Geography resources for teachers

Fires, floods, and typhoons - the impact of El Niño is already having a significant impact on global weather patterns.

Countries including Indonesia, India and the United States have been experiencing droughts, floods and heatwaves in line with projections about how extreme weather events will be supercharged by the phenomenon.

The World Meteorological Agency says the record-breaking El Niño will strengthen further and persist until at least 2027.

A £3.6bn proposal to stop sewage being discharged into Windermere, England's largest lake, has been unveiled.

The plans, which are backed by the local water company United Utilities and clean water campaigners, would see a tunnel up to 12 miles (19km) long built to transport sewage away from the lake.

At the moment both raw sewage and treated effluent are discharged into Windermere and campaigners say that is why parts of the lake have been turning green each summer, so-called algal blooming.

It is now up to the government to decide if the plan can be further developed, and if the £3.6bn price-tag is acceptable.

Students and activists protested across Indonesia over rising living costs, economic concerns and forest fires linked to land clearing for palm oil plantations.

Floods were triggered by torrential rains in the Valencia and Alicante provinces, killing at least two people. In August, a flood and landslide caused by torrential rain killed two in Northwestern Spain.

Extreme rainfall is becoming more common and more intense across Europe due to climate change accelerated by burning fossil fuels.

As forest fires and toxic haze in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan continue to worsen, critics accuse authorities of failing to take adequate action to contain the crisis.

Farmland in Iceland is limited, but the country has an abundance of heat, water and clean electricity.

Tech Now's Adrienne Murray finds out how innovations in food production are using this unique location to their advantage, including an underground strawberry farm, and an aquaculture facility cultivating microalgae.

You’ve probably heard about fossil fuels before – the good, the bad, and the super, super ugly. But what you might not know is that fossil fuels only exist because of the power of the Earth. And that same power can also provide us with a different type of energy that might be key to a more sustainable future. In this episode, we’ll dig deep and talk about fossil fuels and geothermal energy.

Istanbul and several Turkish provinces have been hit by the heaviest rainfall in 80 years, triggering severe flooding that has destroyed businesses, damaged buildings and swept vehicles through residential neighbourhoods.

In Istanbul's Ayazaga neighbourhood, residents and business owners are struggling to recover as floodwaters recede, revealing extensive damage. Shopkeeper Ali Khan describes the frustration of waiting for assistance, while business owner Fahrettin Celik says his showroom has been completely destroyed.

Turkish authorities have deployed more than 50,000 personnel to support disaster recovery, while schools have been cancelled in affected areas.

These villagers in India say they would rather die than leave their homes as they protest a multi-billion dollar government project to join up rivers. Residents say rising waters have flooded their village and the compensation they received hasn’t covered their losses.

AI can deliver answers in seconds, but powering it requires vast data centres, advanced chips, and huge amounts of electricity and water. As investment surges, questions grow over AI’s resource demands and environmental costs.

El Nino will intensify even more before peaking in December, the United Nations said Thursday, warning it could be among the strongest witnessed since at least 1950. The naturally occurring weather phenomenon is set to bring higher temperatures to much of the planet, the UN's weather and climate agency said, with its impact compounding the effects of man-made climate change.

‘We are not asking for pity, we are asking for help.’

A 13-year-old girl has called on world leaders to act on climate change and save her country, Tuvalu. Melelusi Sokotia made the plea to leaders at a summit ahead of the UN’s COP31 climate forum in Turkiye.

The Cairngorms National Park is home to a quarter of the UK’s rare and endangered species.

But in the summer of 2026 wildfire tore through 33 square kilometres of this landscape. Beneath the forest floor, fires are still burning.

Tech Now's Shiona McCallum spent time with the team there to see how cutting-edge tech is being used to find hidden hotspots, monitor damage and help vulnerable landscapes recover.

Toxic smoke haze is blanketing Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, after weeks of fires in Indonesia. In central Chile, flash flooding has trapped people on their roofs, and already Australia’s spring is unusually hot and dry. Scientists have confirmed it’s an El Niño year, and it’s expected to be one of the worst on record, tipping the odds for these extreme weather events.

But we haven’t always had this warning — in 1982 there was a whole heap of apocalyptic weather, and no unifying theory to bring it all together. That “super El Niño” would totally change how we think about forecasting the weather. Now climate change threatens to send us back to the 1980s.

Earthquakes can happen anywhere on Earth, at any time—and unfortunately, we have no way of predicting exactly when or where. But by studying and tracking seismic data, scientists continue to refine forecasts, better assess the risks, and even research how to prevent and protect us from the most damaging shocks.

Sudan's farmers are struggling with unusually low Nile River water levels during the rainy season, as changing climate conditions and ongoing conflict put further pressure on food production.

In Khartoum, farmers Idris Bashir and Eltayeb Mohammed describe the growing physical and financial burden of irrigating their crops as the river recedes. Without the natural flooding that helps replenish farmland, they face higher costs for water, fertilisers and pesticides.

The United Nations warns that environmental pressures are worsening food insecurity for millions of people already affected by Sudan's war between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

An orange haze is blanketing Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan as wildfires rage across the province. The smog has drifted throughout the region, obscuring Singapore’s skyline and shutting down schools in Malaysia.

Hurricane Simon is bearing down on Mexico's Pacific coast, bringing torrential rain and sustained winds of up to 240 kilometres per hour.

Hurricane Simon is expected to become ‌a major hurricane on Sunday near the west-central coast of Mexico and move very close to the coast on Monday, the US National Hurricane Center said.

A 10,000-year-old glacier in Slovenia is possibly days away from melting entirely.

The Triglav Glacier, a once-popular skiing spot high in the Alps near Slovenia's border with both Austria and Italy, has been monitored by scientists since 1946, when it covered 34 acres.

But years of climate change and rising temperatures, coupled with below-average snowfall last winter and premature melting this spring, have brought one of Slovenia's last glaciers to the precipice of extinction.

Melting glaciers pose real concerns for European nations. In Switzerland, over the past five years alone, glaciers have lost nearly 20% of their ice, threatening the supply of water and hydroelectric power.

In the heart of the Egyptian capital Cairo, within the labyrinthine streets of the Manshiyet Nasser district, nearly 120,000 residents process a third of the megacity's waste every day. Long marginalised, these informal recycling specialists are now undergoing a dramatic transformation due to geopolitical tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, through which polyethylene from the Gulf usually passes.