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A14 science
Friday 26 august 2022
Weather whiplash: Summer lurches from drought to flood

BY SETH BORENSTEIN search Center in Falmouth,
AP Science Writer Massachusetts. She is in the
Parts of northern Texas, middle of a study of whip-
mired in a drought labeled lash events.
as extreme and exception- The scientists at World
al, are flooding under tor- Weather Attribution, mostly
rential rain. In a drought. volunteers who quickly ex-
Sound familiar? It should. amine extreme weather for
The Dallas region is just the a climate change finger-
latest drought-suffering- print, have a strict criteria of
but-flooded locale during a events to investigate: they
summer of extreme weath- have to be record-break-
er whiplash, likely goosed ing, cause a significant
by human-caused climate number of deaths, or im-
change, scientists say. Parts pact at least 1 million peo-
of the world are lurching ple. So far this year they’ve
from drought to deluge. been swamped. There
The St. Louis area and 88% of have been 41 events —
Kentucky early in July were eight floods, three storms,
considered abnormally dry eight droughts, 18 heat
and then the skies opened waves and four cold waves
up, the rain poured in bibli- — that have reached that
cal proportions, inch after threshold point, said WWA
inch, and deadly flooding Members of the Balch Springs Fire Department bring a family of four by boat to higher ground after official Julie Arrighi, asso-
devastated communities. rescuing them from their home along Forest Glen Lane in Batch Springs, Texas, Aug. 22, 2022. ciate director of the Red
Associated Press
The same thing happened Cross Red Crescent Cli-
in Yellowstone in June. Earli- den downpour has killed ally go through all of these with several inches more mate Center.
er this month, Death Valley, more than a dozen people. extremes and get through forecast to come. In the United States, many
in a severe drought, got In the Horn of Africa in the it and figure out how to be “These extremes of course of the big heavy summer
a near record amount of midst of a devastating but resilient through the disaster are getting more extreme,” rains are traditionally con-
rainfall in one day, causing oft-ignored famine and after disaster that we see.” said National Center for nected to hurricanes or
floods, and is still in a nasty drought, nearby flash floods In just two weeks in late Atmospheric Research cli- tropical systems, like last
drought. add to the humanitarian July and early August, the mate scientist Gerald Mee- year’s Hurricane Ida that
China’s Yangtze River is dry- disaster unfolding. Europe, U.S. had 10 downpours hl, who wrote some of the smacked Louisiana and
ing up, a year after deadly which suffered through un- that are only supposed to first studies 18 years ago then plowed through the
flooding. China is baking precedented flooding last happen 1% of the time — about extreme weather South until it flooded the
under what is a record-long year, has baked with re- sometimes called 1-in-100- and climate change. “This New York, New Jersey re-
heat wave, already into its cord heat compounded by year storms — calculated is in line with what we ex- gion with record rainfall
third month, with a prelimi- a 500-year drought that is Weather Prediction Center pected.” Weather whip- rates.
nary report of an overnight drying up rivers and threat- forecast branch chief Greg lash, “where all of a sudden But this July and August,
low temperature only dip- ening power supplies. Carbin. That’s not count- it changes to the oppo- the nation had been hit
ping down to 94.8 degrees “So we really have had a ing the Dallas region, a site’’ extreme, is becoming with “an overabundance
(34.9 degrees Celsius) in the lot of whiplash,” said Ken- likely 1-in-1,000-year storm, more noticeable because of non-tropical related ex-
heavily populated city of tucky’s interim climatologist where some places got it’s so strange, said climate treme rainfall,” the National
Chongqing. And in western Megan Schargorodski. “It is more than 9 inches of rain scientist Jennifer Francis of Weather Service’s Carbin
China flooding from a sud- really difficult to emotion- in 24 hours ending Monday the Woodwell Climate Re- said. “That’s unusual.”q

New space telescope shows Jupiter’s

auroras, tiny moons

before, auroras and all. as two tiny moons against to make the features stand
Scientists released the shots a glittering background of out. NASA and the Euro-
Monday of the solar sys- galaxies. pean Space Agency’s $10
tem’s biggest planet. “We’ve never seen Jupiter billion successor to the Hub-
The James Webb Space like this. It’s all quite incred- ble Space Telescope rock-
Telescope took the photos ible,” said planetary as- eted away at the end of
in July, capturing unprec- tronomer Imke de Pater, of last year and has been ob-
edented views of Jupiter’s the University of California, serving the cosmos in the
northern and southern Berkeley, who helped lead infrared since summer. Sci-
lights, and swirling polar the observations. entists hope to behold the
haze. Jupiter’s Great Red “We hadn’t really expect- dawn of the universe with
Spot, a storm big enough ed it to be this good, to be Webb, peering all the way
This image provided by NASA shows a false color composite to swallow Earth, stands out honest,” she added in a back to when the first stars
image of Jupiter obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope brightly alongside countless statement. and galaxies were forming
on July 27, 2022.
Associated Press smaller storms. The infrared images were 13.7 billion years ago.
One wide-field picture artificially colored in blue, The observatory is posi-
By MARCIA DUNN — The world’s newest and is particularly dramatic, white, green, yellow and tioned 1 million miles (1.6
AP Aerospace Writer biggest space telescope showing the faint rings orange, according to the million kilometers) from
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) is showing Jupiter as never around the planet, as well U.S.-French research team, Earth.q