Learn all about different types of extreme weather

The ingredients that make up severe weather

A seven-minute video illustrating how a storm is made. These factors—moisture, instability, lift, and shear—are explained through a series of data sets and creative, descriptive diagrams.

What types of extreme weather can be attributed to climate change?

For decades, it was impossible to say that a specific weather event was caused, or even made worse, by climate change. But advanced research methods are changing that.

Watch how scientists learn about hurricanes by flying into them

A specialized fleet of Air Force planes is built to fly into hurricanes and gather critical data from inside the storm. Beyond radar and microwave sensors, the planes are equipped with dropsondes—small instruments dropped into storms to measure pressure, temperature, and wind.

Explore Earth's future climate under different levels of warming

An incredible interactive project showing how global warming is projected to affect the world, from temperatures to rainfall, droughts and flooding, and more.

What's the difference between weather and climate?

A five-minute TedEd video exploring the differences between weather and climate – what they are, how we predict them, and what those predictions can tell us.

Pilots are familiar with multiple types of turbulence, each with varying severity

Each type is defined based on what disrupts airflow in the atmosphere, including thunderstorms, mountains, and wakes produced by aircraft that previously took off. Pilots classify turbulence as light, moderate, severe, or extreme based on how it affects aircraft movement.

Check out hurricane history where you live

The NOAA's historical hurricane tracker lets you explore over 150 years of data to see where hurricanes traveled and made landfall. The tool lets you search by location, name, or year; create maps and tables; and read NOAA storm reports.

Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones around the world

Tropical cyclones are named differently based on their region of origin due to historical traditions and cultural importance. These storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and northeast Pacific oceans, cyclones in the southwest Pacific and Indian oceans, and typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

Various types of tornadoes are distinguished by their shape, size, and location

Waterspouts form over water as long, thin columns of mist and air, while elephant trunks are tornadoes that elongate vertically as they become tilted during their formation, resembling the mammal's appendage. Wedge tornadoes are among the most powerful, often spanning a mile or more in width.

Nor'easters can produce thundersnow—lightning in blizzard conditions

Although thunderstorms typically require warm air to rise in updrafts and collide with heavier soft hail, which creates charge separation and eventual electrical discharge, these cyclones can replicate these conditions by churning the atmosphere through strong winds. Rarely, especially warm lakes can similarly help generate thunderstorms during the winter.

Hot, semiarid, coastal, cold: An overview of the four desert types

This article describes the various characteristics of deserts, including their geography, their climate, their soil, and the wildlife and vegetation that inhabit them. All desert climates are characterized by extreme temperatures and low rainfall,...

Rivers in the sky

A short introduction to atmospheric rivers, including a handy illustration on the science behind them, the phenomena that help transport water vapor from the tropics across the globe.

Storm surges, not winds, are the leading cause of hurricane-related fatalities

A storm surge is an abnormal rise in water levels generated by a storm that exceeds predicted tides. It is particularly dangerous in coastal regions, where it can generate extreme flooding well before the hurricane makes landfall.

Why do flash floods occur?

Flash flooding can be more dangerous than traditional floods, occurring within the span of hours and exhibiting rapid currents. Here's how atmospheric conditions and geography combine to make some locations ripe for the disaster.

Watch the birth of a tornado in real time

While driving through suburban Oklahoma in May 2013, National Geographic explorer and storm researcher Tim Samaras witnessed the formation of a tornado from a thunderstorm and captured footage of the descending funnel cloud before it touched down.

Mapping how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation affects weather patterns around the world

In the warm episode (El Niño), summers in India, Indonesia, Australia, and the Caribbean are drier than normal, while winters bring wetter, cooler conditions to the US Gulf Coast and warmer conditions to the Pacific Northwest. During the cold episode (La Niña), these are reversed, with India, Indonesia, and the southern Caribbean experiencing greater rainfall in the summers.

View the various types of lightning

The most common form of lightning involves channels of electricity between oppositely charged regions within a cloud or between two clouds to reestablish electrostatic equilibrium. While cloud-to-ground lightning is understood best, research is ongoing to fully model the mechanisms behind rarer forms of lightning, such as transient luminous events.

Visualizing the multibillion dollar cost of US weather disasters

The US has sustained 332 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1B (including CPI adjustment to 2022). The total cost of these 332 events exceeds $2.275T.

Extreme weather conditions heighten cholera risks in settings like refugee camps

Runoff from sewage—exacerbated by situations like flooding or extreme rains—heightens this threat. Increasing temperatures also create the ideal conditions for the bacteria to reproduce, increasing transmission risks.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

How salt, sunlight, and wind drive ocean currents

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation plays a critical role in regulating earth's climate, but is threatened by climate change. Explore the effects of temperature, density, and salinity on ocean currents in this 13-minute PBS video.

Wind energy 101

Learn more about the wind industry, from how a wind turbine works, to the new and exciting research in the field of wind energy.

Dive into the ocean's hottest water to explore hydrothermal vents

What can live at temperatures of 700 degrees Fahrenheit under skull crushing pressure with zero sunlight? Meet the animals living in the most extreme conditions on Earth in this four-minute video.

Explore tips from the American Red Cross on preparing for a tornado

If you live in a region prone to tornadoes, have a plan to retreat to a safe room built to withstand strong winds, such as an underground shelter or a windowless room at the lowest level of a study building, in case of a tornado warning. Having a stay-at-home kit with non-perishable food and water, medications, batteries and chargers, and a battery-powered radio is also essential.

EXTREMA is a smart city system protecting residents from heat-related health risks

The mobile application is designed to protect citizens in select European cities from extreme temperatures by calculating the heat index at a specific location and providing personalized information to users. Municipal governments can also utilize it to inform emergency responses, such as determining when and where to open cooling centers.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

From evaporation to precipitation: An overview of the water cycle

The water cycle is a natural process that continuously circulates water throughout Earth's systems. View this diagram from NASA to understand how the water cycle incorporates evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and more. First, the sun's heat...

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Animal phobias are likely the most common type of phobias, followed by an extreme fear of heights.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Watch what the Ebola virus does inside our cells and organs in order to spread and survive.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.