The Atlantic
Cicadas Know How to End a Multiyear Lockdown
Billions of bugs are about to burst out of the ground to begin the mass gathering of a lifetime. It’s hard not to feel jealous.
Grant Heilman / Alamy
A lot can change in 17 years. The last time the cicadas were here, the virus behind the SARS outbreak had finally retreated. George W. Bush was campaigning for his second presidential term, and Myspace had commenced its meteoric rise. Tobey Maguire was still the reigning Spider-Man. The year was 2004, and a roaring mass of red-eyed, black-bodied insects had just mated and died and left behind billions of baby bugs, heirs of the hallowed Brood X, to burrow into the soil for a lonely stint underground.
Sweltering heat continues to bake Southwest
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Kevään abit kertovat, kuinka korona teki opiskelusta painajaista - Kotimaa
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The Atlantic
Tiny iodine particles are clumping together to trap sunlight and melt polar sea ice.
Christian Vorhofer/ imageBROKER / Alamy
To climate scientists, clouds are powerful, pillowy paradoxes. They can reflect away the sun’s heat but also trap it in the atmosphere; they can be products of warming temperatures but can also amplify their effects. Now, while studying the atmospheric chemistry that produces clouds, researchers have uncovered an unexpectedly potent natural process that seeds their growth. And as the Earth continues to warm from rising levels of greenhouse gases, this process could be a major new mechanism for accelerating the loss of sea ice at the poles one that no global climate model currently incorporates.
(Bloomberg) The bitter chill that toppled Texas’s power grid and broke records across the Great Plains has retreated and likely won’t return.Temperatures across the Midwest, South and most of the East Coast will likely linger 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2-3 Celsius) above normal through Feb. 27. While the West will remain colder into early March, the worst of winter is over.“It’s safe to say ‘all clear’ on that caliber of cold,” said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC. “But we do believe some colder periods could still return later in March for some above-normal heating demand at times.”A blast of sub-freezing temperatures ripped across the U.S. into Mexico last week when the polar vortex the girdle of winds that bottles cold in the Arctic weakened. The record-breaking freeze overwhelmed Texas’s grid, leaving millions without lights, heat and, eventually, water.In the last 30 days, 9,614 d