Extreme weather

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. My parents said the planet is getting too hot for people to live here. They called it climate change. What does that mean? – Joseph, age 12, Boise, Idaho Many countries have seen extremely hot weather lately, but in most of the inhabited world, it’s never going to get “too hot for people to live here,” especially in relatively dry climates. When it’s hot outside in dry places, most of the time our bodies can cool off by evaporating water and heat from our skin as sweat. However, there are places where it occasionally gets dangerously hot and humid, especially where hot deserts are right next to the warm ocean. When the air is humid, sweat doesn’t evaporate as quickly, so sweating doesn’t cool...

The heat wave that left more than 100 million people sweating across the eastern U.S. in June 2024 hit so fast and was so extreme that forecasters warned a flash drought could follow across wide parts of the region. Prolonged high temperatures can quickly dry soils, triggering a rapid onset drought that can affect agriculture, water resources and energy supplies. Many regions under the June heat dome quickly developed abnormally dry conditions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s hazard outlook map shows flash drought warnings in yellow and areas forecast to have a high risk of excessive heat in early July in red. NOAA Climate Prediction Center The human impacts of the heat wave have also been widespread. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses surged. Several Massachusetts schools without air conditioning closed to protect kids and teachers...

As the weather warms, people spend more time outdoors, going to barbecues, beaches and ballgames. But summer isn’t just the season of baseball and outdoor festivals – it’s also lightning season. Each year in the United States, lightning strikes around 37 million times. It kills 21 people a year in the U.S. on average. For as often as lightning occurs – there are only a few days each year nationwide without lightning – there are still a lot of misunderstandings about nature’s largest spark. Because of this, a lot of people take unnecessary risks when thunderstorms are nearby. I am a meteorologist who studies lightning and lightning safety, and a member of the National Lightning Safety Council. Here are some fast facts to keep your family and friends safe this summer. What is lightning, and where does it come from? Lightning is a giant electric spark in the atmosphere and is classified based on whether it hits the ground or not. In-cloud li...

Preparing for Atlantic hurricane season is always a priority in the Caribbean, especially when forecasts project high numbers of storms, as they do for 2024. The region’s most devastating storm in recent years, Hurricane Maria, struck in September 2017 and inflicted unprecedented destruction on Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Croix and other islands. Maria killed more than 3,000 people and caused about US$96 billion in damage. It devastated Puerto Rico’s electric power system, leaving 1.5 million customers in the dark for up to 328 days – the longest blackout in U.S. history. These outages had cascading impacts on other infrastructure, such as water and communications systems. Today, the Caribbean region is experiencing new climate-related challenges. Prolonged extreme heat and humid days are increasing because of the accelerated warming of ocean waters. In response to these increasingly frequent and extreme weather events, I teamed up with a dozen other resea...

The French Broad River winds through the mountains of western North Carolina, fed by dozens of mountain streams, and crosses the city of Asheville. At over 2,000 feet above sea level and more than 250 miles from the coast, it is an unlikely place to prepare for a hurricane. Yet, the remnants of several hurricanes have swept through this region over the years, sending rivers in the region raging out of their banks. When these storms hit back to back, the devastation can be enormous. In September 2004, for example, remnants of Hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne all brought excessive rain to western North Carolina in the span of a few weeks, overwhelming the French Broad and other rivers in the Asheville area. Western North Carolina’s history is just one example of the inland risks from tropical cyclones. A U.S. map of hurricane storm tracks since 1851 shows that the storms and their remnants often travel far inland. Yellows to reds...