Plants in Berlin enjoyed unusually good natural watering this past summer. In average years, though, flowers, bushes, and trees are already feeling the effects of climate change. The climate is warming, and the vegetation is growing thirstier. It needs more water, or it gradually dries out.

Sweetly sings the nightingale...

In late spring, when a male nightingale starts looking for a mate, his voice is the only thing that matters. Males compete for the females’ favor in the dark of night. But the singing competition that erupts among multiple males sounds less like a duel than like a well-rehearsed duet.

Satellite images only provide a rough impression of the hurricane’s scale: They show a white spiral, incessantly spinning around and inexorably approaching the Caribbean islands unlucky enough to lie in its path – Barbuda, Haiti, and Cuba, for example – before making landfall on the American mainland in Florida.