TheConversation

El Niño is officially here, and while it’s still weak right now, federal forecasters expect this global disrupter of worldwide weather patterns to gradually strengthen. That may sound ominous, but El Niño – Spanish for “the little boy” – is not malevolent, or even automatically bad. Here’s what forecasters expect, and what it means for the U.S. What is El Niño? El Niño is a climate pattern that starts with warm water building up in the tropical Pacific west of South America. This happens every three to seven years or so. It might last a few months or a couple of years. Normally, the trade winds push warm water away from the coast there, allowing cooler water to surface. But when the trade winds weaken, water near the equator can heat up, and that can have all kinds of effects through what are known as teleconnections. The ocean is so vast – covering approximately one-third of the planet, or about 15 times the size...

Walk through the personal care aisles of your local store and you’ll see dozens of products that promise to soften your skin, make you smell better, extend your lashes, decrease wrinkling, tame your curly hair, or even semi-permanently change the color of your lips, hair or skin. Remember the adage “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is”? Many of product promises like these are based on chemicals that can also be hazardous to your health, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can interfere with fertility and reproduction, fetal growth and infant development. That’s a big concern, because these products are heavily marketed to young women in the years before they might consider starting a family. Recent studies have demonstrated that college-age women use cosmetic products at higher rates than other groups. Additionally, many of these young women are unaware of the health risks from frequent use of popular products containing contaminan...

Outdoor recreation is on track for another record-setting year. In 2022, U.S. national parks logged more than 300 million visits – and that means a lot more people on roads and trails. While research shows that spending time outside is good for physical and mental health, long lines and gridlocked roads can make the experience a lot less fun. Crowding also makes it harder for park staff to protect wildlife and fragile lands and respond to emergencies. To manage the crowds, some parks are experimenting with timed-entry vehicle reservation systems and permits for popular trails. For all of their popularity, national parks are just one subset of U.S. public lands. Across the nation, the federal government owns more than 640 million acres (2.6 million square kilometers) of land. Depending on each site’s mission, its uses may include logging, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, wildlife habitat or recreation – often, several of these at once. In con...

When the nation’s No. 1 and No. 4 property and casualty insurance companies – State Farm and Allstate – confirmed that they would stop issuing new home insurance policies in California, it may have been a shock but shouldn’t have been a surprise. It’s a trend Florida and other hurricane- and flood-prone states know well. Insurers have been retreating from high-risk, high-loss markets for years after catastrophic events. Hurricane Andrew’s unprecedented US$16 billion in insured losses across Florida in 1992 set off alarm bells. Multibillion-dollar disasters since then have left several insurers insolvent and pushed many others to reevaluate what they’re willing to insure. I co-direct the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Arizona State University, where I study disaster losses and manage the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses database (SHELDUS). As losses from natural hazards steadily increase, research shows it’...

The Biden administration has agreed to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium shells to equip M1A1 Abrams tanks that the U.S. is sending there. Britain has already delivered tanks to Ukraine equipped with depleted-uranium shells. DU munitions, developed in the 1970s, are not nuclear weapons and do not produce a nuclear explosion. But soldiers or civilians can be exposed to the uranium, either in combat or afterward. Health physicist Kathryn Higley explains what depleted uranium is and what’s known about potential health and environmental risks. What is depleted uranium? Uranium, symbolized by the letter U, is a naturally occurring element that is radioactive. Natural uranium is composed primarily of three isotopes: U-234, U-235 and U-238. These isotopes are all uranium and have the same chemical characteristics, but they have slightly different masses, as indicated by the numbers 234, 235 and 238. Depleted uranium is mainly U-238, with small amounts of other isotopes, in...