Discover this week's top nature and climate stories

• This round-up contains the key nature and climate news from the past week.
• Top nature and climate news: Repeat of UK’s ‘exceptional’ summer heat increasingly likely; Global warming ‘increasing US sugar consumption’; EU countries still discussing crucial climate targets.

The UK’s 2025 summer was its hottest ever and people in the country should expect more like it in the future, according to analysis from the country’s national meteorological service.

Answering the question “how truly exceptional was 2025?”, the Met Office says that in a climate without human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, a summer like 2025 would be a roughly one-in-340-year event in the UK.

In the current climate, such a summer is approximately 70 times more likely due to human activity – a one-in-five-year event, it says.

“This means that, while summer 2025 is exceptional by historical standards, similar scenarios might be much more common in the near future,” it says.

Globally, annual maximum daily temperatures are breaking records, too – the ten highest of the past 50 years have all occurred since 2015, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

As the climate crisis drives hotter temperatures, people in the US are consuming more sugar, according to new research.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change links sugar consumption, largely in the form of sweetened drinks and frozen desserts, to temperature rises – when temperatures are between 12°C and 30°C, the amount of sugar the average American consumes rises by about 0.7 grams per degree Celsius. That means at 30°C, the amount of added sugar for the average person in the US is more than 15 grams, the report says.

The researchers say their findings highlight the need to explore dietary adaptation to climate change, and project that by 2095 Americans may consume nearly 3g more added sugar daily.

European Union countries are still wrangling over crucial climate targets ahead of the COP30 United Nations Climate Change Conference, according to the Guardian. With weeks to go until the deadline for Nationally Determined Contributions, key member states “remain at loggerheads over targets on greenhouse gas emissions”, it says.

Rising ocean temperatures could reduce the productivity of Prochlorococcus, a key microbe responsible for generating about a fifth of the sea’s oxygen, according to a report published in Nature Microbiology. This could cause “untold changes” to marine ecosystems, the researchers say.

Leaders meeting at the Africa Climate Summit this week are calling for an increase in support from rich countries for the continent’s green economy. “Africa is ready to be part of [the global fight to stave off climate breakdown] provided we are supported with finance, technology and capacity-building,” Tanzania’s climate envoy Richard Muyungi said in a Guardian report.

The climate crisis is also expected to be a key topic of discussion as Pacific Island leaders meet at their annual summit in the Solomon Islands.

The hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the recent Iberian wildfires – the worst in Spain for three decades – are 40 times more likely due to the climate crisis, according to a new report. Forest fires hit more than 1 million hectares of land in the EU this summer, with events in Spain and Portugal making up about two-thirds of that total.

With the Second Africa Climate Summit underway, the continent has the opportunity to showcase practical approaches that put women and vulnerable communities at the heart of climate solutions. Read more in this article.

Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, enhances biodiversity and boosts farmer income in the long term, helping to reverse the damage caused by intensive farming. This article looks at why the global food industry should embrace the practice today.

This year, Japan saw its third-hottest July on record after the previous two record-breaking years. Policymakers and employers are moving to combat the risks of extreme heat in order to protect workers and business operations.