As the climate becomes warmer on average, it makes intuitive sense that we will see more hot days and we've had predictions of this for some time. However, the duration of heatwaves — how many days in a row exceed a temperature that is unusually hot for a given region — can be very important for impacts on humans, livestock and ecosystems. Predicting how these durations will change under a long-term warming trend is more challenging because day-to-day temperatures are correlated — tomorrow's temperatures have a dependence on today's temperature. This study takes this effect into account, along with the warming seen in current and historical observations and projected for the future by climate models for a wide range of land regions. Not only do the heatwave durations increase, but each additional increment of warming causes a larger increase in the typical length of long heat waves. In other words, if the next decade brings as much large-scale warming as a previous decade, the additional increase in heatwave durations would be even larger than we've experienced so far.

A new study shows how extreme weather and power outages can impact socially vulnerable populations in counties near the U.S. Gulf Coast. The researchers also estimated the 10 counties most and least likely to have long-term power outages in the five states that border the Gulf.

Lightning has a greater impact on forests than previously thought. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed new model calculations that, for the first time, estimate the global influence of lightning on forest ecosystems. According to their findings, an estimated 320 million trees die each year due to lightning strikes. Tree losses caused by direct lightning-ignited wildfires are not included in these figures. In the future, lightning-induced tree mortality could rise due to an increase in flash frequency.

Scientists reveal that prioritizing regulatory stringency as the primary tool for climate mitigation may inadvertently exacerbate climate change and heighten energy security risks.