climate

Spain is going to have three heat waves in six weeks. AEMET is clear: it is no longer a wave, it is the climate

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Spain has just signed its start to the warmest summer in the historical series. There it is nothing. Between June 1 and July 15, the average temperature was 3.3 ºC above normal. In these six weeks, we have suffered two official heat waves, an extreme episode that did not become extreme and, according to AEMETwe are already on the rise of the next wave this Sunday. So much so that the heat begins to be the least of it. The central question of 2026 is simple: if we cross the heat threshold three times in five weeks, isn’t something broken in that threshold? In Xataka "It’s brutal": Meteorologists have taken a look at the heat forecasts for next week and they are not optimistic The third wave does not exist yet. I don’t want to mislead anyone. AEMET has issued an information note (it is not yet a special notice) and this is because, although we know that there will be a generalized thermal rise, the criteria remain extremely strict. Spokesman Rubén del Campo talked about temperatures “extraordinarily high” and maximum temperatures of up to 44 ºC in the southern half. But the duration, extent and strength is yet to be defined. What is clear is that, if it were not, it would be just barely. That’s why what happens next week doesn’t change the general picture. Not only would it be three or four extreme heat episodes in six weeks, but some climatologists such as Jorge Olcina They also add the “Saharan advection at the end of May” and speak of four episodes in eight weeks. With old reference periods, we would probably be in those terms. But how explained José Ángel Núñez and Rubén del Campo On the agency’s official blog, the definition is not touched, precisely, to see things like what we are seeing. That is, what the threshold is doing is clearly showing that everything is changing. According to the agency’s own studybetween 2001 and 2025 Spain registered 91 heat waves compared to 43 in the period 1976-2000, and the days under the wave went from 210 to 510. This summer does not fit the threshold, it is true. But it fits perfectly with the trend. In Xataka Today the heatwave begins and the meteorologists are clear: "They paint coarse for the Mediterranean regions of Spain" And that’s the problem. The ISCIII MoMo system, the statistical model that indicates excess mortality, attributed 3,649 deaths to the heat last summer, the second worst figure of the decade. The problem here, as we pointed out a few days ago, is that in 2026 we will already we have spent half of that excess before the dog days begin (the worst part of summer). Meteorology has shown us that, at any moment, the situation can change suddenly. What remains is to wait, but the feeling that the world is changing faster than our adaptations to it has stopped being a fear and has begun to become something very real. Image | Meteociel In Xataka |Neither London nor the United Kingdom: the NASA map that reveals where the grayest sky in Europe is (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Spain is going to have three heat waves in six weeks. AEMET is clear: it is no longer a wave, it is the climate was originally published in Xataka by Javier Jimenez .

Guadix was one of the last corners of Europe where people lived in caves. Today they have become a climate refuge

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Moors, outlaws and expelled populations occupying caves, carrying pickaxes and candles. That was the realityunromantic, from Guadix. The rural escape chic It would take three centuries to arrive. Visiting the streets and hills is free, of course; spending the night there is something else. In Granada, Andalusia, going down the A-92, next to the Zalabí Valley and at more than 900 meters above sea level, there is a town that looks like something out of Star Wars. Guadix, “the town of the cave houses”, is actually a city that converted flight, poverty and climatic rigor into bioclimatic architecture. And, centuries later, in designer troglottourism. An entire neighborhood underground. Around Guadix, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, there are more than 2,000 homes excavated in red clay hills. “European Capital of Caves“, says the press of a neighborhood that was born around 1550 around the Maese Pedro Fountain and San Marcos Street. In fact, more than 4,500 Accitani live in this neighborhood alone. It is a landscape of hills literally emptied from the inside, whitewashed facades and chimneys that are lime fumaroles and appear like periscopes. And, to top it all off, an interior temperature that remains around 20 degrees all year round. It takes approximately three months for outside air to “seep” into the walls, which softens extreme winters and summers. And of course, this comfort and acoustic insulation has made this architecture passive. forward the letter one of the most requested tourist places in Spain. Today you will get on a tourist train and sleep in a cave house for prices ranging from 60-70 euros to more than 120 euros per night, depending on whims and jacuzzi. Your cave, my Airbnb. Airbnb and aggregators like cozycozy list the “hammam cave”, “la Tita del Pan cave” or “Casa Cueva Los Mosaicos”, with jacuzzis, swimming pools and outstanding ratings. 9.5 on Booking and 4.2 out of 5 on Airbnb. The region is sold under the premise of sleeping like a Neanderthal, but with Wi-Fi and a hot tub. Today, live in one of these caves It’s not easy. Renting it is something else: tourist trains, interpretation centers and guided routes are part of this troglottourism, under the coordinates of sustainability and introspective experience. What were once medieval shanties today stand as beautiful enclaves that defy the harsh climate. It was always there. Guadix has always been a territory of soft land and natural shelters, used since the Bronze Age. Archaeological studies identify human occupations that they used these bad lands or gullies on the edge and bed of the Guadix river to protect themselves from the elements. During the Middle Ages, this landscape intersects with the Nasrid front and, after the capture of the city by the Catholic Monarchs, it becomes a place of refuge: after the expulsions of 1570 and 1609, the hypothesis places the origin of the great neighborhood towards the end of the 15th century, when Moors, outlaws and populations expelled from the medina clandestinely occupied these caves and perfected, with pick and shovel, the technique of excavating entire hills following the knowledge of the builders. The Accitan historian Carlos Javier Garrido emphasizes that this refuge of persecuted people was also a social response to a city dominated by oligarchies. A silent rebellion. Confiscation and new rules. In 1920, the neighborhood housed 60% of the city’s population. It was not until the 1950s when massive excavations expanded and inaugurated new cave houses, already intended as normal homes in another neighborhood. The traces of the Civil War are also notable: the town was left without a hermitage. There is a lot to see, in any case: the Cathedral of La Encarnación, the Palace of the Marquises of Villaverde or the Islamic citadel itself, from the 11th century, added to the Ermita Nueva, in nuclear white and a chapel completely carved under rock. With the arrival of national roads bordering the mountains, electricity, television and emigration, local families converted these old nested slopes into a “summer house” to escape the heat. It was then that the neighborhood began to be seen from the outside more as a picturesque landscape than as a space of marginality. Progress arrived and the BOE. Until recently, in urban terms, cave houses lived in a limbo: they were housing, but they did not fit into the standard categories of the regulations. The new Law to Promote the Sustainability of the Territory of Andalusia (LISTA) and its regulations dedicate for the first time an entire title to the troglodytic habitat, defining what a cave is, what a cave neighborhood is and what a “troglodytic municipality” is (Article 421). The standard establishes minimum conditions of safety, health and habitability: water and sanitation services, minimum surface area of ​​30 m², sufficient ventilation, adequate drainage of rainwater and guarantees of stability of the excavated land. General management plans are now required to indicate measures for their protection, conservation and improvement, from maintaining the outer layer of soil to preserving natural rain drainage channels. See the caves. He average itinerary It includes a panoramic view of the center, the Roman Theatre, the Arab wall, the Alcazaba, the historic and Jewish neighborhoods and, finally, a stop of about 45 minutes in the troglodyte area to visit viewpoints, a unique cave church and the Caves Interpretation Center. Of course, whoever makes a reservation rules over whoever shows up randomly: visits to the cave neighborhood fill up, especially in the mornings and on weekends. The train usually operates with departures every 40–60 minutes in the morning schedule. The tour takes about 75 minutes, with recorded comments in several languages. He Interpretation Center It reopened in April 2026 with new hours: Monday to Saturday it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., and on Sundays until 2:30 p.m. To sleep under the hill. The other experience is to literally spend the night underground. A night as a couple usually costs around 110 euros per … Read more

Microsoft set a climate goal for 2030. Becoming an AI company has blown up the plan

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Microsoft is one of the companies that, a few years ago, set out to be less polluting. There were two goals, the first being to become a company.”carbon negative” by 2030. They began to investigate to create more sustainable buildings and to make better use of water and heat from the Azure hubs to pollute less, but then came the final boss of climate goals. Artificial intelligence. The figures. In it last environmental report, the American company indicates that its total emissions went from about 16 million tons of CO2 to about 20 million net tons in the last fiscal year. As we see in The Vergethat implies that, during 2025, they were 25% more than in the previous period. That “net” thing is explained because they really emitted 34 million, but then you have to subtract the carbon that they paid to remove from the atmosphere, which gives us those 20 million tons. As we see in GeekWirethat places Microsoft emitting as much CO2 as Panama or Lithuania. According to Melanie Nakagawa, director of sustainability at the company, Microsoft continues to focus on the 2030 goal. And what has caused this situation is the push for data centers and artificial intelligence. Scope 3. The report itself points out that the main cause of the increase is investments in new data centers for AI and cloud computing, including integrated OpenAI systems in Microsoft products. And where this carbon footprint accumulates the most is in what they qualify as Scope 3, which encompasses the construction materials of data centers (steel and cement, which we already know are highly polluting), as well as the purchased goods and services, which skyrocket with the massive deployment of AI infrastructure. That Scope 3 concentrates around 96% of Microsoft’s entire footprint, far above the direct emissions from its operations. Electricity. But it is not only due to the construction of the buildings, since these facilities must be maintained. Emissions linked to electricity have increased almost ten times between 2024 and 2025 and, although they pride themselves on reducing direct emissions, they recognize that electricity demand has skyrocketed and it is difficult to cover everything with renewable energy alone. There are already independent analyzes that highlight that Microsoft’s electricity consumption went from 23.6 TWh to 29.8 TWh, 26%, in 2024, and we have to wait to see the independent figures for 2025. If with emissions we have that they are higher than those of Panama, with consumption Microsoft ‘swallows’ the same as Ireland. and it is expected that AI consumption will skyrocket by 2030. braking. Due to this boom and fever for artificial intelligence, Microsoft is deviating from the goal set in 2020, exemplifying the tension between being an AI company and being a company with environmental objectives. But let’s not think that it is the only one because the carbon footprint of amazon increased by 16% last year and that of Google 18%. They remain committed, of course, but right now we are talking about non-terrestrial computing, space but. And for that, many rockets have to be sent into space, with their corresponding emissions. Although the end is good, according to Jeff Bezos: sending all pollution away from Earth to return to the state prior to the Industrial Revolution. Something is something. In Xataka | There is a thing called “Ornn price index”, it is out of control and it is bad news for everyone

Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving

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The increasingly frequent heat waves are not harmless for the population as they cause thousands of deaths each year, with vulnerable people being the most affected by this unwanted effect. But beyond this, which is what impacts anyone the most, we are also seeing how the increase in temperature is causing let’s reduce our physical activitysince when the street becomes an oven, sedentary lifestyle skyrockets. It is studied. The first major published work In this regard, he appeared on the scene in March of this same year and analyzed data from 156 countries collected between 2000 and 2022 to identify the “thermal frontier” in which our behavior changes radically from having good physical activity to moving to a sedentary lifestyle. With all this data, the limit was placed at 27.8ºC average temperature, since, according to the study, for each additional month in which a country exceeds this average temperature, global physical inactivity increases 1.5 percentage points. And it is not a simple summer anecdote, but stopping walking, running, cycling to work or playing in the park has direct physiological consequences. In Xataka The El Niño numbers are so strong that they are beginning to make half the world nervous. We have to be able to differentiate risk from hysteria Looking to the future, The figures are chilling, since if we continue with the current trend in an inactive manner, physical inactivity caused exclusively by excess heat will cause between 470,000 and 700,000 premature deaths additional each year around the world. Added to this is the economic impact, since lower productivity and increased medical spending will mean annual losses of between 2,400 and 3,680 million dollars. Spain, Due to its geographical location and its tendency towards desertification, it has been identified as one of the European countries most affected by this phenomenon, along with critical regions such as Central America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Because? To understand the reasons that reach these extremes, we have to look at another study that analyzed 74 years of hourly data, combining temperature and humidity to coin the concept ‘limiting heat’. With this term we talk about those environmental conditions in which the human body cannot carry out physical activity outdoors without its core temperature reaching dangerous levels. The most alarming thing about the study is the speed at which we are losing “working” hours per year. The annual time we spend in conditions of “severe livability limitation” has doubled since the 1950s, and it is not something that affects only the elderly. It affects us all. In young adults, historically there were about 25 hours a year of heat so extreme that it prevented them from moving safely. But today that figure has shot up to 50 hours annually and continues to increase. In the case of those over 65 years of age, their tolerance threshold is lower and they have gone from suffering 600 hours of climate confinement per year to more than 900 hours per year. This means that they spend more than 10% of the year in restrictive environmental conditions. In Xataka The map that splits Europe into two when the heat arrives: where there is air conditioning and where there isn’t He pushes us to the couch. The WHO itself has been warning that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier.” Here we have the perfect example, since heat not only makes us directly sick, but also enhances other modern pandemics such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes by promoting a sedentary lifestyle. The solution is not just to tell people “go out and do sports earlier” or “join a gym with air conditioning.” Pass byrethink citiessince if the streets do not have shade, if the parks are cement slabs without climatic shelters, and if urban planning does not adapt to the new temperatures, going for a walk will cease to be a medical recommendation and will become a risky sport for four months a year. In Xataka | The networks are filling up with maps that promise the end of the heat. One thing is what we would like and another, very different, is what we know (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving was originally published in Xataka by José A. Lizana .

“In Spain we are not immune to the effects of climate change, we need to intensify conservation”

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Europe has lived an inconceivable heat wave until very recently beyond the Pyrenees and the consequences have been dire. France attributes heat as the main cause of more than 1,000 deaths and in the windows they have come to see thermal blankets to reflect the sun’s rays and reduce the temperature in homes that lack air conditioning. The consequences today have been devastating in much of Europe. Melting roads and trams that drag the materials that stick their tracks to the ground. Firefighters who water the bridges so that the steel does not fracture. Trains canceled because the temperature was too high inside. The situation has been so dramatic that more than half of Europe is already looking south. Portugal, Spain and Italy are now the benchmarks when it comes to building new infrastructures, aware north of our borders that these episodes of extreme heat will be more and more recurrent. But Spain doesn’t have it that easy either. Although we have obvious experience in dealing with extreme heat when building our infrastructure, our country also has to remain alert to other episodes of climate change. Although in recent days the discourse has become popular on social networks that Spain has many lessons to teach northern Europe, the truth is that we have our own problems. “We share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” he warns us. Cesar Francopresident of General Council of Industrial Engineers and director of master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the UAX. Our own challenges While the videos accumulated, the morality lessons piled up on social networks in southern Europe. If you have entered spaces like Or that their infrastructures do not have expansion joints. “It is an inaccurate statement. Joints exist and are essential in bridges, viaducts and concrete structures throughout Europe”, assures César Franco who points out that, in addition, “the use of Via Seamless (continuous welded rail) is an international standard” and is also used in Spain. “The difference is in the calculations. In central and northern Europe, resistance to extreme cold, frost, freeze-thaw cycles and the use of melting salts have historically been prioritized. Now facing prolonged heat waves with records typical of Mediterranean latitudes, the materials and neutralization temperatures of their pathways are subjected to compression stresses outside their historical design ranges,” explains the president of the Council of Industrial Engineers. The question, therefore, is not not knowing how to build an infrastructure, the question is what climatological effects they face. “Today, climate design is no longer limited to the asphalt-steel binomial. The real challenge is the concurrent risk. In addition to the heat, Spain must face episodes of torrential rain, DANA, storms, floods and associated geotechnical phenomena. This forces engineering to focus on general geotechnical stability: the behavior of the slopes, the capacity of drainage works to avoid scours on bridges, and the monitoring of clearings to prevent landslides that interrupt circulation,” explains Franco about our country. That is, while Europe now has problems with extreme summer heat, Spain must be careful with cycles of strong and recurring rainssomething for which, as we found just a few months ago, we are not prepared. “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” the General Council of Industrial Engineers emphasize. And the temperature can dilate the tracks of a train until causing the so-called “lateral buckling”. It is not, they explain to us, a structural failure, it is really “a collapse due to elastic instability of the entire system (track-fastening-sleeper-ballast).” The asphalt binder can also lose this stability, which “if it exceeds its softening temperature, it loses viscosity. The mixture loses rigidity and resistance to deformation, and under heavy traffic ruts, undulations or exudations (sticky surfaces) may appear,” explains César Franco. We do not have these problems in Spain because we are adapted to them, but the General Council of Industrial Engineers warns: “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe. Our network faces challenges linked to the aging of assets and the need to intensify preventive conservation. Spain’s advantage is the experience in the behavior of materials under heat; the common European challenge is the financing and speed of adaptation of existing networks to the new climatic normality”. And Spain and Europe face the same problem. Both have to find ways to make their infrastructure suitable during extreme weather events for which they were not designed. The European Union, César Franco reminds us, “requires that the main networks be fully operational and resilient against natural risks with horizons to 2030, 2040 and 2050” but the problem is that, everything indicates, we are not moving fast enough. Photo | Julian Hochgesang and General Council of Industrial Engineers In Xataka | AEMET asks that we prepare because “starting on Friday” a rise is expected that will put Spain “eight degrees above normal”

Tell me where you live and I will tell you which city is a climate sister to yours

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Heat waves last longer and appear more frequently and there are also more floods and torrential rains: the weather has changed and the reason is climate change. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, you can see for yourself with this map with data since 1940 or, even more devastating, this other weather map in 2080. Or better yet, discover that, for example, in Seville the weather is the same as in some areas of Zambia or northern India. How do I know? Well, it’s not because I’ve been to any of those locations too much (three times in Seville), but because I’ve used the interactive map Climate Visualizedwhich is used to explore the weather patterns of any place on the planet using the classification of Köppen-Geiger. and find climate “brothers” throughout the world. This project is the work of Atlas Guo, a cartographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and for its development he used the D3.js visualization tool and as a source, data from a scientific study (Beck et al. (2018)) who produced the most detailed global climate map that exists. Specifically, Guo uses the lowest resolution version (1 degree latitude per longitude), covering the period 1990-2020. From there, he turned it into an interactive and visual tool for anyone to explore. The Köppen-Geiger classification is the most used system in geography, ecology and climatology worldwide since it was formulated back in 1884 and the data from Beck and his collaborators made an enormous leap in precision. Having them at hand in an interactive and free graphical interface is a before and after, since reading and understanding a paper is something within the reach of few people, while with this project it is opened to the general public, curious people and students. The poster version of the project. Cartoguography At the end of the 19th century, climatologist Wladimir Köppen had a simple but powerful idea: classify all the climates in the world according to how much it rains and how hot it is every month. The result was five large climatic zones (tropical, arid, temperate, continental and polar) with up to 30 variants. Based on this, in 2018 Beck and his team updated that system with much more precise satellite and climate data (data from ERA5 and CHELSEA), producing the most detailed global climate map available. The study also estimates how those climate zones could change by the end of the century if emissions continue their current trend (RCP8.5 scenario), although that predictive part is not included in Guo’s web visualization. Other limitations to take into account are that it uses the lowest resolution of the study, which reduces the 30 Köppen climate types to 29 and blurs heterogeneities in coastal or mountain areas, which can be critical in more localized analyses. On the other hand, it remains in 2020, so it lacks the latest representations of climate drift. How it works The locations twinned with the time of Pamplona in the world. Cartoguophy Simply hover over a location or write in the search box to find out what type of climate you have and access monthly climate graphs, which are displayed in a side menu on the left: overview, temperature and precipitation. The months appear arranged in a circle, like a clock, starting with January. Each point on the circle shows both the temperature and rainfall for that month, all in a single drawing. In addition, that little dot is colored with a tone that you can find the same in other parts of the Earth. For example, Pamplona shares a climate with a good part of France, Belgium and Holland, but also with Melbourne, on the other side of the planet. In Xataka | The easiest way to understand global warming, in this climate map with data from 1940 In Xataka | The temperature your city will have in 2080, simulated on this disturbing interactive map Cover | Cartoguophy

The biggest problem for Spanish olive trees is neither costs nor climate change: it is ‘ghost oil’

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Something smells bad in the olive oil market. We knew it for a long timebut it is now with the collapse of prices at source (almost 46%) that everyone has become nervous. The figures do not add up and the bill will not be paid by the large olive oil groups, but by the small producers. For this reason, on June 15, a COAG representative stood in front of the microphones and reported that 81% of olive oil Tunisian was entering Spain undercover. But how do you put 65,500 tons of oil under the radar? It has not been easy to determine, the truth is. But if the organization is right, the oil ship has more than one leak compromising its future. But it doesn’t have it. Always according to the COAGa good part of that oil comes from Portugal. But the ‘Portuguese way’ does not add up: with the data from the 2024-2025 campaign, Portugal produces between 160,000 and 195,000 tons of its own and imported only 3,406 of Tunisian oil. Those 3,406 tons cannot explain the 131,877 that it re-exports to Spain. Some part yes, but not all of it. And then? The problem seems different. It looks like ours, in fact. Because what COAG does seem to be right about is that a good part of the oil that entered the country did so under a special regime: that of active development. It is a formula of the Customs Code of the European Union that allows the importation of non-EU merchandise without tariffs or VAT as long as it is transformed and exported again. What the producers point out is that a good part of the oil that arrives in Spain to be “perfected” ends up being sold in the country without appearing in the statistics (marked, in fact, as community). The consumer does not notice it substantially in the price, but it is noticeable at the source. And a lot. But there is more. A few years ago, honey became a problem. Nobody really knew what they were eating in Europe. The key to this was to mix it up. Above all, because with completely insufficient regulation, it was enough to put “mix” so that there was nothing more to ask. This was attempted to be resolved with Directive (EU) 2024/1438 (the “Breakfast Guidelines“) which has not come into force in Spain until June 14, 2026. Among many other things, Brussels demands that the package states where what is inside comes from. Easy, clean, effective and… …non-existent for oil. The big problem, as almost always, is traceability. Not that we have problems, but that there is almost no real interest in doing it. As we have said many times, the Spanish agricultural market is a giant with feet of clay and now is the time to think if we want it to be something else. In Xataka | Something strange is happening with the price of olive oil and farmers have just denounced it: there are up to 2.8 billion at stake

We fill the field with solar panels to stop climate change. We have unintentionally saved 122 species of bees

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There’s a hum under Minnesota solar panels that engineers didn’t put in the plans. It is a biological, dense, ancient hum. Beneath the photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity, 122 species of native bees have found something that has been disappearing from the fields of half the world for decades: flowers. It’s not a coincidence. It is the result of a management decision that costs money, requires planning and that, according to the latest science, is producing results that no one expected when the first solar panel was installed in a meadow. The bees are disappearing. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolutionwith data from 681 agricultural fields on three continents and more than 19,500 specimens of 910 species of wild bees, reached an uncomfortable conclusion: pesticides and habitat loss are reducing bee populations in an additive, independent way, without one factor compensating for the other. That is, having more natural habitat around a field does not neutralize the damage from pesticides. And reducing pesticides is not enough if the habitat has disappeared. They are two different problems that require two different solutions. The work, led by Anina Knauer and researchers from Agroscope among other institutions, found that pesticides not only reduce the number of bees: they also reduce their functional and phylogenetic diversity. Communities not only become smaller, they become simpler, less resilient, less able to cope with future shocks. A desert with seasonal flowers. In Iowa, in the heart of the American Corn Belt, 72% of the territory is covered in corn and soybean monocultures. Less than 0.01% of the original prairie remains standing. This is what researchers at Iowa State University publish in BioScience described as “an extreme example of landscape simplification”. Bees literally have very little to go to. And when the soybeans stop flowering at the end of summer, there is nothing. The colonies enter what science calls the feast-famine dynamic: the festival of flowering followed by famine that kills hives before winter. This is the background scenario. An agricultural world that urgently needs more pollinator habitat, free of pesticides or with minimal exposure. And in that desert, solar panels are doing something no one expected. 14 floors. 122 species. And an unexpected star. A team of researchers led by Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar of Western EcoSystems Technology and James McCall of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory asked a very specific question: Of all the plants that can be grown under and around solar panels, which ones actually establish? And how many bees can they hold? The work, published in Environmental Research Communicationstested 101 plant species in eight different seed mixtures at three solar farms in the tallgrass prairie region of Minnesota. After three years of monitoring, 14 species of flowering herbaceous plants had successfully established themselves. With those 14 species as a starting point, the researchers cross-referenced the data with an exhaustive catalog of plant-bee interactions from the same region. The result is that those 14 plants can support 122 unique species of native bees, 24% of all bee diversity in the state of Minnesota, which has 508 documented species. The star of the system is Zizia aureathe golden Alexander, a yellow flowering plant that blooms early in the season. Alone, it supports 67 species of bees. And 36 of those species—30% of the total study—only visited Zizia aurea among all the plants studied. If it is not in the seed mix of the solar park, those 36 species have nothing. Not all flowers are worth the same. The study also documents an important nuance: bumblebees, the group of pollinators with the most species in decline—three of the eleven species of Bombus of the study are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN: B. pensylvanicus, B. terrestrial and B. fervidus—they don’t get along with Zizia aurea. Only one species of bumblebee visited that plant. Bumblebees prefer Monarda fistulosathe wild bergamot, visited by nine of the eleven species of Bombus of the study. The practical lesson: there is no universal mix. The design of what is planted must respond to what is to be conserved. And what if there are pesticides in the surrounding fields? He study by Toth and colleagues in BioSciencewith more than a decade of data on strips of native prairie embedded in corn and soybean fields in Iowa, systematically reviewed chemical contamination in that type of habitat. Pesticides arrive—neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, fungicides—but in concentrations that, for the best studied species, are below the damage thresholds. And most importantly: the concentrations are no higher than in the rest of the surrounding agricultural landscape. They are not an ecological trap; They are an island of resources in a sea of ​​fields that already have pesticides on them anyway. In addition, a diet rich in quality pollen—exactly what these plants provide—makes bees better tolerate chemical exposure. Nutrition acts as a shield. The authors of that work themselves explicitly point out that their conclusions are applicable to “other types of landscape improvements for pollinators such as hedgerows, pollinator gardens, solar installations with pollinator habitat.” It is not a journalistic extrapolation. It’s in the text of the paper. If there are flowers inside there are bumblebees. If field studies answer the “does it work now?” published in Global Change Biology by Hollie Blaydes and colleagues at Lancaster University answers “will it still work in 2050?” The team modeled the 1,042 operational solar farms in Britain under three socio-economic scenarios for mid-century: a sustainability scenario, an intermediate scenario and a fossil development scenario with maximum agricultural intensification. The main finding is compelling: the management of the solar park is the main determining factor of bumblebee density within the park, above land use changes in the surrounding landscape. Solar parks last between 25 and 40 years. That means decades of stable habitat in landscapes that are going to change and possibly get worse for pollinators. And there is an economic angle that is not minor either. Colonies located near diverse native vegetation avoid feast-famine dynamic which in monocultures weakens … Read more

Starlink has been ruining astronomers’ nights for years. Now it turns out that their launches are leaving their mark on the climate

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Much has been said about the great light pollution that generate the Starlink satellites from SpaceX. However, not so much has been said about something that, if we think about it, is much more evident. Air pollution derived from launches. Any space launch, in fact, can generate this type of contamination. However, satellite trains require such a large number of launches that it is not unusual for them to be of particular concern to scientists today. 15,000 satellites and counting. A team of British and American scientists has carried out Recently a study brought this problem to the fore and predicted what the effects could be in the short term. This investigation indicates that there are currently around 15,000 telecommunications satellites in orbit, more than 10,000 of which belong to SpaceX. This represents three times as many satellites as in 2020 and the worst thing is that the number continues to increase. As a consequence, according to the simulations of these researchers, by 2029, these satellites could account for 40% of the atmospheric pollution derived from space activity. Also have calculated that by then this sector will be releasing around 870 tons of soot into the atmosphere annually. It would be more or less the same amount released by all cars in the United Kingdom, so action must be taken as soon as possible. Launch and reentry problems. The two key points at which these trains of satellites will put our planet’s climate on the ropes are launch and re-entry. With the first, a large amount of black carbon. These are fine carbon particles that come from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. Regarding reentry, it mainly releases aluminum oxides. The satellites must be changed every 5 years. Later, when orbital conditions are favorable, this re-entry can occur, the price for which for the planet is also very expensive. The effects. Black carbon is harmful to the Earth’s climate on two levels. On the one hand, the particles that make it up have a great capacity to retain the heat of the Sun. That is why they play a very important role in the global warming of our planet. On the other hand, they can affect cloud formation in two different ways. Sometimes they prevent their formation, causing droughts, and other times they trigger extreme rainfall. Regarding aluminum oxides, can damage the ozone layerwith all the harmful effects that this entails. The place matters. The main problem with the release of these polluting substances is that it occurs in the highest layers of the atmosphere. The contamination at this height, if space activity did not exist, would be residual. However, the launches deposit that black carbon there, which remains for 2 to 3 years, retaining heat and affecting the clouds. That is why black carbon derived from space activity is estimated to have a much greater effect on the climate than that of ships, cars or power plants, for example. What is to come is very dangerous. It is said that Elon Musk wants to launch a million satellites into space. This is possibly an exaggerated figure. But it is clear that SpaceX has enormous objectives set. In fact, already It is even looking for launch platforms outside the United Statesbecause in his native country there is no room for such ambition. To all this we must add that other companies have increasingly ambitious objectives with their own satellite trains. This is, for example, the case of Amazon with Leo. The situation can become very worrying if alternatives are not sought, such as less polluting fuels for launches or more durable satellites that require fewer re-entries. Science will probably take us there at some point; but, in the meantime, the consequences for the planet will become worse and worse. We have time to solve it, but we must act now. Images | Gwendolyn Kurzen In Xataka | In 2018, Elon Musk put his own car into orbit. Eight years later it is still circling the Earth

Big tech had ambitious climate goals. Then the AI ​​came and started devouring them

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There was a time when technology seemed to have found a comfortable way to tell its climate future. The big companies talked about “clean energy”net zero emissions, increasingly efficient operations and commitments dated to 2030 or 2040. It was an attractive story because it coexisted with our daily use of the internet, services and applications. Generative AI, however, has complicated that picture: not only does it bring more smart services, it also requires more infrastructure, more electricity, and climate pressure that is much more difficult to square with the promises those same companies made just a few years ago. The most recent movement comes from Microsoft. Bloomberg has published that the company would be considering delaying or even abandoning one of its most ambitious energy goals, at a time when the race for AI requires increasingly more computing capacity. Tell OpenAI or Anthropic. This case does not appear in a vacuum: other large technology companies are also facing increasingly visible challenges to fit their climate commitments with the expansion of their data centers. The question is no longer just what they promised, but what happens when those promises collide with the actual scale of AI. The companies did not reach these commitments in a single way nor did they promise exactly the same thing. Some focused on the purchase of renewable energy, others on zero-carbon electricity, others on net-zero emissions, and others on eliminating more carbon than they generate. There were also different reasons for doing so: regulatory pressure, investor expectations, reputation and a fairly widespread conviction that digital infrastructure could grow. without triggering its climate impact. What interests us here is not to review all those promises, but to follow some of the most ambitious ones and see how they are holding up to the AI ​​race that is unfolding before our eyes. Climate promises in the face of expanding data centers As we say, the fundamental change is that many of these commitments were formulated before generative AI became an absolute priority for the industry. Until then, the growth of data centers was already a challenge, but it could be projected with a more gradual logic. The new race has altered that pace: training models, deploying them in massive products, and answering large-scale queries requires computing power that grows very quickly. What once seemed like a difficult but manageable roadmap now faces a different dynamic. Microsoft was one of the companies that formulated one of the most demanding goals. In July 2021 he announced his 100/100/0 commitment, a way of saying that by 2030 he wanted match 100% of your electricity consumption100% of the time, with zero-carbon energy purchases. The nuance matters: it was not just about offsetting annual consumption with renewables, but about getting closer to an hour-by-hour correspondence. Furthermore, the company proposed doing so in the same electrical networks from which it took that energy. Now that commitment is under obvious pressure. The aforementioned economic media indicated that the Redmond company is studying delaying or even abandoning it, according to anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter, while seeking to clear obstacles to powering its data centers. Microsoft has not confirmed that change and its director of sustainability, Melanie Nakagawa, maintained that the company remains committed to its environmental goals. He also left an insight that sets the tone for the official response: any adjustment would be part of a review of approach, not a change in long-term ambition. Google also set a powerful goal. In 2021, the Mountain View company set the goal to achieve net zero emissions across its operations and value chain by 2030, including its consumer hardware products. To achieve this, he proposed reduce 50% its absolute emissions compared to 2019, not only those generated directly by the company, but also those linked to its activity and its supply chain. What it could not reduce, according to its roadmap, it would compensate by removing carbon from the atmosphere through natural and technological solutions. The current situation shows how difficult it is to put this roadmap into practice. In its 2025 environmental reportGoogle points out that in 2024 its emissions were 11.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent. That is 11% more than the previous year and 51% above its 2019 base. The nuance is important: they did not increase 51% in one year, but rather compared to the starting point chosen by the company. The report itself also recognizes that integrating more AI into its products can complicate the reduction of emissions due to the greater demand for computing and technical infrastructure. Amazon also presented a high-ambition climate pledge. In September 2019the e-commerce giant announced together with Global Optimism The Climate Pledge, a commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040ten years before the horizon set by the Paris Agreement. The company founded by Jeff Bezos became the first signatory of that initiative, which called for measuring and reporting emissions on a regular basis, applying decarbonization strategies and neutralizing remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent and socially beneficial compensations. Amazon’s situation shows that these promises already had gray areas even before AI was at the center of the debate. In September 2023, Data Center Dynamics published that the Science Based Targets initiative had removed the Amazon commitment from its panel and placed it in the “expired commitment” category. The reason, according to the media, was that both parties were unable to agree on a sufficiently significant emissions target. Amazon responded that the requirements had changed and that it would continue to look for credible third-party validators. In this sense, general photography goes in the same direction. The US Department of Energy estimates that the Data centers consumed around 4.4% of the country’s electricity in 2023 and could be between 6.7% and 12% in 2028. The International Energy Agency also projects a relevant leap on a global scale: from about 415 TWh in 2024 to about 945 TWh in 2030. Not all of this growth can be attributed solely to AI, … Read more

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