All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
A new study points to an unusual cause behind the disaster that killed 200 in India this year.
The 2021 megadrought is having major impacts on the ground. But to truly grasp the scope, you need to see it from space.
The historically low levels threaten to strain the region's supply of drinking water.
Microphones on top of drones could be crucial for rescuers after disasters.
It’s the latest dusty curtain to make the transatlantic trek.
We've reached the literally "praying for rain" phase of the West's megadrought.
Summer has begun with a sizzle in California and the rest of the West. Large swaths of the state are baking under a heat wave, including areas in the Central Valley where the National Weather Service is warning there’s “little to no relief” from the brutal temperatures on Thursday. That will only reinforce the dire…
The megadrought is taking its toll on farmers, and could change what they grow in California.
The Atlantic is acting up out of season. Again. A disturbance near Bermuda is likely to become the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season in the next two days. As of Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center gave the weather system a 90% chance of becoming a named storm. (It would take the…
There’s a new big ‘berg floating around Antarctica. The European Space Agency said Wednesday that a huge chunk of ice had broken off from the Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea and formed the world’s largest iceberg. When they say the world’s largest, they mean it—it’s got a 1,668 square mile (4,320 square kilometer)…
It’s only May, but it feels like summer has arrived in my hometown of Baltimore. Since I woke up, I’ve been counting the hours until I can drink iced cocktails on my deck while wearing a sundress. Can you blame me? It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius) out. There’s another reason I really need…
It’s reasonable to think of nuclear bombs in terms of their destructive capabilities; splitting the atom means obliteration for anything in the blast radius. But, as a team of geologists and physicists recently figured out, it also means creation: specifically, the transfiguration of ordinary crystalline structures into previously unimaginable geometries. On July 16, 1945, a…
The steady march of time has caused Darwin’s Arch—an iconic rock formation in the Galápagos Islands—to collapse. Tibetan monks will devote dozens of hours to painstakingly create their colorful and elaborate mandalas, only to destroy them in a matter of seconds. Seems pointless, but this exercise is done for a reason. It teaches the key…
Chalk up one more precious thing the pandemic has ruined. On Tuesday, the New York City Department of Education announced that it would no longer allow kids to stay home from school on especially snowy or bad weather days; instead, schools will switch to remote learning. With the pandemic waning in the U.S., schools in…
A spring break assignment for geology students has resulted in the discovery of radioactive isotopes in honey produced along the U.S. East Coast, and at levels higher than expected. The amount of radiation isn’t considered dangerous, but the finding points to the drawn-out legacy of nuclear tests done during the Cold War. Back in 2017,…
An estimated 4,000 tons of debris—including rocks the size of cars—has collapsed onto a beach along Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Because this part of Britain is packed with fossils, the rockfall is likely to attract amateur and professional collectors, but local officials are asking the public to steer clear of the beach. The cliff collapse, reported…
At least a dozen people are still missing off the coast of Louisiana after a commercial boat capsized in rough weather on Tuesday afternoon. Authorities have rescued six of the at least 18 passengers aboard the Seacor Power, a 129-foot (39.3-meter) workboat for the oil industry, after it capsized in the Gulf of Mexico off…
On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its new “average” estimate for Atlantic hurricane season. If trends follow the period from 1991 to 2020, the Atlantic region should expect 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. This isn’t the annual outlook; it just slightly moves the bar for what the average…
On Friday, the small Caribbean island of St. Vincent became the epicenter of the seismic world when La Soufriere volcano sent a cloud of ash flying 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) into the sky and streaming across the Atlantic. The volcano has been rumbling for months, but authorities raised alert levels to red in the northern…
On April 13, 2018, a huge swell of water broke on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. It was a tsunami, one far from any fault line typically associated with the ginormous waves. This was a meteotsunami, a wall of water forged from the air conditions above it. On that Friday the 13th, the lakefront…
