During the last ice age, the Atlantic Ocean’s powerful current system remained active and continued to transport warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic despite extensive ice cover across much of the Northern Hemisphere, finds new research led by UCL scientists.

A new flagship UN report warns that the world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy,” where decades of overuse, pollution, and climate‑driven disruption have pushed many water systems beyond recovery. The analysis shows that long‑term withdrawals now exceed natural replenishment in numerous regions, resulting in depleted aquifers, shrinking lakes and wetlands, and rising land subsidence. The authors urge governments to shift from short‑term crisis response to “bankruptcy management” by preventing further irreversible damage, transforming water‑intensive sectors, and prioritizing just transitions for vulnerable communities.

A team of researchers led by the University of Plymouth have earned £3.7million from UK Research and Innovation to conduct an unprecedented assessment of the response and resilience of deep sea coral ecosystems. The five-year project will be delivered in collaboration with organisations across the Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius and will focus on coral reefs below the surface of the Indian Ocean, employing a number of methods to assess their vulnerability to climate change.

Hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks offer a cleaner alternative to diesel transport, but public support is essential for large-scale adoption. In a new study, researchers surveyed households in South Korea to measure willingness to pay for expanding hydrogen truck deployment. The results show strong public acceptance, with benefits exceeding carbon reduction costs, indicating the policy is socially profitable and supports long-term low-carbon transport transitions under national climate policy goals frameworks.

A decade-long study led by Penguin Watch¹, at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, has uncovered a record shift in the breeding season of Antarctic penguins, likely in response to climate change. These changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food and increase interspecies competition. The results have been published today (20 January - World Penguin Awareness Day) in the Journal of Animal Ecology.