Harvard atmospheric scientists directly sampled 5-day old wildfire smoke in the upper troposphere and found large particles that are not reflected in current climate models.

A death toll of more than 1,100 is expected to rise significantly after a rare convergence of heavy rains and multiple cyclones that devastated multiple countries in south and southeast Asia. Cyclones — rotating storms with high winds in the Pacific Ocean — don’t normally manifest near the Earth’s equator, but last week’s extreme weather saw three such storms form in the area. As the frequency and intensity of cyclones ramp up, a team of researchers is calling for better forecasting with the development of intelligent observation networks.

Photocatalytic seawater splitting is an attractive way for producing green hydrogen. Significant progresses have been made recently in catalytic efficiencies, but the activity of catalysts can only maintain stable for about 10 h. Here, we develop a vacancy-engineered Ag₃PO₄/CdS porous microreactor chip photocatalyst, operating in seawater with a performance stability exceeding 300 h. This is achieved by the establishment of both catalytic selectivity for impurity ions and tailored interactions between vacancies and sulfur species. Efficient transport of carriers with strong redox ability is ensured by forming a heterojunction within a space charge region, where the visualization of potential distribution confirms the key design concept of our chip. Moreover, the separation of oxidation and reduction reactions in space inhibits the reverse recombination, making the chip capable of working at atmospheric pressure. Consequently, in the presence of Pt co-catalysts, a high solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 0.81% can be achieved in the whole durability test. When using a fully solar-driven 256 cm² hydrogen production prototype, a H₂ evolution rate of 68.01 mmol h⁻¹ m⁻² can be achieved under outdoor insolation. Our findings provide a novel approach to achieve high selectivity, and demonstrate an efficient and scalable prototype suitable for practical solar H₂ production.

With natural disasters striking communities across the U.S. at an accelerating pace, the question of how to build homes that can endure them has never been more critical. New research spanning political science and civil engineering shows that the answer could lie at the intersection of smarter regulatory systems and stronger structures. University of Notre Dame political scientist Susan Ostermann and her team have identified the building code features that have the biggest impact on hazard resilience and translated those features into tangible, practical building solutions.

A new University of Maryland study of campus air samples revealed that chemical compounds from Canada’s historic 2023 fires lingered in the air, forming an ‘atmospheric soup.’

The Reinhard Süring Foundation's 2025 Research Award goes to Leipzig-based atmospheric researcher Dr. Cristofer Jiménez for his contributions to a remote sensing technology that makes it possible to study the interactions between particles and clouds much better than ever before. The so-called dual-field-of-view polarisation lidar is based on two different aperture angles, which are used to observe and compare the reflections of laser beams in the atmosphere. Every three years, the Reinhard Süring Foundation Research Prize honours young scientists for outstanding work in a subfield of meteorology. In 2025, the prize was awarded for "New techniques, methods and applications of remote sensing of the atmosphere".

Rising greenhouse gas emissions could see the size of extreme floods in the Central Himalayas increase by between as much as 73% and 84% by the end of this century.