What is a heat dome?

More extreme heat days are putting human health at risk in both the short and long term

America is generally experiencing more frequent extreme heat days, over a longer period, in certain parts of the country. The heat-related death toll is rising, and beyond those direct deaths, extreme heat can also have troubling ripple effects including elevated violence and decreased productivity.

Bomb cyclones can produce heavy rain, blizzard conditions, and intense winds

Known as "bombogenesis" in meteorology, these systems get their colloquial name from their rapid intensification over a 24-hour period—a phenomenon seen in some tropical cyclones. They occur most commonly along the coasts of the Northeast and Northwest US when there is a severe temperature difference between colliding air masses.

Oceans absorb 90% of warming from greenhouse gases

Oceans are providing increasingly more energy to power hurricane intensity. Current projections show rapid intensification is becoming more common, increasing the likelihood of Category 4 and 5 storms.

How Earth's 'greenhouse effect' works

The so-called "greenhouse effect," where various gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat from the sun, is a crucial factor in our planet's ability to sustain life. It's also pivotal in discussions over humanity's impact on changes in the Earth's...

City structures cause localized heat zones hotter than nearby rural areas

Urban materials like asphalt and concrete trap heat, while cities lack cooling features like trees and water. Due to hot runoff, urban streams can heat up by as much as 18°F more than forested streams.

Heat is the leading cause of death in natural disasters

Floods are a distant second, followed by hurricanes. That's according to data reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What causes hail?

Hail can be a particularly destructive element of certain thunderstorms, occurring even during otherwise warm days. Learn about the dynamics that lead to ice chunks falling from the sky.

All hurricanes have a central eye where no extreme weather phenomena take place

When standing in the eye of a hurricane, you're likely to experience sunny, cloudless skies surrounded by a wall of intense winds and thunderstorms. The physics behind this formation is the same as what causes water to spiral around a hollow cone as it goes down a drain.

13 unconventional ways to stay cool during heat waves

While air conditioning is the default solution for many in a heat wave, it can get expensive while requiring the consumption of fossil fuel energy. So, how else can you stay cool during a heat wave? This list compiles some practical, at times quirky, suggestions, including an ice-pack-filled aubergine hat.

A breakdown of Earth's atmospheric layers, including why it can get colder or hotter with altitude

Gases in the troposphere—the atmosphere's lowest layer—cool with increasing height as they get farther from the thermal energy emitted by Earth's warm surface. In the next layer—the stratosphere—ozone is increasingly heated by the sun's ultraviolet radiation with height. Because cooler air sinks and hotter air rises, the cooler troposphere and hotter stratosphere form a natural boundary keeping Earth's weather in the lowest layer.

How the gut microbiome can affect heatstroke risk

Some research suggests that our gut microbiome influences our risk of exertional heatstroke. If exercise boosts our body temperatures to unsafe levels, increasing gut permeability, that can cause a "leaky" gut—allowing bacteria and other gut microbes to leak into the bloodstream and potentially trigger endotoxemia, a potentially life-threatening inflammatory response that can occur with heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

Heat exhaustion is the most likely diagnosis if someone is talking clearly

Heatstroke, true to its name, looks more like a stroke. Its symptoms include severe disorientation, irritability, and seizures, among others. A patient does not need to have collapsed in order to have exertional heatstroke, but if someone is talking clearly, they likely have heat exhaustion, and it hasn't progressed to heatstroke.

Monsoons are large, seasonal shifts in wind driven by land-sea heating differences

Because land heats and cools faster than water, pressure differences form and create significant sea breezes. Moist air pulled onto land rises, condenses, and leads to substantial summer rainfall.

Explaining the Leidenfrost effect, where water can hover and move against gravity

Water droplets can glide across surfaces whose temperatures are well above water's boiling point. This heat instantly vaporizes the bottom of the droplet, creating a layer of steam that the rest of the droplet rides and bounces upon. This can be seen when sprinkling water on skillets to determine if the surface is hot enough to cook on.

How is the climate like baseball?

A two-minute video taking a lighthearted look at an unexpected analogy, explaining why some people call carbon dioxide (and the other greenhouse gases) the steroids of the climate system.

Ranking the 10 hottest places on Earth

Death Valley in California often gets the press for the hottest recorded air temperature in the world. What about the runners-up? This list compiles the rest of the Earth's hottest spots, from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to Kebili in Tunisia.

Concentrated sound waves can collapse microscopic bubbles, creating light

The phenomenon, known as sonoluminescence, can generate extremely short, high-intensity flashes from the sudden focusing of sound energy, which can drive the temperature within the bubbles to values over twice that of the sun's surface.

Microwave ovens heat food by agitating certain molecules with non-ionizing light

Molecules with resonant frequencies within the microwave range vibrate, producing heat between adjacent matter, just as hands warm when rubbed together. The mesh in front of an oven's door confines the microwaves to the container, while the rotating plate allows different parts of food to travel through regions of maximum vibration.

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,...

Hawaii formed from oceanic plate movement over a hot spot in the mantle

Abnormally hot magma rose through the crust and emerged from the seafloor, where it cooled and piled onto layers that became tall enough to form an island. As the plate moved, the existing island moved away and a new one formed over the hot spot, repeating for each Hawaiian island.

Visualizing changes in ocean temperatures between 2016 and 2020

How much does the temperature of the sea change in a given year? This visualization helps illustrate the changes by showing sea surface temperature data from January 2016 through March 2020. Sea surface temperature, which refers to water temperature at the sea's surface, plays a significant role in climate and weather.

Photochemical smog forms when sunlight reacts with car and industrial emissions

The hazy phenomenon's name is a combination of "smoke" and "fog" and is composed of chemical pollutants that can cause eye irritation, lung damage and harm to crops. Smog buildup is more common in cities with sunny climates, minimal wind and surrounding mountains that trap these chemicals.

As of 2025, scientists at B2 study the heat tolerance of cacao and coffee trees

The research at Biosphere 2 has led to the development of low-cost plant monitors, which can be provided to farmers worldwide to enable more precise monitoring of crops. Geodesic domes built within the ocean biome are used to investigate the best architectural structures for repopulating degraded reefs.

Learn about the sun's corona, which is nonlethal despite a temperature of millions of degrees

The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is best seen during a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the much brighter (and significantly cooler) solar surface. Despite the high-energy particles in the corona moving fast enough to escape the sun's gravity and gradually become solar wind, their density is too low to contribute meaningfully to the region's overall radiation.

View thermophiles found in Hot Springs National Park, including nanobacteria and ostracods

Most organisms in this subset of extremophiles live at temperatures between 60 and 80 degrees Celsius (140 to 176 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hot enough to unfold proteins needed for most biochemical reactions. In thermophiles, these molecules, including those needed to replicate DNA during cellular division, are tightly packed and held by stronger bonds to resist changes in shape.

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

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.

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.

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.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

Coral reefs get their colors from zooxanthellae—microorganisms that line corals' digestive tracts and provide them with sugars in exchange for a home within this protective tissue.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

Poison ivy will likely become both larger and more resilient due to climate change.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

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.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.