Environment

As summer temperatures soar across the United States and Europe, cities are being forced to confront the difficult reality that they're getting dangerously hot.... Read more

Firefighters raced to save a 1,000-year-old monastery in northeastern Spain on Friday as a growing wildfire prompted the hasty removal of the bones of medieval monarchs buried there.... Read more

Over 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of protected tropical forest—an area double the size of Wales—have been lost to wildfires since 2001.... Read more

Tornadoes are among the most destructive weather phenomena on Earth. Their small scale, short life cycle and sudden onset make them extremely difficult to predict. This challenge is amplified for weak tornadoes embedded within midlatitude westerly flows, which often hide in plain sight with faint signals. Improving the simulation capability... Read more

According to a new study led by researchers from Brazil and Germany, the main system that transports heat from one end of the Atlantic Ocean to the other may undergo sudden changes in intensity driven by climate change similar to what we are experiencing now, even when it is already... Read more

When it comes to compounding natural hazards like landslides, wildfires, flooding and extreme heat, where you live makes all the difference. New research from Portland State University underscores this disproportionate reality, finding that in Portland, the areas most vulnerable to multiple climate hazards are historically underinvested neighborhoods marked by lower... Read more

Respiratory infectious diseases and air pollution remain persistent global health challenges. Yet the tools used to monitor airborne threats are often expensive, power-hungry and difficult to deploy outside laboratories.... Read more

Three factors—spectacular images, a high death toll and strong personal ties—make it more likely that the media in one country will report on a natural disaster in another, according to a study by the University of Bonn, the University of Warwick and Imperial College London, which has been published in... Read more

Salt and sugar from the sea can rise as far as the free troposphere, thereby influencing both cloud formation and the Arctic climate. This is the finding of balloon measurements carried out by a team of researchers on Spitsbergen in autumn 2021 and spring 2022.... Read more

Imagine you wake up one morning and look out your window. You see a red sky, hear a ferocious blast of wind and watch as tree branches creak and crack. No, the apocalypse has not descended on your local neighborhood. You've just been caught in the middle of a dust... Read more

Approximately 1.4 million Californians live in areas at high risk of flooding each year, and climate change is only driving this number up. But flood risk can be a tricky concept for residents and policymakers alike to grasp. Just looking at a FEMA map or knowing that a home is... Read more

An analysis of 103 European cities' climate-neutral plans for 2030 (including 22 capital cities) shows that municipalities are planning to rely on carbon removal to compensate for about a fifth of their emissions. This would mean removing roughly 61 million tonnes of emissions from the atmosphere—close to Austria's annual emissions.... Read more

There's good news and bad news for folks who love a good coat of ice on the Great Lakes for the activities and businesses it supports. The good news is that, after decades of declining annual average ice cover, there's reason to believe that trend could slow or even temporarily... Read more

A wildfire needs a name long before anyone knows what caused it. When the pines of the Gironde in southwestern France caught fire in July, the fire was reported within hours under the name of the ground it was burning. By the time it had taken 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres),... Read more

In 2024, the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) came into force. The regulation is intended to secure Europe's supply of critical raw materials, especially minerals and metals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The EU is therefore focusing on reducing its dependence on third countries such as China,... Read more