Tis the season for magical gifts 🎁 And my gift this week is my 4-yo discovering the phrase: “Why should I?” apparently to be deployed in response to every single request from me. Yuletide joy! 🤦‍♀️

The vandals are after NCAR now. 😭

Thoroughly enjoyed the UKIODP conference in Southampton yesterday. I took zero photos so you’ll just have to imagine 80 or deep-sea drilling nerds drinking tea, listening to talks, chatting at posters, and hatching cunning plans over curry and beverages… 🤓☺️🧪⚒️🌍

10k fewer attendees at AGU this year! That’s wild but not unexpected. Lots of Europeans steering clear of the USA at the moment, plus likely issues with travel grant funding for American geoscientists. But still, yikes.

20mph zones in residential areas save lives and prevent serious injuries. Full stop. What else matters? I don’t care if 20mph “feels too slow” or “it’s hard to stick to” or “everyone breaks the limit any way”. Grow up. (God, the comments under this article 🤦‍♀️) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms. The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.' 1/2

Well well well…

“A Santas Against Sewage swimming event had to be called off due to sewage in the water prompting an onshore protest over pollution instead.” 🤦‍♀️ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... So depressing to have to check www.sewagemap.co.uk every time before swimming. Cornwall map this week after 🌧️ is 🤮

"It is therefore vital that #climate change projections of European hydroclimate for the (far) future consider the possibility of #AMOC changes, & the exacerbated effects this would have on projected regional hydrological changes & consequences for ecosystems & society"

“A region unused to tropical cyclones has had three in a week. The world needs to ask why this happened” The Indian Ocean disaster is a climate tragedy — and needs more attention www.nature.com/articles/d41...

'The Earthlycrumb Tragedies' (with apologies to Edward Gorey & for being overly morbid) A poem in 26 Skeets... 🧵

We’re not a nation that is used to the concept of drought and water as a limiting resource. We live on a bunch of rainy islands in the sea, right? ☔️ Well we had better get our head out the sand and come up with a joined-up approach quickly, or reality will bite in the very near future.

Some gorse, occasional red campion, and a stand of winter heliotrope were the only flowers I saw on the north coast today. Did spy some very nice pillow basalts thought 😉 #wildflowerhour

The latest grim news Refugees heading north from baking, waterless, southern Europe, will meet those heading south from a cold, crop-less northern Europe as the AMOC shuts down www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Thanks to @sioldridge.bsky.social @nickoldridge.bsky.social & the team for their monumental efforts in pulling together yesterday’s National Emergency Briefing www.nebriefing.org on climate change. Thanks also go to those MPs, journalists & others who attended. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Getting post from older members of my family addressed to “Mrs husband’s-full-name” cracks me up. Like a) I never legally changed my name, b) that’s Dr Littler to you if you want to be formal 😅

Really enjoyed hosting @palaeopete.bsky.social yesterday for an excellent departmental seminar on applications of sedimentary ancient DNA, and a subsequent PhD viva. I learnt many things! What a fascinating and fast moving field 🧬 Thanks Pete! 🌍 🧪 ⚒️

Take a look at this... Remarkable "warmth" last month across both polar regions when visualizing temperature departures by latitude. The x-axis is quite stretched out here compared to my usual monthly update of this graphic. GISTEMPv4 using their 1951-1980 baseline (data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/).

A really informative and entertaining (and slightly scary) talk from the indefatigable Prof. Alley.

I don’t normally share petitions, but good friends and colleagues are going to lose their jobs as part of the planned cuts to the geology dept at Leicester. Consider adding your signature here: www.change.org/p/save-geolo... An excellent dept that doesn’t deserve to be decimated. 🧪⚒️🌍

⛏️ COP30 could be the first to discuss the impacts and opportunities of mining the minerals needed for the energy transition. tinyurl.com/392badee The UN climate talks have never addressed the material dimension of the energy transition before. I'm going to be tracking those discussions here👇

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Ah yes, now I remember why I don’t go up north very often. The crosscountry train from Durham to Cornwall takes 9 hours at the best of times, and today it’s over an hour late… the toilet door is broken… and the rainwater is literally coming in from the ceiling and dripping onto my seat. 👍👍👍

China’s emissions have peaked, five years ahead of schedule. A moment of epochal importance. bsky.app/profile/carb...

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage urging them to condemn Trump’s attack on the BBC. “The BBC belongs to Britain, not Trump. We must defend it together.”

Rounding off my ‘Northern Tour’ with a seminar in beautiful Durham. Thanks for the joint hosting in Earth Sciences/Geography by @erinmcclimate.bsky.social and @grockesibl.bsky.social. Lots of interesting discussions were had - I won’t leave it another decade next time!

When people ask my favourite UK bird, I invariably say red kite. Not only are they beautiful and impressive, their UK conservation success story is a rare example of hope in a world that can sometimes feel a bit hopeless. I will never tire of seeing them soaring overhead upcountry.

“The team determined that 53% of zooplankton and 60% of micronekton, which feed on zooplankton, would be affected by mining waste discharge.”

Had a great visit to St Andrews this week to give a seminar on our Pliocene monsoon work. 🧪⚒️ So nice to sample #fifelife again! Thanks to @mudwaterclimate.bsky.social @oceanicandrea.bsky.social Sami Mikhail and Claire Cousins for hosting 😊 (Totally failed to get any photos together 🤦‍♀️).

🚨🚨 The UK has become too dependent on #Musk and his Space X company for the success of its space programme, and must urgently seek greater independence from it in order to stop the “politicisation” of these services , a new Parliamentary report has warned. bylinetimes.com/2025/11/04/t...

Having a very interesting time at the ECORD (scientific ocean drilling) week in Edinburgh. Great to get updates on what’s going on with the programme and all the exciting developments with planned expeditions. Lots of great stuff including open calls for exp participants! iodp3.org 🧪⚒️

🌊 Postdoc Opportunity: Ocean Biogeochemical Modelling Alessandro Tagliabue at the University of Liverpool is hiring a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate @altagliabue.bsky.social 🔗Details & apply www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPG117/p... #Postdoc #Oceanography #Biogeochemistry #AcademicJobs #ScienceJobs

Crikey, this is a damming exposé of Chinese state interference in UK universities. This is what happens when you make universities’ entire bottom line rest on recruitment of international students 😬 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

ERC starter grant applications from US researchers nearly triple in 2025 compared to 2024 as Trump restricts funding. Good for "Choose Europe" initiatives, but dire for global and national science, given the limited volume of non-US funding available.

I've finally got around to curating a selection of films about the #climate crisis 🎥 There's lot of mediocre climate films out there, but for me these stand out head & shoulders above the rest 🎞️ They make excellent resources for classrooms, lecture halls, or community cinema's 🎬 Thread:🧵Plz RT

Here's a map of UK fire activity in 2025. 2025 was a record year for both number of fires and burnt area in the UK, according to the satellite record. Data from EFFIS, based on MODIS and Sentinel observations. 🔥#ukwildfires #wildfires

This is sad but doesn’t surprise me. Yes it’s urbanisation but also household wealth. If you live in the city/ town and don’t have much disposable income and a car, how are you supposed to access ‘nature’? Urban parks, nature reserves, school grounds, and gardens are so important. 🌱 🌳

This is pretty cool science 😎❄️

I wanted to offer some thoughts on the Gates climate memo that has been circulating this week. While I can't directly speak for others, I can say that my own response is one of dismay & deep frustration (and that this view is shared by many climate/Earth scientists). [1/n]

Cornwall has a few small but precious patches of ancient woodlands, in what is otherwise a very low tree cover county. Clearly a mast year for the oaks with acorns everywhere! Some really interesting galls on the oak leaves too, made by various species of gall wasp.

Thoroughly enjoying checking out the spectacular folded and overturned Carboniferous-aged turbidities near Millook Haven on the NE Cornish coast. Lovely sedimentary structures - graded bedding, slumps, load casts, flutes, all subsequently squeezed into tight chevron folds ::chef’s kiss:: ⚒️🧪🌍

Really important paper led by my @iiasa.ac.at colleague Alex Nauels www.nature.com/articles/s41... “The difference between decisive climate action today and continued high emissions is not just measured in degrees of warming but also in meters of sea-level rise” 👏👏👏

Lord help us (cos this government sure as hell aren’t going to). UK HE needs root and branch reform (with a small ‘R’), and all we got was sticking-plaster-tuition-fee rises, and empty words. Further significant job loses and department closures are inevitable.

The incredible tragedy for #ArcticScience of NOAA shutting down their #methane monitoring data. 5th May 2025 is the last data we'll ever get. #NCKF25

“persisting with an inadequate fees-led model of higher education, in which universities are run as competing businesses funded by student consumers, is producing a dystopian academic landscape” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Harvested our precious minute crop of Chilean guava berries this weekend. Little red balls that are somewhere between a strawberry and herbal tea in taste. Apparently Queen Victoria’s favourite berry that she had shipped in from her private stash garden in Cornwall.

So for-profit AI companies have trained on the world's largest collaborative volunteer project and a precious free resource, to make money for their for-profit enterprises. They have crushed traffic to the volunteer project, starving it of donors and volunteers www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...