Kate Ravilious
Kate Ravilious is a freelance science journalist who specialises in explaining how Earth, climate and weather shape everyday life and environmental change. Her coverage stands out for weaving rigorous earth science and meteorology into compact stories that show what shifting climate and geological processes mean in practice.
Weatherwatch: cities, storms and a warming climate
At the Guardian, Ravilious is a core voice behind the Weatherwatch column, using short, research-led pieces to show how a warming climate is reshaping familiar weather patterns. Her Weatherwatch articles range from analysing how rainclouds travel farther in a warmer world to asking whether 2024 could be the first full year to breach 1.5C of global heating. She consistently connects climate signals to everyday experience, writing on flash droughts becoming increasingly common, how California’s extreme weather is being driven by large-scale atmospheric changes, and what El Niño means for thunderstorms as seen through long-running data from Shetland.
Ravilious often focuses on the way built environments and infrastructure interact with weather, turning abstract climate trends into tangible urban and transport issues. Recent Weatherwatch pieces examine how buildings, warehouses and shopping centres slow down and redirect wind, how cities modify rainfall patterns, and how climate change is likely to deepen pothole problems as freeze–thaw cycles intensify. She also explores how cities can help trees survive extreme heat and why bees need well-designed, insulated homes, linking ecological detail with broader climate pressures.
The tone is direct and explanatory: each column isolates a specific phenomenon, grounds it in current research, and then shows the practical consequences for people, streets and ecosystems.
Terrawatch: geology behind the news
Alongside Weatherwatch, Ravilious writes Terrawatch, a Guardian column that uses earth science to explain the deeper processes behind environmental and news stories. Terrawatch pieces cover topics such as deep mantle movements that help explain Earth’s mysterious surface bulges, the birth of the North Atlantic Ocean and its role in rapid global warming 55m years ago, and the conditions under which animal fossils can form and be preserved. She uses case studies from current research to open up long timescales and large spatial scales, showing how plate tectonics, mantle dynamics and sedimentary processes feed into climate and landscape change.
Her Terrawatch reporting regularly focuses on natural hazards and their interaction with human infrastructure.
Recent articles include work on scientists linking a 2019 Iranian landslide to the building of a dam, aftershocks that can occur centuries after an original earthquake, and greener trees that can offer early warning of volcanic awakening. She writes about Iceland’s Reykjanes fires and how historical eruptions suggest they may burn for decades, and about warming climates turning rivers rusty with toxic metals as geochemical conditions shift. Other pieces examine estuaries as “nurseries of the sea” that are disappearing fast, and studies identifying where wind is most reliable for generating power, tying together geomorphology, ecology and energy systems.
The column’s purpose, as described by the Guardian, is to convey the geology behind a news story or discovery, and Ravilious’ work keeps that mission tightly focused.
Broad science reporting and long tenure at the Guardian
Ravilious has a long history of science writing at the Guardian that extends well beyond climate and earth sciences. Earlier in her career she contributed a series called “The science behind the news”, tackling topics such as how burning wood can help reduce global warming, whether a 30mph speed limit would save lives, how much a coma patient can understand, and the implications of private companies owning human gene patents. She also wrote on subjects ranging from bee smell memory and shark migration to Nobel physics prizes and sleep research, showing an ability to move across disciplines while maintaining clear, accessible explanations.
That breadth is still visible in occasional pieces that touch archaeology, fossils and broader scientific discoveries within her current environmental focus.
Her Guardian work has also included more feature-style pieces and Q&As that draw together expert voices and public concerns. Past articles asked how governments, scientists and individuals can “save the Earth”, and explored what makes scientists laugh, indicating an interest in the culture and practice of science as well as the data itself. Even in these more thematic pieces, she keeps a strong emphasis on concrete findings and mechanisms, avoiding opinion-led framing in favour of summarising evidence and expert insight.
Work across outlets and recurring themes
Beyond the Guardian, Ravilious writes science news and features for a range of outlets, including New Scientist, Nature, Archaeology, Physics World and Cosmos. Her work is described as focusing on earth sciences, climate, environment and archaeology, with a particular interest in new discoveries and the processes behind them. Projects highlighted by scientific organisations include reporting on Kathmandu’s earthquake risk for Cosmos and blog series for the European Geosciences Union on topics such as sniffing out signs of an earthquake and community roles in environmental research.
Other coverage examines how satellites burning up in Earth’s atmosphere could affect climate change and ozone depletion, reflecting her sustained focus on atmospheric chemistry, orbital debris and their environmental implications.
Across outlets, the through-line is consistent: Ravilious takes a specific scientific study or emerging risk and translates it into clear language that shows why it matters for climate, hazards and landscapes.
She returns repeatedly to themes of extreme weather, rainfall, drought, urban microclimates, volcanoes, earthquakes and long-term climate records, using short formats to distil complex research into practical, memorable insights. That combination of environmental focus, earth science literacy and disciplined, explanatory prose distinguishes her from more general environment reporters and makes her coverage particularly relevant to stories grounded in data, geoscience and the physical climate system.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.