Floods News

August 5, 2025

Top Headlines

515-Mile Lightning Flash Caught from Space

Aug. 1, 2025 — A jaw-dropping 515-mile lightning bolt lit up the skies from Texas to Kansas City, smashing previous records and reshaping our understanding of extreme weather. Thanks to advanced satellite tech, scientists like Randy Cerveny and Michael Peterson ...

Satellites Just Revealed a Hidden Global Water Crisis—and It’s Worse Than Melting Ice

July 27, 2025 — For over two decades, satellites have quietly documented a major crisis unfolding beneath our feet: Earth's continents are drying out at unprecedented rates. Fueled by climate change, groundwater ...

18x More Floods, 105% Bigger Storms — All from a Single Clear-Cut

July 19, 2025 — Clear-cutting forests doesn’t just raise flood risk — it can supercharge it. UBC researchers found that in certain watersheds, floods became up to 18 times more frequent and over twice as severe after clear-cutting, with these effects lasting ...

Antarctica’s Slow Collapse Caught on Camera—and It’s Accelerating

July 7, 2025 — Long-lost 1960s aerial photos let Copenhagen researchers watch Antarctica’s Wordie Ice Shelf crumble in slow motion. By fusing film with satellites, they discovered warm ocean water, not surface ponds, drives the destruction, and mapped “pinning ...

Rainforest Deaths Are Surging and Scientists Just Found the Shocking Cause

July 3, 2025 — Tropical trees are dying faster than ever, and it's not just heat or drought to blame. Scientists have uncovered a surprising culprit: ordinary thunderstorms. These quick, fierce storms, powered by climate change, are toppling trees with intense ...

Antarctica’s Ocean Flip: Satellites Catch Sudden Salt Surge Melting Ice from Below

July 2, 2025 — A massive and surprising change is unfolding around Antarctica. Scientists have discovered that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, and sea ice is melting at record speed, enough to match the size ...

New Orleans Is Sinking—and So Are Its $15 Billion Flood Defenses

June 28, 2025 — Parts of New Orleans are sinking at alarming rates — including some of the very floodwalls built to protect it. A new satellite-based study finds that some areas are losing nearly two inches of elevation per year, threatening the effectiveness of ...

Only 3 Years Left: The Carbon Budget for 1. 5 °C Is Almost Gone

June 27, 2025 — At current emission rates, we re just over three years away from blowing through the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5 C. This new international study paints a stark picture: the pace of climate change is accelerating, seas are rising ...

Wildfires Threaten Water Quality for Up to Eight Years After They Burn

June 24, 2025 — Wildfires don’t just leave behind scorched earth—they leave a toxic legacy in Western rivers that can linger for nearly a decade. A sweeping new study analyzed over 100,000 water samples from more than 500 U.S. watersheds and revealed that ...

123,000-Year-Old Coral Fossils Warn of Sudden, Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise

June 23, 2025 — Ancient coral fossils from the remote Seychelles islands have unveiled a dramatic warning for our future—sea levels can rise in sudden, sharp bursts even when global temperatures stay ...

Scientists Reveal the Hidden Trigger Behind Massive Floods

June 15, 2025 — Atmospheric rivers, while vital for replenishing water on the U.S. West Coast, are also the leading cause of floods though storm size alone doesn t dictate their danger. A groundbreaking study analyzing over 43,000 storms across four decades found ...

Geological Time Capsule Highlights Great Barrier Reef's Resilience

June 2, 2025 — New research adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand rising sea levels in isolation but is vulnerable to ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:19pm EDT

Scientists Modeled Nuclear Winter—the Global Food Collapse Was Worse Than Expected

July 26, 2025 — What would happen if a nuclear war triggered a climate-altering catastrophe? Researchers have modeled how such a scenario could devastate global corn ...

Coastal Flooding More Frequent Than Previously Thought

June 2, 2025 — Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water ...

Researchers Use Deep Learning to Predict Flooding This Hurricane Season

June 2, 2025 — Researchers have developed a deep learning model called LSTM-SAM that predicts extreme water levels from tropical cyclones more efficiently and accurately, especially in data-scarce coastal regions, ...

2021's Hurricane Ida Could Have Been Even Worse for NYC

May 30, 2025 — Hurricane Ida wreaked an estimated $75 billion in total damages and was responsible for 112 fatalities -- including 32 in New Jersey and 16 in New York state. Yet the hurricane could have been even ...

When Climate Disasters Hit, They Often Leave Long-Term Health Care Access Shortages

May 30, 2025 — Immediate recovery efforts receive the most attention after severe natural disasters, yet new data from researchers at Drexel University and the ...

Coastal Squeeze Is Bad for Biodiversity, and for Us, Experts Say

May 24, 2025 — Worldwide, coastal areas are squeezed between a rising sea level on one end and human structures on the other. The distance between a sandy coastline and the first human structures averages less than ...

When the Sea Moves Inland: A Global Climate Wake-Up Call from Bangladesh's Delta

May 23, 2025 — As sea levels climb and weather grows more extreme, coastal regions everywhere are facing a creeping threat: salt. Salinization of freshwater and ...

May 22, 2025 — Hurricane winds are a major contributor to storm-related losses for people living in the southeastern coastal states. As the global temperature ...

World's Rivers Remapped to Improve Flood Modeling

May 16, 2025 — A team has created the most complete map of the world's rivers ever made offering a major leap forward for flood prediction, climate risk planning, and water resource management in a warming world. ...

Ancient Ocean Sediments Link Changes in Currents to Cooling of Northern Hemisphere 3.6 Million Years Ago

May 16, 2025 — New research from an international group looking at ancient sediment cores in the North Atlantic has for the first time shown a strong correlation ...

Earlier Headlines

Engineers Tackle Sunlight Intermittency in Solar Desalination

May 14, 2025 — A team of engineers has developed a system that could transform desalination practices, making the process more adaptable, resilient and cheaper. The new system is powered by sunlight and uses a ...

Tech Meets Tornado Recovery

May 14, 2025 — Traditional methods of assessing damage after a disaster can take weeks or even months, delaying emergency response, insurance claims and long-term rebuilding efforts. New research might change that. ...

Sharp Depletion in Soil Moisture Drives Land Water to Flow Into Oceans, Contributing to Sea Level Rise

May 14, 2025 — The increasing frequency of once-in-a-decade agricultural and ecological drought has underscored the urgency of studying hydrological changes. A research team has analyzed the estimated changes in ...

Climate Change Is Turning Coastal Lagoons Into 'Salty Soup'

May 14, 2025 — The impacts of human activity and climate change are coalescing to make coastal lagoons saltier, changing the microbial life they support and the function they play in their ecosystems, according to ...

Enhanced Activity in the Upper Atmosphere of Sporadic E Layers During the 2024 Mother's Day Super Geomagnetic Storm

May 13, 2025 — Researchers report on ionospheric sporadic E layer (Es) activity during the Mother's Day geomagnetic storm. The team found that the Es layers were significantly enhanced over Southeast Asia, ...

All of the Biggest U.S. Cities Are Sinking

May 8, 2025 — Across America’s 28 biggest cities, the ground is shifting—literally. A new study using millimeter-precision satellite data reveals that almost all these cities are sinking, with some areas ...

Satellites Observe Glacier Committing 'Ice Piracy'

May 8, 2025 — A glacier in Antarctica is committing 'ice piracy' -- stealing ice from a neighbor -- in a phenomenon that has never been observed in such a short time frame, say ...

Climate Change: Future of Today's Young People

May 7, 2025 — Climate scientists reveal that millions of today's young people will live through unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical ...

2024 Sea Level 'Report Cards' Map Futures of US Coastal Communities

May 6, 2025 — Researchers have released their 2024 U.S. sea level 'report cards,' providing updated analyses of sea level trends and projections for 36 coastal communities. Encompassing 55 years of ...

Western US Spring Runoff Is Older Than You Think

May 5, 2025 — Hydrologists show most streamflow out of the West's mountains is old snowmelt on a multi-year underground journey. New study finds that spring runoff is on average 5 years ...

Artificial Oxygen Supply in Coastal Waters: A Hope With Risks

May 5, 2025 — Could the artificial introduction of oxygen revitalise dying coastal waters? While oxygenation approaches have already been proven successful in lakes, their potential side effects must be carefully ...

Ancient Poems Tell the Story of Charismatic River Porpoise's Decline Over the Past 1,400 Years

May 5, 2025 — Endemic to China's Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a perpetual smile on its face. To track how this ...

When Sea Stars Fall, Sea Otters Rise: Sea Otters Benefit from Prey Boom Triggered by Loss of Ochre Sea Stars

Apr. 30, 2025 — In 2013, a sea star wasting syndrome decimated populations of Pisaster along the west coast of North America and along the Monterey Peninsula in California, where this study was conducted. The orange ...

Flood Risk Increasing in Pacific Northwest

Apr. 28, 2025 — A powerful earthquake, combined with rising sea levels, could significantly increase flood risks in the Pacific Northwest, impacting thousands of residents and properties in northern California, ...

Scientific Path to Recouping the Costs of Climate Change

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study lays out a scientific framework for holding individual fossil fuel companies liable for the costs of climate change by tracing specific damages back to their emissions. The researchers ...

Coastal Management Model Plays the Long Game Against the Rising Tides

Apr. 21, 2025 — To protect against rising sea levels in a warming world, coastal cities typically follow a standard playbook with various protective infrastructure options. For example, a seawall could be designed ...

Microplastics: What's Trapping the Emerging Threat in Our Streams?

Apr. 21, 2025 — Microplastics, tiny plastic particles found in everyday products from face wash to toothpaste, are an emerging threat to health and ecology, prompting a research team to identify what keeps them ...

Pioneering Research Reveals Arctic Matter Pathways Poised for Major Shifts Amidst Climate Change

Apr. 14, 2025 — A new study has shed unprecedented light on the highly variable and climate-sensitive routes that substances from Siberian rivers use to travel across the Arctic Ocean. The findings raise fresh ...

Deep-Sea Mining Risks Leads Study to Urge Shift to Circular Solutions

Apr. 14, 2025 — Deep sea mining operations are expected to increase the negative impact on environmental indicators by up to 13 per cent, a change categorized as having 'great' significance, relative to ...

Hundred-Year Storm Tides Will Occur Every Few Decades in Bangladesh, Scientists Report

Apr. 11, 2025 — For the highly populated coastal country of Bangladesh, once-in-a-century storm tides could strike every 10 years -- or more often -- by the end of the century, scientists ...