This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Frazer Bird and William Gosling of The Open University explain why tiny midges are a powerful tool for telling us about past climate change, and how they can help us predict the future.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Gerd Masselink and Paul Russell of Plymouth University talk about the work they're doing to assess the impacts of some of the worst winter storms on record on the communities and coastlines of southwest England.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Steve Ormerod of Cardiff University and John Clark of the RSPB explain why toxic chemicals banned long ago are still causing problems for Eurasian dippers and their chicks.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ranjeet Sokhi and Kevin Douglas of the University of Hertfordshire explain why scientists are calling for greater controls on so-called non-exhaust emissions to combat Britain's air pollution problem.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Michelle Cain of the University of Cambridge and Stéphane Bauguitte of the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements explain how and why they're measuring methane in the atmosphere above the Arctic -- a region that's warming twice as fast as anywhere else on our planet.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Roland Leigh and Joshua Vande Hey of the University of Leicester describe the work they're doing with Leicester City Council to cut light pollution and help the council save electricity.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tony Cooper and Vanessa Banks of NERC's British Geological Survey give us a unique insight into how sinkholes form and explain why the worst of them may be still to come.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Mike Begon, Andy Fenton and Federico Costa of the University of Liverpool describe the work they're doing to understand how infections like Weil's Disease and bubonic plague move from rodents to people.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Paul Whitehead of the University of Oxford and Mark Barnett of the Environment Agency explain why the UK's River Thames will fail to meet new pollution standards unless farmers and water companies take radical action.

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Nancy Harrison of Anglia Ruskin University and Dave Leech of the British Trust for Ornithology talk about why city birds outperformed their country counterparts after the UK's cold, harsh 2012 spring.