A new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology study suggests greater exposure to extreme heat may accelerate biological aging in older adults, raising new concerns about how climate change and heat waves could affect long-term health and aging at the molecular level.

Analysis of stalagmite samples from caves in southern Morocco has provided new insights into rainfall patterns in the Sahara Desert in the past. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine have discovered that rainfall in the desert increased between 8,700 and 4,300 years ago, which had a major impact on ancient herding societies. The study is available to read in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers investigate the extreme weather patterns and atmospheric properties of exoplanet LTT 9779 b. New JWST observations with NIRISS reveal a dynamic atmosphere: powerful winds sweep around the planet, shaping mineral clouds as they condense into a bright, white arc on the slightly cooler western side of the dayside. As these clouds move eastward, they evaporate under the intense heat, leaving the eastern dayside with clear skies.

A newly operational model, known as the Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS), has been launched by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), an intergovernmental centre and leader in numerical weather prediction. For many measures including tropical cyclone tracks, the AIFS outperforms state-of-the-art physics-based models, with gains of up to 20%. This high accuracy model complements the portfolio of ECMWF's physics-based models, advancing numerical weather prediction, and leverages the opportunities made available by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), such as increased speed and a reduction of approximately 1,000 times in energy use for making a forecast.