Weather

A new study has revealed yet another way that human-induced climate change is affecting the planet. Decades of weather balloon and satellite data has shown that the Earth’s troposphere is expanding, even after natural variations are accounted for.

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.

Scientists have found evidence of a “space hurricane” for the first time. The storm, made up of swirling clouds of plasma, raged in Earth’s upper atmosphere for hours, dumping huge amounts of electrons like rain in a system that resembles a regular hurricane.

Comprehensive climate data has shown that globally, 2020 was the warmest year on record, tied with 2016. Worryingly, 2020’s record came in spite of a La Niña event, which has a cooling effect, while 2016’s record came off the back of a warming El Niño.

There are worlds out there so weird they’d put Dr. Who writers to shame. The latest to join the ranks is K2-141b, a scorching planet where it rains rocks, winds whip at supersonic speeds and huge swaths of the surface are covered in lava oceans.

Home to constant turbulent weather and the Great Red Spot – a storm bigger than Earth – Jupiter is the storm capital of the solar system. Now NASA’s Juno mission has discovered two new quirks of these storms – shallow lightning and “mushball” hail.

There are few more spectacular demonstrations of nature's power than a thunderstorm. The World Meteorological Association (WMO) has now confirmed two new records for the biggest lightning bolts in recorded history, measured by duration and distance.

A new study looking at nearly four decades of data has shown that in almost every part of the world where hurricanes form, their strongest winds are getting even stronger, with global warming thought to be a key contributing factor.

The western United States has been suffering drought since 2000. A new study has examined extreme droughts in the region dating back 1,200 years, and found that the current conditions have the makings of a “megadrought” that could last decades.

A new study has calculated that the Greenland ice sheet lost hundreds of billions of tons of ice last year, marking the biggest drop in its ice mass since records began in 1948. The team found that unusual pressure patterns had a devastating impact.

New research from an international team of scientists is suggesting that instantly recognizable earthy smell after rain is released by bacteria trying to attract a particular arthropod as a way to spread its spores.

If you're wondering what the weather was like thousand of years ago, well … there aren't going to be weather reports from back then. What there are, however, are fossilized giant clam shells, and a new study suggests they could provide the answers.