If anything could get people in Britain to stop talking about the weather for a bit, the coronavirus pandemic is surely it. But while attention has been focused on the health crisis, the unseasonal warmth and heavy rain of the last few months has put many species in a tailspin.

This year saw the hottest ever January recorded on Earth. For many plants and animals in the northern hemisphere, it will have felt as if there had been no winter at all. But this is “the winter that climate change science has long been predicting”, according to Paul Ashton, head of biology at Edge Hill University. The unusually high temperatures will have benefited some organisms – autumn flowering plants like common ragwort could have survived a frostless few months, while badgers and blackbirds will no doubt have gorged on the surplus earthworms that multiplied while the soil stayed wet and warm. For most species though, the careful adaptations they’ve evolved to survive the cold will now place them at odds with the rapidly changing world around them. Small mammals have emerged weeks earlier than usual, often to a landscape where their natural prey are absent. Some plants that relied on low temperatures as a cue to start germinating will lie beneath the soil in stasis while a new season begins without them.

Elsewhere, coronavirus has disrupted the plans of NASA scientists, as the long-awaited ExoMars2020 mission to the red planet has been postponed. We’ll be bringing you everything you need to know about the pandemic as it unfolds, straight from trusted academic sources. You can stay up to date with all of our coronavirus coverage, and don’t forget to look out for our latest update from across The Conversation network later today.

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