Weather

Environment
When a Storm Strengthens Near Shore, Its Heaviest Rain Leans to One Side
Forecasters have a name for the moment a tropical cyclone turns dangerous fast: rapid intensification, an increase of about 35 mph in maximum winds within 24 hours. When it happens far out over open…
By Olga Schmidt41 min ago3 min read
Environment
How Scientists Put a Death Toll on a Single Heatwave
A heatwave rarely leaves an obvious body count. There is no single moment, no wreckage to photograph. Most of the people it kills die at home or in hospital wards over a stretch of days, their deaths…
By Anna Kotlyar5 days ago5 min read
Environment
The Global Ocean's Warmest Day on Record Came in the Wrong Month
Take every stretch of open ocean outside the polar seas, average the surface temperature across all of it, and the number you get has a season of its own. It is not the season most people live in. It…
By Anna Kotlyar1w ago4 min read
Environment
The Atmospheric Traffic Jam That Turns a European Heatwave Into a Flash Flood
Think of the jet stream as a motorway for weather. Most days the traffic moves briskly west to east, and one system gives way to the next before either can do much damage. But every so often the flow…
By Olga Schmidt1w ago5 min read
Environment
How a Hot Year or a Volcano Can Reset the Climate's Political Clock
The physics of climate change runs on decades and centuries. Politics runs on the last hot summer. A new modeling study asks what happens when you wire the two together and let the short clock start…
By Oli Kotyk1w ago3 min read
Environment
Wind, Not Just Current, Decides Where Ocean Plastic Washes Ashore
Most of the plastic that enters the ocean does not stay at sea. It comes back to land, washing onto beaches, piling up in mangroves, fouling the same coastlines it drifted away from. The hard…
By Anna Kotlyar1w ago3 min read
Environment
East Asia's Worst Downpours Are Intensifying About Three Times Faster Than the Rest
Averages are reassuring, and that is exactly the problem. When people talk about rain getting heavier in a warming world, the mental image is usually a whole distribution nudging up a notch:…
By Oli Kotyk1w ago3 min read
Environment
Amazon Trees That Weathered the 2010 Drought Hint at Which Forests Bend Rather Than Break
In 2010, a severe drought gripped the Amazon, one of a run of exceptional dry spells this century that have tested the world's largest rainforest. Droughts like that are grim to live through and, for…
By Olga Schmidt2w ago3 min read
Environment
Heatwaves May Be Changing Shape, Not Just Getting Hotter
A heatwave is almost always reduced to a thermometer reading: a record broken, a threshold crossed, a number in the headline. But no single figure captures what a heatwave actually is: a whole…
By Olga Schmidt3w ago4 min read
Environment
How Much of a Storm's Damage Bill Belongs to Climate Change? Scientists Put a Number on Eunice
For a day and a half in February 2022, Storm Eunice tore across the British Isles, the Low Countries and northern Germany, driving a red weather warning, shuttering rail networks and leaving well…
By Anna Kotlyar3w ago3 min read
Environment
Why "100-Year" Alpine Floods Are About to Become Far More Common
Ask how often a river floods catastrophically and the standard answer comes wrapped in a number: the 100-year flood, an event so severe it strikes, on average, once a century. It is the figure…
By Olga Schmidt3w ago3 min read
Environment
How Much of Spain's Record Flood Was the Weather Pattern, and How Much Was the Warming
By the end of 29 October 2024, a rain gauge in the small town of Turís, inland from Valencia, had recorded something almost no one in Europe had seen: 771 millimetres of rain in twenty-four hours.…
By Oli Kotyk3w ago3 min read

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Weather

When a Storm Strengthens Near Shore, Its Heaviest Rain Leans to One Side

How Scientists Put a Death Toll on a Single Heatwave

The Global Ocean's Warmest Day on Record Came in the Wrong Month

The Atmospheric Traffic Jam That Turns a European Heatwave Into a Flash Flood

How a Hot Year or a Volcano Can Reset the Climate's Political Clock

Wind, Not Just Current, Decides Where Ocean Plastic Washes Ashore

East Asia's Worst Downpours Are Intensifying About Three Times Faster Than the Rest

Amazon Trees That Weathered the 2010 Drought Hint at Which Forests Bend Rather Than Break

Heatwaves May Be Changing Shape, Not Just Getting Hotter

How Much of a Storm's Damage Bill Belongs to Climate Change? Scientists Put a Number on Eunice

Why "100-Year" Alpine Floods Are About to Become Far More Common

How Much of Spain's Record Flood Was the Weather Pattern, and How Much Was the Warming