Flaming forests

Cosmic Milky Way bar

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7/26/2021 Thank you for subscribing to The Cheat Sheet, from Science News for Students. If you like this newsletter, share it with a friend or colleague. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up for our weekly updates. Got questions, suggestions or comments? Email us at sns@sciencenews.org and put “The Cheat Sheet” in the subject line. We’d love to hear from you. In the News Along with record-breaking temps, which brought the U.S. West to its knees, wildfires broke out big and early last month. The double whammy has been challenging communities with costly damage to infrastructure and human health. Along with this month’s mega-rains in Germany and neighboring countries, many people have been asking: What’s the role of climate change in each of these catastrophes? The simple answer: It’s too early to know. But scientists are working on it, and using a relatively new field of research — attribution science — to get answers. Meanwhile, there is much we do know. A warming climate can trigger more extreme weather events, including flooding rains. Lightning strikes, one trigger of wildfires, will surge as our climate warms. Wildfires can imperil rare species and incinerate their habitat. The heat from wildfires can create local changes in weather (including firenadoes). A fire’s smoky aerosols can tweak the climate, impair air quality over huge distances, lead to glacial melting half a world away and induce a host of health impacts — everything from heart attacks to eczema. And now we have zombie wildfires to worry about.  These conditions mark trends, not freak anomalies. As a new National Weather Service analysis just found, the last 30 years were the warmest on record and constitute a “new normal.” Many details of how and why these things have been happening remain unresolved. But as more data emerge, we will be there helping students understand this changing world — and the science needed to help many communities cope. Science News is a nonprofit. We depend on our readers to support our journalism. You can help by subscribing for as little as $25.   SUBSCRIBE NOW   Catch up with the latest from Science News for Students ‘Zombie’ wildfires can reemerge after wintering underground: Climate change may make these not-quite-dead blazes more common. Scientists are learning to predict where a zombie might emerge. Readability: 6.0. Resources: Power words, classroom questions, alternate version at Science News Spin in this Milky Way bar may show cosmic dark matter does exist: A method akin to studying a tree’s rings reveals the timeline of a slowdown in those stars at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Readability: 7.4. Resources: Power words, alternate version at Science News Let’s learn about microbes: There may be a billion species of microorganisms on Earth — but scientists have only discovered a small fraction of them.  Readability: 6.4. Resources:   Power words, word find puzzle Ancient creature revealed as lizard, not a teeny dinosaur: CT scans of 99-million-year-old fossils of hummingbird-sized specimens trapped in amber reveal a number of lizardlike features. Readability: 8.0. Resources: Power words, alternate version at Science News Find out more about the resources available for using Science News for Students stories for learning. And if you like this newsletter, please share it with a friend or colleague. Did someone share this with you? Subscribe to this newsletter here. If you’ve got questions, suggestions or comments, email us at sns@sciencenews.org. Thank you for reading! Privacy policy  |  Update Profile  | Manage Subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe This email was sent by: Society for Science 1719 N Street NW Washington, DC, 20036, US