All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
Who doesn’t love to spend time in garden? Some people love it so much, though, that they stake out for hours, camera in hand, waiting for an insect to land on a flower petal to capture the perfect shot. These are the kind of people who submit their photography to the annual International Garden Photographer…
Fresh off the heels of a record-setting heat wave last month, Europe is about to heat up in a major way again. Paris and London could set new high-temperature records this week while the forests of Spain and Portugal are once again at risk of exploding in flames. The story is fast becoming the new…
Vast stretches of Earth’s northern latitudes are on fire right now. Hot weather has engulfed a huge portion of the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland to Siberia. That’s helped create conditions ripe for wildfires, including some truly massive ones burning in remote parts of the region that are being seen by satellites. Pierre Markuse, a…
It’s no secret that corals are dying at an alarming rate. While climate change heating up the oceans is understood to be screwing over corals, a new study points fingers at a different culprit: pollution. Published in the journal Marine Biology Monday, the study used 30 years’ worth of data to conclude that nutrient pollution…
Tropical Depression Barry has been downgraded to its current status after smashing into Louisiana as the first hurricane of the season on Saturday, and it mostly spared the city of New Orleans from a potentially devastating direct hit. But torrential downpour has put 11 million people at risk of “epic flooding” as it crawls across…
The Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise, California, last year. Since then, the community has struggled to rebuild. In fact, more than 90 percent of Paradise residents never returned, according to new numbers from the governor’s office. Now, the town is officially a “rural area,” which opens the door for more federal assistance to…
Two years ago, Greenland lit ablaze. It was weird, and a harbinger of things to come on our changing planet. It just didn’t seem like they would come again so soon. Satellites spotted another wildfire in western Greenland this week. The blaze first showed up on Wednesday. Though already out and not on the scale…
If there is one thing you need to know about Tropical Storm Barry, it is this: The storm bearing down on Louisiana is forecast to be a flooding disaster. Basically every aspect of the setup for Barry is lined up to unleash multiple types of flooding that could last for days on end, potentially placing…
Tropical Storm Barry just officially formed this morning, but water is already bearing down on New Orleans. The situation looks bad, to say the least, and we at Earther will be following it closely as the city and state of Louisiana prepare for what is forecasted to become a hurricane by the weekend. New Orleans,…
Historic, record-breaking heat isn’t the only environmental malaise that’s gripped Alaska this summer. So has wildfire smoke. An incredible satellite image taken on July 8 shows smoke spreading far and wide across Alaska as a spate of hot, dry weather causes the state’s wildfire season to kick into high gear. Dense smoke advisories and red…
Would-be Tropical Storm Barry is still a day or more away from forming, let alone making landfall. But the developing system’s impacts are already being felt on Wednesday morning in New Orleans. Residents of the Big Easy woke up to tornadoes and water spouts touching down in the city and on Lake Pontchartrain, and to…
The second tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season could arrive from an odd source: Missouri. Storms sweeping across the Midwest to start the week have now stalled out on the Gulf Coast, exploding into towering thunderstorms. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting they’re likely to spin further out into the Gulf of Mexico and…
Friday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake near Ridgecrest, California, was nothing to sneeze at. The shake, which triggered gas leaks, power outages, and fires, was felt from San Diego to Sacramento. And it ripped open a new fissure in the Earth that didn’t escape the notice of humanity’s ever-growing satellite fleet. Before-and-after imagery captured by Planet Labs…
An unusually large bloom of toxic blue-green algae has prompted the closure of all beaches along the Mississippi coastline. Officials are attributing the bloom to excessive rainfall and overuse of fertilizers. On Sunday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, through its Beach Monitoring Program, announced the closure of two more Mississippi beaches, namely Pascagoula Beach…
Washington, D.C. commuters came back to work after the long weekend with a bang. Powerful storms swept across the nation’s capital, inundating roadways, unleashing flash floods, and creating at least two waterfalls in the Metro system. Even the White House experienced some flooding. Swamp status: full. The entire Washington, D.C. metro area is under some…
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck southern California on Friday night at around 8:19 p.m. local time, with a reported epicenter around 10 miles to the northeast of the town of Ridgecrest—the second major quake to hit the region in two days. Per the Washington Post, Kern County Fire Chief David Witt said that no deaths…
This year’s Independence Day in Anchorage, Alaska, is not one its residents will soon forget as the temperature got as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), establishing a new record for the northern city. In a tweet put out early this morning, the National Weather Service (NWS) for Anchorage said the record breaking…
Scientists in Florida have detected the largest seaweed bloom in the world. Extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the African coast, the unusually large bloom is threatening marine life and coastal regions, with the researchers warning it’s likely a sign of things to come. New research published today in Science describes the Great Atlantic…
The weather forecast is one of the most ubiquitous things in our daily lives. People talk about it when there’s nothing else to say, farmers from the Midwest to Mali use it to decide when to plant crops, and everyone loves to (wrongly) complain when it screws up. But as smartphones have put the forecast…
More than 1 million people are being ordered to evacuate from southern Japan as an onslaught of rain threatens their safety. Nearly 6 inches of rain that fell Wednesday is set to cause mudslides and deadly floods, reports the Japan Times. And that amount is set to increase big time in the coming days. As…
