All things geology, climate, oceans, and more
The Carr Fire is in the record books as one of California’s largest and most destructive fires. But it will also forever live in nightmares for unleashing one of the most terrifying spectacles on Earth in the form of a firenado. On Wednesday, CAL FIRE released three new videos that show the firenado ripping through…
Public concern over hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking) has often focused on the potential for this extractive process to pollute waterways. Well, a new study reminds us that fracking is messing with our water in more ways than one. Published in Science Advances Wednesday, this study found that more and more water has been…
It’s been a summer of algae for the Sunshine State. Last month, Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in counties whose waterways were befouled by blue-green algae blooms. On Monday, Scott found himself declaring another emergency for a separate red tide algae outbreak taking place across the state. The current red tide bloom…
Our oceans are brimming with microscopic phytoplankton—plant-like organisms that contribute significantly to marine diversity. Tiny though they are, these sea critters, when infected with a particular virus, may influence atmospheric processes such as cloud formation, according to new research. A ubiquitous, bloom-forming phytoplankton known as Emiliania huxleyi is plagued by a virus known as EhV.…
Some personal news: I’m about done with wildfires. The western half of North America has turned into a funeral pyre for forests. We’ve heard a lot about California recently, but British Columbia is also in serious trouble. There are about 600 blazes currently turning the province into a smoldering morass, including 145 new fires that…
It’s been around 100,000 years since California’s Long Valley supervolcano experienced a major eruption, but this supposedly dormant caldera has been acting a bit strangely over the past four decades. New research suggests 240 cubic miles of magma still exists within this supervolcano, but thankfully, a major eruption remains unlikely. The Long Valley Caldera, located…
Some of the Earth’s oldest rocks may have formed from the high temperatures of meteorite impacts, a new study reports. Granite-like, or felsic, rocks in northwest Canada dating back to the Earth’s earliest era seem to have different compositions from the felsic rocks at the cores of the continents. New computer modeling suggests that meteorite…
The Mendocino Complex Fire just keeps setting records. Last week, the combination of the Ranch and River fires set the record as the state’s largest fire complex in history. But now the Ranch Fire alone is the biggest single fire to ever scar the state. Together, the Ranch and River fires have scorched 344,890 acres.…
Weeks after Yosemite Valley closed due to wildfires for the first time in decades, parts of Glacier National Park in Montana have been evacuated thanks to an explosive fire. The Howe Ridge Fire “grew significantly” on Sunday according to a Facebook post by the park, the same day Glacier hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the…
Rebecca Waddington arrived in Long Beach, California, last weekend. The 35-year-old was preparing for her first hurricane-hunting mission with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the following day. The pilot had flown for the federal department before to survey marine mammals or even post-hurricane damage—but never to approach an active cyclone. She was feeling…
New imagery puts the massive wildfire in context, revealing the both the power and capriciousness of one the most destructive fires in California history.
We really are connected, man. As of Wednesday, smoke from the record–breaking wildfires in California had made its way to the East Coast, according to the National Weather Service. Who knows how far it’s traveled by now. As wild as this sounds, movement of wildfire smoke across continents is pretty common. Look at Indonesia, where smoke…
It looks like we could be granted a reprieve from the fourth horseman of the weather apocalypse—hurricanes.
Weather geeks went wild last week when the National Weather Service announced that the Carr Fire near Redding, California had spawned the equivalent of an EF-3 tornado on July 26. And for good reason: Fire tornados are among the rarest weather phenomena on Earth, and this vortex had the added distinction of possibly being the…
Three months and countless Olympic swimming pools of lava later, Kilauea seems to have pressed the pause button on its fiery eruption. But it’s too soon to tell if the Hawaiian volcano has chilled out for good. Over the weekend, scientists with the US Geological Survey noted a significant slowdown in the lava coming out…
Anyone who’s spent time in a city in the summer knows that these bastions of blacktop get uncomfortably hot compared with the surrounding countryside. But even within a city’s bounds, some neighborhoods swelter more than others, and that can have a big effect on who’s most threatened by heatwaves. Which is why citizen scientists are…
East Antarctica has long been hailed as a bastion of continuity in the rapidly unraveling Antarctic. The West Antarctic is the landscape where ice goes to die, while the higher elevation, colder eastern portion of the continent has been viewed as a stable landscape largely separated from rising temperatures and warm ocean currents. But new…
The deadly Carr Fire burning in Northern California can now claim an unfortunate milestone: It has officially cracked the list of the 10 most destructive wildfires to ever beset California. The Monday morning update from CAL FIRE shows that 1,236 structures have been destroyed, making the Carr Fire the seventh-most destructive wildfire to hit the…
Another day, another extreme weather event disrupting life on our planet. Torrential rains associated with Myanmar’s monsoon season have wrought havoc. Floods have killed at least 11 people and forced the evacuation of more than 119,000 throughout the country on Monday, reports Reuters. Three of the deceased include soldiers who were helping with relief efforts.…
I’m no expert, but I feel like our planet is trying to tell us something. In addition to every corner of the globe being on fire, doused in rain, or cooked by heat, a new volcanic eruption is adding heavy ash to the list of calamities befalling humanity. The Manaro Voui volcano popped off in…
