Black swan events are rare and surprising occurrences that happen without notice and often wreak havoc on society. The metaphor has been used to describe banking collapses, devastating earthquakes and other major surprises in financial, social and natural systems.A new analysis by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University is the first to document that black…

A University of Connecticut climate scientist has confirmed that more intense and more frequent severe rainstorms will likely continue as temperatures rise due to global warming, despite some observations that seem to suggest otherwise.In a research paper appearing this week in Nature Climate Change, UConn civil and environmental engineering professor Guiling Wang explains that data showing the intensity of severe…

Detecting and predicting lightning just got a lot easier. The first images from a new instrument onboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite are giving NOAA National Weather Service forecasters richer information about lightning that will help them alert the public to dangerous weather.

According to 33 years of remote sensing data, productivity of U.S. grasslands is more sensitive to dryness of the atmosphere than precipitation, important information for understanding how ecosystems will respond to climate change.A new study showing dryness of the atmosphere affects U.S. grassland productivity more than rainfall could have important implications for predicting how plants…

Understanding how the structural and chemical makeup of the material changes during the charge/discharge process could help scientists advance battery design for future energy storage needsSometimes understanding how a problem arises in the first place is key to finding its solution. For a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National…

A record drop in coal use — coupled with the rapid growth of renewable energy, an expansion of energy efficiency programs, and an increase in burning natural gas for electricity — have driven carbon dioxide emissions in the UK to their lowest levels since the 1920s, according to a new study by the non-profit group, Carbon Brief.

The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers from the University of…

At high latitudes, such as near Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, the ocean’s surface waters are cooled by frigid temperatures and become so dense that they sink a few thousand meters into the ocean’s abyss.Ocean waters are thought to flow along a sort of conveyor belt that transports them between the surface and the deep…

Tomorrow’s tires could come from the farm as much as the factory.Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered that food waste can partially replace the petroleum-based filler that has been used in manufacturing tires for more than a century.In tests, rubber made with the new fillers exceeds industrial standards for performance, which may ultimately…

Rainfall from spring-like downpours in the U.S. from February 25 to March 1 were analyzed at NASA using data from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite.Record breaking warm temperatures this winter have caused plants to bloom early in the eastern United States. Unfortunately this has also resulted in the formation of spring-like severe thunderstorms…