Severe Weather News

January 21, 2026

Top Headlines

The World’s Mountains Are Warming Faster Than Anyone Expected

Jan. 21, 2026 Mountain regions around the world are heating up faster than the lands below them, triggering dramatic shifts in snow, rain, and water supply that could affect over a billion people. A major global review finds that rising temperatures are turning ...

The Ocean Absorbed a Stunning Amount of Heat in 2025

Jan. 14, 2026 Earth’s oceans reached their highest heat levels on record in 2025, absorbing vast amounts of excess energy from the atmosphere. This steady buildup has accelerated since the 1990s and is now driving stronger storms, heavier rainfall, and rising ...

Extreme Heat Is Breaking Honey Bees’ Natural Cooling System

Jan. 13, 2026 Honey bees can normally keep their hives perfectly climate-controlled, but extreme heat can overwhelm their defenses. During a scorching Arizona summer, researchers found that high temperatures caused damaging temperature fluctuations inside hives, ...

Scientists Discover What’s Linking Floods and Droughts Across the Planet

Jan. 13, 2026 Scientists tracking Earth’s water from space discovered that El Niño and La Niña are synchronizing floods and droughts across continents. When these climate cycles intensify, far-apart regions can become unusually wet or dangerously dry at the ...

A Greenland Glacier Is Cracking Open in Real Time

Jan. 5, 2026 A meltwater lake that formed in the mid-1990s on Greenland’s 79°N Glacier has been draining in sudden, dramatic bursts through cracks and vertical ice shafts. These events have accelerated in recent years, creating strange triangular fracture ...

Scientists Found a Dangerous Feedback Loop Accelerating Arctic Warming

Dec. 29, 2025 The Arctic is changing rapidly, and scientists have uncovered a powerful mix of natural and human-driven processes fueling that change. Cracks in sea ice release heat and pollutants that form clouds and speed up melting, while emissions from nearby ...

Hidden Heat Beneath Greenland Could Change Sea Level Forecasts

Dec. 27, 2025 Scientists have built the most detailed 3D models yet of temperatures deep beneath Greenland. The results reveal uneven heat hidden below the ice, shaped by Greenland’s ancient path over a volcanic hotspot. This underground warmth affects how the ...

Oceans Are Supercharging Hurricanes Past Category 5

Dec. 25, 2025 Deep ocean hot spots packed with heat are making the strongest hurricanes and typhoons more likely—and more dangerous. These regions, especially near the Philippines and the Caribbean, are expanding as climate change warms ocean waters far below ...

Global Warming Could Trigger the Next Ice Age

Dec. 21, 2025 Scientists have uncovered a missing feedback in Earth’s carbon cycle that could cause global warming to overshoot into an ice age. As the planet warms, nutrient-rich runoff fuels plankton blooms that bury huge amounts of carbon in the ocean. In ...

Scientists Find Hidden Rainfall Pattern That Could Reshape Farming

Dec. 12, 2025 New research shows that crops are far more vulnerable when too much rainfall originates from land rather than the ocean. Land-sourced moisture leads to weaker, less reliable rainfall, heightening drought risk. The U.S. Midwest and East Africa are ...

New Fossils in Qatar Reveal a Tiny Sea Cow Hidden for 21 Million Years

Dec. 12, 2025 Fossils from Qatar have revealed a small, newly identified sea cow species that lived in the Arabian Gulf more than 20 million years ago. The site contains the densest known collection of fossil sea cow bones, showing that these animals once thrived ...

A Hidden Antarctic Shift Unleashed the Carbon That Warmed the World

Dec. 2, 2025 As the last Ice Age waned and the Holocene dawned, deep-ocean circulation around Antarctica underwent dramatic shifts that helped release long-stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Deep-sea sediments show that ancient Antarctic waters once trapped ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:32pm EST

A NASA Satellite Caught a Giant Tsunami Doing Something Scientists Didn’t Expect

Jan. 6, 2026 When a huge earthquake struck near Kamchatka, the SWOT satellite captured an unprecedented, high-resolution view of the resulting tsunami as it ...

This Rare Earthquake Did Everything Scientists Hoped to See

Dec. 16, 2025 A rare, ultra-long earthquake in Myanmar revealed that mature faults can deliver their full force directly to the surface. The discovery could mean stronger shaking near faults like California’s ...

New Data Reveals One of the Smallest Ozone Holes in Decades

Dec. 4, 2025 This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica ranked among the smallest since the early 1990s, reflecting steady progress from decades of global action under the Montreal Protocol. Declining chlorine ...

A Global Shipping Detour Just Revealed a Hidden Climate Twist

Nov. 26, 2025 Rerouted shipping during Red Sea conflicts accidentally created a massive real-world experiment, letting scientists study how new low-sulfur marine fuels affect cloud formation. The sudden surge of ...

This Glowing Particle in a Laser Trap May Reveal How Lightning Begins

Nov. 24, 2025 Using a precisely aligned pair of laser beams, scientists can now hold a single aerosol particle in place and monitor how it charges up. The particle’s glow signals each step in its changing ...

Extreme Floods Are Slashing Global Rice Yields Faster Than Expected

Nov. 15, 2025 Scientists discovered that a week of full submergence is enough to kill most rice plants, making flooding a far greater threat than previously understood. Intensifying extreme rainfall events may ...

Massive Hidden Waves Are Rapidly Melting Greenland’s Glaciers

Nov. 14, 2025 Researchers in Greenland used a 10-kilometer fiber-optic cable to track how iceberg calving stirs up warm seawater. The resulting surface tsunamis and massive hidden underwater waves intensify ...

Satellite Images Reveal the Fastest Antarctic Glacier Retreat Ever

Nov. 14, 2025 Hektoria Glacier’s sudden eight-kilometer collapse stunned scientists, marking the fastest modern ice retreat ever recorded in Antarctica. Its flat, below-sea-level ice plain allowed huge slabs of ...

Space Dust Reveals How Fast the Arctic Is Changing

Nov. 13, 2025 Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast, and scientists have turned to an unexpected cosmic clue—space dust—to uncover how ice has changed over tens of thousands of years. By tracking ...

Meet the Desert Survivor That Grows Faster the Hotter It Gets

Nov. 9, 2025 In Death Valley’s relentless heat, Tidestromia oblongifolia doesn’t just survive—it thrives. Michigan State University scientists discovered that the plant can quickly adjust its photosynthetic ...

9,000-Year-Old Ice Melt Shows How Fast Antarctica Can Fall Apart

Nov. 9, 2025 Around 9,000 years ago, East Antarctica went through a dramatic meltdown that was anything but isolated. Scientists have discovered that warm deep ocean water surged beneath the region’s floating ...

Antarctic Robot ‘Lassie’ Uncovers Thousands of Icefish Nests Beneath Antarctic Ice

Oct. 29, 2025 Beneath the ice of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, scientists discovered a vast, organized city of fish nests revealed after the colossal A68 iceberg broke away. Using robotic explorers, they found over ...

Frozen for 6 Million Years, Antarctic Ice Rewrites Earth’s Climate Story

Nov. 5, 2025 Scientists discovered 6-million-year-old ice in Antarctica, offering the oldest direct record of Earth’s ancient atmosphere and climate. The finding reveals a dramatic cooling trend and promises ...

Scientists Just Found Hidden Life Thriving Beneath the Arctic Ice

Oct. 21, 2025 Melting Arctic ice is revealing a hidden world of nitrogen-fixing bacteria beneath the surface. These microbes, not the usual cyanobacteria, enrich the ocean with nitrogen, fueling algae growth that ...

China’s Coastal Cities Are Sinking as Seas Rise at Record Speed

Oct. 23, 2025 Sea levels are rising faster than at any time in 4,000 years, scientists report, with China’s major coastal cities at particular risk. The rapid increase is driven by warming oceans and melting ...

1,000 Swiss Glaciers Already Gone, and the Melting Is Speeding Up

Oct. 2, 2025 Swiss glaciers lost nearly 3% of their volume in 2025, following a snow-poor winter and scorching summer heatwaves. The melt has been so extreme that some glaciers lost more than two meters of ice ...

The Red Sea That Vanished and the Catastrophic Flood That Brought It Back

Oct. 8, 2025 Researchers at KAUST have confirmed that the Red Sea once vanished entirely, turning into a barren salt desert before being suddenly flooded by waters from the Indian Ocean. The flood carved deep ...

Scientists Just Recreated a Wildfire That Made Its Own Weather

Oct. 2, 2025 In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive ...

California’s Next Big One Could Be Faster and Far More Destructive

Oct. 12, 2025 Supershear earthquakes, moving faster than seismic waves, could cause catastrophic shaking across California. USC researchers warn that many faults capable of magnitude 7 quakes might produce these ...

Tiny Skaters Beneath the Arctic Ice Rewrite the Limits of Life

Sep. 12, 2025 Hidden within Arctic ice, diatoms are proving to be anything but dormant. New Stanford research shows these glass-walled algae glide through frozen channels at record-breaking subzero temperatures, ...

The Ocean’s Most Abundant Microbe Is Near Its Breaking Point

Sep. 9, 2025 Tiny ocean microbes called Prochlorococcus, once thought to be climate survivors, may struggle as seas warm. These cyanobacteria drive 5% of Earth’s photosynthesis and underpin much of the marine ...

Even the Toughest Corals Are Shrinking in Warming Seas

Sep. 5, 2025 Scientists found that Red Sea corals can endure warming seas but grow much smaller and weaken under long-term heat stress. Though recovery is possible in cooler months, rising global temperatures may ...

Earth’s Inner Core Exists Only Because of Carbon

Sep. 4, 2025 New research reveals that carbon made it possible for Earth’s molten core to freeze into a solid heart, stabilizing the magnetic field that protects our planet. Without it, Earth’s deep interior ...

Central Asia’s Last Stable Glaciers Just Started to Collapse

Sep. 3, 2025 Snowfall shortages are now destabilizing some of the world’s last resilient glaciers, as shown by a new study in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains. Using a monitoring station on Kyzylsu Glacier, ...

Antarctica’s Collapse May Already Be Unstoppable, Scientists Warn

Nov. 6, 2025 Researchers warn Antarctica is undergoing abrupt changes that could trigger global consequences. Melting ice, collapsing ice shelves, and disrupted ocean circulation threaten sea levels, ecosystems, ...

Mexican Cave Stalagmites Reveal the Deadly Droughts Behind the Maya Collapse

Aug. 16, 2025 Chemical evidence from a stalagmite in Mexico has revealed that the Classic Maya civilization’s decline coincided with repeated severe wet-season droughts, including one that lasted 13 years. These ...

NASA’s PREFIRE Satellites Reveal a Secret Glow Escaping from Our Planet

Aug. 17, 2025 With its two tiny CubeSats, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is capturing invisible heat escaping from Earth, offering clues to how ice, clouds, and storms influence the climate system. The insights could ...

A Record-Breaking Antenna Just Deployed in Space. Here’s What It Will See

Aug. 17, 2025 NASA and ISRO s NISAR satellite has just reached a major milestone: the successful deployment of its enormous 39-foot antenna reflector in orbit. Folded up like an umbrella during launch, the ...

Myanmar’s Massive Quake Hints at Bigger Earthquakes to Come

Aug. 17, 2025 The massive 2025 Myanmar earthquake revealed that strike slip faults can behave in surprising ways. Using satellite data, Caltech researchers found the Sagaing Fault ruptured more dramatically than ...

Scientists Finally Crack the Mystery of Rogue Waves

Sep. 8, 2025 Once thought to be sailors’ myths, rogue waves gained credibility after a towering 80-foot wall of water struck the Draupner oil platform in 1995. New research shows that these extreme waves ...