Hurricane Helene cut power to more than 4 million homes and businesses as it moved across the Southeast after hitting Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 storm on Sept. 26, 2024. As Helene’s rains moved into the mountains, causing devastating flooding, officials warned that fixing downed utility lines and restoring power would […]
We’ve had so many “hottest months on record” over the last two years, it’s getting hard to keep up. As of this writing, the official hottest month on record happened just two months ago, in July 2024. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported July 2024’s temperatures were 0.03°C (0.05°F) higher than July 2023, […]
Summer 2024 was officially the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest on record. In the United States, fierce heat waves seemed to hit somewhere almost every day. Phoenix reached 100 degrees for more than 100 days straight. The 2024 Olympic Games started in the midst of a long-running heat wave in Europe that included the three hottest days […]
Kids born in 2020 worldwide will experience twice the number of wildfires during their lifetimes compared with those born in 1960. In California and other western states, frequent wildfires have become as much a part of summer and fall as popsicles and Halloween candy. Joan Casey, University of Washington and Rachel Morello-Frosch, University of California, […]
Levels of methane in the atmosphere have soared by record-breaking amounts since 2020, according to new research. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, locks in around 80 times more warming over the course of two decades than CO2, but fades more quickly from the atmosphere. As a result, cutting methane emissions is widely viewed as a crucial part […]
August 2024 was Earth’s hottest August in NOAA’s 175-year climate record. The sweltering month was also the 15th month in a row of record-warm months and wrapped up the Northern Hemisphere’s warmest meteorological summer on record, according to scientists and data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. By John Bateman NOAA Here are highlights from NOAA’s latest […]
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 relief, particularly for vulnerable coral reef ecosystems. This cooling comes from two climate phenomena with similar names: […]
Chase Cain is a national climate reporter and meteorologist for NBC and we found that combination of meteorology and journalism quite interesting. By Chelsea Henderson EcoRight News/ RepublicEN As media outlets report the latest news about the breaking of monthly global heat records, it feels timely to roll out this week’s guest, who knows a thing […]
Tropical Storm Debby was moving so slowly, Olympians could have outrun it as it moved across the Southeast in early August 2024. That gave its rainfall time to deluge cities and farms over large parts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. More than a foot of rain had fallen in some areas by early Aug. […]
One proposed method for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere – and reducing the risk of climate change – is to capture carbon from the air or prevent it from getting there in the first place. However, research from Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford University, published in Energy and Environmental Science, suggests that carbon capture technologies can cause […]
Heading to the theater to see the new “Twisters” movie? Keep an eye out for NOAA! You’ll see NOAA logos, props and people (as unpaid extras) throughout. Our scientists worked hard behind the scenes with the producers to make the science as accurate and realistic (in some parts!) as possible. By NOAA Staff/Climate.gov The “Twisters” […]
Every increment of global warming above 1.5C increases the risk of crossing key tipping points in the Earth system – even if the overshoot is only temporary, says new research. It is well established that if global temperatures exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, there is a higher risk that tipping points will be crossed. By Ayesha Tandon Carbon […]
Wildfire blowups, fire whirls, towering thunderstorms: When fires get large and hot enough, they can actually create their own weather. Kyle Hilburn, Colorado State University The Conversation In these extreme fire situations, firefighters’ ordinary methods to directly control the fire don’t work, and wildfires burn out of control. Firefighters have seen many of these risks […]
Once again this year, a prolonged heat wave is slated to engulf much of the United States. People in the Southwest, Southeast, and Plains could be at particularly high risk of dangerous and possibly deadly heat this week, with the potential for coast-to-coast impacts by mid-August. In western states, already reeling from devastating wildfires, the heat […]
Less than a month into summer 2024, the vast majority of the U.S. population has already experienced an extreme heat wave. Millions of people were under heat warnings across the western U.S. in early July or sweating through humid heat in the East. Mathew Barlow, UMass Lowell and Jeffrey Basara, UMass Lowell The Conversation Death […]