Climate change fueled the fury of hurricanes Helene and Milton
Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet's changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? The rapid intensifications of both storms were fueled by the Gulf’s extremely warm water. Developing tropical storms can suck up…
Here’s how to turn climate change anxiety into action
Imagine something you love. Then imagine it’s threatened. That’s what Jada Alexander experienced when she was studying coral reefs in French Polynesia. During her first trip, as a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she was captivated. “The coral reef was vibrant. It was beautiful,” she recalls. It was teeming with life, full…
Why Hurricane Helene was so devastating
Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet's changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? The powerful gusts pushed the sea onto the shore, generating record-breaking floods that inundated coastal communities in meters of seawater.…
How rapid intensification spawned two monster hurricanes in one week
Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet's changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Within just 60 hours, NHC predicted PTC9 would intensify at a record-breaking pace, going from winds less than 35 knots…
A thousands-year-old log demonstrates how burying wood can fight climate change
In 2013, Ning Zeng came across a very old, and ultimately very important, log. He and his colleagues were digging a trench in the Canadian province of Quebec, one that they planned to fill with 35 metric tons of wood, cover with clay soil, and let sit for nine years.
From Frozen to Sweltering: Earth’s Climate Over the Last 485 Million...
Earth’s last half-billion years were action-packed. During that time, the climate underwent many changes. There have been changes in ocean levels and ice sheets, changes in the atmosphere’s composition, changes in ocean chemistry, and ongoing biological evolution punctuated with extinction events. A record of Earth’s temperature over the last 485 million years is helping scientists…
Advanced Civilizations Will Overheat Their Planets Within 1,000 Years
Earth’s average global temperatures have been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), Earth has been heating up at a rate of 0.06 °C (0.11 °F) per decade since 1850 – or about 1.11 °C (2 °F) in total. Since 1982, the average annual increase has been…
Climate change could double U.S. temperature-linked deaths by mid-century
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated…
Earth’s ancient ‘greenhouse’ conditions were hotter than thought
Over the last 485 million years, Earth has been both a lot colder and a lot hotter than once thought. A new temperature timeline that combines geologic data with computational simulations reveals a rich, detailed and dramatic picture of the ebb and flow of icehouse and greenhouse conditions on Earth throughout this span of time,…
Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?
Transcript James McCall: Solar production in the US really started to pick up around 2012. As solar really became mainstream, there was a lot more concerns of land use changes. Ravi Sujith: If you look at the type of land that’s been converted for solar installations, over 60 percent of those landscapes are converted croplands.…