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    Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?

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    James McCall: Solar production in the US really started to pick up around 2012. As solar really became mainstream, there was a lot more concerns of land use changes.

    Ravi Sujith: If you look at the type of land that’s been converted for solar installations, over 60 percent of those landscapes are converted croplands.

    Chong Seok-Choi: They both require flat areas with a lot of sun, and that’s close to transmission infrastructures. So in this context, it is important for us to figure out how to combine farming and solar power production so that both can exist in harmony. More

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      Mega El Niños kicked off the world’s worst mass extinction

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      A barrage of intense, wild swings in climate conditions may have fueled the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. A re-creation of how ancient sea surface temperatures, ocean and atmosphere circulation, and landmasses interacted revealed an Earth plagued by nearly decade-long stints of droughts, wildfires and flooding.

      Researchers knew that a spike in global temperatures — triggered by gas emissions from millions of years of enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia — was the likely culprit behind a mass extinction roughly 252 million years ago (SN: 8/28/15). But it was the resulting catastrophic “mega El Niños” that whiplashed ecosystems, ultimately wiping out some 90 percent of all ocean species and 75 percent of those on land, researchers report in the Sept. 13 Science. More

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      How much is climate change to blame for extreme weather?

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      This video was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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      Maria Temming: In 2021, a historic heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest killing hundreds of people and fueling wildfires. Researchers later reported that human-caused climate change made this heat wave at least 150 times more likely.

      But how do scientists figure out how much climate change is to blame for a specific weather event?

      Researchers use a variety of techniques for this work, which is called extreme event attribution. One method compares the world we have today–which has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution –with what the world would look like without climate change. Researchers estimate what that second world would look like based on historic trends in weather data and climate models. More

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      Fiddler crabs are migrating north to cooler waters

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      This video was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

      TRANSCRIPT

      David Johnson: So in 2014, we were on a muddy bank in the marsh up here in Massachusetts, and I saw this small crab scuttle across the mud bank and pop into a hole. And so I dug out the crab, and it was a fiddler crab. I was shocked. I had worked a decade in this marsh and had never seen a fiddler crab up here. More

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      Summer-like heat is scorching the Southern Hemisphere — in winter

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      It’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere — but you wouldn’t know it from the thermostat.

      On August 26, a remote stretch of the coastline in Western Australia experienced the highest winter temperature ever recorded anywhere in the country: a blistering 41.6° Celsius (107° Fahrenheit).

      In Bidyadanga, an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, the overnight low temperature on August 28 was a staggering 27.2° C (81° F). That’s in winter, when the long-term average nighttime temperature has been around 15° C (59° F). Such heightened nighttime temperatures can disrupt sleep, leading to decreased cardiovascular and mental health (SN: 8/6/23). More

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      Extreme heat and rain help send dengue cases skyrocketing

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      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?

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      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

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      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