2025’s best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs

Mount Etna in Sicily is the world’s most active stratovolcano, which is a high, conical volcano created by repeated eruptions of viscous lava. In February, it erupted with ash clouds and a lava flow that travelled 3 kilometres, forcing a local airport to partially close. One of the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites captured this image of the lava flow on 12 February.

A giant iceberg drifted into the harbour in Innaarsuit in western Greenland in July, looming over the village of 180 for more than a week. Authorities warned people to stay away in case it collapsed and crushed something or generated a destructive wave. This is the second time in less than a decade that a massive iceberg has threatened the town. As Greenland melts, more icebergs are calving off its glaciers.

Hurricane Melissa tied with the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as the strongest storm to ever make landfall around the Atlantic Ocean. On 28 October, it pummelled Jamaica with winds of nearly 300 kilometres per hour and 76 centimetres of rain, destroying structures including these buildings in Black River. Early analysis suggested climate change intensified Melissa’s winds by about 16 kilometres per hour. This year saw three category 5 hurricanes for only the second time on record.

The Qiantang river in China is home to the world’s largest tidal bore, a phenomenon where the rising tide enters a shallow river, generating a wave up to 9 metres high that can move upriver at speeds approaching 40 kilometres per hour. Locals have nicknamed the tidal bore the “silver dragon”, and surfers come to ride it for dozens of kilometres. Here, people watch the tidal bore in Jiaxing in October.

On 29 May, the Birch glacier in the Swiss Alps collapsed under the weight of 9 million tonnes of fallen rock that had gradually accumulated from the mountain above. The landslide buried most of the 800-year-old village of Blatten with an impact equivalent to a magnitude 3.1 earthquake, damming the Lonza river. The village had been evacuated, and only one person died. Scientists blamed the falling rocks on the thaw of permafrost, permanently frozen ground that holds the mountains together. At current rates of carbon dioxide emissions, 90 per cent of glaciers in the Alps could disappear by 2100.

In January, wildfires roared down from the forested hills into northern Los Angeles and annihilated entire neighbourhoods like this one in the Pacific Palisades. Potentially the costliest natural disaster in US history, the fires killed 31 people, razed 16,000 structures and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. Some have blamed California’s home insurance regulations for encouraging risky construction near woodlands. But global warming has also extended the fire season and made hot, dry and windy conditions more likely.