Heat Wave | featured news

The summer heat waves over the past decade that killed thousands of people in Europe, scorched the Russian wheat crop, and sent Greenland's glaciers galloping to the sea are without parallel since at least 1400, according to a new study. The findings are based on a statistical analysis of summer seasonal temperatures inferred from tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments, and instrumental records.

If you thought September felt a bit warmer than usual, you weren't alone. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday that last month tied a 2005 record for the warmest September on record worldwide. These numbers have been tracked since 1880. September's combined average temperature over land and ocean around the world was 60.21 degrees Fahrenheit -- 1.21 degrees over the 20th century average.

Southern California wildfires are threatening dozens of homes after burning through more than 19 square miles of brush in the midst of a heat wave.

July was the hottest month ever recorded in the United States, beating the previous record set in the 1930s Dust Bowl era, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Led by NASA’s James E. Hansen, the study said it was nearly certain that events like the 2011 Texas heat wave were caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.

For folks without air conditioning, an electric fan may seem like a life-saver in a steaming summer like this one. But researchers who looked at existing studies say it's possible fans do more harm than good when the temperature soars above 95 degrees. That's because blowing hot air over your body might actually increase heat stress and your risk of heat-related illness -- even if you feel like the fan is cooling you down. Better ideas: get out of your hot house and into a cool mall or library for a few hours; take cool showers.

Some cornstalks in fields around the farm where David Kellerman works stand tall, but appearances can be deceiving. When the husks are pulled back, the cobs are empty. No kernels developed as the plants struggled with heat and drought.

Some of the weather extremes bedeviling people around the world have become far more likely because of human-induced global warming, researchers reported on Tuesday. Yet they ruled it out as a cause of last year’s devastating floods in Thailand, one of the most striking weather events of recent years.

It's been a hot year. In fact, the first six months of 2012 accounted for the warmest January-through-June period on record for the contiguous U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday.