We've seen about a 60 percent increase in the frequency of events like Dorian stalling near the coast...The culprit is related to a slowdown in large scale atmospheric wind patterns likely due to a warming climate. -Timothy Hall of NASA
This week on Living Lab Radio:
- Hurricanes that stall are becoming more common. They can dump more rain than a faster-moving hurricane and often follow a less predictable path. Dorian is just the latest example. One study found that over the past 70 years Atlantic hurricanes have gotten more likely to stall. We talk to Timothy Hall, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an author on the study.
- For years, doctors’ tests failed to turn up a cause for chronic fatigue syndrome. That’s changing. “Over the last 35 years, there have been over 9,000 studies that have revealed a whole variety of abnormalities,” said Anthony Komaroff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of a new article about chronic fatigue syndrome published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
- There’s more to fall gardening than raking leaves. It’s the perfect time to collect the seeds of your favorite wildflowers and even plant a cover crop to convert unwanted lawn into a field of native flowers and planting trees and shrubs. We talk to Uli Lorimer, director of horticulture at the Native Plant Trust, formerly the New England Wild Flower Society.
- We all use physics every day. Every time we pick something up, throw a ball, charge our cell phones, or drive a car physics is involved. A new book aims to get us thinking about exactly that, but with a humorous twist. Randall Munroe is the author of the web comic XKCD and his new book is How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems.
