Britain’s flagship energy project, Hinkley Point C, is “hanging by a thread” as critics inside key funder EDF use the political turmoil from the Brexit vote to try to derail the already delayed £18bn scheme, the Guardian reports. Sources in Paris told the Guardian that the EDF board is in danger of fracturing further as former supporters of the project worry about Brexit. Detractors of the project say it is difficult to make a decision when it is “unclear who will be the future prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer and energy and climate change secretary”.

Shell’s chief executive Ben van Beurden has warned that Shell could “absolutely” cut more jobs on top of the 12,500 positions cut since last year. In an interview with the Telegraph, van Beurden confirmed Shell is considering selling out of its mature assets in the North Sea. “You cannot expect us to act against our economic interest” he told the Telegraph. However, Shell “will not leave the UK altogether”, van Beurden says.

A new study in the journal Science claims to have found the first firm signs that the thinning ozone layer over the Antarctic is starting to heal. It is more than 4km smaller in September last year than it was in 2000. “We can now be confident that the things we’ve done have put the planet on a path to heal”, says lead author Professor Susan Solomon of MIT. This provides evidence for the success of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, that committed the world to the rapid phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons. “Confirmation of success for one global treaty to keep pollutants out of the atmosphere will be useful ammunition in the current fight against climate change”, argues an accompanying comment piece in the Financial Times.

Bloggers last week caused a stir when they claimed that the Northern Hemisphere jet stream had crossed the equator and joined the southern one, calling it a “global climate emergency”. But scientists have dismissed these claims as unsupported and unscientific. Cliff Mass, professor of meteorology at the University of Washington, told the Independent: “This is total nonsense…flow often crosses the equator”.

Greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increase in the size and temperature of the ‘Indo-Pacific Warm Pool’, the largest area of warm water in the world that stretches 9,000 miles along the equator. Defined as an area where the temperature averages more than 28C, has increased in size by about a third in 60 years, and has experienced the “world’s highest rates of sea-level rise” in recent years, the Independent reports.

Volkswagen has rejected calls to compensate European customers in the same way as it is repaying American drivers for diesel emissions cheating, because the costs would “overwhelm” the German carmaking giant. The Times also has the story.

Apple, a strong advocate of action against climate change, is positioning itself for entry into the energy industry, as it recently filed for permission to sell electricity to individual consumers. The move “marks the beginning of a restructuring in the energy market that will reshape the sector across the world over the next decade”, Butler says.

With the successful Leave campaign led by several political figures opposed to tackling climate change, and the fact that none of the contenders to replace David Cameron are vociferous renewable energy advocates, Europe’s renewable energy sector faces great insecurity on energy policy, as well as other financial uncertainties. Pilita Clark takes a look at how the changing political landscape could affect the green energy industry.

Jacobs, the former climate advisor to Gordon Brown, says that Brexit is not a cause for despair for those wanting to see action on climate change: “It is true that on leaving the EU we will no longer be required to meet its renewable energy and energy efficiency targets. But we will still have to implement them, because they are part of our national climate and energy policies, aimed at meeting the three goals (decarbonisation, affordability and security of supply) set by the UK government, not the EU…The proper response to this is not to cry woe; it is to mobilise the public in support of environmental protection. This must now be the green movement’s overwhelming priority.”

In the wake of the Brexit vote, many scientists working in the UK voiced fear over funding, jobs and collaborations. And uncertainty over the break-up process is already causing problems, Daniel Cressey writes in Nature, with three “key recruitments” at King’s College London “now all at risk”. Meanwhile some scientists say that the fear that consortiums that might avoid the inclusion of UK partners into grant proposals, because of the uncertainty over future EU membership, is already happening.

Greenhouse gases from human activity are the dominant cause of the warming and expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) over the last 60 years, a new study suggests. The IPWP is a body of water that spans the western Pacific to eastern Indian Ocean around the equator; it holds the warmest sea surface waters in the world. Using simulations from multiple climate models, the researchers show that human-caused warming is the primary reason the IPWP has increased in intensity and size in recent decades. Natural fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean have also had a small role in the changes, the researchers note.

A new paper reviews the methods behind recent research into the impact of climate change on viticulture – the growing of grapevines for winemaking. Many potential impacts of climate change on yields and quality of vineyard harvests – particularly those associated with a change in climate variability or seasonal weather patterns – are often not included in these studies, the researchers say. Key characteristics of viticulture are often unaccounted for, the researchers also note, such as being able to cultivate vineyards in a microclimate even if the wider climate isn’t suitable.