Weather

Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with Washington Post reporters Ben Noll and Ruby Mellen about the 2025 hurricane season. “The thing that really powers the hurricane is how fast you can transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. The bigger the temperature difference, the faster you can transfer heat. The faster you can transfer heat, the more powerful the hurricane can be,” says Emanuel. “This past summer, the sea surface temperatures across much of the tropical Atlantic were warmer than normal, which is part of what led people to predict that there would be a very busy season.” 

Visiting scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe about how sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) could bring wintry temperatures to parts of the northern hemisphere next week. According to Cohen “this explains why forecasters expect western states to bear the brunt of next week’s cold temperatures, but that could still change,” writes Lapointe. 

Visiting Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Newsweek reporter Amanda Greenwood about how a disruption of the polar vortex can impact the 2025-2026 winter outlook. “A sudden stratospheric warming [is] the largest type of disruption that occurs to the polar vortex,” says Cohen. “It is named because of the dramatic warming that occurs in the polar stratosphere (warming near the North Pole can exceed 100 degrees in just a few days). The warming displaces the polar vortex much further south than normal.”

Visiting scientist Judah Cohen speaks with USA Today reporters Doyle Rice and Janet Loehrke about how the polar vortex and La Niña could impact winter weather across the country. Overall, Cohen believes that "the behavior of the polar vortex is more influential in determining if the U.S. will experience cold weather."

Writing for Meteorological Technology International, Alex Pack explores how MIT researchers have developed a new “lightning-prediction model that could help protect more unconventional aircraft designs – such as blended-wing bodies or truss-braced configurations – as aviation moves beyond traditional tube-and-wing designs.” 

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporter Andrew Freedman about the impact of human-caused influences on massive storms, such as Hurricane Melissa. “This is the third Category 5 tropical cyclone in the Atlantic this year, and the other two also went through periods of rapid intensification. Taken together, this season might be said to be consistent with what we have been saying for some time,” Emanuel explains. “The proportion of global tropical cyclones reaching high intensity is increasing, as is the incidence of rapidly intensifying storms.”

Prof. John Hansman speaks with Newsweek reporter Anna Skinner about the logistics behind flying an aircraft through a hurricane. “Flying through a hurricane at altitude is not particularly hazardous, particularly if you are above the tops of the clouds and the turbulent layer,” explains Hansman. “It is more hazardous to land or take off in those conditions where there are high winds and rain." 

Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with WBUR reporters Vivian La and Barbara Moran about the impact of NOAA cuts on the future of weather forecasting. “They're cutting into bone and muscle when they should be cutting into fat,” says Emanuel. He adds that streamlining operations and saving money “requires deep understanding of the organization and deep consultation with people who understand it.”

Berly McCoy and Sushmita Pathak of NPR’s Short Wave spotlight research by postdoctoral associate Funing Li and his team on tornado occurrence. The researchers used “historical data to model and simulate the interaction between land and the atmosphere,” explains McCoy. 

Postdoctoral associate Mostafa Hamouda speaks with Washington Post reporter Scott Dance about the recent cold blast that is bringing “frigid air that normally swirls above the North Pole to places much farther south.” Hamouda explains: “You need really cold air in the pole to have a very fast-spinning polar vortex.” Any warming “slows the whole circulation down.”

Inspired by his daily walks, Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and his colleagues have developed a new way to measure how climate change is likely to impact the number of days when it is comfortable to be outdoors, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. “I find people walking, jogging, cycling and enjoying the outdoors,” says Eltahir. “That's what motivated me to start looking at how climate change could really constrain some of those activities.”

Researchers at MIT have found that “more than 98% of prisons in the United States experienced at least ten days that were hotter than every previous summer, with the worst of the heat-exposed prisons concentrated in the Southwest,” reports Minnah Arshad for USA Today. s

MIT researchers developed a new method to model how climate change will impact the number of “outdoor days” and found that Southern states in the U.S. will lose a significant number of outdoor days, reports Kristin Toussaint for Fast Company. Prof. Elfatih Eltahir explains that the concept of outdoor days is, “an attempt for me to bring the issue of climate change home. When someone tells you global temperatures are going to increase by 3 degrees, that’s one thing. If someone tells you that your outdoor days will be dropping by 20% or 30%, that’s another thing.”

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Associated Press reporter Terry Spencer about Tampa Bay’s vulnerability to incoming hurricanes. “It’s a huge population,” explains Emanuel. “It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition. I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.” 

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Washington Post reporters Sarah Kaplan, Shannon Osaka and Dan Stillman about the future of hurricane forecasting. “This is one thing that scares me, if these things can intensify more rapidly,” says Emanuel. “We’re going to have cases where forecasters go to bed with a tropical storm and wake up with a Category 5 when it’s too late to evacuate people.”