Weather

Storm chasing is a branch of photography that requires tenacity and perseverance in order to capture lightning strikes. The Bolt Hunter is a lightning camera trigger that may be the solution to this challenging type of photography.

The construction work currently underway in Saudi Arabia is unprecedented, with buildings like the Line transforming the desert landscape. Now an expert has suggested that the scale of work is so massive, it could even alter weather patterns.

In a world first, Japanese researchers flew a lightning-proof drone in a thunderstorm, using it to induce and direct natural lightning strikes. The team is now working on how this flying lightning rod might capture and store lightning energy.

One picture taken every day of the year starting September 2023 through to September 2024 provides a pretty fascinating perspective of the twilight zone transit due to the Earth's 23.5-degree axial tilt as it orbits around the Sun.

This week’s global NVIDIA GTC, GPU Technology Conference, included a discussion about using accelerated computing to drive climate action. Three startup companies have taken advantage of NVIDIA's AI and Earth-2 platform to do just that.

Although drones are a good substitute for piloted aircraft in hazardous weather conditions, it's obviously still best for their users if the things don't crash. The Czech-designed ThunderFly TF-G1 autogyro drone was created with that fact in mind.

After sending a fleet of self-sailing drones into the path of Hurricane Sam to help improve forecast models, Saildrone has now launched three uncrewed surface vehicles into the Gulf Stream winter to gather data on carbon uptake in the ocean.

Having flexed its muscles in predicting kidney injury, toppling Go champions and solving 50-year-old science problems, artificial intelligence company DeepMind is now dipping its toes in weather forecasting.

Given how deadly and destructive lightning can be, it would certainly be good to know in advance where and when it was going to strike. A new artificial intelligence-based system could help, utilizing nothing but standard weather-station data.

One of the benefits of driving a "connected" car is the ability to receive warnings of hazardous weather on the road ahead. Toyota is now looking at improving the accuracy of such warnings, by monitoring what vehicles' windshield wipers are up to.

​When it comes to checking the weather forecast, you can of course just look at your smartphone. Australian startup Typified, however, has created something that designer Oli Woods claims is more artistic and less obtrusive – a poster that changes color according to the upcoming weather.

​Christiaan van Heijst is an airline pilot with over a decade's experience flying everything from small Turboprops to massive Boeing 747s. He's also a photographer able to capture spectacular images from his privileged perspective at 35,000 ft.