Climate

A massive bolt of lightning that lit up the sky from Dallas to Kansas City, Mo., in October 2017 is officially the longest single flash ever recorded.

A reanalysis of satellite data collected during the storm revealed that this megaflash spanned 829 kilometers and lasted 7.39 seconds, says Michael Peterson, an applied physicist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. A study describing the event was published online July 31 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.   More

July has washed across the United States with unusually destructive, deadly torrents of rain.

In the first half of the month alone, historically heavy downpours sent rivers in Central Texas spilling far beyond their banks, causing at least 130 deaths. Rains prompted flash flooding across wildfire-scarred landscapes in New Mexico and flooded subway stations in New York City. Roadways in New Jersey turned into rivers, sweeping two people to their deaths as the floodwaters carried away their car. A tropical depression dumped up to 30 centimeters of rain in one day on parts of North Carolina, leading to at least six more deaths. More

An army of treelike creatures called Ents marches to war in the second The Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, walking for miles through dark forests. Once they arrive at the fortress of the evil wizard Saruman, the Ents hurl giant boulders, climb over walls and even rip open a dam to wipe out their enemy.

Mobile trees like the Ents are found throughout science fiction and fantasy worlds. The treelike alien Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy uses twiggy wings to fly. Trees called Evermean fight the main character Link in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom video game. And Harry Potter’s Whomping Willow — well, it whomps anyone who gets too close. More

Vanilla plants could have a future that’s not so sweet.

Wild relatives of the vanilla plant — which could be essential if the original cash crop disappears — may someday live in different places than their usual pollinators, according to two climate change predictions. The result could be a major mismatch, with habitat overlap between one vanilla species and its pollinator decreasing by up to 90 percent, researchers report July 3 in Frontiers in Plant Science. More

In recent weeks, extreme heat waves have broiled the United States, China and Europe. But scientists are warning of another hazardous form of heat: chronic heat. In places like Miami and Phoenix, temperatures can soar for months at a time without reaching heat wave levels, potentially contributing to health issues such as kidney disfunction, sleep apnea and depression. But too little research has focused on how these impacts may compound over months of exposure, University of Miami climate and health researcher Mayra Cruz and colleagues report in the June Environmental Research Climate.

“It’s the family that lives with conditions that are just a little bit too hot all the time and no air conditioning,” says Victoria Turner, an urban planner at UCLA who was not involved in the study. “The mother is pregnant in hot conditions, their children go to bed without air conditioning and go to schools without air conditioning, and then that’s changing their developmental physiology.” More

A cool house without air conditioning may soon be possible.

Scientists in Singapore have developed a new type of paint that reflects sunlight and cools surfaces by slowly evaporating water. Unlike other commercially available cooling paints, which are designed to repel water to protect the underlying material, the new one even works in hot, humid places, offering a low-energy way to stay cool, researchers report June 5 in Science.

“The key is passive cooling,” which requires no energy input, says material scientist Li Hong In other words, it works without using electricity or mechanical systems. Right now, radiative cooling is the most common type of passive cooling used in materials, including certain paints. It works by reflecting sunlight and radiating heat from a surface such as walls or roofs, into the sky. But in humid places like Singapore, water vapor in the air traps heat near the surface, which prevents it from escaping into the atmosphere and keeps the surfaces warm.In response, Hong and two other material scientists from Nanyang Technological University developed a cement-based paint that combines three cooling strategies: radiative cooling, evaporative cooling, which our skin uses, and solar reflection. In the study, the scientists painted three small houses: one with regular white paint, one with commercial cooling paint that uses only radiative cooling and one with their new formula. After two years of sun and rain in Singapore, the first two paints had turned yellow. But “our paint was still white,” says coauthor Jipeng Fei. Unlike other colors, white helps materials maintain their high reflectivity and cooling performance. More

This year may already be on track to be the second hottest on record, after 2024. Floods and tornadoes are wracking wide swathes of the United States. And more wild weather is expected to be on the horizon.

But the federal government’s ability — and long-standing charge — to warn the nation about the future impacts of climate change is in jeopardy. On April 28, the Trump administration abruptly dismissed the hundreds of U.S. scientists working on the sixth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated interagency report. The latest report was expected to be released in 2028, but now its future is in doubt. And that could greatly hobble the nation’s ability to prepare for future climate-related extreme events. More