THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. When summer starts with a stifling heat wave, as many places are seeing in 2024, it can pose risks for just about anyone who spends time outside, whether they’re runners, people who walk or cycle to work, outdoor …
Read More »Insurance Rates Are Soaring for US Homeowners in Climate Danger Zones
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. For most of his life, Cory Infinger has lived down a hill and along a bend in the Little Wekiva River, a gentle stream meandering northwest of Orlando. During Hurricane Ian, in September 2022, …
Read More »Climate Change Is Bad for Your Health, Wherever You Are
Extreme heat kills roughly half a million people worldwide each year, but at the current rate of global warming it could be close to five times as deadly by 2050. Then there are the indirect health risks of climate change: Chaotic weather and higher temperatures generate deadly natural disasters, bring …
Read More »Emergency Planners Are Having a Moment
Lucy Easthope is a professional emergency planner. She helps governments and businesses prepare for the worst. In the age of the permacrisis, it’s a growing profession. “We’re having a little bit of a—I don’t know if you can call it a renaissance—maybe just a ‘naissance,’” says Easthope, a professor in …
Read More »Who Tests If Heat-Proof Clothing Actually Works? These Poor Sweating Mannequins
Meet ANDI, the world’s sweatiest mannequin. Although he might look like a shop-floor stalwart from a distance, a closer glance reveals bundles of cabling and pipework concealed beneath his shell. He’s wired up with sensors, plumbed into a liquid supply, and dotted with up to 150 individual pores that open …
Read More »How Your Body Adapts to Extreme Cold
A bitter winter storm is sweeping across the north-east of North America this weekend, and is expected to bring significant snow to New York City for the first time in two years. Low temperatures around freezing are expected to last into next week. If this is making you miserable, it’s …
Read More »Yes, the Climate Crisis Is Now ‘Gobsmacking.’ But So Is Progress
Scientists are running low on words to adequately describe the world’s climate chaos. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could already say earlier this month that there was more than a 99 percent chance that 2023 was the hottest year on record. That followed September’s sky-high temperatures—an average of 0.5 …
Read More »Snow Sports Are Getting More Dangerous
Many people meet Dale Atkins for the first time on their worst days—ice climbers who are stranded and injured, skiers that have been swallowed by an avalanche. Atkins, a skilled mountaineer as well as a climatologist and former weather and avalanche forecaster, is one of the experts on Colorado’s Alpine …
Read More »New York Needs to Get Spongier—or Get Used to More Floods
Two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ian dumped up to 10 inches of rain on New York City in just two hours, the metropolis is once again inundated today by extreme rainfall. It is one of the many cities worldwide grappling with a counterintuitive effect of climate change: Sometimes, …
Read More »Why Rain Is Getting Fiercer on a Warming Planet
One of the weirder side effects of climate change is what it’s doing to rainfall. While most people think about global warming in terms of extreme heat—the deadliest kind of natural disaster in the United States—there is also an increasing risk of extreme precipitation. On average, it will rain more …
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