I’m a science journalist and researcher at The Watchers, contributing to the Epicenter edition, where I cover peer-reviewed scientific research and emerging discoveries across Earth and space sciences. With a background in astronomy and a passion for environmental science, I’ve worked in shark and coral conservation in Fiji, conducting reef and shark-behavior research, contributing to mangrove restoration, and earning PADI Open Water and Coral Reef Certifications. I bring a blend of scientific rigor and storytelling to illuminate the discoveries shaping our planet and beyond.
Uganda launched emergency food relief operations on July 9, 2026, after the government reported 16 deaths from causes associated with food shortages in the drought-hit Karamoja sub-region, where prolonged dry conditions have caused widespread crop failures and prompted additional emergency assistance for the worst-affected districts.
El Niño has become established across the tropical Pacific, while seasonal forecast models favor the development of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) during the Southern Hemisphere winter and spring, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). If both climate drivers persist, they would increase the probability of warmer and drier conditions across much of Australia during the second half of 2026.
A prolonged heatwave continued across France on Monday, July 13, with 37 departments under red heatwave vigilance and another 39 under orange vigilance. Exceptionally warm nights, increasingly dry soils and a nationwide wildfire danger are expected to persist as the highest temperatures shift toward central and eastern parts of the country.
New observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, released on July 6, 2026, to mark the observatory’s fourth year of science operations, have revealed the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A in remarkable infrared detail, exposing dust structures, hidden stellar populations, and activity surrounding its central supermassive black hole. Combined with findings from a preprint published on arXiv on July 6, 2026, and a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on July 18, 2025, the observations provide one of the clearest views yet of how an ancient galactic merger continues to shape star formation and the galaxy’s energetic nucleus billions of years later.
Western Europe recorded its warmest June on record in 2026, with an average temperature of 20.74°C (69.3°F), 3.06°C (5.51°F) above the 1991–2020 average, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The record-breaking month coincided with widespread heatwaves across western and central Europe that set national and local temperature records, while June ranked as the second-warmest globally in the ERA5 dataset.
A landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rainfall struck the under-construction Anakkampoyil–Kalladi–Meppadi tunnel road project near Kalladi in Kerala’s Wayanad district at about 11:00 LT on July 7, 2026, killing three migrant workers, injuring seven others and leaving five people missing, according to Kerala authorities. Rescue operations continued on July 8 despite persistent rainfall that hampered access to the site.
NASA announced on July 7, 2026, that its New Horizons spacecraft has resumed active operations after completing its longest hibernation period to date. The spacecraft emerged from a 321-day hibernation in good health, allowing mission controllers to begin retrieving spacecraft telemetry and science data gathered while it continued its journey through the Kuiper Belt, approximately 9.5 billion km (5.9 billion miles) from Earth.
A study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on July 6, 2026, reports that the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope has discovered 31 quasars dating to the Universe’s first billion years. The discoveries include the two most distant quasars ever observed and provide astronomers with their first large sample of these rare objects from the epoch of reionisation, offering new insight into how the earliest supermassive black holes and galaxies formed.
A rare tornado struck the urban area of Huanggang, Hubei Province, between 20:10–20:30 LT on July 6, 2026, causing widespread destruction across residential neighborhoods, industrial facilities, and logistics parks. Huanggang’s on-site command headquarters said the tornado produced winds exceeding Force 15 on the Chinese wind scale during what it described as a historically rare event for the city. Still preliminary numbers mention up to 12 fatalities and hundreds injured.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS formed in an exceptionally cold, relatively metal-poor stellar nursery as long as 10 to 12 billion years ago, according to observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and a study published in Nature on June 22, 2026. Measurements of unusually high deuterium in water and exceptionally low abundances of carbon-13 compared to carbon-12 distinguish the object from every comet measured in the Solar System, providing a rare glimpse into the chemistry of one of the Galaxy’s earliest planetary systems.
