climate

6 articles · All tags

• Urban Heat Islands: Why Cities Are Hotter Than Nearby Land
  An urban heat island is a city area that runs hotter than the countryside around it, mainly because dark surfaces absorb sunlight and buildings and roads store heat.
• How Hurricanes Form: The Life Cycle of a Tropical Cyclone
  Hurricanes form over warm ocean water when heat, moisture, and rotation organize a storm. Learn the ingredients, the Saffir-Simpson scale, and why storm surge kills.
• El Nino and La Nina
  El Nino and La Nina explained: how Pacific ocean warming and cooling shift rainfall, droughts, storms and fisheries in the ENSO climate cycle.
• The Little Ice Age
  The period of regional cooling from roughly 1300 to 1850 — glacial advances, frozen rivers, failed harvests — and what it reveals about climate sensitivity.
• Ocean Currents
  Large-scale movements of seawater driven by wind, density differences, and Earth's rotation that redistribute heat around the planet.
• Greenhouse Effect
  The warming of Earth's surface by greenhouse gases that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation, keeping the planet habitable.