Aurelia Butler

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    Extreme heat and rain help send dengue cases skyrocketing

    When it rains, it pours. And when it pours, mosquitoes pop up. 

    A series of storms slammed the northeastern United States on August 18, unleashing torrents of rain and causing flash floods across parts of New York and Connecticut. In Oxford, Conn., a potentially record-breaking rainfall of roughly 38 centimeters (15 inches) fell in 24 hours. The National Weather Service is confirming whether the measurements beat the state’s single-day record, set 69 years ago when Hurricane Diane dumped about 32 centimeters of rain.

    Meanwhile, millions of people were under excessive heat warnings as Texas and the Southwest baked under a heat dome last week. Phoenix extended its ongoing, record-long streak of triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures, and air conditioner use across Texas on August 20 pushed energy demand to a record high (SN: 8/12/24). More

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    The world’s record-breaking hot streak has lasted 14 months. When will it end?

    In its latest global climate report, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that July was the 14th straight month of record-breaking heat. That, in and of itself, is a new record.

    In the last 175 years, there has been only one other hot streak that comes close in terms of longevity. According to NOAA, the second longest hot streak on record spanned the 12 months from May 2015 to May 2016 (SN: 1/20/16; SN: 1/14/21). Then things drop off: The third and fourth longest recorded streaks were six months each, and subsequent stints are shorter still.

    Many of these streaks occurred during an El Niño, a natural phenomenon in which warm surface waters spread across the tropical Pacific Ocean, temporarily elevating the global average temperature (SN: 8/21/19). Its cyclical counterpart, La Niña, involves those warm surface waters receding to the western side of the Pacific, causing a transient global cooling effect. More

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    More than 4 billion people may not have access to clean water

    Access to clean water is a human right — one that half of the world may not have.

    Out of the roughly 8 billion people on Earth, more than 4.4 billion lack access to safely managed drinking water, researchers report August 15 in Science. The estimate, based on computer simulations of data from low- and middle-income countries, is more than double the figure calculated by the World Health Organization (SN: 8/16/18).

    “The number of people whose basic human right to safe drinking water is not being met may therefore be significantly underestimated,” says environmental microbiologist Esther Greenwood of Eawag, an aquatic research institute in Dübendorf, Switzerland. More

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    Your medications might make it harder for you to beat the heat

    The pills stocked inside your medicine cabinet may factor into how well you can handle summer heat.

    Extreme heat can be deadly. As outdoor temperatures sizzle, our bodies jump into action to keep internal temps under control (SN: 8/6/23). Blood rushes to the surface of our skin to release heat as sweat pours onto it, cooling us as it evaporates. If these methods fail to keep body temperature in check, people can fall victim to heat-related symptoms such as headache, dizziness and confusion. In severe cases, people might become delirious or go into organ failure. More

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    Extraordinary heat waves have readers asking how A/C affects greenhouse gas emissions

    An extraordinary heat wave last week toppled thousands of temperature records across Asia, from Iran to Japan. In Iran’s highlands, the city of Isfahan, at the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, sweltered in temperatures up to 43.8° Celsius (110.8° Fahrenheit). Japan, which saw at least 120 deaths due to heatstroke in July, issued more heat stroke warnings August 9, as temperatures climbed to 39° C (102.2° F).

    As what’s “normal” for temperatures continues to tick upward, it’s important to note that we can’t just adapt our way out of climate change, scientists have warned (SN: 2/28/22). A concerted, global effort to curb carbon emissions is what’s needed to stave off more disastrous climate consequences, researchers say. More

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    Squall line tornadoes are sneaky, dangerous and difficult to forecast

    Meteorologist Thea Sandmael watched the storm close in. It was near enough for her to spot a rotating dome of clouds emerging from its dark underbelly — the quickening of a tornado. By the time the spinning mass was 10 minutes away, Sandmael and her colleagues had shut down their radar instruments and evacuated their post.

    “Just keep going,” she advised her colleague behind the wheel, who was rightly focused on maneuvering their SUV down the remote Alabama road. Following behind was another colleague in a truck carrying their cumbersome radar equipment. Evacuating was a good decision, she reflects: “We were sitting on the west side of the road, and the tornado touched down in our exact location.” More

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    Record-breaking Coral Sea temperatures threaten the Great Barrier Reef

    Australia’s Great Barrier Reef faces critical danger from back-to-back bouts of extreme ocean heat.

    Ocean heat in the Coral Sea is at its highest in four centuries, scientists report in the Aug. 8 Nature. The researchers drilled into coral skeletons from in and around the region and analyzed the chemical makeup of those samples to reconstruct sea surface temperatures from 1618 to 1995, alongside modern instrumental sea surface measurements spanning 1900 to 2024.   

    Before 1900, ocean temperatures in the region were relatively stable. But from 1960 to 2024, those temperatures have climbed relentlessly. That upward climb is linked to humans’ greenhouse gas emissions, the team found.

    Five of the six hottest years in the record were in the last decade: 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024, with temperatures as much as 1 degree Celsius hotter than average. Each year had a mass bleaching event during the warmest months, from January to March (SN: 4/29/24).

    Scientists drilled into corals in the Great Barrier Reef (shown) to collect core samples. The chemical makeup of the corals reveals changing water conditions, including temperature, over the corals’ lifetime.Tane Sinclair-Taylor

    Researchers have long sounded the alarm about mass bleaching, in which corals stressed by extreme heat or pollution expel symbiotic algae living in their tissues, leaving them stark white (SN: 8/9/23). Corals can bounce back, given time. But back-to-back bleaching can ultimately kill a reef.

    “The Great Barrier Reef is iconic,” climate scientist Benjamin Henley of the University of Melbourne in Australia said at an Aug. 6 news conference. UNESCO designated the reef as a World Heritage Site in 1981. More