Science & Environment

Alison Francis Senior Science Journalist RBG Kew The renovation will begin in 2027 and will take an estimated five years It’s a makeover on a massive scale – it involves moving 1,300 plants, replacing 16,000 panes of glass and cleaning up hundreds of tonnes of iron. This is the ambitious £50m plan to renovate the world-famous Palm House, which sits …

Alison Francis Senior Science Journalist Watch: BBC goes behind the scenes at Kew Gardens ahead of major Palm House renovation It’s a makeover on a massive scale – it involves moving 1,300 plants, replacing 16,000 panes of glass and cleaning up hundreds of tonnes of iron. This is the ambitious £50m plan to renovate the world-famous Palm House, which sits …

Mark Poynting and Justin Rowlatt BBC News Climate & Science Getty Images Reservoirs in the Midlands are showing lower levels than usual The East and West Midlands have officially entered drought, joining the North West and Yorkshire, after yet another hot and dry spell of weather. The Environment Agency announcement follows England’s driest start to the year since 1976, leaving …

Mark Poynting Climate reporter, BBC News Getty Images Reservoirs in the Midlands are showing lower levels than usual The East and West Midlands have officially entered drought, joining the North West and Yorkshire, after yet another hot and dry spell of weather. The Environment Agency announcement follows England’s driest start to the year since 1976, leaving many rivers across the …

Listen to the sounds three different plants might make if they were stressed Animals react to sounds being made by plants, new research suggests, opening up the possibility that an invisible ecosystem might exist between them. In the first ever such evidence, a team at Tel Aviv University found that female moths avoided laying their eggs on tomato plants if …

Joe Daniel Price via Getty James Canton spent two years sitting beneath an 800-year-old oak tree near his home in Essex, watching acorns fatten and butterflies land on the massive knurled grey trunk. Sometimes he sat in the branches too. Canton, a lecturer at the University of Essex, recalls how it helped him feel a “sense of connection”. “We’re happier …

BBC James Canton spent two years sitting beneath an 800-year-old oak tree near his home in Essex, watching acorns fatten and butterflies land on the massive knurled grey trunk. Sometimes he sat in the branches too. Canton, a lecturer at the University of Essex, recalls how it helped him feel a “sense of connection”. “We’re happier sat in an oak …

Geoff Maskell BBC News NI weather presenter BBC Armagh Observatory holds weather records dating back to 1795 Armagh Observatory is marking a very special meteorological milestone as the institute celebrates 230 years of continuous weather observation. The unbroken tradition of handwritten data makes it the longest sequence of continuous weather information gathered anywhere in the UK and Ireland. Events are …

PA Media Many parts of the UK are in the throes of their third heatwave The UK is breaking heat and rainfall records increasingly frequently as its climate continues to warm, the Met Office has warned. The country’s changing weather patterns mean the UK now experiences a “notably different” climate to what it was just a few decades ago, its …

PA Media Many parts of the UK are in the throes of their third heatwave The UK is breaking heat and rainfall records increasingly frequently as its climate continues to warm, the Met Office has warned. The country’s changing weather patterns mean the UK now experiences a “notably different” climate to what it was just a few decades ago, its …