As Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast the evening of October 9, a deluge of rain ruptured the city of St. Petersburg’s water main lines. The damage meant that some hospitals in the area—including one with a large neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)—were temporarily cut off from public …
Read More »South Sudan May See the First Permanent Mass Displacement Due to Climate Change
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Enormous floods have once again engulfed much of South Sudan, as record water levels in Lake Victoria flow downstream through the Nile. More than 700,000 people have been affected. Hundreds of thousands of people there were already forced …
Read More »The Cost of Lightning
It was the terrible prospect of lightning one day striking the historic windmill that troubled Andrew Farrell. A bolt five times hotter than the surface of the sun instantly turning moisture in one of the mill’s timbers to steam, exploding it. What if a raging fire then engulfed the 160-year-old …
Read More »Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think
The year’s first super typhoon erupted over the steamy waters of the western Pacific Ocean on Thursday as Yagi churned toward an eventual landfall in southern China. Having formed as a tropical cyclone in the Philippine Sea on Sunday, the powerful storm peaked on Thursday afternoon local time with maximum …
Read More »A Rare Coincidence of La Niña Events Will Weaken Hurricane Season
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The North Atlantic Ocean has been running a fever for months, with surface temperatures at or near record highs. But cooling along the equator in both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific may finally be starting to bring some …
Read More »Climate Change’s Latest Deadly Threat: Lightning Strikes
Through local papers and word of mouth, volunteer Daya Shankar keeps track of a very specific cause of death. As soon as he receives news of someone being struck by lightning around his neighborhood in Jharkhand, East India, he picks up his motorcycle and heads to the destination. Sometimes he …
Read More »Extreme Weather Poses a Challenge for Heat Pumps
Andreas Bangheri knows how to read the wind. He’s been hang gliding and piloting small aircraft around the mountains of his native Austria for years. And he can tell that things are changing. “The wind is getting stronger and stronger. It’s becoming more of an issue,” says Bangheri, CEO of …
Read More »Last Monday Was the Hottest Day on Record
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. In the past week, Earth’s record for the hottest day was broken twice. Sunday, July 21, was declared Earth’s hottest day since records began, when average surface temperature reached 17.09 degrees Celsius. On Monday the record was broken …
Read More »There’s Another Chance to See the Northern Lights This Week
Remember all the social media posts from a few months ago showing the northern lights, in all their glory, in unexpectedly southern places? Well, get ready to potentially see them again, or for the first time: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) predicts light displays will again appear …
Read More »What 'Twisters' Gets Right—and Wrong—About Tornado Science
It’s not hyperbole to say that a significant number of meteorologists working today never would’ve thought to enter the field if it weren’t for the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Meteorology programs around the United States saw a surge in admissions in the years after the movie came out. Following the success …
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