What’s driving America’s deep freezes in a warming world?
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 11-Jul-2025 20:10 ET (12-Jul-2025 00:10 GMT/UTC)
Despite a warming climate, bone-chilling winter cold can grip parts of the U.S.—and this study explains why. Researchers found that two specific patterns in the polar vortex, a swirling mass of cold air high in the stratosphere, steer extreme cold to different regions of the country. One pattern drives Arctic air into the Northwest U.S., the other into the Central and Eastern areas. Since 2015, the Northwest has experienced more of these cold outbreaks, thanks to a shift in stratospheric behavior tied to broader climate cycles. In short: what happens high above the Arctic can shape the winter on your doorstep.
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University are generating realistic drone footage of landscapes from even hundreds of years ago with the help of artificial intelligence. With their method, presented in the journal Land, the authors aim to introduce a new tool that helps to better understand the original functioning of a landscape and can support strategic decisions about current land use — for example, implementing water retention solutions in often drought-stricken areas such as the Hungarian Great Plain.
The remains of landscapes thought to have formed when ancient rivers flowed across East Antarctica have been discovered – and could help predictions of future loss from the ice sheet.
The azuki bean beetle is a common pest of stored beans and peas. Researchers at Kyushu University have found that when beetles infected with Wolbachia bacteria are exposed to elevated temperature and carbon dioxide they tend to produce larger eggs to enhance the survivability of their offspring. Interestingly, these larger eggs gave rise only to male larvae.
The environmental impact of nine pesticides, commonly used in grape cultivation, may have been significantly underestimated, suggesting current pesticide risk assessment criteria need updating.
Researchers have conducted an integrated geochronological and geochemical study of mafic rocks in the Wutai Complex, North China Craton, revealing key insights into the Neoarchean–Paleoproterozoic tectonic evolution of the Trans-North China Orogen. The ~2.54 Ga Nb-enriched gabbros originated from a depleted mantle wedge metasomatized by slab-derived melts, while the ~2.08 Ga amphibolites formed from partial melting of a spinel-garnet lherzolite source influenced by both slab-derived fluids and sediment melts. These results indicate a tectonic transition from Late Archean subduction to Paleoproterozoic lithospheric extension, providing compelling evidence that plate tectonics likely initiated at least partly during the latest Neoarchean. (Reference: Asim et al., 2025, Cont. Life Evol., https://doi.org/10.55092/cle20250001)