Global Pulse

分类： science

  • Another 151 research positions axed at CSIRO despite $387M federal budget boost

    Another 151 research positions axed at CSIRO despite $387M federal budget boost

    Australia’s national scientific research powerhouse, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has eliminated 151 frontline roles focused on environmental and health research, a move that has sparked widespread concern across the country’s scientific community even as the agency frames the cuts as a critical step toward long-term financial stability.

    The latest round of layoffs, carried out over just several days, includes 92 positions from CSIRO’s Environment Research Unit and an additional 59 roles across the organisation’s health and biosecurity teams. These cuts form part of a broader restructuring initiative announced late last year that is set to eliminate as many as 350 research positions in total. Union data from the CSIRO Staff Association shows that the agency has cut a staggering 1,150 roles since the start of 2024, marking one of the most rapid periods of downsizing in the organisation’s modern history.

    What makes the cuts particularly notable is that they come just months after the Australian federal government committed a $387.4 million, four-year funding injection to CSIRO, revealed in the 2024 May federal budget. Finance and Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher explained that the funding package was intended to provide the agency with the long-term operational stability it needed to continue delivering critical research and plan for future challenges. However, Gallagher acknowledged that the government could not guarantee no further jobs would be lost, noting that CSIRO operates as an independent statutory body with an autonomous board that makes its own strategic decisions, a framework the government fully supports. She added that the federal government remains confident the funding package will put CSIRO on a sustainable financial footing moving forward.

    CSIRO leadership has defended the restructuring, pointing to deep-seated structural financial challenges that have built up over decades. Senior executives revealed last year that the organisation faces persistent long-term sustainability issues, with public funding failing to keep pace with the rising operational costs of running a world-class modern scientific agency. The agency estimates it requires up to $135 million in additional annual funding over the next decade just to maintain its current operations and capabilities.

    To address this gap, CSIRO has opted to drastically narrow its research focus, deprioritizing projects that lack critical scale and reallocating resources to high-growth, high-impact advanced technology sectors including artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and robotics. “CSIRO has made strategic choices to evolve our research, to focus efforts where we can deliver the greatest national impact following a comprehensive review of our research portfolio,” a CSIRO spokesperson said. “To achieve this sharpened focus, we need to deprioritise areas where we lack the required scale to achieve significant impact or areas where others in the ecosystem are better placed to deliver.”

    The 59 health and biosecurity roles eliminated in this round are a direct result of a departmental merger that combined the existing Health and Biosecurity unit with the Animal Health Laboratory to form a new, consolidated Biosecurity Research Unit. While CSIRO has stated that the merged unit will strengthen cross-sector expertise across animal, human, and plant health without compromising the critical diagnostic capabilities of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, leading scientific industry bodies have raised serious alarms about the long-term consequences of the cuts.

    Ryan Winn, chief executive of Science and Technology Australia, described the layoffs as another major blow to Australia’s domestic scientific capacity, particularly at a time when the nation is already responding to a current diphtheria outbreak and still grappling with the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. Winn pointed out that CSIRO’s health and biosecurity teams already endured significant cuts just two years ago, questioning how the nation can expect to retain and attract skilled STEM workers when faced with such persistent employment instability. “These jobs are not just a loss to the CSIRO, they could impact Australia’s capability to respond to future health and biosecurity emergencies,” Winn said.

    CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Doug Hilton has remained steadfast in his defense of the overhaul, framing the painful job cuts as an essential survival measure for the national science agency. “These are difficult but necessary changes to safeguard our national science agency so we can continue solving the challenges that matter to Australia and Australians,” Dr Hilton said. “We must set up CSIRO for the decades ahead with a sharpened research focus that capitalises on our unique strengths, allows us to concentrate on the profound challenges we face as a nation and deliver solutions at scale.”

  • Scientists find yeast in ancient Iceman’s guts — and make bread

    Scientists find yeast in ancient Iceman’s guts — and make bread

    More than five millennia before the present day, long before the final stones were placed on Egypt’s Great Pyramids, a Bronze Age traveler now known to the world as Ötzi the Iceman was fatally shot with an arrow through the back while crossing the Alpine tundra along the Austria-Italy border. His frozen corpse lay undisturbed deep in glacial ice for 5,300 years, until two German hikers accidentally uncovered his remarkably preserved mummy in Italy’s South Tyrol region in 1991.

    Since that landmark discovery, Ötzi has been stored at a constant -6°C, replicating the frigid conditions of his glacial tomb to preserve his body for ongoing research. As one of the most intact ancient human mummies ever found, he has provided scientists with an unparalleled view of daily life, diet, and health during the Neolithic period. Now, a new study published Wednesday in the journal *Microbiome* has uncovered a surprising twist: Ötzi’s remains host active ancient and modern microbial communities, including four strains of cold-adapted yeast living in his gut, skin, and the meltwater that leaches from his partially thawed body.

    Lead researcher Mohamed Sarhan, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, told reporters that the presence of surviving yeast was completely unexpected. “What we didn’t expect to find was yeast,” Sarhan explained in an interview with Agence France-Presse. All four isolated yeast strains are adapted to survive sub-zero temperatures, a rare trait most commonly seen in yeast communities native to extreme environments like Antarctica. Researchers say this confirms the yeast colonized Ötzi’s body after his death, rather than being part of his original living gut microbiome. Genetic testing showed that the yeast’s DNA damage levels are consistent with ancient microorganisms embedded in the Iceman’s tissues, leading the study team to conclude colonization occurred shortly after Ötzi died and froze.

    “These yeasts have accompanied Oetzi on his long journey through the millennia,” said study co-author Frank Maixner in a public statement about the findings. After isolating the yeast strains, the team replicated them in cold laboratory conditions stored in a standard refrigerator. When word of the yeast discovery spread, the team faced the inevitable question: could this 5,000-year-old yeast be used to bake bread?

    Initial baking attempts failed, but after three months of tweaking growing conditions and fermentation techniques, the team produced what Sarhan described as a “very, very good sourdough” loaf. When asked about future experiments, Sarhan joked that brewing beer with the ancient yeast is already “on the list” of upcoming projects. Beyond the novelty of baking with ancient yeast, the discovery holds serious practical applications for environmental science. After Ötzi was first discovered in 1991, conservation teams treated his body with phenol, a common chemical preservative used to stop fungal growth on cadavers. The team found that the isolated yeast can consume and break down phenol, meaning related strains could one day be used to remediate phenol contamination in polluted soil and water systems.

    The yeast discovery is not the only groundbreaking insight from the new analysis of Ötzi’s microbiome. Researchers also identified a strain of gut bacteria in Ötzi’s intestines that is virtually absent in the gut microbiomes of people living in industrialized nations today. The same bacteria has only been found in isolated indigenous tribes across Africa and South America, and in 3,000-year-old preserved feces recovered from a Bronze Age salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria — one of the few other existing samples of ancient human gut microbes. Sarhan noted that Ötzi and the Bronze Age salt miners ate far more fiber and whole grains than the average modern person, a dietary difference that likely explains the presence of this now-rare bacteria.

    The study upends the long-held view of Ötzi as a static “frozen time capsule” of Neolithic life, instead framing his mummy as a dynamic, ongoing complex ecosystem that continues to evolve thousands of years after his death. Researchers note that it remains too early to confirm whether the active yeast communities are causing any long-term degradation to Ötzi’s remains, and have called for additional long-term study to monitor microbial activity in the mummy.

    Not all independent experts have fully accepted the study’s conclusion that the yeast has been active in Ötzi’s body for millennia. Nikolay Oskolkov, a researcher at the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis who was not involved in the new study and previously discovered ancient fungus in Ötzi’s gut, called the finding that the Iceman’s microbiome is not “frozen” scientifically interesting. However, he cautioned that yeast samples were only collected in 2010 and 2019, meaning there is limited evidence to confirm the yeast has been multiplying continuously over thousands of years. Oskolkov argued the yeast may be relatively recent colonizers of the mummy’s body rather than long-term inhabitants that survived with Ötzi since the Copper Age.

  • Only on AP: Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

    Only on AP: Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

    Beneath the baking summer sun where crowds of tourists queue to climb the iconic Notre Dame cathedral and glimpse its famous gargoyles, an unprecedented archaeological excavation is unfolding 13 feet underground. This dig is not just a side project to post-fire reconstruction: it is a journey back through millennia, pulling back the curtain on the layered origins of Paris, from its Roman beginnings to the medieval era and beyond.

    Five years after a devastating 2019 fire collapsed Notre Dame’s spire in an event watched by the world, the historic cathedral completed its extensive reconstruction and reopened to the public in late 2024. As part of post-reopening improvements, city officials planned to transform the harsh, sunbaked public square in front of the cathedral into a greener, shaded space to accommodate visitors and combat rising temperatures linked to climate change. Under French archaeological protection rules, however, any ground disturbance for construction must be preceded by full excavation to protect undiscovered historical artifacts. What began as a pre-construction survey quickly grew into what local French media has dubbed the “dig of the century.”

    “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to make a difference to the history of Paris,” explained Lucie Altenburg, a conservator with Paris’ municipal archaeology unit, in an interview with the Associated Press. Already, the small excavation team has uncovered hundreds of significant objects, ranging from a well-preserved 4th-century Roman coin bearing the portrait of Emperor Constantine to fragments of medieval pottery marked with undeciphered symbols that have left experts baffled — a puzzle many on site compare to a real-life ancient Da Vinci Code.

    For tourists visiting the newly reopened landmark, the active dig has added an unexpected layer of magic to their trip. “It makes Notre Dame feel alive again,” shared Emily Carter, a 34-year-old visitor from Manchester who was waiting in the tourist line with her two children. “You come to see the cathedral, then realize there’s another city under your feet. That’s almost more moving.” Just 20 inches below the surface, the first traces of earlier settlements emerge, and the team has continued to recover new artifacts all the way down to the 13-foot depth. On busy dig days, the team fills up to 15 crates of finds from ground that has remained undisturbed for hundreds of years.

    This type of layered urban archaeology is not unique to Paris, but it offers one of the clearest glimpses into how ancient cities evolve. As the old adage goes: in historic global cities, the past is not kept in a distant museum — it lies directly beneath the modern streetscape. Every successive civilization builds its new structures atop the rubble of the one that came before it, pushing the ground level higher over centuries. For context, ground level in central Rome has risen roughly 30 feet since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, and the large-scale Athens metro construction ahead of the 2004 Olympics triggered the largest archaeological excavation in Greek modern history, unearthing tens of thousands of artifacts that are now displayed directly in the city’s metro stations. Paris is no exception to this rule.

    All of Paris traces its origins to the small Ile de la Cite, the island in the Seine River where Notre Dame now stands. When construction first began on the cathedral in 1163, the entire forecourt area was tightly packed with medieval homes, divided only by a single narrow street, according to Camille Colonna, the lead archaeologist heading the excavation. Colonna’s team has already excavated down to the cellars of these long-gone medieval homes, placing them firmly in their historical context. Deeper still beneath these cellars lie grain pits dating to the Merovingian and Carolingian eras, between the 6th and 10th centuries. Further down, researchers have uncovered a dense residential quarter from Roman Lutetia, dating to the 4th and 5th centuries. In total, 20 centuries of human settlement are compressed into just 4 meters of earth — roughly the height of two and a half Napoleon Bonapartes stacked atop one another.

    “Here you can see the layers — medieval Paris, Roman Paris, maybe even before that,” said Yasmine Benali, a 22-year-old archaeology student observing the dig from behind public barriers. “It makes the city feel less like a postcard and more like something still being discovered.”

    Some of the most well-preserved finds have come from an unexpected source: the deep medieval latrine pits that doubled as community trash dumps centuries ago. The anaerobic, soft waste environment cushioned fragile ceramic objects, leaving many fully intact even after hundreds of years. The team has pulled whole jugs, cups, and drinking vessels out of these pits, alongside broken pottery fragments and animal bones. “It’s rare to find complete ceramics,” noted Valentine Breloux, an archaeologist with the Paris unit, adding that the intact pottery recovered at the site is nothing short of miraculous.

    The most puzzling discovery so far is a series of faint red markings painted on the inner surface of multiple medieval pottery shards. No expert has yet been able to decode the meaning of the repeated symbols, which Breloux describes as the most “astonishing” find from the dig to date.

    Coins recovered from the dig also play a critical scientific role beyond their historical value. After cleaning and X-ray analysis, one heavily corroded black disc was confirmed to be a 4th-century coin bearing the face of Emperor Constantine, who ruled Rome in the early 300s AD. Dated objects like these coins allow archaeologists to accurately assign timelines to each stratigraphic layer of the excavation, Altenburg explained.

    For the research team, the Roman-era finds are the most valuable, as they fill major gaps in historical knowledge. Researchers have long known that the center of Roman Lutetia was originally located on the Seine’s Left Bank, and as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the local population retreated to the defensible Ile de la Cite, reusing stone from older Roman structures to build new fortifications. The Notre Dame dig has already turned up physical proof of this practice: a large Roman doorstep, taken from a much grander public building, flipped upside down, and repurposed as paving stone for a medieval road.

    All artifacts recovered from the excavation are transported to Paris’ central regional archaeology center, a large, secure storage facility Colonna describes as “a huge archaeological store” and a hidden treasure house of Parisian history.

    For archaeological teams across Europe, large open urban digs like this only happen when major construction is scheduled, a dynamic Altenburg compares to industrial quarry workers stumbling on dinosaur fossils. “This only happens because the city of Paris decided it wanted to beautify the area,” she said.

    The redevelopment of Notre Dame’s forecourt is scheduled for completion by 2028. The new public space will be designed as a shaded woodland clearing, planted with 160 new trees and fitted with a shallow cooling water feature to combat the extreme summer heat waves that have become more frequent due to climate change. Tourists who currently wait in direct sun to enter the cathedral will eventually queue in cool shade, and the existing underground parking lot will be redeveloped into a new public visitor center overlooking the Seine.

    Until construction begins, however, the excavation team plans to continue digging deeper, pushing past the Roman layers to search for traces of the Gaulish settlement that gave Paris its original name. “The hope is that we are able to go back in time even further than we’ve ever been before,” Altenburg said.

  • Watch: Moment a meteor creates sonic boom over Massachusetts

    Watch: Moment a meteor creates sonic boom over Massachusetts

    On a recent day that drew widespread public attention, a dramatic celestial event unfolded over Massachusetts, as a streaking meteor blazed through the upper atmosphere before breaking apart in a violent burst that generated a noticeable sonic boom across much of the state. Multiple eyewitnesses captured footage of the glowing fireball as it tore across the sky, with videos of the event quickly spreading across social media platforms and sparking fascination among casual stargazers and astronomy enthusiasts alike.

    Following the sighting, NASA experts stepped in to analyze the energy released during the meteor’s fragmentation. According to official assessments from the U.S. space agency, the breakup of the incoming space rock unleashed energy equivalent to roughly 300 tons of TNT – a force large enough to generate the shockwave that many residents across Massachusetts heard and felt as a deep, resonant boom.

    Meteor events of this scale are classified as small to medium-sized entry events, according to astronomical records. Most meteors that enter Earth’s atmosphere burn up completely before reaching the surface, and this event was no exception; NASA has not reported any findings of surviving meteorite fragments reaching the ground as of current updates. The event has renewed public interest in near-Earth objects and the regular cosmic activity that interacts with our planet on a daily basis, often going unseen by most people.

  • China’s Shenzhou 21 astronauts returns to Earth after nearly 7 months in space

    China’s Shenzhou 21 astronauts returns to Earth after nearly 7 months in space

    BEIJING – Three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 21 mission touched down safely on Friday evening at the Dongfeng landing site in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, wrapping up a nearly seven-month stay aboard the country’s Tiangong Space Station and completing a formal handover to the newly arrived Shenzhou 23 crew earlier this week.

    The successful return of crew members Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang marks another key milestone for China’s expanding human spaceflight program, which is currently accelerating development work ahead of the country’s planned first crewed lunar landing by the end of the 2020s. According to official statements from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) carried by China’s national news agency Xinhua, the Shenzhou 21 team checked off a full roster of technical and scientific objectives during their orbital mission.

    Beyond maintaining the space station’s operational systems, the crew processed and transmitted a large volume of data from ongoing on-orbit experiments, coordinated the transfer of leftover supplies to the incoming crew, and conducted in-depth experience sharing sessions with the three Shenzhou 23 astronauts, who arrived at Tiangong on Monday. Prior to their departure, the crew also completed three extravehicular activities (EVAs), more commonly known as spacewalks.

    CMSA spokesperson Zhang Jingbo noted that mission commander Zhang Lu, who previously flew on the Shenzhou 15 mission to Tiangong, has now completed seven spacewalks across his career — a new record for the most spacewalks by any Chinese astronaut. This achievement underscores the growing experience and expertise of China’s astronaut corps as the program takes on more ambitious deep-space objectives.

    The handover to Shenzhou 23 opens a new chapter for Tiangong operations: one of the incoming crew, Lai Ka-ying (also transliterated as Li Jiaying from Mandarin), a native Hong Konger, made history as the first astronaut from Hong Kong to participate in a Chinese space station mission. Additionally, one Shenzhou 23 crew member is scheduled to remain on orbit for a full 12-month stay, a first for China’s human spaceflight program that will generate critical data on long-duration human exposure to microgravity.

    China’s Tiangong Space Station was developed and constructed independently after the country was barred from participating in the International Space Station (ISS) over national security concerns raised by the United States, which has since emerged as China’s primary competitor in the 21st-century space race. Currently, NASA is pursuing its own Artemis program objectives, targeting a crewed lunar landing for 2028, two years ahead of China’s planned touchdown.

  • What does Blue Origin rocket mishap mean for Nasa’s Moon mission?

    What does Blue Origin rocket mishap mean for Nasa’s Moon mission?

    In September 2024, an unexpected explosion during a Blue Origin rocket test sent ripples through the global space exploration community, raising urgent questions about the timeline and future of NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over half a century. As science correspondent Pallab Ghosh has outlined, the incident is more than a minor technical hiccup: it represents a significant, tangible setback for the collaborative effort between the private aerospace firm and the U.S. space agency to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

    Blue Origin holds a key contract with NASA to develop the Blue Moon lander, a core component of the Artemis III mission that is scheduled to carry the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface. The test failure, which involved the upper-stage BE-4 engine that powers the company’s New Glenn rocket, has exposed unforeseen technical vulnerabilities that will require extensive debugging, redesign, and retesting. Aerospace industry analysts note that private space development relies heavily on iterative testing, but high-stakes government contracts come with non-negotiable deadlines that leave little room for major delays.

    The broader implications of this mishap extend beyond NASA’s lunar timeline. It has reignited debate over the growing reliance of public space programs on private sector partners, highlighting the risks that private development setbacks can derail long-planned public scientific goals. While Blue Origin has emphasized that engineering failures are a normal part of rocket development and that their team is already working to address the root cause, the incident has injected new uncertainty into a program that has already faced multiple prior delays. For space exploration advocates who have waited decades for a return to the Moon, the explosion is a disappointing reminder of how unforgiving the challenge of deep space travel remains, even as private space technology advances at a rapid pace.

  • Skygazers prepare as rare lunar event set to take over the sky on Sunday

    Skygazers prepare as rare lunar event set to take over the sky on Sunday

    Skywatchers across Australia are preparing for a once-in-a-generation celestial treat this coming Sunday, May 31, as two rare lunar phenomena align to create a unique blue micromoon visible to the naked eye across the entire country.

    This extraordinary event marks the rare convergence of two distinct astronomical occurrences: a blue moon and a micromoon. Unlike common misconceptions, a blue moon does not refer to a change in the moon’s color; instead, it describes the second full moon that occurs within a single calendar month. This quirk of astronomy arises because the moon’s 29.5-day orbital cycle does not perfectly align with the 30- or 31-day structure of the Gregorian calendar, creating an extra full moon roughly once every two to three years. This May will play host to two full moons, with Sunday’s event earning it the blue moon title.

    Compounding the rarity of the event, this blue moon coincides with a micromoon, a phenomenon that takes place when a full moon falls close to the apogee – the farthest point of the moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth. Data from astronomy tracking site Time and Date notes that micromoons appear roughly 6% smaller than an average full moon, and more than 12% smaller than their counterpart, the supermoon, which occurs when a full moon falls near the closest orbital point, the perigee.

    Laura Driessen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, explained that while the size difference is subtle to the untrained eye, the brightness of the event will be unmistakable. “It’s tens of thousands of times brighter than the brightest star in the night sky,” Driessen told SBS News. She added that the human eye cannot pick up the small size difference between a micromoon and a typical full moon – the change is only noticeable when side-by-side photographs of the two events are compared. “It will look like a beautiful full moon to us,” she confirmed.

    Unlike many rare celestial events that require specific viewing locations or specialized equipment, this blue micromoon will be visible from every region of Australia, with no telescope required. The best viewing window is any time after dark on Sunday when the sky is clear of cloud cover. Peak fullness falls at slightly different times across Australia’s time zones: 6:45pm AEST for New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania; 6:15pm ACST for South Australia and the Northern Territory; and 4:45pm AWST for Western Australia.

    For the best viewing experience, astronomy enthusiasts recommend looking toward an unobstructed eastern horizon around moonrise or just after sunset, when the moon will often take on a soft golden-orange glow as it sits low in the sky. While no equipment is needed, a pair of binoculars can help bring out sharper details of the moon’s craters and surface features for interested observers.

    For those who miss this weekend’s event, the next blue moon will not grace Earth’s skies until December 31, 2028, making this a rare opportunity that astronomy fans across Australia are not keen to miss.

  • A warmer world creates bigger and more damaging hailstones, study says

    A warmer world creates bigger and more damaging hailstones, study says

    As human-caused climate change continues to reshape extreme weather patterns across the globe, a groundbreaking new study published in the journal *Nature* has uncovered a worrying consequence of rising global temperatures: a dramatic increase in the frequency of large, destructive hailstorms by the end of the 21st century.

    Led by a research team with lead authors based in China, the study uses advanced three-dimensional modeling of hail formation – a method that fills key gaps in previous hail research, which mostly focused on the United States and only examined changes in storm frequency rather than hail size – to project how shifting atmospheric conditions will alter hail activity worldwide.

    The core link between a warming planet and larger hail lies in two key atmospheric changes driven by greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil, and natural gas. Warmer air holds more water vapor: roughly 4% more moisture for every one degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, or 7% per degree Celsius. This extra moisture injects more energy into storm systems, generating stronger updrafts – the upward currents of air required to form and sustain hail. At the same time, higher atmospheric temperatures mean smaller hailstones are more likely to melt before reaching the ground, while larger, heavier stones survive the descent. “We’ve seen record hailstones in recent years. I find this extremely concerning because we’re not really building our environment to be resilient to hail,” said study co-author John Allen, a meteorology professor at Central Michigan University, in an interview from Guymon, Oklahoma, where he was joining field researchers who penetrate active hailstorms to study their inner mechanics.

    Depending on the volume of future heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, the study projects that global occurrences of hail larger than 1.2 inches (30 millimeters) – roughly the size of a U.S. half-dollar coin, between a large marble and a golf ball – will jump by between 38% and 47% by 2100. By contrast, storms producing smaller hail will decline by 4% to 8% globally.

    Geographically, the most pronounced increases in large hail are expected to hit Argentina, Western Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Northern Plains. Meanwhile, many tropical regions will see an overall reduction in hail as smaller stones melt more frequently in warmer upper-atmosphere temperatures.

    Unlike many other extreme weather events, hail rarely causes direct human fatalities, but its economic toll is already staggering. The study estimates annual hail damage costs hit roughly $10 billion in the U.S. and $80 billion globally – figures that already outpace average annual damage from tornadoes, and rival the cost of multiple hurricane events each year. Larger hailstones deliver exponentially more destructive force: they weigh more, fall faster, and hit with far greater impact than smaller stones. While small hail mostly harms crops, hailstones measuring 2 inches (5 centimeters) or larger can punch through vehicle bodies, destroy roofs, damage solar energy infrastructure, and cripple other built assets, explained Andreas Prein, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich who was not involved in the research. Where a single large hailstone may only leave a repairable hole in a roof, a full hailstorm of large stones typically requires a complete, costly roof replacement, Allen noted.

    Outside experts emphasized that while climate change is increasing the risk of more large hail, total future damage will not be shaped by weather patterns alone. “This is a meaningful climate signal,” said Walker Ashley, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who did not participate in the study. “But disaster losses are not driven by the peril alone.” As population and development expand into hail-prone regions – including the rapid construction of residential properties and utility-scale solar farms in high-risk areas – total risk will rise even faster. “Climate change may be increasing the potential for larger, more damaging hail in some regions, but the future loss signal will also depend heavily on where people build, what they build, how resilient those structures are, and how land use changes,” Ashley added.

    The Associated Press received financial support from private foundations for its climate and environmental coverage, and retains full editorial control over all content. Full details on AP’s standards for philanthropic partnerships, a list of supporters, and coverage areas are available on AP.org.

  • Even moderately hot days raise risk of koala deaths: study

    Even moderately hot days raise risk of koala deaths: study

    As climate change continues to drive more frequent and severe heatwaves across the globe, new research has uncovered a sobering threat to one of Australia’s most iconic native species: even moderately warm sustained temperatures can drastically increase a koala’s risk of death or urgent medical intervention.

    Published in the journal *Biology Letters* and led by researcher Valentina Mella from the University of Sydney, the study draws on more than two decades of koala rescue and mortality data from New South Wales (NSW), one of the species’ key remaining habitats. Analyzing nearly 12,000 records of koala admissions to care facilities and recorded deaths collected between 2000 and 2022 from local rescue groups and koala hospitals, the team built the first statistically verified link between long-term ambient temperature trends and koala mortality, adapting a methodology commonly used to study heat risk in human populations.

    The research revealed a clear upward trend in danger as sustained average peak temperatures climb. When seven-day average maximum temperatures hit 27 degrees Celsius – a threshold most would consider mild rather than extreme – the odds of koalas being rescued or dying already began to climb. Once average peaks reached 30C or higher, those risks jumped to between 1.5 and 3.5 times the rate observed around 25C, according to Mella.

    “Our findings suggest that even what might seem like moderate heat can become physiologically stressful when it is sustained over time,” Mella told AFP in an interview.

    Koalas have evolved a suite of adaptations to survive Australia’s naturally warm climate. On short hot days, they cool off by hugging tree trunks to pull excess heat away from their bodies, retreat to dense foliage and lower tree branches away from direct sunlight, and conserve water by reabsorbing moisture from their colons and producing concentrated urine. They also use heterothermy, allowing their body temperatures to shift with surrounding conditions to reduce energy and water use. For short periods, the species can even survive temperatures above 40C.

    But the study confirms that these adaptations are no match for prolonged heat, even at much lower, less alarming temperature thresholds. Mella explained that prolonged exposure to sustained moderate heat significantly undermines koalas’ health and ability to survive.

    The species’ inherent biological traits and changing landscape make them uniquely vulnerable to rising temperatures compared to many other wild animals. Unlike creatures that can adapt to shifting conditions by changing their diets or moving to cooler habitats, koalas are largely sedentary, tied to specific forest ecosystems, and get most of their water from eucalyptus leaves. When high temperatures persist for days on end, koalas rapidly develop dangerous dehydration, and widespread habitat fragmentation often blocks their ability to travel to cooler, more shaded areas.

    Koalas already fighting disease face even greater risk: the study found that individuals living with chlamydiosis, one of the most widespread and damaging diseases affecting wild koala populations, see their existing conditions worsened by heat stress, putting them at even higher risk of death.

    These threats are growing worse by the year. As climate change pushes once-rare high temperatures to become a regular summertime occurrence, Mella noted that koalas will increasingly face prolonged periods of heat stress on an annual basis. The threat is particularly acute for already endangered inland northwest koala populations, which are exposed to more extreme heat and face the greatest risk of population collapse.

    The study does offer clear pathways for intervention to reduce risk. Mella noted that protecting large, mature shade-producing trees and providing accessible water sources for koalas during heatwaves can cut rates of dehydration and death. Without targeted, proactive conservation action, however, the growing frequency of extreme heat events could push already vulnerable koala populations closer to permanent extinction.

    The findings add to a growing body of evidence confirming that climate change does not only threaten human communities – it puts a wide range of wildlife species at growing risk of mortality and extinction, even through threats that may seem moderate at first glance.

  • Watch: Nasa shows renderings for planned permanent moon base

    Watch: Nasa shows renderings for planned permanent moon base

    In a major milestone for humanity’s deep space exploration ambitions, NASA has publicly released detailed digital renderings that outline its blueprint for a long-term, crewed outpost on the Moon, with a formal target of establishing permanent human habitation on Earth’s only natural satellite by 2032.

    The newly revealed visualizations offer the public and scientific communities a clear preview of what the groundbreaking facility could look like once completed, showcasing modular living quarters, research laboratories, and operational zones designed to sustain human life through the Moon’s extreme temperature swings, long dark lunar nights, and harsh cosmic radiation environment. Unlike the short-duration Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s that only saw brief visits by astronauts, this project marks a fundamental shift in lunar exploration: moving from temporary visits to continuous, long-term human presence off Earth.

    Experts note that a permanent lunar base is not just an end goal on its own. It is positioned as a critical stepping stone for future crewed missions to Mars, allowing scientists to test life support systems, resource utilization technologies (including extracting water ice from lunar polar regions), and deep space survival strategies in a relatively accessible deep space environment. The project also opens new opportunities for international collaboration and commercial partnership in space exploration, with multiple private aerospace companies already contributing to development planning for key components of the base.

    NASA’s release of these renderings comes amid renewed global interest in lunar exploration, with multiple space agencies around the world advancing their own lunar exploration plans in recent years. The 2032 target date sets a clear timeline for the agency to advance engineering development, test new technologies, and execute precursor missions to lay the groundwork for the permanent habitation facility.