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Categories: Archaeology: General, Geoscience: Severe Weather

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'Flash droughts' have become more frequent due to human-caused climate change and this trend is predicted to accelerate in a warmer future, according to new research.

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Simulated volcanic eruptions may be blowing up our ability to predict near-term climate, according to a new study.

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The question of how prehistoric populations obtained sustainable food in the barren heights of the Tibetan Plateau has long attracted academic and popular interest. A new study highlights the critical role of dairy pastoralism in opening the plateau up to widespread, long-term human habitation.

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Soil stores more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined, and soil microbes are largely responsible for putting it there. However, the increasing frequency and severity of drought, such as those that have been impacting California, could disrupt this delicate ecosystem. Microbial ecologists warn that soil health and future greenhouse gas levels could be impacted if soil microbes adapt to drought faster than plants do.

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Researchers develop a computational model of stormwater piping to study storm geysers. They used this model to understand why storm geysers form, what conditions tend to make them worse, and what city planners can do to prevent them from occurring. The authors say the best cure for a storm geyser is bigger pipes; however, that advice is little help to cities with existing pipeline infrastructure. In these systems, the focus must be on minimizing the potential damage by reducing the height of the geysers, the volume of expelled water, or the resulting damage to the pipeline.

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Material left on the seafloor by bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, according to new research.

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A lightning strike in New Port Richey, Florida, led to a chemical reaction creating a new material that is transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth. High-energy events, such as lightning, can cause unique chemical reactions. In this instance, the result is a new material -- one that is transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth.

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The island of Dominica took a direct hit from Category 5 Hurricane Maria. Nine months afterward, researchers found that while 89% percent of trees located in nine previously documented forest stands were damaged, but only 10 percent had immediately died. The most common damage was stem snapping and major branch damage. The damage with the highest rates of mortality were uprooting and being crushed by a neighboring tree. Large individual trees and species with lower wood density were susceptible to snapping, uprooting and mortality. Those on steeper slopes were more prone to being crushed by neighboring trees.

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Dense urban areas amplify the effects of higher temperatures, due to the phenomenon of heat islands in cities. This makes cities more vulnerable to extreme climate events. Large investments in the electricity network will be necessary to cool us down during heatwaves and keep us warm during cold snaps, according to a new study.

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Ponderosa pine forests in the Sierra Nevada that were wiped out by western pine beetles during the 2012-2015 megadrought won't recover to pre-drought densities, reducing an important storehouse for atmospheric carbon.

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About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this sector by 40% in the United States. The approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), could also help prevent blackouts caused by high power demand during extreme weather events.

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Natural disasters can devastate a region, abruptly killing the species that form an ecosystem's structure. But how this transpires can influence recovery. While fires scorch the landscape to the ground, a heatwave leaves an army of wooden staves in its wake. Storm surges and coral bleaching do something similar underwater.

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A warmer Arctic has been linked to extreme winter weather in the midlatitude regions. But, it is not clear how global warming affects this link. In a new study, researchers show, using weather data and climate models, that while the 'Warm Arctic-Cold Continent' pattern will continue as the climate continues to warm, Arctic warming will become a less reliable predictor of extreme winter weather in the future.

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Planners have come up with many innovative ways to prevent flooding caused by heavy downpours -- from planting rain gardens to installing green roofs. But in many cases, nothing works quite as well as a simple hole in the ground -- a detention basin.

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For the first time, researchers have pinpointed a date when elite Mongol Empire people were drinking yak milk, according to a new study.

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For tiny salamanders squirming skin-to-soil, big-picture weather patterns may seem as far away as outer space. But for decades, scientists have mostly relied on free-air temperature data at large spatial scales to predict future salamander distributions under climate change. The outlook was dire for the mini ecosystem engineers, suggesting near elimination of habitat in crucial areas.

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European forests are increasingly turning brown in the course of hot, dry summers. In the scorching summer of 2022, Europe experienced more trees turning brown than ever, with 37% of temperate and Mediterranean forest regions affected. In the three-year meteorological history of low-?greenness events, characteristic weather signals can be found as precursors of the events.

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Researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti -- and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti -- as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.

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The largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa, which includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization, has now broken the stalemate about the extent to which people from outside Africa contributed to Swahili culture and ancestry.

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Being able to withstand hurricane-force winds is the key to a long life for many buildings on the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast of the U.S. Determining the right level of winds to design for is tricky business, but support from artificial intelligence may offer a simple solution.