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...

Holy wow, +3.5 ppm CO₂ last year, up from +2.4 ppm average the past decade, and +0.6 ppm in the 1960s. It gets scarier the closer you look at it. All this is a stress test for the planet, and it's buckling. Two big reasons for the massive increase: wildfires, and the ocean sinks are shutting down.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out 5 times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show. Running costs understated. PHEVs emit just 19% less CO2 than petrol/diesel cars Underestimate of emissions lets carmakers avoid fines. Why do govts not corroborate industry claims?

We need mitigation AND adaptation. Global warming impacts are already evident in the UK, and will definitely worsen in the coming decades even under the most optimistic scenarios. Flooding, drought, storm damage, food security… spend ££ now or ££££££ later. 🌍 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

After what feels like years just spinning all the plates and doing endless teaching, it feels so fantastic to be reading and writing papers again this autumn. I’m one happy geo-nerd right now 🤓 🪨 🌏 📖 💻 ⚒️

Amazing second year at this site! These footprints are really something special.

Undergraduate recruitment below expectations 😱

It's also not "just another" extinction, it's the first from mainland Europe in centuries. CENTURIES. And there will be others within our lifetime. That's biodiversity loss. We'll never hear this sound, ever again xeno-canto.org/398794

🧵🚨 The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news. Today our report is published! www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n... 1/11

"The day had begun with Robert Jenrick accused of racism. This is of course quite unfair. Racists believe in something." Absolutely fantastic sketch by @roberthutton.co.uk. Every line is a banger:

The @iea.org's guess at the variable renewable energy share in various countries by 2030 - Denmark will be around 78%. None of this was meant to be even remotely possible!! iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/48ecc...

Nothing nicer than an early morning trip to Hayle estuary with a friend. So many amazing birds! 🐦 Various gulls, waders, ducks, and even a spoonbill 😍 Love huddling in the hide with a flask of tea and a biscuit. Bliss.

🚨Our new paper introduces the #AirQualityStripes – a visual tool to show how outdoor air pollution (PM2.5) has changed in 🌍 cities since 1850. Inspired by the iconic #WarmingStripes. Led by @kirstypringle.bsky.social & @jimmcquaid.bsky.social 🔗 airqualitystripes.info 📄 doi.org/10.5194/gc-8... 🧵👇

My favourite Jane Goodall quotes....so many, so to the point, so wise. How different the world would be if enough people listened to her.

Destabilization of Earth system tipping elements (Review) suggesting key Earth system tipping points - like the Greenland Ice Sheet, Amazon rainforest, and AMOC - are losing stability and nearing critical thresholds Interactions may mask warning signs www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We lost Jane Goodall this week 😞 www.theguardian.com/science/2025... “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Some good news. London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces. The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.

What fresh hell is this? Feeling proud to have been educated at number 2 and 4 on the ‘woke list’ despite their ‘plunge’ in league table* position by :checks notes: 2 and 1 places respectively 😱 *Murdoch-owned right-wing Times league table. 🤔

The Falmouth ‘basket shark’ has arrived on the campus, and is looking great on this sunny September day. 🦈🌊☀️ More info: www.falmouth.ac.uk/news/falmout...

“To be a good scientist, I have to take emotions out of work. Still, I would say looking at this data, when I allow myself to connect to it emotionally, then I am afraid. This really scares me” - Dr. Levke Caesar, co-lead of Planetary Boundaries Science Lab

Overcame my (frankly quite reasonable) fear of fast traffic and big roundabouts to do my first ever bike-to-work today. Feeling like a badass 💪🚴‍♀️

A 7% decline in English birds in just 5 years is astonishing The web of life is unravelling fast

📢We're hiring!📢 We have a permanent Lecturer in Earth Sciences position available in @OU_EEE @OpenUniversity £47,389 to £56,535 Closing Date: 20 October 2025* We are a friendly, research intensive school with supportive colleagues and great labs. jobs.open.ac.uk/job/Lecturer...

😞

As both a lifelong birder and a paleo person, I really enjoyed this paper on bird feeding traces. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... I had thought about bird footprints in the rock record before, but confess I hadn’t really considered beak and dabbling marks etc. I’ll look harder next time!

The concept of trying to implement geoengineering solutions to #climate change is like trying to design a complicated, expensive, unreliable helmet while you're still hitting yourself in the head with a 2x4.

After all the autumnal rain lately, it was nice to get out and enjoy some late afternoon sunshine by the reservoir. Mushrooms, acorns, swallows, great crested grebes, and a big colony of mining bees. 🍂 🌳 🐝 🍄‍🟫

🎉 Big River Watch starts today! After a summer of challenging weather, it's time to check in on our rivers. 📱Download the Big River Watch app ⏱️Spend just 15 minutes by the river 👀Share what you see in a survey You've got until 25th of September to take part💙 theriverstrust.org/big-river-watch

The Northern Pacific Ocean is currently smashing temperature records. And it is reaching these levels far earlier than the current generation of climate models had expected. A short thread 🧵

You can take the girl outta London, but you can’t take London outta the girl. Even if I’m a proper west-country bumpkin now, London will always have a big place in my ❤️