This website gets skeptical about global warming “skepticism”.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #18 2026
30 April 2026 @ 1:56 pm
Open access notables
Unprecedented 2024 East Antarctic winter heatwave driven by polar vortex weakening and amplified by anthropogenic warming, Tang et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
During July–August 2024, East Antarctica experienced the most intense winter heatwave in the 46-year satellite era, with regional mean surface air temperatures across Dronning Maud Land exceeding the climatological mean by more than 9°C for 17 consecutive days. To explore the physical drivers and quantify the anthropogenic contribution to this unprecedented event, we propose a multi-model, multi-method attribution framework integrating regional climate m
Unprecedented 2024 East Antarctic winter heatwave driven by polar vortex weakening and amplified by anthropogenic warming, Tang et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
During July–August 2024, East Antarctica experienced the most intense winter heatwave in the 46-year satellite era, with regional mean surface air temperatures across Dronning Maud Land exceeding the climatological mean by more than 9°C for 17 consecutive days. To explore the physical drivers and quantify the anthropogenic contribution to this unprecedented event, we propose a multi-model, multi-method attribution framework integrating regional climate mWildfires used to ‘go to sleep’ at night. Climate change has them burning overtime
29 April 2026 @ 8:16 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found.
Fires used to die down or even die out at night as temperatures dropped and humidity increased, but that’s happening less often. The number of hours in North America when the weather is favorable for wildfires is 36% higher than 50 years ago, according to a study published earlier this month in Science Advances.
Places such as California have 550 more potential burning hours than in the mid-1970s. Parts of southwestern New Mexico and central Arizona are seeing as many as 2,000 more hours a year when the weather is prone to burning fires, the highest increase seen in the study, which looked at Canada and the United States. T
Transition risk: The human cost of net zero
28 April 2026 @ 7:55 pm
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
I am finalizing a textbook on climate risk and am posting chapters as I finish them. I’d previously posted chapters about embedded energy and physical climate risk; this post is a chapter on transition risk, the economic and social risks of the transition to a clean-energy economy.
Introduction
In the context of climate risk, transition risk encompasses the economic and social risks associated with a shift towards a low-carbon economy. Such an effort would fundamentally reshape our world and create critical financial uncertainty for assets and industries tied to
How strong can a hurricane get in a warming world?
27 April 2026 @ 7:38 pm
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
October 28, 2025, was a very bad day to be in Jamaica. That morning, Category 5 Hurricane Melissa intensified into the strongest hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic: 190 mph (305 km/h) winds, a tie with Hurricane Allen of 1980. That afternoon Melissa powered ashore in Jamaica, causing a catastrophic $8.8 billion in damage, equivalent to 41% of Jamaica’s GDP.
Melissa came close to its maximum potential intensity
The maximum potential intensity of a tropical cyclone is the maximum strength a storm can achieve based on the existing atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Potential intensity theory was
2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #17
26 April 2026 @ 3:51 pm
A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 19, 2026 thru Sat, April 25, 2026.
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)
A more troubling picture of sea level rise is coming into view Scientists have uncovered a “blind spot” in the research on rising seas, revealing that tens of millions of people thought safe from coastal flooding are at risk of inundation. Grist, Fred Pearce, Apr 18, 2026.
Wildfires used to 'go to slee
The really big picture, in four pictures
24 April 2026 @ 3:00 pm
This is a guest blog post by John Lang about his new "Climate Trunk" graphics project and website. He will add one graphic per week for about 2 years rounding out the big picture of human-caused climate change graphic by graphic.
If you had to explain climate change in 10 seconds, what would you say?
Climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and Kimberly Nicholas have long boiled it down to five phrases: It’s real. It’s us. It’s bad. We’re sure. And we can fix it.
This framing has helped millions cut through a topic swamped by jargon, acronyms and complexity. The first four Climate Trunk graphics owe a debt to that tradition.
You’ll noti
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #17 2026
23 April 2026 @ 2:07 pm
Technical note: new feature in New Research
Every article we list here is eyeball-scanned by a real human but we do lean on bibliographic catalogs (publication databases) to supply article metadata for assembly of each edition of our weekly research surveillance scan. A little in-house software on our end connected via an API to a rich suite of upstream bibliographic information makes regular production possible.
While recently making API changes to improve our background tooling for New Research, we found ourselves unable to resist tapping into a little more information to include in our regular product. There's one key metric to help us all better understand what practicing scientists find most useful (and stimulating) in the torrent of climate-related research rEGU2026 - My plans for attending virtually
22 April 2026 @ 3:03 pm
This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will again take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from May 4 to 8. This year, I'll join the event virtually for the full week, participating in the hybrid sessions from the comforts of my home. I already picked most of the sessions I plan to attend and - as meet-hopping is a lot easier online than on-site - I didn't have to pay close attention to where in the conference center they happen. This year, I submitted abstracts to two sessions and both happen to be on Monday. This suits me just fine as it means, that I can freely plan the rest of my week, picking and chosing sessions piquing my interest. This blog post provides an overview of my itinerary.
Monday morning, May 4
The very first session
Monday morning, May 4
The very first session Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger
21 April 2026 @ 8:20 pm
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
In brief:
Multiple studies have found that tropical cyclones are becoming stronger worldwide.
New so-called attribution studies have linked increased wind speeds to human-caused ocean warming.
In the future, scientists expect an increase in the proportion of Category 4 and Category 5 tropical cyclones.
The dangers posed by one of humanity's greatest scourges – the tropical cyclone – are being significantly increased by human-caused global warming. In fact, one of the more confident predictions about how climate change will affect these great storms — which we will refer to by their Atlantic name when they reach winds of 74 mph (119 km/hr)
As Cuba’s grid fails, solar power becomes a lifeline
20 April 2026 @ 8:39 pm
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Pearl Marvell
The Trump administration’s fuel blockade against Cuba has resulted in widespread power outages, gas shortages, garbage in the streets, and a humanitarian crisis – but also a surge in solar installations.
In 2025, the Caribbean nation produced 10% of its electricity from renewable sources, a jump from 3.6% in 2024, according to Rosell Guerra Campaña, director of the Ministry of Renewable Energy at Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines.
Cuba’s increased reliance on renewables is driven by dire necessity.
Since President Donald Trump’s January 2026 executive order impo