"Prepare our country for the worst while we are still in time to prevent the worst from becoming a catastrophe." This is the cry of nearly 700 people, including scientists, science communicators, researchers, civil society, and public figures in an open letter addressed to the Government—and to the Generalitat Valenciana—in which they request action before El Niño arrives, a climate phenomenon originating in the Pacific Ocean that is characterized by a large release of thermal energy into the atmosphere and which can lead to practically unprecedented downpours. Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Jordi Solé and UPC professor and Doctor of Physics Olga Alcaraz warned this Tuesday that El Niño will create another layer of heat in a Mediterranean that, as we have seen in recent weeks with exceptional rainfall, is already extremely hot.

When Jonathan was born, Charles Darwin was only 23 years old. This giant tortoise of the Aldabra species is the longest-living (terrestrial) animal in the world known to date. It is 194 years old and still today it walks, at a very slow pace, through the gardens of Plantation House, which is the residence of the governor of Saint Helena, one of the Seychelles islands. It has lost its sight and sense of smell, and it must be fed (basically lettuce and carrots), but it is still active and weighs about 180 kilograms. Now, scientists have studied its DNA to try to extract data that will help us live longer.

The summer we have just left behind is the one that has caused the most heat-related deaths in the last decade in Spain. The Daily Mortality Monitoring System for all Causes (MoMo) of the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) estimates that between May 15 and September 30, there were 5,807 deaths attributable to high temperatures.

This past week the Generalitat has announced that it will take charge of 75 million euros of the costs caused by the recent torrential rains. The figure is a small sample of the constant drip of public spending caused by the effects of the ecological crisis. But the climate problem does not only affect the public treasury, it also entails an economic drain for families and insurance companies. To know the monetary impact of these phenomena, the European Environment Agency has compiled the annual losses that extreme weather phenomena have meant in the European Union (EU). Although the economic figures only take into account direct expenses – for example, those registered by governments and insurers – and not indirect ones, the data are implacable.

The images of the Besòs river full to the brim and about to overflow a week ago have been one of the most prominent photographs left by the storm of recent days on the Catalan coast. A scene that had not been seen for decades and that not only made many in the area remember tragedies like the 1962 flood, but also put the spotlight back on the urbanization project around the Three Chimneys of Sant Adrià.

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert (United States, 1954) studies the most extreme climates in the Universe, those of distant planets where it rains glass or that of gaseous worlds where the daytime temperature is so high that the molecules of the atmosphere break down into atoms. Also that of Earth, both the current one and the one from 4.5 billion years ago. This perspective allows him to put into context to what extent the pale blue dot on which we are lucky to live is exceptional – and at the same time fragile. Professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he is one of the most recognized specialists in climate crisis. He has visited the CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona to convince us that we must reduce CO₂ emissions to zero. Because there is no other option.

Although there are more satellites orbiting the planet continuously sending high-resolution images and atmospheric data, radars that detect precipitation in real time, meteorological stations, rain gauges, radiosondes, and supercomputers capable of performing calculations on a scale unthinkable just a decade ago, it is still difficult to know exactly if a strong storm will unleash, where and when it will do so, and how much rain it will leave.

Catalonia is experiencing a very rainy start to the month of October on the coast and pre-coastal areas, where water accumulations are in some cases extraordinary. In autumn it is normal for it to rain heavily, but the magnitude of the episodes that are taking place and their torrential nature are at a level rarely seen. These are the effects favored by the climate crisis and the warming of the sea. However, this Monday's downpours stood out because the forecasts did not indicate that it would rain so much.

"I am not in favor of recycling, because there are many chemical substances in plastics and many that we still do not know are there or how they act." This is how forcefully scientist Laura Monclús, from the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), expressed herself this Monday in Barcelona. This toxicology expert has stated that increasing the percentage of recycled plastic will not solve the plastic crisis, but rather what is needed is to rethink the "essentiality" of plastic products: "If there is any product that is essential to be made of plastic, which there are, it will be necessary to ensure that they are completely safe (for health), but the majority of the plastics we consume are not essential," warned Monclús, during a conference on the Global Plastics Treaty organized by the Waste Agency of Catalonia.

Sea level rise is one of the impacts of the climate crisis that are already irreversible, as the UN warns. As the oceans warm, water rises mainly due to a phenomenon of thermal expansion, and to this is added the water poured in by both melting terrestrial glaciers and the continental ice of the poles as it thaws. It is precisely this last cause, the melting of the polar ice caps, that has been accelerating the most in recent years. Now, a new study published in Scientific Data, from the Nature group, offers the most precise portrait obtained to date on ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

There is an invisible line connecting the holm oak forests of the Castanya valley, in Montseny, with the offices of Canberra and the UN climate summits. This line is the trajectory of Pep Canadell (Sabadell, 1961). Trained at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) under the tutelage of Jaume Terradas –a direct disciple of Ramon Margalef himself–, he has dedicated his life to building an international scientific alliance capable of putting indisputable figures to the CO₂ that we dump on Earth. After an extreme summer that has once again melted thermometers in Europe, the scientist speaks to ARA from Australia, via video call. Despite being a world authority on climate, he keeps the spirit of that field student intact: he speaks plainly, avoids arrogance, and never tires of reminding us that the Earth is not an inert machine, but a living organism that is beginning to show signs of exhaustion. He has just been recognized with the 22nd Ramon Margalef Award in Ecology 2026, which is awarded annually by the Government of Catalonia.

To find a wolf, you must learn to look at the landscape through the eyes of a wolf. Gabriel Lampreave knows this well. He has spent 25 years following the trail of this canid in Catalonia. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack: these elusive animals travel vast distances in a short time. “You have to learn to read the territory,” this rural agent explains with humility, in charge of coordinating the monitoring of the two large predators we have, the brown bear and the wolf.

Extreme temperatures have long since ceased to be an exception and have become a recurring threat to health. Now the arrival of a super-El Niño could exacerbate this trend and cause 451,000 additional heat-related deaths worldwide over the next six months, according to an estimate by the Climate Impact Lab, a research group linked to the University of Chicago.

The rise in temperatures in Catalonia has been unstoppable for some years, but there are areas where the effects of warming are especially significant. This is the case for the mid-altitudes of the Pyrenees. In this area located between 1,500 and 2,200 meters above sea level, the maximum temperature has risen by 1.8 ºC in just the last 24 years. A thermal increase that is even more notable regarding minimum temperatures, where the increase has been 2.1 ºC in the same period of time.

They were found completely sedated at Cairo airport on May 2nd. The three infants were traveling bundled up inside the suitcases of a passenger flying to India. When the Egyptian authorities intercepted him, they found, in addition to the little chimpanzees, ten bags full of rare reptiles.

The planet has been spending its freshwater reserves for a decade. This is warned by the report on the state of global water resources from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), published this Thursday. The study concludes that the storage of continental water – in groundwater, rivers, lakes, soil, vegetation, snow, and ice – has maintained a downward trend since the 2014-2016 period. And it is not just a question of drought: the water cycle is becoming increasingly irregular, with alternating periods of lack and excess.

Almost two years after the tragic DANA of 2024, the Generalitat Valenciana has once again been late, and last night it sent an ES-Alert when the rains that affected the province of Valencia had already been torrential for more than an hour. Specifically, at 10:08 p.m., it broadcast a message to all mobile phones in the area informing about the risk of flooding and asking to limit travel, in addition to moving to higher floors if an increase in water level was detected.

The effects of climate change are making extreme weather events more frequent and intense. In Catalonia, this autumn will be marked by extreme rainfall fueled by this summer's temperatures, which have left a thermal anomaly of four degrees above average in the sea water temperature. For this reason, the Civil Protection of the Generalitat has issued a warning about the risks that sudden and intense downpours can entail. The administration has called for caution and is also considering using ES-Alert messages when there are episodes of unforeseen torrential rain to warn of potential damage.

The world knew that the next El Niño would be powerful, but this Thursday, forecasts confirmed that this climatic phenomenon will be of great intensity and will have unpredictable consequences. The UN warns that the peak of this episode will be experienced at the end of 2026, but that it will extend until 2027, a year that could become the warmest recorded to date.

Drought is not just a problem at home: it is a phenomenon that has increased by 30% since 2000 worldwide. In fact, it is estimated that by 2050, three out of every four inhabitants of the planet will be affected by drought. Even so, the United States has blocked a global agreement against drought and has postponed international negotiations on this issue until 2028. All the world's governments gathered in Mongolia this August have not managed to sign a binding treaty in this regard, but they have announced that they will mobilize 1.3 billion dollars to restore land and combat desertification in 23 states. The protocol to finance these projects, however, was to be defined within this global agreement against drought, which has been left pending.