When it comes to compounding natural hazards like landslides, wildfires, flooding and extreme heat, where you live makes all the difference. New research from Portland State University underscores this disproportionate reality, finding that in Portland, the areas most vulnerable to multiple climate hazards are historically underinvested neighborhoods marked by lower median incomes, lower education levels and higher racial diversity.

What if the secret to drought-resistant crops isn't how much water plants use, but when they use it? A new study identifies a daily window that could help breeders develop tomatoes that better withstand drought without sacrificing yield.

X-band phased-array radar data assimilation sharpens high-resolution simulation of a westerly weak tornado

Ny-Ålesund/Leipzig. Salt and sugar from the sea can rise as far as the free troposphere, thereby influencing both cloud formation and the Arctic climate. This is the finding of balloon measurements carried out by a team of researchers on Spitsbergen in autumn 2021 and spring 2022. With the Arctic becoming increasingly ice-free, more and more of these cloud-forming ingredients from seawater could enter the atmosphere and affect the radiation budget. The new findings therefore contribute to a better understanding of the complex interactions that lead to above-average warming in the Arctic, the researchers write in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

The study, led by the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), also involved researchers from the University of Cologne, the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, the University of Oldenburg and the University of Bremen. It forms part of the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) Transregios 172 programme, which has been investigating climate change in the Arctic since 2016 under the leadership of Leipzig University.

Before tropical cyclones can significantly strengthen, they generally must first become vertically aligned, with their rotating centers stacked through the atmosphere. New research using nearly three decades of NOAA Hurricane Hunter observations identifies four features that can help a tilted storm become aligned and more capable of intensifying.