La Niña, the cooler and at times costlier flip side of El Niño, has arrived to warp weather worldwide, meteorologists said Thursday. This natural weather phenomenon often turbocharges the Atlantic hurricane season, but this La Niña may be too weak and fleeting to cause much trouble.
Predicting tropical cyclones (TCs) accurately is crucial for disaster mitigation and public safety. Although the forecasting accuracy of TC tracks has improved substantially in recent decades, progress in the forecasting of TC intensity remains limited. In recent years, deep learning methods have shown great potential in TC intensity prediction; however, they still face challenges, including limited interpretability, cumbersome feature engineering, and unreliable real-time operational forecasts.
High temperatures can cause serious health problems and even death, especially among elderly people and people with underlying diseases. The extremely hot summers of 2022 and 2023 are estimated to have caused 60,000 and 50,000 heat-related deaths in Europe respectively. To protect people, more reliable forecasts and effective warning systems are needed.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established in 2015 to address some of the world's most pressing problems. The 17 goals include 169 targets such as eradicating poverty, reducing inequality and acting on climate, in service of peace, prosperity and environmental sustainability.
As the world relies increasingly on critical minerals such as cobalt to fuel not just the green revolution but also everyday life, the United States may need to turn to domestic mining to meet its needs.
Plant functional diversity is highly dynamic over time and fluctuates considerably. It is influenced by seasonal cycles and wet-dry periods, and varies depending on the region. These are the findings of researchers from Leipzig University, the University of Freiburg, and Aarhus University in Denmark.
When fire erupted at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. bulk liquid petroleum storage terminal, large plumes of dark smoke billowed into the clear skies over Deer Park, Texas. Despite the efforts of site staff and local firefighters, more than 70 million gallons of petroleum products burned or were otherwise released into the environment over the following three days in March 2019.
Modelers have demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) models can produce climate simulations with more efficiency than physics-based models. However, many AI models are trained on past climate data, making it difficult for them to predict how climate might respond to future changes, such as further increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases.
Since the 1980s, scientists have known fine roots (< 2 mm) are critical to ecosystem carbon cycling, with research long suggesting their contribution to soil carbon accrual may exceed that of aboveground plant parts like leaves. Yet more than 40 years later, a key knowledge gap remains: the role of multi-decadal root iterative dynamics (growth, turnover, decomposition) in soil carbon accumulation—especially for "absorptive roots," the finest, most metabolically active roots (typically the distal 2–3 root orders or < 0.5 mm in diameter).
Climate-driven oxygen loss in the Black Sea thousands of years ago triggered the expansion of microorganisms capable of producing the potent neurotoxin methylmercury. That is shown in a new study published in Nature Water, led by Eric Capo at Umeå University, which suggests that similar processes could occur in today's warming oceans.
As climate change continues to reshape the intensity and behavior of hurricanes, meteorologists and researchers are examining whether the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a decades-old classification system, still adequately communicates the full scope of hurricane hazards. While the scale remains a widely recognized tool, experts like Zachary Handlos, director of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Georgia Tech, suggest that a complementary system could enhance public understanding of the broader risks hurricanes pose.
Most Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) forest carbon offset projects significantly overstate their climate benefits, according to a new study published in Science.
An EPFL engineer has illustrated some of the complex ways in which climate change will affect hydropower facilities, taking the Gries dam in Valais Canton as a case study.
Dry soils in northern Mexico may trigger episodes of simultaneous drought and heat wave hundreds of miles away in the southwestern United States, such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, according to a new study. These "hot droughts" in the region increasingly persist through consecutive days and nights rather than easing up after sundown, the research also found, leaving no window for afflicted areas to recover.
Two powerful offshore earthquakes struck the same region in the southern Philippines hours apart on Friday with the first 7.4 magnitude temblor killing at least seven people, setting off landslides and prompting evacuations of coastal areas nearby because of a brief tsunami scare.
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