Research briefs

Most people know that heat waves can be dangerous. What they may not realize is that the heat indoors can be much worse than outdoors.

When we see a forest fire on the news, it is easy to think of it as a local emergency. A new CMCC study shows that smoke from Italian forest fires can travel hundreds to even thousands of kilometers, carrying fine particles.

Climate change could push UK rivers to dangerous extremes and see more frequent rapid swings between wet and dry conditions – a phenomenon known as hydroclimatic whiplash – according to research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

When heat waves hit the Western United States, the risk of wildfires quickly rises. The prolonged heat dries out vegetation, but that’s only part of the cause – heat waves also play other roles in spreading wildfires.

Beyond helping emergency managers better alert downstream communities to flooding events, tracking rapid runoff allows water managers to improve reservoir management.

In 1900, coastal communities could expect certain extreme water level events to occur on average once in a century; in other words there was only a 1% chance to experience such an event in any given year.

Traditional global climate models were like early digital cameras — they had only about ten thousand pixels to cover the entire planet. At that low resolution, big storm systems looked like blurry blobs.

Climate change is altering where and when rocks are most likely to fracture across Spain, according to new research that suggests warming temperatures are redistributing a key process responsible for breaking down mountain landscapes.