extreme weather

Wildfires spread through three heat-transfer mechanisms — radiation, convection, and conduction — turbocharged by wind, dry fuel, and a fire's own self-generated weather. Understanding the physics explains why modern wildfires outrun every suppression strategy thrown at them.

On April 10, 1996, an automated anemometer on Barrow Island off the northwest coast of Australia measured a three-second wind gust of 408 km/h (253.5 mph) during Tropical Cyclone Olivia — the highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded on Earth. Tornadoes have exceeded even that. A hailstone in South Dakota weighed 878 g (1.94 lb). A Venezuelan lake generates up to 1,600 lightning bolts per hour, every night, for 300 nights per year. These records are not flukes. Each one follows from specific, explainable atmospheric physics.

How scientists link heat waves, floods, wildfires, and storms to climate change, how attribution studies work, and where the evidence is still weak.