By analyzing the devastating floods that affected Emilia-Romagna, Italy, in 2023 and 2024, a team of researchers from CMCC - the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change - describes for the first time how a particular orographic configuration makes certain regions particularly prone to extreme flooding. The “cul-de-sac” effect: where mountains act as a trap for moisture over a confined area for several days, while a stationary cyclone continues to channel humid air, leading to prolonged and intense precipitation. The research shows how these events, which affect other Mediterranean areas with similar orography, could become more frequent in a changing climate, paving the way for new forecasts and improved early warning systems that will help communities better prepare.

Researchers at the University of Kansas have conducted a study based on their building of the Kansas Energy Transition Atlas. The tool gathers wind energy regulations for all of the state's 105 counties, showing what kind of regulations each has, as well as information on transmission lines, turbine height and much more. The study shows how many counties have regs that enable wind development, how many seek to block them and show that agricultural reliance factors into allowing wind in a county, while voting patterns did not factor in to types of regs. The site not only shows how a state with massive wind energy potential handles the issue, but can help guide the nation in energy transition policies, the researchers argue.

Research by Pompeu Fabra University has shown in detail how climate change is affecting the physical and mental well-being of people living in Catalonia in such spaces as the home, the workplace, in nature, and to the body. Thus, it concludes that basic routines like sleeping, working and meeting up with friends are being altered by the effects of climate change. This preliminary qualitative study is led by Mar Coll Planell and Maria Rodó Zárate, researchers with the UPF Gender and Inequalities Research Group (GRETA).