West Sussex reports temperature of 35.8C, beating previous record from 1976; red weather alert extended to 72 of France’s 96 mainland departments

Grahame Madge, a Met Office spokesperson, said the agency is forecasting 39C as a headline maximum temperature on Thursday in the UK, most likely for somewhere in London or the south-east.

“It is possible we could see temperatures higher than the 39C if the final values are at the upper end of our narrow range,” he said, according to the Press Association.

Readers remember the Sherwood Forest tree that has failed to produce leaves for the first time in 1,000 years

Wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir had no idea what he had found until scientists started to get in touch

When wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of footage to YouTube, he thought little more about the small, pale cat seen digging a hollow in the sand in the remote dunes of south-west Libya.

The video, however, posted in 2017, turned out to be the first material evidence that the sand cat (Felis margarita), the world’s only felid adapted to true desert conditions, existed in the country.

Analysis shows cars in Europe have grown longer, taller and wider every year since 2000

Cars have grown 1.2cm longer, 0.5cm taller and 0.5cm wider each year on average since 2000, analysis of new vehicles sold in Europe has found, in what green groups call “relentless carspreading”.

The increase in size, which leaves people more likely to be killed in a crash and increases emissions that hurt lungs and heat the planet, has progressed at a roughly steady rate for two and half decades even as family sizes have fallen, the campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E) found.

Following a devastating heatwave in 2003 that killed 15,000, France has adopted four alert levels to help people cope with extreme temperatures

• Helen Massy-Beresford is a British journalist and editor who lives in Paris

Over the weekend, as evening fell on the hilly (and, crucially, shady) Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, one of Paris’s most popular green spaces, the joyfully chaotic Fête de la musique – a summer solstice celebration of music in all its forms – got under way, with competing DJs starting their sets in nearby cafes.

It was stiflingly hot and picnickers were cooling down with water, juice or alcohol-free beer – or at least, they should have been. The Paris authorities banned the consumption of alcohol in public spaces (apart from cafe terraces) during the festival, just one of the measures they can put in place to keep citizens safe once the city reaches vigilance rouge canicule – red heatwave alert.

Helen Massy-Beresford is a British journalist and editor who lives in Paris

Researchers assessed likelihood gas was produced during creation of Alps, Pyrenees and Baetic mountains

Hydrogen gas is anticipated to play a central role in phasing out fossil fuels, particularly in industries that are proving more challenging to decarbonise, such as chemical production, shipping and steelmaking. But producing hydrogen synthetically is energy intensive and costly. In order for the hydrogen economy to take off, we need to find reliable natural sources of this gas. Could it be hidden in the mountains?

Researchers used plate tectonic simulations to investigate the Pyrenees, Alps and Baetic mountain ranges to assess if their mountain-building processes were likely to have resulted in hydrogen being produced and stored. Their findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, showed that the Alps and Pyrenees could be strong natural hydrogen exploration sites.

Photographer Shane Hynan explores the tension between the central role peat bogs play in Irish life and their wider environmental impact

“You can read Ireland’s history in the boglands. They hold millennia in their layers,” says photographer Shane Hynan of his project, Beofhód (meaning Beneath in English).

The boglands, known as portachs in Irish, cover roughly 1.2m to 1.5m hectares or about 14% to 17% of the country’s total land area. The raised bogs of the Irish Midlands are made of peat that forms at a rate of 1mm a year (0.04in) in low-lying, poorly drained basins or former lakes. As the historical geographer Kevin Whelan observes in the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, “the bog has been etched as deeply into the human as into the physical record in Ireland – to an extent unrivalled elsewhere.”

Eddie and Con footing turf for domestic use, Knockirr Bog, County Kildare, 2022.

Matriarchal groups in east and west exhibit distinct click patterns, used to form social structures

From “Howdy” to “G’day”, English – like other languages – is rich in dialects. Now researchers have found sperm whales on different sides of the Mediterranean show similar variations in their vocalisations.

Sperm whales communicate vocally using sequences of short clicks called codas. However, the rhythmic pattern of these clicks, known as the dialect, can differ between different matriarchal groups.

Climate Change Committee chair Nigel Topping says U-turns damage investor confidence and disrupt businesses

Weakening the UK’s net zero policy would disrupt business and damage the economy, the UK’s chief climate adviser has warned.

Nigel Topping, chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said: “The U-turns are really damaging to inward investor confidence. If we really want to grow the economy, then investing and getting good at building stuff is essential.”

UK regulator has increased its scrutiny of fashion retailers over potentially misleading environmental statements

Ads for Calvin Klein, Adidas and Uniqlo promoting “recycled” clothing and shoes have been banned by the UK watchdog after the advertisers were unable to prove their green claims.

Each of the fashion companies ran paid-for Google ads, with Adidas promoting “recycled running shoes”, Calvin Klein “recycled” tops for women, and Uniqlo advertised fleece coats and jackets made from “recycled materials”.

Record-breaking temperatures should focus minds on the UK’s lack of preparedness for the climate dangers ahead

As western Europe bakes under what scientists describe as a heat dome, or “atmospheric lid”, reports of dozens of drownings, and heat-linked deaths of children and elderly people in France, are a stark reminder of the threat to life from extreme heat – and the fact that some people face higher risks than others. The red alert covering most of southern England and Wales for Wednesday and Thursday is only the second such warning to be issued.

With the UK’s June record of 35.6C expected to be broken, hundreds of schools are closed. Network Rail has advised against non-essential travel. Temperatures in France and Spain are expected to be even higher, before the heat moves eastwards. But since the UK is less used to intense heat than its Mediterranean neighbours, it faces distinct challenges.

Europe is dealing with a debilitating heatwave, with schools closed, trains cancelled and France holding an emergency meeting after heat-related deaths.

António Guterres, the UN chief, is urging the world to act on fossil fuels as the continent braces for record-breaking heat.

Lucy Hough speaks to Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan

As hot weather becomes more common, companies and homeowners are coming up with innovative ways to keep properties cool

When graphic designer Marc Alabaster had a new set of glass doors installed at his West Sussex home eight years ago, he soon realised how they magnified the heat of the afternoon sun.

“The kitchen was 40-plus degrees,” he said. Then he went on holiday to Spain and saw an apartment building wrapped in louvre-like rows of angled fins or blades that shaded the external walls against the sun.

The administration interrupted data streams that are key to forecasting. These systems should not be vulnerable to political whims

In 1877, North Americans experienced an unusually mild winter – it was known as the “year without a winter”. It coincided with one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded. Scientists suspect the same El Niño was a major factor in one of the worst environmental disasters in history. As much of the world was enveloped in drought, harvests collapsed in India, China, parts of Africa, and Brazil. The drought, compounded by colonial and other socioeconomic policies, led to the “Great Famine”, which killed between 30 and 60 million people, about 3% of the world’s population at the time.

What distinguishes us from the victims of 1877 is not luck but data. When I served as deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, I saw modern ocean monitoring and forecasting provide the advance warnings the Victorians lacked. This lead time saves thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Today, we can anticipate climate shocks before they arrive.

Terry Garcia is a former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The ‘heat dome’ settling over western Europe could bring temperatures of up to 40C to some parts of England and Wales in the middle part of this week

We’ve shown that rapid, measurable progress is achievable in our cities. Here’s how that can now be replicated worldwide

• Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City

Some public health threats make global headlines: Covid-19. Ebola. Famine. When these disasters hit, photographs and videos of people suffering and dying spur countries to respond, international bodies to cooperate and individuals to donate supplies and money. Yet one of the world’s deadliest threats gets almost no attention at all, because it is largely invisible to the public and mostly absent from media coverage: air pollution.

Every day, billions of people are inhaling air that is shortening their lives and making them sicker with every breath. Every year, air pollution kills more than 8 million people worldwide. That’s more deaths than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. It hides in plain sight and strikes without mercy, leading to heart and lung disease, cancers and other deadly conditions.

Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City

A hundred incredible images have been shortlisted by the South Australian Museum as part of this year’s Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition. In its 23rd year, the competition attracted 2,129 entries from 501 photographers in 17 countries. Entries were accepted covering content from across the ANZANG bioregion – Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea

The island’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threat

The higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spring from the lower tree canopy. Higher still, dense lichen spread. Up in cloud-drenched branches, a rare, hardy orchid, Bulbophyllum ciliisepalum, can be spotted.

“In one tree, every species has their preferred location,” says Dr Rebecca Hsu, assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. “Every metre the temperature, the wind, the sun, the light is different.”

The reconstruction of the vaquita, whose numbers barely reach double figures in the wild, is designed to help research and conservation efforts

Scientists have created a digital reconstruction of the world’s most endangered marine mammal, preserving its anatomy in three dimensions to aid research and conservation efforts as the species teeters on the brink of extinction.

The project digitised the skeleton of a female vaquita, a small porpoise found only in Mexico’s northern Gulf of California, using a combination of medical imaging, ultra-high-resolution micro CT scans and photography.

More than half of Ayetoro – a Christian utopia founded in the 1940s – has been lost to the ocean, and its remaining people are running out of options

In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.

By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt

Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.

Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.

Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library

The short-tailed roundleaf bat was feared extinct until scientist Iroro Tanshi found one in Afi sanctuary in Nigeria, and set out to protect the only confirmed roosting colony

Just after sunrise, a cacophony of whoops and chatter can be heard over the verdant forests of the Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary. Nestled within the Cross River rainforest in south-east Nigeria, and spanning an area about the size of central Paris, the steep sanctuary is a haven for endangered gorillas, drill monkeys, the grey-necked rockfowl – and the short-tailed roundleaf bat.

The Nigerian biologist Iroro Tanshi remembers the moment she first spotted the endangered bat in 2016, during a field expedition for her PhD research. “We were trapping near a roost that night, so we caught a lot of bats,” says Tanshi. But, she adds: “This looked very, very different. Big-eared.” She promptly turned to her identification guide, which revealed that the tiny furry creature she was holding between her fingers was Hipposideros curtus, better known as the short-tailed roundleaf bat, last recorded in the wild in the 1970s.

Amid fears the wreck will be more accessible to explorers – and new species – as the climate warms, conservationists want to create the region’s first underwater protected area

The harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact.

Conservationists say cherished creatures such as whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers by fishing tackle

Thousands of Britain’s most charismatic and protected marine wildlife, including whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals and seabirds are being killed as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to the first-ever analysis of bycatch data.

The analysis, by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of voluntary conservation groups, reveals the devastating toll bycatch, the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, is having on marine species.

The species is abundant within the protected archipelago but when they migrate outside the marine reserve to give birth they run the gauntlet of industrial fishing

The unmistakable fluted T-shape of a scalloped hammerhead shark slides by, followed by a diver holding his breath and a metal spear like an extra-long snooker cue. The spear hits the fish behind its dorsal fin and the 2-metre shark darts away, disgruntled but otherwise unharmed.

Carlos Robalino, a marine biologist from the Galápagos Islands, trained as a shark researcher in Mexico but is now back home and working as a junior researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation. When we meet in March, he is one of the divers on the foundation’s research expedition to Darwin and Wolf, the most northerly islands in the Galápagos marine reserve.