New research aims to better predict and understand cascading land surface hazards
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 29-Jun-2025 12:10 ET (29-Jun-2025 16:10 GMT/UTC)
A Dartmouth study uses machine learning to reexamine whether climate change is causing large waves in the polar jet stream that have brought Arctic-like temperatures and storms to temperate regions of the United States in recent years. The researchers constructed a timeline of the jet stream's wintertime variability since 1901 and found it's in the latest of several “wavy” periods from the past 125 years, most of which predate significant effects of climate change. The authors report that climate change is likely not amplifying extreme winter weather by making the jet stream wavier, but through more direct links such as a warmer atmosphere that retains more moisture.
In an era of intensifying extreme weather, this review offers a clear message: to better project the future of tropical cyclones in a warmer climate, we must first understand the patterns of the warming seas.
The study challenges the idea that the climate of northern Africa dried out around 3 million years ago, a time when the earliest known hominids appear in the fossil record.