Northwest

Marys Peak, highest point in the Oregon Coast Range. Credit: Steve Lundeberg, OSU Forests in the coolest, wettest parts of the western Pacific Northwest are likely to see the biggest increases in burn probability, fire size and number of blazes as the climate continues to get warmer and drier, according to new modeling led by an Oregon State University scientist. …

Digital reconstruction of the rampart network from the northern section of the Khaybar walled oasis 4,000 years ago. Credit: Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project, M. Bussy & G. CharlouxSedentary communities lived in the oases of the North Arabian Desert during the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE. Scientists from CNRS and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) recently uncovered a fortification surrounding the Khaybar Oasis, marking it as one of the oldest known structures of its kind from this era.This new walled oasis…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Even in the precipitation-heavy Pacific Northwest, more frequent heat waves are threatening a key source of water supply. A Washington State University study that intended to look at snow melting under a single, extreme event, the 2021 "heat dome," instead revealed an alarming, longer-term rising trend of successive…

Map of the total precipitable water vapor in the atmosphere at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time on December 4, 2023. A warm, moisture-laden weather system soaked western Washington and Oregon. A powerful atmospheric river streamed toward the U.S. Pacific Northwest in early December 2023. The long current of water vapor delivered warm, wet weather to much of western Washington and Oregon, toppling daily rainfall and temperature records and escalating flood and debris flow risks. Monitoring Atmospheric Conditions This map shows the…

A recent study examined 60 years of near-surface air temperature data in North-West Europe, revealing that the maximum temperature on the hottest days is rising twice as fast as the maximum temperature on average summer days. These findings emphasize the necessity for immediate action from policymakers to adjust crucial infrastructure in response to the consequences of climate change.A recent study led by the University of Oxford reveals that climate change is driving the warmest days in North-West Europe to heat up at…

Time series of average summer (black) and maximum summer (red) daily maximum temperatures averaged over England and Wales, 1960-2021. Trend-lines are also shown for each time series. Image credit: Matthew Patterson, Department of Physics, University of Oxford. Credit: Matthew Patterson, Department of Physics, University of Oxford. New research led by the University of Oxford has found that climate change is causing the hottest…

A couple watches the sun set, on May 13, 2023, as seen from the 520 Bridge View Park in Washington during a heat wave. Photo: Lindsey Wasson (AP)The Pacific Northwest is currently baking under a heat wave that has lasted for several days. Temperatures on both the lower and higher end of the scales for today are expected to be 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above average for that region throughout this week.Extreme Weather Events in 2022 | Extreme Earth“Record breaking heat over the Pacific Northwest will expand into the…

CLIMATEWIRE | Arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing as the world warms, opening up potential new shipping routes across the top of the world. But there’s a catch: Less ice means more fog, making it harder and more dangerous for ships to navigate the thawing sea. It’s an overlooked climate trade-off, according to a new study. And while new Arctic passages often are touted as faster alternatives to conventional shipping routes through the Panama and Suez canals, foggy conditions can cause delays. Fog in the Northwest…

In June and July 2021, an extreme heat wave swept across the historically temperate Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds of people and cooking over a billion sea creatures. Now, scientists have used information etched into tree rings to demonstrate that, yes, the heat wave was unlike anything the region had seen in a millennium.Could NASA's Electric Airplane Make Aviation More Sustainable?A study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science looked at tree rings in the Pacific Northwest going back over 1,000…

Oceanic fabric, margin architecture and seismicity associated with the 1995 megathrust earthquake. a Regional map of the Rivera subduction zone depicting the study area (red box), and the location of the seismic line TS02 (this study) and TS06b. Blue arrows are convergence vectors in cm yr−1. NW-SE seamounts chains are marked in the figure with black arrows. The Rivera Fracture Zone (FZ) sets the boundary between the Rivera plate, and the Pacific and…