#climate

6 articles

The Greenhouse Effect

Sunlight comes in as visible light and leaves as infrared, and a handful of molecules are transparent to one and opaque to the other. That asymmetry sets the temperature of the planet.

11 min read·Jul 20, 2026

Earth & Climate

El Niño: When the Pacific Flips

El Niño is not a single storm but one warm phase of ENSO — a recurring ocean-atmosphere oscillation that redistributes the tropical Pacific's heat and rain worldwide.

10 min read·Jul 18, 2026

Earth & Climate

The Carbon Cycle

Photosynthesis and ocean exchange dwarf human emissions, yet the atmospheric stock is rising. The resolution is the difference between a balanced two-way flux and a small one-way one — and it is the whole story of the carbon cycle.

10 min read·Jul 15, 2026

Earth & Climate

Hurricanes: Nature's Heat Engines

Why a hurricane is a heat engine, not a wind machine: warm-ocean evaporation and latent heat are the fuel, the Coriolis effect only organises the spin, and a warming ocean tilts the odds toward the most intense storms.

10 min read·Jul 14, 2026

Earth & Climate

Ocean Circulation

Why the Gulf Stream is narrow and fast, what the Coriolis effect actually does (and does not do), and what oceanographers really think about an AMOC collapse.

10 min read·Jul 13, 2026

Earth & Climate

The Water Cycle

Water is conserved and endlessly recycled through a handful of reservoirs of wildly different sizes. Residence time — reservoir divided by flux — explains why a molecule spends nine days in the air but three thousand years in the deep sea, and why a warming atmosphere runs the whole cycle faster.

10 min read·Jul 8, 2026