is an understandable response to witnessing harm to places and species that matter to us. We might experience environmental loss directly, particularly when we live or work in threatened places. At other times, we encounter it through news and social media, or against the wider backdrop of future threats such as climate change. Because ecological loss is ongoing, cumulative, and sometimes ambiguous, we need to practise support, connection and care in ways that we can sustain over time.

Yet our feelings in response to loss are often hard to talk about, especially when they are minimised or dismissed by others. Our society is not very good at “doing grief”. Death is difficult to understand, and can feel like something to be avoided at all costs.

In addition, many of us have lost the rituals and gathering places that enable us to process loss together, such as those offered through spiritual or cultural practices. This can lead to disenfranchised grief, when loss is not acknowledged or validated, leaving people feeling isolated.

Becoming more “grief literate” means developing the knowledge, values and practical skills to understand grief, and support ourselves and others. For environmental loss, this might involve talking with people who are feeling a similar way, spending time in restorative places, or making art, either alone or in groups.

A growing awareness of loss

The good news is communities and professionals are coming together to support people as they grapple with ecological loss. In Australia, organisations like Psychology for a Safe Climate host a network of mental health practitioners who are aware of the realities of climate change and can provide professional support.

Psychology for a Safe Climate also offers regular “climate cafes”, where people can connect with others who share concerns about beloved species and ecosystems.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have learnt to live amid the drastic changes to Country wrought by centuries of colonisation. Their knowledge and practices offer a vital source of wisdom for all, but must be treated with respect and reciprocity if they are offered beyond their own communities. We Al-li shares Indigenous cultural traditions and trauma informed practices through online courses and other training.

Across the world, new groups are forming to support people grappling with ecological grief. US-based not-for-profit Good Grief Network runs peer-to-peer programs delivered by over 180 facilitators globally. Another organisation, Radical Joy, invites people to “make beauty in a wounded place”, either together or alone.

Paying attention to feelings

As we work with people experiencing ecological loss, we are slowly learning to notice and respond to how we are feeling in ourselves. This might include noticing we need to rest, or take a break from news about ecological “doom”.

It might be as simple as going outside and feeling the grass under our feet, or the wind on our face.

For people in environmental professions, Claudia’s team at the University of Queensland have created an ecological grief resource to guide workplaces to provide better support. It encourages compassionate listening with a colleague, which involves listening without judging or offering solutions. It also suggests undertaking a project – like holding a remembrance event or creating something using art – to honour a loss.

With colleagues at Black Dog Institute and the University of Sydney, Chloe developed an activity booklet for young people, families and all those interested in creative tools for exploring climate and environmental feelings. It provides joyful, open-ended prompts for drawing, photography, and writing that can help people of all ages understand their relationship to the natural world.

Making space for grief

Perhaps most importantly, we have learned that paying attention to feelings like ecological grief is not a distraction from responding to pressing environmental challenges.

By making space for grief, you also create opportunities for care, connection and action. This can sustain us all for the long haul, helping us focus on small, achievable changes without losing sight of the bigger picture.

If you are experiencing overwhelming grief or emotional distress, free and confidential support is available anytime in Australia. Call Lifeline at 13 11 14, Griefline at 1300 845 745, or Beyond Blue at 1300 22 4636.

Chloe Watfern, Senior Research Associate, UNSW and Claudia Benham, Senior lecturer, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This year’s cuttlefish season has been unlike any other.

Every winter, more than 100,000 giant Australian cuttlefish can usually be found mating along the rocky coastline of Point Lowly, northeast of Whyalla, South Australia. They put on shapeshifting, colourful displays in their attempts to attract a mate.

This is the only cuttlefish aggregation in the world. In a typical year, thousands of enthusiastic fans travel to regional SA and brave the freezing water temperatures to experience this unique phenomenon.

In stark contrast, this year’s cuttlefish season has seen significantly fewer cuttlefish, and tourists have been kept away.

What makes this cuttlefish aggregation so unique?

Giant Australian cuttlefish are the world’s largest cuttlefish species, and are only found in southern Australia. Cuttlefish are cephalopods, a type of advanced mollusc that also includes octopuses, squids and nautiluses.

Adult giant cuttlefish typically congregate in small groups to mate. But at Point Lowly, one special population forms a single, large mating aggregation along an 8 kilometre stretch of shallow reef. Like most cephalopods, the cuttlefish life cycle lasts about a year. In winter, eggs are laid at the aggregation site, which hatch in spring; juveniles then spend the summer and autumn months growing in deeper waters, before adults return to the aggregation site. Crucially, after mating, all adult cuttlefish die, meaning the next generation is dependent on the mating success of the previous year.

This population of giant Australian cuttlefish is genetically distinct from those found in the rest of the country. The aggregation is considered a rare natural phenomenon and is National Heritage listed.

What happened to the cuttlefish in 2026?

During May and June, tourism operators at Point Lowly reported extremely low cuttlefish numbers, often seeing fewer than ten cuttlefish per dive in areas where one would typically see 100 or more.

In July, significantly reduced cuttlefish numbers were confirmed by the SA government, which regularly surveys the aggregation. While cuttlefish numbers fell to a record low in 2013, there were still thousands of animals – abundant compared with 2026.

What we’ve seen this year is unprecedented. While the timing of the cuttlefish aggregation can vary slightly each year, by late June the animals should be well and truly aggregating. In short, the cuttlefish have simply failed to turn up.

What could be causing this?

While we’ll never know for sure, we can work towards some hypotheses.

On the balance of probabilities, the decline is likely linked to the SA algal bloom in some way. We’re taking into account the extent and rapidity of the cuttlefish decline, relative to past years, and the unprecedented nature of the algal boom’s ecological impact.

The algal bloom was dominated by Karenia cristata microalgae species, which can have a significant and swift impact on cephalopod populations, as seen in Australia and other countries. Cuttlefish could have been directly exposed to the bloom, or it might have reduced their food supply. Cephalopods are obligate carnivores and hunters, meaning they must eat live food such as crabs and shellfish. A decline in prey could have significant impacts.

Another hypothesis is water temperature. It is generally thought winter water temperatures influence the timing and success of the breeding aggregation. However, winter water temperatures have been relatively warm in the past, while a decline in numbers at this scale has not been seen before.

Some aspects of giant cuttlefish biology are still a mystery, so there could be other reasons for the decline that remain unknown.

Can anything be done?

Cephalopods reproduce quickly and grow fast. As such, the giant cuttlefish could bounce back if conditions are good, food is abundant, and there aren’t too many hungry predators around. However, there are still many unknowns that may impede their recovery – more research is needed to understand this unique cuttlefish population.

On a positive note, a 90-day tourism ban imposed by state government gave the remaining cuttlefish the best possible chance to thrive. This move was supported by local tour operators and communities, despite its economic impacts.

Furthermore, Invertebrates Australia is convening a working group of researchers, experts and tourism operators to compile the best available evidence on the status of the giant Australian cuttlefish population at Point Lowly. This will contribute to a review of the population’s conservation status on the world-leading IUCN Red List.

There was media coverage of a “bubble curtain” that was installed to protect the cuttlefish during the algal bloom. It was designed to protect the vulnerable eggs, which are attached to rocks, from the bloom. However, the eggs hatched without issue, and so the bubble curtain was not required.

We’re lucky to have this unique wonder in Australia, and the more research we can do, the more we can do to help protect these animals for future generations to enjoy.

Zoe Doubleday, Associate Professor and Marine Ecologist, Adelaide University and Bethany Jackel, PhD student, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine you wake up one morning and look out your window. You see a sky of red, hear a ferocious blast of wind and watch as tree branches creak and crack.

No, the apocalypse has not descended on your local neighbourhood. You’ve just been caught in the middle of a dust storm.

These storms form when strong winds lift sand and dust particles into the atmosphere. Of the two, sand storms typically occur closer to the ground and travel shorter distances. Finer dust particles can be lifted high into the atmosphere and travel across oceans and continents. Dust from Australia has been found as far away as Antarctica.

Sand and dust storms typically occur in arid environments where the ground is dry, loose and vegetation-free. But they can inflict severe and lasting damage on homes and buildings, solar panels and farm machinery. And as our planet rapidly warms, sand and dust storms will become more common.

So what does this mean for arid nations like Australia? And what can we do about it?

Our climate is rapidly warming, dramatically reshaping weather around the globe. In this three-part series, we explore a range of emerging climate phenomena and consider how to respond to their destructive effects.

Where the dust blows…

In Australia, our dust storms mainly come from the vast, dry region of the Lake Eyre Basin in central and outback Australia.

Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre and Mudna-Lake Frome are two ephemeral lakes from this region that periodically flood and then dry out. This process brings new sediment that, when the water disappears, dries out and can then be lifted up by strong winds. Dust storms also form in South Australia’s semi-arid regions and the intensively farmed areas of Victoria and western New South Wales.

In Australia, dust storms travel across two main paths: from the Lake Eyre Basin across south-east Australia, and from central Australia out to Western Australia. However, recent evidence suggests there’s a third, largely unrecognised dust pathway stretching from the Lake Eyre Basin into northern Queensland and northern Australia.

Damaging dust

Sand and dust can cause major disruptions to everyday life.

Transport networks are particularly vulnerable. Sand and dust particles reduce visibility and prevent tyres from gripping the road properly, leading to more vehicle crashes.

Sand and dust storms also damage infrastructure. They can wear down farm equipment and irrigation systems, uproot fences and pollute water reservoirs. Sand and dust storms are costly to clean up. After they roll through, farmers can be left with broken machinery, reduced crop yields and less fertile topsoil. We saw this after the 2009 “Red Dawn” dust storm that swept across eastern Australia. In New South Wales alone, affected landowners spent an estimated A$5.1 million rebuilding their farms.

Sand and dust storms can hamper energy production. If dust settles on solar panels – a process known as “soiling” – they work less efficiently and need regular cleaning. One study found dust reduced how much power solar panels generated each month by roughly 4.5%.

However, sand and dust storms don’t just inflict visible damage. These storms carry microscopic particles that, if inhaled, can enter your lungs and bloodstream and cause various health problems. Dust particles may contain heavy metals such as iron and aluminium. They can absorb pathogens and facilitate the spread of infectious diseases such as Valley fever and bacterial meningitis.

When dust, drought and fire converge

In the 1940s, several severe dust storms swept across Australia, mainly due to the drying effects of intensive livestock grazing. So the term “Australian dust bowl” was born. This dusty era ushered in a new wave of land management and soil conservation policies designed to keep the dust at bay.

These environmental policies proved effective, and since that period south-east Australia has not recorded such high levels of dust. But today, more dust flies around during prolonged droughts. We saw this during the 2009 “Red Dawn” dust storm and the “Tinderbox drought” of 2017-19, which coincided with the horrific Black Summer bushfires. This compounding disaster – when two or more disasters occur together or in quick succession – devastated many communities and put immense pressure on emergency responders.

Recent storms suggest the dust is far from settled. In 2025, Sydneysiders were again shrouded in red dust, while just months later Northern Territory mine workers were caught in an intense dust storm racing across the Tanami Desert. And last May, a dust storm and its unrelenting winds ravaged the South Australian town of Port Pirie.

So, what can we do?

To prepare for future sand and dust storms, we urgently need more research. We are currently investigating how the on-and-off flooding of rivers in the Lake Eyre Basin produces dust. Satellites are also helping us better understand where major dust storms come from and travel to in Australia.

The effect of climate change on these processes should be another research priority. And we must also ensure our environmental policies address both why we are experiencing more dust and how we can protect our communities, ecosystems and infrastructure from the damage it causes.

Tegan Clark, PhD Candidate, College of Systems and Society, Australian National University and Isabelle Finlay, PhD Candidate, Geography and Environment, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You may have heard reports of fish die-offs or seen photos of hauntingly bleached coral.

Those are just two signs a marine heatwave has swept through the sea.

Marine heatwaves happen when the ocean remains abnormally hot for an extended period. While they may be invisible from the shore, their impacts can wreak havoc underwater – killing various kinds of coral, seagrass and fish.

As climate change continues to warm the ocean, marine heatwaves will only become more frequent and severe. While we cannot stop these marine disasters happening, we can work to better understand them and reduce their impacts on vulnerable ocean ecosystems.

Our climate is rapidly warming, dramatically reshaping weather around the globe. In this three-part series, we explore a range of emerging climate phenomena and consider how to respond to their destructive effects.

The science of marine heatwaves

Marine heatwaves are naturally occurring weather patterns that can form when hotter water near the surface of the ocean doesn’t mix with cooler water below. This is most common when conditions are hot, dry and windless. However, marine heatwaves can also develop when unusually strong currents carry extra heat from the tropics to colder ocean areas.

To identify a marine heatwave, scientists measure ocean temperatures and compare those observed ocean temperatures with the historical average temperature – the baseline or “normal” temperature of that location at a specific time of year.

Marine heatwaves occur when the ocean is hotter than 90% of historical temperature records. To be considered a heatwave, this abnormal heat must last for at least five consecutive days.

Ocean temperatures vary according to local conditions. Given marine heatwaves are measured in relation to a region’s normal seasonal ocean temperatures, they can happen anywhere and at any time of year. For example, a water temperature of 25°C at Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef might not seem warm for that tropical area. However, 25°C in the waters around Tasmania would be considered extreme.

Terrestrial heatwaves follow the same logic as marine heatwaves. But a land-based heatwave only needs to last three days to be classified as a heatwave. Minimum night and maximum day temperatures must also be unusually hot.

An underwater disaster

Given marine heatwaves can happen in any part of the ocean, all marine ecosystems are at risk.

However, marine species cope in different ways. Those that are mobile, such as fish, can swim to cooler waters. In contrast, coral, kelp or bottom-dwelling creatures such as sea urchins can’t relocate. This means they are directly impacted by marine heatwaves. For example, they may struggle to reproduce due to heat stress. They also suffer indirect impacts, such as a lack of food if species further down the food chain are wiped out by a marine heatwave.

On land, marine heatwaves can be economically and culturally devastating for coastal communities. They can cost fisheries, aquaculture businesses and tourism operators billions of dollars in lost income. Marine heatwaves may also damage culturally significant sites, as in the case of Shark Bay, a World Heritage-listed marine ecosystem off the WA coast. They may also destroy blue carbon habitats. These are ocean-based habitats, such as mangroves and seagrass, that absorb carbon and help cool the planet.

In February 2011, a massive compound heatwave – where a marine and a terrestrial heatwave happened together – decimated ecosystems across WA. On land, it killed trees and caused the endangered cockatoo population to crash. Beneath the sea, it triggered widespread coral bleaching in the Pilbara, Ningaloo and Houtman Abrolhos Islands regions.

In September 2024, another marine heatwave swept through the waters off the coast of WA lasting several months. It was the state’s longest, largest and most severe marine heatwave ever. It killed about half of the coral in the North West Shelf region.

Most recently, sea surface temperatures have surged during the 2026 European summer, in some places by up to 5°C higher than average. This threatens marine ecosystems across the Mediterranean Sea, North Sea and Baltic Sea.

Worse under climate change

Marine heatwaves are a natural part of our planet’s variable climate system.

But climate change means they are becoming more common and severe. They are also lasting longer. The ocean’s thermal baseline – or the natural temperature of the ocean – is rising due to climate change. This means any temperature fluctuations compound the effects of this background warming.

Other climate drivers, including the El Niño and La Niña climate patterns, can also intensify marine heatwaves. In Australia, El Niño typically warms the waters off the east coast, heightening the risk of severe marine heatwaves there. La Niña tends to push warm water towards the west coast, driving extreme ocean temperatures off WA.

However, because of climate change, large-scale climate patterns like El Niño and La Niña are no longer necessary to trigger marine heatwaves. This means even the slightest change in these climate drivers might bring extreme heat to either coast.

Where to from here

To better understand the factors that drive marine heatwaves, we need further research that analyses changes in air and ocean currents. We should also prioritise research investigating the sub-surface ocean. Satellites monitor the surface but many severe marine heatwaves remain hidden underwater, devastating marine life without detection.

The most important step to reduce the impacts of marine heatwaves is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, limiting further ocean warming. At the same time, researchers are exploring other ways to help ecosystems adapt. These include introducing thermal tolerant species to vulnerable regions. Marine cloud brightening, which aims to temporarily reduce ocean heating by making clouds more reflective, is another option being investigated.

We must also invest in modelling to predict when future marine heatwaves may hit. Early warning systems are also vital to ensure fisheries and conservation zones can prepare for these increasingly common underwater disasters.

Sina Pinter, PhD Candidate in Ocean Dynamics, The University of Western Australia and Nicole L. Jones, Professor of Physical Oceanography, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Feral cats and foxes now roam across almost all of Australia. These predators are a major reason why many species have been driven to extinction.

In response, conservation groups and authorities have turned to safe havens – islands or large fenced-off areas on land. Well known havens include Newhaven in the Northern Territory and Faure Island off the coast of Western Australia.

After feral cats and foxes are removed, authorities can reintroduce endangered native mammals such as bilbies who can live their lives in the wild, rather than in zoos or captive breeding programs. Many are now flourishing, such as the brush-tailed bettong and greater bilby. These havens have become a powerful tool to pull many mammal species back from the brink.

Unfortunately, our new research shows mainland safe havens don’t yet offer strong protection for many other groups of animals, such as frogs, reptiles, fish, birds and invertebrates. Many species from these groups are similarly threatened by introduced predators as well as other invasive threats, from black rats to deadly fungal infections.

This is because safe havens are often set up for mammals and don’t protect the range of habitats other animal groups need or exclude their specific threats. We will need to create new safe havens for non-mammal species. We have pinpointed several priority areas on the mainland where future safe havens could extend protection.

Nowhere to hide

To test whether safe havens were protecting other animal groups, we examined the known ranges of 123 species of threatened reptiles, amphibians, birds and invertebrates considered highly susceptible to introduced species.

We found only two have populations currently inside existing safe havens – the great desert skink and western swamp tortoise. Some frog and fish species have specific havens, such as breeding sites fenced off to protect them from feral pigs or other threats.

Our research shows few current havens are likely to have suitable habitat for our target species in the future.

This means our current network of safe havens aren’t enough. We need more in different locations and designed to counter different threats.

What’s more, we will need to account for future shifts in where these threatened species will occur given human-induced climate change.

While existing safe havens can keep out cats and foxes, they’re not designed to stop rats or birds. But these can pose real threats to threatened invertebrates and amphibians.

Location, location, location

Australia will need safe havens for the foreseeable future. It makes sense to ensure our network is inclusive and protects as wide a range of species as possible, beyond just threatened mammals.

We used models of where species are likely to be found in the future while accounting for future climate projections. This let us identify the top 1% of priority locations for new safe havens aimed at protecting non-mammal species most at risk from invasive species.

Many of these regions are in eastern Australia. They include the Victorian Alps, the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, and Tasmania’s Central Highlands.

Creating a robust network

There’s no silver bullet to protect the many hundreds of Australian animal species at risk. Each often faces many different threats simultaneously in addition to invasive species.

As the safe haven network grows, it will be necessary to design some to respond to threats which cat and fox-proof fences don’t protect against.

Finer-scale fencing or netting may be needed, or the creation of havens in natural refuges such as isolated waterways or islands.

If priority locations lie in tough terrain where extensive fencing is less viable, it may work to create mini havens protecting a smaller set of species.

For some species, it may work to have “leaky” havens where invasive species can’t get in but threatened species can move in and out. This would help avoid genetic bottlenecks due to isolation.

For some species, fences won’t work at all. For instance, the green and golden bell frog is threatened by both the lethal chytrid fungus and invasive fish such as mosquitofish, which eat its eggs. For this species, our earlier research suggests the best safe haven would likely be a wetland on a high plateau rather than a fence.

A similar option for other species is to use mesas – high, isolated landforms with flat tops – to keep invaders out. This could be a cost-effective solution, as these provide long-term refuges for such species to recover.

All havens have limits

Keeping threatened species in the wild rather than captivity has many benefits. Bringing animals back to the land restores their key ecological roles, such as digging through soil and spreading seeds.

Their presence benefits other native species who they have evolved alongside over millions of years, making ecosystems more functional.

Despite these benefits, havens are not a long term solution. Animals protected from predators and other threats lose their wariness. If they’re released outside the fence, many are quickly eaten. Some researchers are exploring ways to expose animals to a few predators so that the wariest survive and breed. The point of safe havens is to buy time for scientists to find longer-term solutions.

Our research offers a blueprint for a new generation of climate-ready safe havens able to protect many more species and give many lesser-known species a fighting chance.

John Gould, Senior Research Assistant in Conservation Biology, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Intense heat, unprecedented wildfires and savage droughts have hit Europe hard this northern summer. More than 25,000 people have died from the heat, while hundreds of thousands have been evacuated.

Farmers in the United Kingdom have warned of possible shortages of some foods if the drought continues. The Rhine River has fallen to record low levels, disrupting one of Europe’s most important trade and freight arteries.

Climate change made this angry summer vastly more likely. As governments are realising, climate change is no longer just an environmental issue, but a significant challenge for economies, infrastructure and geopolitics.

In the past few years, climate action has dropped down the international agenda. Pro-fossil-fuel governments have pushed back against already-inadequate efforts on climate action. Media coverage is falling, even as climate damage increases.

But will these recent, palpable forms of damage make climate action a priority again?

Responding to disasters – or acting on climate?

Europe is the fastest-warming continent. Temperatures are rising at about double the global rate.

European policymakers have long taken the lead to drive climate action. Many European countries were among the high-ambition nations that helped secure the hard-won Paris Agreement of 2015, with a goal of holding climate change to 1.5°C.

In the 11 years since Paris, progress has been made on electric vehicles and very rapid uptake of solar. Emissions have slowed but not yet begun to fall. Climate change has slipped down the agenda. One estimate counts the reversal of 45 climate policies across 15 jurisdictions in the year to July. The legislated 1.5°C limit is not going to be met.

In Europe, the climate change agenda has been overshadowed by war and instability, trade tensions, economic pressures and the rise of populist parties critical of existing climate policies.

Yet the picture is far from uniform. Public concern about climate change remains high across much of the continent, and this summer has increased its visibility. In Sweden, for example, climate change is a polarising but prominent issue ahead of the upcoming national election.

The problem is, worsening climate damage can amplify concern but divert resources away from the long-term investments needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost adaptation and preparedness.

This perverse feedback loop is known as derailment risk. The only way to escape this downward spiral is to work now to cut emissions, boost resilience and blunt the effects of climate disruptions.

Climate change also exposes weaknesses in how governments manage risk. Prevention and resilience are often underfunded because benefits are widely shared and may not be realised for years, while costs are typically paid upfront. Responsibility is often split across agencies and levels of government, which creates a bias towards responding to disasters after they happen rather than investing to reduce future losses.

Authorities will need to fund quick-response disaster recovery efforts that both reduce long-term risks and improve response capacity, such as nature-based solutions or rebuilding destroyed houses and infrastructure better or in different locations after disasters.

Surprisingly, natural disasters and climate change have long been discussed in quite separate policy worlds. Last year, a United Nations report found a lack of policy coherence between disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Europe.

For example, many European insurance policies only fund “like for like” replacement after disaster, limiting people’s ability to rebuild a destroyed house as a stronger, better version. Increasingly, frequent disasters are pushing the insurance industry business model to its limits.

Climate change poses threats to many interconnected systems on which we rely, from farming to roads to electricity grids to glacier-fed rivers. Worse, these threats can interact and compound. Low river levels have made it much harder to cool nuclear reactors in Hungary and Romania, raising the risk of power outages and fuelling tensions between the nations.

Compounding threats can quickly trigger economic disruption, political tension and institutional strain.

What does this mean for Australia?

Australia has long looked to Europe for policy guidance and leadership on climate change.

But if Europe is focused on responding to disasters rather than climate action, it could hamper already ailing global climate policy efforts. The Trump administration in the United States wants to keep selling gas, coal and oil. While China has emerged as the single biggest force in electrification and clean energy, it has yet to lead on climate.

At COP31, the next global climate talks in Turkey in November, Australia will take on a hard-won diplomatic role to try to get climate action back on track.

Can we respond to disaster – and get serious on climate change?

As Europe grapples with this summer’s damage, we can expect to see concern about climate change increase.

Authorities can only devote so much time, money and attention to problems. There’s now a real risk that intensifying immediate disasters will make it harder to tackle the underlying problem – even if citizens demand renewed action.

But if we don’t get serious in bringing down emissions and reducing our vulnerability to climatic hazards, the next disasters will only be worse.

Lauren Rickards, Professor of Climate Change Adaptation, La Trobe University; Hartmut Fünfgeld, ICLEI Professor of Practice - Local Government Climate Resilience, La Trobe University, and Magnus Moglia, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a true natural wonder: a unique and diverse underwater seascape the size of a small country.

However, cycles of disturbance and recovery threaten to turn its colourful coral gardens into algal-dominated seascapes – then back again. And these cycles are becoming more volatile as our world warms.

At the Australian Institute of Marine Science, we’ve been documenting these changes for the past four decades through our Long-Term Monitoring Program. This is one of the longest records of continuous coral reef data in the world.

Concerningly, we’ve watched the health of the Great Barrier Reef begin to fluctuate dramatically over the past 15 years. The 2024 mass coral bleaching – where a record-breaking marine heatwave bleached coral reefs from the Caribbean to the Indian and Pacific Oceans – was particularly destructive. It caused the largest single-year decline in coral ever measured in two regions.

However, our latest report reveals some promising signs of recovery.

In hot water

In 2025, the Great Barrier Reef endured its sixth coral bleaching since 2016 – one of only two back-to-back bleachings in the reef’s history.

However, our latest survey data shows the 2025 bleaching was smaller and less severe than in 2024. This means substantially less coral died, showing not all periods of bleaching have the same outcome. A heatwave’s intensity and duration determines whether corals die or survive. If corals get relief from the heat, they can regain their symbiotic algae and survive.

On the Great Barrier Reef, sea surface temperatures generally peak between January and March. During these summer months, marine heatwaves can increase the risk of coral bleaching. Marine heatwaves occur if ocean temperatures remain unusually warm for the location and time of year for at least five consecutive days.

In spring 2025, a marine heatwave swept across the reef, raising ocean temperatures by up to 1.5°C. According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s climate trends, December 2025 was the reef’s hottest December on record since 1900. If the heatwave continued through summer, the unrelenting heat would have likely led to widespread coral bleaching.

Signs of recovery

Last year, we recorded the largest single-year decline in living coral cover in four decades of monitoring. This followed the devastating 2024 mass coral bleaching. Coral cover refers to how much of the reef surface is covered in live hard coral, compared with algae, sand and other organisms. It’s one indicator of how healthy a reef is.

In good news, our latest report suggests coral cover increased slightly in some parts of the reef from 2025 to 2026. In the northern region (Cape York to Cooktown), coral cover rose from 30% to 35.1%. This figure increased from 28.6% to 31.6% in the central region (Cooktown to Proserpine). This puts both regions above the long-term average of coral cover. However, coral cover in the reef’s southern region (Proserpine to Gladstone) remained below the long-term average, decreasing slightly from 26.9% to 26.4%.

So, what is driving this?

In early 2026, we noticed signs of regional coral bleaching in the northern and central Great Barrier Reef. But a monsoon soon arrived, bringing widespread cloud and rainy weather, helping to cool the reef at just the right time.

Australian monsoon activity typically coincides with the northern wet season, from October to April. During an active monsoon, clouds, rain and winds help cool the surface of the ocean. Breaking waves and turbulence then mix hotter surface waters with deeper, cooler waters. The monsoon season also reverses winds over the tropics, so northern Australian winds blow as moist northwesterly winds.

Still challenges ahead

Our ability to assess threats to the Great Barrier Reef has vastly improved in the past decade. Global forecast systems can now predict ocean temperatures weeks to months in advance, providing early warnings of marine heatwaves and coral bleaching risks around Australia.

But the reef faces many urgent and increasing pressures.

Recent bleaching means corals are particularly vulnerable to record-breaking global ocean temperatures and a predicted strong El Niño.

Crown-of-thorns starfish are one well documented threat to the reef’s corals. Since the 1960s, there have been four waves of crown-of-thorns outbreaks, with a fifth wave currently emerging in the far north. And these coral-eating starfish will move further south in the coming years.

The reef was also hit by two tropical cyclones – Koji and Narelle – between January and March 2026. Cyclones have some cooling effect, but may whip up enormous waves that destroy coral in their path.

The Great Barrier Reef has again shown its remarkable ability to recover. But we can’t take this for granted. Instead, we must urgently act to reduce our carbon emissions and minimise climate change. Developing science interventions offers a pathway to build the reef’s resilience and help it survive a warming future. And we must protect our marine parks to ensure the reef not only survives, but thrives.

Jessica Benthuysen, Physical Oceanographer, Australian Institute of Marine Science; Daniela Ceccarelli, Reef Fish Ecologist, Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Mike Emslie, Senior Research Scientist in Reef Ecology, Australian Institute of Marine Science

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is famous for its coral reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast and Ningaloo Reef in the west. Both World Heritage-listed reefs attract thousands of visitors each year.

But there’s another vast network of coral reefs in Australia that few people know about. More than 1,000 uncharted northern coral reefs were recently identified using satellite imagery along the north coast of Australia.

Due to the remote location, and the challenge of conducting fieldwork in croc-inhabited waters, these northern reefs have been largely overlooked and understudied. They are deeply valuable to the species that call them home, and the Traditional Owners on whose Sea Countries they lie yet their value to Australia has too often gone unrecognised.

As marine heatwaves and coral bleaching on Australian reefs become more frequent and severe, work to safeguard them must extend beyond iconic systems to include Australia’s northern reefs. Otherwise, we risk losing them – not because they are less important, but because they are largely out of sight and out of mind for many Australians.

Why Australia’s hidden reefs matter

Coral reefs provide immense ecological, economic and cultural value by harbouring marine animals and plants, supporting fisheries that feed millions of people worldwide, and buffering coastlines from erosion. For Indigenous peoples around the globe, reefs contain culturally significant sites and resources essential for cultural and community wellbeing.

This means reef decline is not only an ecological crisis but a social one, which threatens livelihoods, cultural heritage and fundamental human rights.

The urgency to understand these understudied reefs has never been greater. Following global coral bleaching in 2023–25, which affected 87% of the world’s coral reefs, climate models predict strong El Niño conditions are returning to Australia this summer. We can expect warmer ocean temperatures and a heightened risk of coral bleaching.

Climate change is changing Australia’s reefs, and we must tackle the climate crisis. But, concurrently, we need to give reefs the best possible chance of surviving the changes already underway. Consequently, Australia’s efforts to conserve and restore its reefs will influence the future of many of them. And we face difficult choices about where to direct our limited funding and subsequent conservation efforts.

In recent months, an additional A$91.8 million of federal funding has been announced to protect the Great Barrier Reef. And the Western Australian government has launched an $11 million coral regeneration and enhancement program for Ningaloo Reef and Exmouth.

But Northern Territory reefs have not received the same attention, and when reefs remain excluded from conservation and management decisions they are at risk of silent loss.

Silent loss: The case of Groote Eylandt

Our new research, undertaken in partnership with the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, merges modern science with First Nations knowledge of Sea Country to document changes to local coral reefs around Groote Eylandt, the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Although reefs in this region are estimated to cover more than 3,200 square kilometres, they were only first described in the scientific literature in 2004. For context, more than 5,000 scientific studies have focused on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef, yet fewer than ten have examined reefs in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and none have focused on the corals themselves.

Working alongside the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, we surveyed five reef sites around Groote Eylandt and observed coral cover on the reefs ranging from 5–47%. These sites shared the characteristics of some of the world’s most marginal reefs, where tougher coral species have persisted.

Massive, slow-growing species dominated, while fast-growing branching corals – which create much of a reef’s three-dimensional structure – were rare or absent. Without historical monitoring, we do not yet know if these branching corals have always been scarce, or whether past disturbances, such as bleaching or cyclones, have driven their decline.

Our work also documented significant coral bleaching in February 2024, which may otherwise have gone unrecorded. It was only detected because of our strong partnership with the Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers, whose stewardship was expanded to include visual inspections of the local coral reefs. This enabled us to identify and document bleaching.

This shows designing scientific projects with local knowledge is essential for understanding remote reef systems, which have historically received scant scientific attention.

We need to know more

Remote, understudied Australian reefs are just as vulnerable to climate change as other, better-known and celebrated reef systems.

Given their immense value, particularly for Traditional Owners like the Anindilyakwa peoples, more research is needed to understand their changing ecology.

Without long-term monitoring and local expertise, Australian scientists are unable to track how these reefs are changing, or make wise decisions about their conservation.

Emma F. Camp, Future Reefs Team Leader, University of Technology Sydney; Ariel K. Pezner, Chancellor's Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney, and Dane P. G. Wattle, PhD student, Marine Biology, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many people are blissfully unaware the world’s frogs and amphibians are fighting their own deadly pandemic. In fact, this fungal disease – chytridiomycosis, or chytrid for short – is the worst wildlife disease on record.

The chytrid fungus has caused the global extinction of 90 amphibian species and affected nearly 30% of all globally threatened amphibians.

Scientists have responded with ingenious and novel ways to help frogs survive, such as frog saunas – where amphibians can warm up and bake off their infections – and captive breeding programs.

But our new research suggests some of these may come at a cost to a core aspect of frog survival: their ability to reproduce.

Frogs in the front line

Frogs are more robust than we often give them credit for, having survived several previous mass extinctions. But some scientists argue amphibians are now on the front line of a sixth mass extinction.

Under the combined pressures of disease, habitat destruction and rising temperatures, we are now seeing an alarming decline in frog species. If we want frog populations to recover in the long term, we need to ensure not only their survival, but their reproductive health.

Australia is home to roughly 250 frog species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. They are also among the worst affected globally by chytrid, which is thought to have caused seven frog extinctions. A further 36 species are under threat.

What we studied

The chytrid fungus and many frogs flourish in cool, moist habitats. So scientists have experimented with making the environment inhospitable to chytrid without harming frogs.

Deliberately exposing frogs to chytrid and following this with heat therapy in “frog saunas” offers a protective effect in some frogs. This approach was tested on green and golden bell frogs and found to act like a vaccination, making it more likely they would survive reinfection. These interventions are vital for helping amphibians survive, and should continue to be developed and used.

But survival is not the same as recovery. Our new research found both being infected with the fungus and the use of heat therapy may reduce frog sperm quality. And this could affect their reproductive ability long after they recover. Our findings suggest we need to carefully study what happens after interventions are used.

Successful treatment but unexpected side-effects

The green and golden bell frog, Ranoidea aurea, is one of the species hit hardest by chytrid. It has disappeared from more than 90% of its former range in southeastern Australia.

We examined the effects of chytrid infection and heat treatment on sperm quality in male green and golden bell frogs. We found frogs with moderate infections produced higher concentrations of sperm than uninfected frogs, which may reflect a phenomenon known as “terminal investment”.

This occurs when animals facing a threat to their survival respond by increasing their reproductive effort, in an attempt to pass on their genes before it’s too late. Similar responses have been observed in other amphibian species affected by chytrid, but responses to chytrid can vary.

Some frogs may increase sperm numbers, calling effort (to attract mates) or breeding displays, while in others there has been no observed effect to these traits. Research in this area is still ongoing, and trends can be hard to identify because we don’t know how one reproductive trait may correlate with another – for example, an increase in calling effort may not mean there are increased sperm numbers.

Interestingly, in our study, frogs with the worst infections did not have higher sperm counts. Instead, they had poorer sperm quality, particularly reduced sperm movement, which is essential for fertilisation. Frogs with only moderate infections had higher sperm counts, but lower sperm movement. We believe these findings indicate more energy being directed to mounting an immune response as infection progresses.

Frogs that underwent heat treatment to clear the fungal infection also showed substantial declines in sperm concentration, which persisted for months. While this sperm movement recovered over time, sperm numbers remained unusually low six months later.

So while heat treatment successfully eliminated the disease, the treatment itself appeared to impose a reproductive cost. This hidden cost could be missed if we consider survival from disease as the only indicator of success.

Does this mean no more frog saunas?

We are definitely not saying conservationists should abandon heat treatments or other disease management strategies. The evidence overwhelmingly shows these tools are valuable and can help save frogs from a disease that has devastated amphibian populations worldwide.

Instead, our findings suggest conservation programs should broaden what success looks like. If a frog survives infection but its reproductive capacity is reduced, conservation managers may need to account for this when they plan breeding programs, translocations and population recovery efforts.

Monitoring the reproductive health of frogs alongside their disease status could help identify any hidden long-term consequences before they affect population growth. Encouragingly, researchers overseas and in Australia are already exploring a diverse range of approaches. These include assisted reproductive technologies, captive breeding and genetic biobanking.

Our study highlights how solutions can sometimes have unexpected trade-offs. Understanding this is critical if we want conservation efforts to keep frogs alive today, and ensure thriving populations for generations to come.

Rose Upton, Lecturer in Biotechnology, University of Newcastle; Alex Callen, Post-doctoral researcher, University of Newcastle, and Anne Ibbotson, HDR candidate, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Albanese government will expand the scheme providing incentives to households and businesses to acquire renewable energy to enable larger businesses, farms and community facilities to install solar systems up to ten times bigger than presently allowed.

Energy minister Chris Bowen will announce the broadening of the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme on Wednesday, saying it will address the “missing middle” in Australia’s energy transition.

“The missing middle is mid-scale solar,” he says in his speech to the National Press Club, part of which has been released ahead of delivery.

Bowen says while utility-scale solar and rooftop household solar are going strongly, the gap is in solar on factories, warehouses, farming sheds and large industrial premises. These form a “big empty roof space ripe for solar generation”.

Australia is already the world’s top rooftop solar nation, per capita. But there is four times as much residential solar on homes as on commercial buildings. In Europe, it’s the opposite – there is 1.5 times as much solar on businesses as on houses.

Bowen says data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis show residential solar installation sits at 22 gigawatts, but businesses have only installed about 5.6 gigawatts.

Under the government’s announcement, the solar discount will be widened to include installations of up to 1 MW in size. Bowen says this will cut the installation costs for commercial, industrial and agricultural rooftops by about 20%.

The installation of a 250kW solar system on a medium size enterprise such as a retailer could save upfront about $68,000 on installation. “Going forward they’d be generating about 345 megawatt hours of electricity each year – a potential saving of $50,000 in annual electricity costs,” Bowen says.

A larger operation installing a 850kW system – enough for a manufacturing business, a large retail complex, or a logistics warehouse – would have an upfront discount of about $232,000. It would be generating annually about 1,173 MWhs, with savings of about $175,000 in energy costs.

“This isn’t just about energy bills – it’s good for productivity, freeing up capital to invest back in their business,” Bowen says.

He also is concerned about installation delays for large rooftop solar.

Businesses are telling him they have run into delays in getting network services providers to approve installation.

Many of these delays “are unacceptable and simply make it so hard for businesses to install solar that they just give up”.

To address the “road block”, Bowen is asking the Australian Energy Market Commission to require network providers to approve commercial and industrial solar much more quickly and efficiently.

The expansion of the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme is expected to be budget neutral because the scheme operates through a market mechanism. The installation of a solar system generates certificates which energy companies buy.

The expansion starts October 1.

Previous research has shown Australia has enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space to supply at least 25% of its annual electricity use – five times as much as currently supplied by gas-fired generators.

The Australian Conservation Foundation welcomed the change. “The Albanese government isn’t nailing it when it comes to fossil fuel exports, but on the domestic renewables front – it’s just about bang on,” ACF’s national climate policy adviser Annika Reynolds said.

“However pressing down on the accelerator for renewables alone is unlikely to get Australia to 82% renewables by 2030 which is what we need for a safe climate and an energy independent grid. We urge the Albanese government to explore every possible lever to firming up the closures of remaining coal and gas clunkers in Australia.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australian homes and cities are increasingly producing and storing their own power.

After two decades of growth, solar panels are now on the rooftops of one in three Australian homes. And home batteries have surged after the Australian government began offering subsidies last year. Around 450,000 batteries had been installed by the end of 2025 – about 4% of Australia’s 10.9 million households.

What would happen if these trends continue? It’s tempting to picture a future where Australian homes and cities could power themselves using these two decentralised technologies.

But while rooftop solar and batteries can take us a long way, they aren’t enough to take most households off-grid – let alone run entire cities.

The real question is how much household power demand can be met by solar and batteries, at what times of day, and under what conditions. These five charts show what’s possible – and what’s not.

How far could these technologies take us?

As of April 30, the National Energy Market had close to 26 gigawatts installed capacity of small-scale rooftop solar, which includes small-scale rooftop PV installed on homes, businesses and other eligible premises.

Solar panels never produce at their full capacity. Clouds cut output, and there’s no sun at night. As a result, that 26GW of panels produced 4GW of power on average from January to March this year.

That’s still significant. It’s equivalent to 16% of demand, and almost four times higher than the same quarter eight years ago. Solar-rich South Australia had 28% of underlying demand met by rooftop solar. During sunny, low-demand periods, rooftop solar can meet around 60% of National Energy Market demand.

Rooftop solar capacity has been increasing rapidly since 2017. But it could go much higher still. Australia’s energy market operator (AEMO) projects small-scale solar capacity (rooftop and other small systems) could almost triple by 2050 to around 87GW.

If all suitable household rooftops were fully used for solar, capacity could reach around 61GW. But homes are only part of Australia’s rooftop solar potential. Once commercial, industrial and other buildings are included, the technical potential is much larger – around 179GW.

This also helps explain why AEMO forecasts for small-scale solar capacity eventually rises above 61GW – its forecast includes rooftop and other small-scale systems on businesses and other premises as well as homes. When large-scale solar farms are also counted, Australia is likely to pass 61GW of total solar capacity within a decade.

This progress is significant. But it also changes the problem that the grid must solve.

Before the rise of wind, solar and batteries, coal plants supplied much of Australia’s electricity. These work best when running steadily, as they can increase or decrease output relatively slowly.

Solar changes this equation.

Power from rooftop solar first meets demand within homes and businesses. At times, solar can exceed local demand, requiring excess power to be exported to the grid, stored or curtailed. As the sun sets, solar output falls rapidly. Demand for grid-supplied electricity then rises sharply, often peaking in late afternoon or evening.

This pattern of low daytime demand and high evening demand is known as the “duck curve”. It poses challenges for grid operators, who have to manage very low grid demand during the day and then rapidly bring on other generation or storage as solar output falls and evening demand rises.

The problem can be partly solved by coordinating home batteries and other types of energy storage, as they can store excess solar and release it at peak times.

What rooftop solar and home batteries can’t do

While rooftop solar and home batteries have clear promise, they’re not a simple substitute for the grid, especially during evenings, heatwaves or prolonged cloudy periods.

Heavy industry, data centres and other big power users require substantial and often continuous supplies of electricity which cannot be wholly met by small-scale energy production.

Home batteries are already reducing how much power households buy from the grid.

But their usable stored energy remains limited relative to the amount of rooftop solar generation available. They’re good at reducing how much expensive power households buy at peak times, but not so good at providing extended backup over an extended cloudy period or during evenings amid an intense heatwave.

What future should we aim for?

What we’re likely to see is rooftop solar and household batteries operating alongside large-scale solar and wind farms to supply much of Australia’s electricity as conditions allow.

We will still need local networks to supply electricity when solar output is low, and carry surplus power in the opposite direction. New transmission lines are needed to better connect large scale renewable areas with cities and heavy industry.

Long-duration energy storage, such as pumped hydro and grid-scale batteries, will be necessary to keep Australia running through periods of low wind and sunlight. A few gas plants will have to be kept as backup.

As the renewable transition progresses, we will need to judge progress not by how many solar arrays and home batteries have been installed, but by how well we can make use of them alongside larger-scale renewables and storage.

We should not aim for a future where household after household quits the grid. Far better to build a resilient, integrated system where homes produce and store more electricity, power grids deal with two-way flows of power intelligently and large-scale renewables and storage cover the periods rooftop solar and batteries can’t respond to.

Magnus Söderberg, Professor and Director, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is installing home batteries at extraordinary speed.

Around 600,000 homes now have one, and more than 400,000 batteries were installed in the 12 months to June 2026. This growth has largely been driven by the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which initially cut the upfront cost of eligible batteries by about 30%.

This is promising news. Batteries can help households use more of their own solar power and keep essential appliances running during a blackout. They also lower evening grid demand.

But there is a catch. A large battery can store more electricity, but can’t fix a house that wastes energy. That’s where our new research comes in.

Better by design

Our new paper reviewed 97 studies on off-grid and self-sufficient housing. There was plenty of sophisticated research on solar panels, batteries and backup systems, but much less attention was paid to the design of the house itself.

Enter: architects.

A home’s orientation, insulation, windows, shading, ventilation and room layout all shape how much energy it consumes. Architects make decisions about these features early in the design process, often long before a battery installer becomes involved.

When these decisions are thoughtfully made, the house can remain comfortable while using less heating and cooling. This reduces the amount of electricity that must be supplied by solar panels and batteries.

A poorly insulated house, for example, will need heavy heating on a chilly winter’s evening. And if it has large, unshaded and west-facing windows, its rooms could overheat in summer.

After the sun goes down, your house may rely on electricity from a battery, the grid or another backup source such as a diesel or petrol generator. If your existing battery can’t meet your after-dark energy needs, you might rush out to buy a bigger one. However, buying a larger battery to cover avoidable demand is a bit like fitting a bigger fuel tank to a car that uses too much petrol. You may travel further before refuelling, but the car is still inefficient.

What we learnt from one regional NSW home

Our research team took a closer look at a newly built off-grid family home near Armidale, in the cool climate of regional New South Wales.

Traditionally, the architecture and energy system of a house are designed in separate stages. In this project, however, the architect and energy specialists worked together from early in the design process. This ensured:

1. the home was positioned to capture more northern sunlight in winter but less in summer

2. its insulation, glazing, construction materials and internal zoning – how a home is divided into functional areas – were designed to reduce heating and cooling demand

3. the family’s appliances and daily routines were considered when estimating how much power the house would need.

Compared with the initial off-grid energy system design, the final solar-and-battery system reduced usable battery storage by about 19%, from 56 to 45.6 kilowatt hours. The estimated upfront cost of the solar-and-battery system fell by around A$11,000, or 15%. And these changes had little effect on the reliability of the energy system.

However, this is just one off-grid home, so these savings can’t be replicated for every household. Its battery is also much larger than those typically needed in grid-connected homes as this home must store enough power for use when solar generation is low, such as at night and during cloudy periods.

How can I buy the right battery for my home?

Building an energy-efficient home is all about the process: start by reducing unnecessary energy use, then size the battery around your house and your family’s energy needs.

But before shopping for a battery, you should consider:

• when you use electricity, such as after school pick-up or just before bedtime, not just the figure on your last bill. You can also review a full year of smart-meter data to identify trends in your energy use

• the storage capacity and power output of your existing battery. Capacity refers to how much energy the battery can hold, while power output tells you how many appliances it can run at once

• if you have solar panels, how much power your panels produce. Most solar systems let you check this through the inverter display or the manufacturer’s monitoring app

• if you can use appliances during daylight hours and whether your house is well shaded and insulated. If it isn’t, you can make several straightforward upgrades such as adding insulation and sealing draughts.

Where to from here

In Australia, early government rebate schemes offered higher discounts for larger batteries. As a result, the average battery capacity of Australian homes rose sharply. However, this rebate structure created a much stronger incentive to buy larger systems.

In May 2026, the rules changed so support now falls as battery size increases. This is a sensible correction.

However, policy could go further by linking battery rebates with home-energy assessments, where an accredited home-energy assessor inspects your home’s construction, insulation, windows and shading. This gives you a rating to help identify ways to make your home more energy-efficient. Rebate schemes should also account for upgrades such as insulation, external shading and efficient appliances.

Australia’s battery boom is welcome. But the best battery is not necessarily biggest one. Instead, it’s the one matches your energy needs, the design of your home and our rapidly changing climate.

Jena Glover, PhD Researcher, Architecture, Griffith University; Mohammad Sanjari, Senior Lecturer, Electrical Engineering, Griffith University; Peyman Akhgar, Lecturer, Architecture, Griffith University, and Ruby Michael, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When you are out and about at this time of year in many parts of Australia, a cold and sometimes drab winter is relieved by a blaze of brilliant yellow: soursob.

It can look pretty, but sadly it’s an introduced weed that should have nothing to do with an Australian winter.

Soursob, Oxalis pes-caprae, is an introduced weed from Africa. It is also known as soursop, sourgrass and Cape sorrel, among other names. The name pes-caprae means goat’s foot and refers to the pattern formed by the leaves.

Soursob was first planted in Australian gardens for its flowers. These days the very mention of it would strike fear into the hearts of most gardeners – once it’s there, it’s very hard to get rid of.

Edible but problematic

Many people will know soursob from childhood.

I remember, as a child, we would eat the stems of these bright yellow, five-petalled flowers with a clover-like leaf – the taste is sour but not unpleasant.

The plant is as popular with little ones now. Posies are easily gathered, stalks tasted and taken home as a trophy of the day’s walk or visit to a playground.

The sour taste is due to the significant quantities of oxalic acid in soursob. Oxalic acid (H₂C₂O₄) is a small organic chemical that occurs naturally in humans as part of the metabolism of vitamin C and collagen.

It is found in many plants humans eat, including spinach, beans, potatoes and almonds. In other common foods such as rhubarb, peanuts and in a number of forage plants, oxalic acid adds flavour.

In its native South Africa, soursob has been widely used as a food or flavouring. A childhood dab on the tongue and the sour taste will do no harm, but taking things to excess can be problematic. The consumption of soursob in large amounts has been reported as a cause of death in hungry sheep.

Eradication – easier said than done

Given soursob can occur in great swards (meadows) in rural areas and is a very difficult garden pest to control, getting rid of it must be a priority.

But this is an Oxalis species we’re dealing with; getting rid of it is much easier said than done.

Soursob spreads by bulbs and the smaller bulbils (tiny bulbs that crowd around the main, larger bulb).

In its native South Africa the plant also seeds, but rarely does so in Australia because the introduced plants are usually infertile. This means the weed spreads more by bulbs and bulbils than by seed. We have dodged a bullet there, perhaps by sheer good luck.

On a large scale and in rural situations the only current way to effectively deal with soursob is to use herbicide or out-compete it with pasture or another crop that shades it out.

You cannot plough or cultivate the soil as this spreads the bulbs and bulbils. Whether you use herbicide or not, eradication will take several years and demands immense patience.

In home gardens, where many people are wisely reluctant to use chemicals, there are alternatives – but nearly all require an almost inhuman persistence.

The best time for control is just before flowering (early to mid-winter) when the bulbs are depleted and have put their resources into leaves and flower stalks and buds (sometimes called bulb exhaustion).

The idea is to starve the bulbs and bulbils over time. There are several approaches:

• don’t pull the plant out as this just spreads bulbils
• instead, simply remove all the leaves and flower buds and stalks; it’s not difficult to do by hand – but you have to keep doing it
• mow over soursob in your lawn – but you have to keep doing it
• plant over the soursob in an attempt to shade it out, which again can starve the bulbs – but you have to keep doing it
• attempt to smother and starve the plants with cardboard, carpet or plastic, but this is not good for your soils – and you have to keep doing it (I don’t recommend it).

All of these approaches take lots of time, effort and persistence. Adding a good layer of mulch (75-100mm deep) makes control and ultimate eradication much easier.

When it comes to a battle of persistence between a weed and a human, the weed will win most of the time. That is one of the things that makes a weed a weed.

Soursob is a persistent curse, but it can be beaten. It may take a few years, but in a garden I can attest that control and starvation does work.

What a sense of achievement – or is it victory? – you get when the dense swathe is diminished and then finally vanquished.

Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From spears and the invention of the wheel to smartphones and robots, human societies have been building and using tools from the beginning. Human tool use has served to conquer new environments, increase communication, and ultimately alter the course of human evolution.

But humans are not alone in the use of tools. Our new study, published in the journal of Marine Mammal Science, shows dolphins can use seashells to help them hunt for fish. And they might be learning this clever tool use from their mothers.

Challenging human exceptionalism

Tool use in the animal kingdom is more widespread than you might think.

One of the first documented records of tool use in non-human animals is from the 1960s, when legendary primatologist Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees using sticks to fish termites out of hollow logs. This challenged the belief that tool use was unique to humans.

Studies have since shown that primates use stones as hammers to crack open nuts and fruit.

Dolphin researchers in Western Australia have found dolphins using basket sponges on their beaks to help them hunt through rubble-littered sea floors. Dolphins use the bowl-shaped basket sponges as a protective sheath for their rostrum or beak. This armor guards their beaks while they flush out fish hidden hidden behind broken coral, shells, and rocks.

Crows in New Caledonia fashion twigs into hooks and leaves into barbed “knives” to extract larvae from narrow crevices in trees. And octopuses have been observed carrying coconut shells to construct portable shelters.

These are just some of the many observations of animal tool use researchers have made over the years.

Stumbling upon tool use in the wild

While studying the local dolphin populations of the Great Sandy Marine Park (Butchulla Country) in southeast Queensland, our research team stumbled upon dolphin tool use in the wild.

From our research boat, we observed Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) “shelling” – a hunting behaviour where dolphins chase fish into a large empty shell, then lift the shell and manipulate it at the water’s surface to drain the fish into their mouths.

Between July and October 2025, we observed two adult female dolphins shelling. Using our cameras and drones, our team captured footage of both events.

These observations alone were important, as shelling had previously only been reported in Shark Bay, Western Australia.

Speaking to local tour operators, we learned that shelling was also observed and photographed in the Great Sandy Marine Park in 2013 and 2019. These older images show shelling has occurred in this population for longer than expected, but went unnoticed due to limited research in the region.

Mothers are the most important teacher

The Queensland shelling records show dolphins on opposite sides of Australia (more than 6,000 kilometres apart) learned to use tools in the exact same way, likely independent of one another.

This highlights how smart, clever and innovative dolphins are. And since this behaviour went unreported for more than a decade here, we have to wonder: are we missing it in other parts of Australia and around the world?

We also witnessed something even more exciting.

The calf of the second female observed in October 2025 picked up the shell within minutes after the mother dropped it. Our team captured footage of the calf holding the shell at the water’s surface in the same way as its mother, with what appears to be a lizardfish dangling from the shell.

This footage provides the first potential evidence of maternal social transmission, where the calf learns to shell by watching its mother.

This aligns with other skilled foraging techniques such as sponge foraging. Because calves depend on their mothers for so long, they have plenty of time to learn from them.

So just like for us humans, mothers likely hold a very important role as a calf’s first and most important teacher.

A cool dinner trick?

So why do some dolphins shell? Is it to capitalise on an opportunity to help them hunt? Does it possibly help reduce competition for food among other dolphins by using a special skill set they learned? Is it just a cool dinner trick?

There’s still a lot we don’t know, and many questions we will hopefully ask and answer with time.

For now, all we can say is that within Australia some dolphins are shelling, and that this innovative tool use has spread from individual to individual by learning.

Alexis Levengood, Lecturer in Animal Ecology, University of the Sunshine Coast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fifty-six million years ago, Earth’s forests reached a tipping point. They had grown dense, lush canopies at the start of one of Earth’s most intense episodes of greenhouse warming. But those canopies began to thin.

As global temperatures rose by as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius), heat and drought put stress on the forests, killing large numbers of trees. Forest canopies opened, exposing the ground to more sunlight and altering the movement of water through the landscape.

In southern Wyoming, ferns briefly flourished where relatives of elms, walnuts, dawn redwood and avocado trees once thrived. Then palms and other warmth-loving plants spread northward.

In a new study in the journal Science, my colleagues and I show how those Wyoming forests lost 60% of their canopy during this period, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, and how it took them well over 100,000 years to recover.

The PETM was Earth’s closest natural analog to the warming the world is experiencing today, although humans are releasing carbon dioxide roughly 10 times faster than the planet’s natural processes did then.

Understanding what happened to the forests may help humanity recognize similar thresholds before the planet crosses them again.

Reading the forest from fossil leaves

As paleobotanists, my colleagues and I use plant fossils to identify which species once lived in a place. We wanted to answer a harder question: What did the forest itself look like and how did it change?

The structure of a forest – and importantly its canopy – controls the amount of light that reaches the forest floor, the temperature, water habitat and amount of carbon the forest can store, making it one of the clearest indicators of ecosystem function.

But how do you measure the density of a forest that disappeared 56 million years ago?

Ecologists measure canopy density using what’s known as leaf area index. Dense forests with multiple layers of leaves intercepting sunlight have a high leaf area index score, while open forests that allow more light to reach the forest floor have a lower score. Because the forest canopy influences shade, temperature, water loss and photosynthesis, the index provides a powerful measure of forest function.

Our clues to the density of forest canopies millions of years ago came from microscopic plant cuticles – the thin, waxy outer skin of leaves that can survive for millions of years in organic-rich sediments.

You can still see the shapes of epidermal cells in these fossil leaf fragments, and that’s important.

The cell shape reflects the amount of sunlight the leaf received while growing. Leaves that grow in shade develop longer, more elongated cells as they stretch out seeking sunlight. Those exposed to more sun develop shorter, rounder ones.

We turned that relationship into a tool for reconstructing ancient forests. To calibrate it, we collected soils from forests across Central and South America spanning a wide range of canopy densities. Each handful of soil contains cuticles shed by many different plants across the canopy, reflecting the structure of the forest as a whole.

The fossil record preserves this same fragmented leaf litter. Comparing the shapes of thousands of epidermal cells with the leaf area index we measured revealed a remarkably strong relationship: The more elongated the cells, the denser the forest canopy above them.

That relationship allowed us to reconstruct the structure of Wyoming’s forests millions of years ago and show how they changed over time.

When forests reach their limits

One of the most surprising discoveries was that the forests did not enter the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum in decline.

Just before rapid warming began, the forest canopies reached their greatest density in hundreds of thousands of years, likely reflecting favorable growing conditions as atmospheric carbon dioxide began to increase. A leading theory for the source of that carbon dioxide involves volcanic eruptions.

That flourishing forest did not last, however. As temperatures climbed, heat and drought overwhelmed the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels. The canopy rapidly thinned as trees died, and it remained much thinner for over 100,000 years.

The forests functioned very differently in this diminished state, and that affected the surrounding environment. Ancient soils gave way to coarser river deposits, suggesting that the loss of canopy altered how water and sediment moved through the basin.

The changing climate changed the forest, and the forest changed the landscape.

Lessons for today

This sequence carries an important lesson for today.

Higher carbon dioxide levels like the world is experiencing now can stimulate plant growth, but only while temperatures and water remain within the limits that trees can tolerate.

Beyond those limits, heat, drought, insects, pathogens and wildfire can overwhelm any fertilization effect that would boost growth.

Around the world, many forests are already showing signs of diminishing as temperatures rise, in addition to deforestation for timber, crops and rangeland that further reduce their resilience.

Forests recovered, but it took over 100,000 years

The story of the ancient forests of 56 million years ago does not end with collapse.

Over time, the increased breaking down of rocks in the warmer climate, known as weathering, gradually pulled carbon from the air, storing it in marine sediments. That allowed the climate to cool and water to become more available.

Forest canopies recovered, eventually becoming even denser than before the warming began. As the forests expanded, they likely restored their ability to stabilize soils, regulate the water cycle and draw carbon from the atmosphere, helping reduce the greenhouse effect and boost the planet’s long-term recovery.

Our study shows that carbon dioxide emissions have pushed forests beyond their physiological limits before, triggering changes that ripple from vegetation to rivers and across entire landscapes. It also shows that forests are remarkably resilient when given time to recover, but what counts as time is far longer than a human lifespan – it requires thousands of generations.

Today, human-caused carbon emissions and warming are unfolding vastly faster than during the PETM. The fossil record reminds us that forests can recover, but only if humanity avoids pushing them beyond thresholds from which recovery takes tens of thousands of years.

Regan E. Dunn, Associate Curator at La Brea Tar Pits and Museum; Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.