climate

A natural El Nino, human-caused climate change, a stubborn heat dome over the nation’s midsection and other factors cooked up Tropical Storm Hilary’s record-breaking slosh into California and Nevada, scientists figure.

Two tropical storms — Franklin and Gert — are swimming around the Atlantic Ocean in various stages of intensifying and degrading. One of them, Franklin, has the best chance of intensifying into a hurricane. As of Monday, there is no current threat to Florida. As of the 11 a.m. NHC report, Emily was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.

Hurricanes in the U.S. the last few decades killed thousands more people than meteorologists traditionally calculate and a disproportionate number of those victims are poor, vulnerable and minorities, according to a new epidemiological study.

A system of ocean currents that transports heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse by mid-century, according to a new study, and scientists have said before that such a collapse could cause catastrophic sea-level rise and extreme weather across the globe.

For the roughly five million Floridians who get their utilities through Florida Power & Light, the current record-breaking summer heat wave can be felt not just in the air, but in their wallets as well.With heat indices breaking 110 degrees across South Florida, more residents are taking the cue to beat the heat and stay inside.

More temperatures in the 100s were forecast in the southern parts of Southwest Florida on Sunday.

The National Weather Service has warned people in several cities, including Phoenix and Miami, to avoid the sun over the coming days as temperatures climb to life-threatening numbers.

The planet’s temperature spiked this week to its hottest day in at least 44 years and likely much longer.

As a warming Earth simmered into worrisome new territory this week, scientists said the unofficial records being set for average planetary temperature were a clear sign of how pollutants released by humans are warming their environment. But the heat is also just one way the planet is telling us something is gravely wrong, they said.

When it comes to gauging how risky it is to live where major hurricanes sometimes make landfall, the most important thing to know is what’s called the ‘return period.’ That is the estimated average time between such storms. But, because historic records only go back so far scientists use other ways to determine how frequent major storms have occurred in the past. One such technique is called paleoclimatology — or more specifically in the case of massive storms like Hurricane Ian, paleotempestology.We meet one of these scientists who is doing this kind of research work right here in Southwest Florida. Dr. Jo Muller is a paleoclimatologist and a Professor in the Department of Marine & Earth Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. She studies past tropical cyclone activity by collecting core samples from lagoons and bays behind Southwest Florida’s barrier islands.