People who live in the Amazon basin are not likely to forget the great storm of January, 2005. Over the course of two days, a squall line measuring 620 miles (1,000 km) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide raged across the region from southwest to northeast, with buzzsaw-like winds of 90 mph (146 km/hr) causing widespread damage to property …
Weather
More Heat to Come—Eventually
The current heat wave is about to moderate here on the U.S. east coast. Temperatures will “only” be in the 90’s for the next week or so, compared with the 100-plus we’ve been sweating profusely under .
For those of us who write about climate, extreme weather events—not only heat waves, but also floods, droughts, …
Turning Up the Heat on Climate Change
By time I was up and walking to work around 8 AM this morning in New York, the temperature was already 84 degrees and it’s forecast to hit a record-setting 102 degrees by 3 PM. The streets are a griddle, the offices are oppressive—more than usual—and I don’t even want to talk about the subways. Meteorologists are predicting that the …
A Quick Fix for Climate Change Falls Flat
It’s always about this time of year—when the first air-sucking, clothes-wilting, soul-smothering heat wave hits a big swath of the country—that people who rarely think about climate change start to worry. Never mind that a single sweltering summer can never be traced directly to global warming. Hot weather causes even some of the …
Stormy Days for the Oil Spill?
It doesn’t take much to disrupt the jury-rigged system BP has designed to contain some of the oil spewing into the Gulf. Just a few days ago an underwater remote operated vehicle bumped into a venting system, requiring BP to remove the containment cap for about half a day—during which time oil flowed from the well virtually …