news 2026

When Philip Minderhoud travelled through Vietnam in 2015, he sensed that something was not quite right. Minderhoud was working on his PhD research on land subsidence in the Mekong Delta, one of the largest deltas in the world. He had brought along a series of maps indicating how high the land was supposed to be elevated: one and a half metres above sea level, and in some places even two metres, according to the maps.

Northern wildfires, such as the record-breaking 2023 and 2025 fires in Canada, have long-lasting effects on the climate, according to new research from, among others, earth system scientists Max van Gerrevink, Sander Veraverbeke and Nick Schutgens. The summer of 2025 marked the second largest fire season on record in Canada, after the recent record of 2023.