Collated blogs, articles and white papers by HRCM scientists for online publications and for non-specialist audiences.
Hurricane Melissa is a warning – why violent storms are increasingly catching the world off guard
The Conversation | 30th October, 2025 | doi.org/10.64628/AB.xkc9tvfdw | Alexander Baker
Hurricane Melissa brought record-breaking winds and torrential rain to Jamaica, making its Category 5 landfall unprecedented for the island. The storm’s rapid strengthening is as alarming as its size and intensity. Read on →
(republished on Weather and Climate @ Reading on 14th November, 2025, and Connecting Research on 30th October, 2025)
Hurricane Milton: What are hurricanes and is climate change making them more damaging?
NCAS News | 10th October, 2024 | Alexander Baker
Hurricane Milton brought tornadoes, flooding and storm-surge risks to Florida in October 2024. It made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane after weakening from Category 5, the most dangerous type of hurricane, and comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated the US. Read on →
Upward global trends in the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones
Connecting Research | 14th April, 2023 | Alexander Baker
Tropical cyclones are among the world’s most devastating natural hazards. Category 4 Hurricane Ian, which struck Florida in September 2022, became one of the costliest hurricanes on record. Read on →
Storms more likely to intensify rapidly due to climate change
NCAS News | 21st November, 2022 | Alexander Baker
Climate change is increasing the likelihood that tropical cyclones rapidly develop into powerful, damaging hurricanes. New research shows how global warming is making storms transform into intense hurricanes or typhoons within a single day, creating major challenges for weather forecasters. Read on →
More intense hurricanes form rapidly due to climate change
University of Reading News | 14th November, 2022 | Alexander Baker
Climate change is increasing the likelihood that tropical cyclones rapidly develop into powerful, damaging hurricanes. New research shows how global warming is making storms transform into intense hurricanes or typhoons within a single day, creating major challenges for weather forecasters. Read on →
Severe storms from tropics reach Europe once every five years on average – new research
The Conversation | 18th May, 2021 | doi.org/10.64628/AB.t57dgn3tc | Alexander Baker
An unusual and devastating storm struck Ireland in the early hours of 16th October, 2017. Record-breaking gusts of up to 119 mph left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity and caused three fatalities, before the storm continued across the UK and Scandinavia. Read on →
Recent progress in simulating North Atlantic weather regimes
Weather and Climate @ Reading | 5th October, 2020 | Alexander Baker
Weather is chaotic. One way to make sense of this variability is by identifying so-called weather regimes. How well global climate models reproduce North Atlantic weather regimes is key to simulating European climate, including cyclones and other high-impact events. Read on →
High-resolution insights into future European winters
Weather and Climate @ Reading | 21st October, 2019 | Alexander Baker
Most of Europe’s winter rainfall is brought by extratropical cyclones, steered our way by the North Atlantic jet stream. Understanding the jet’s response to future climate change is vital to understanding of future European hydroclimate. High-resolution global modelling may be key to this. Read on →
North Atlantic post-tropical cyclones
Weather and Climate @ Reading | 7th January, 2019 | Alexander Baker
A topic of ongoing research is historical variability of North Atlantic post-tropical cyclones. These are tropical storms that travel into the mid-latitudes, bringing hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of Europe and North America that are potentially less prepared for these hazards. Read on →
Characterising extreme event occurrence
Weather and Climate @ Reading | 16th May, 2016 | Reinhard Schiemann
When presented with a new data sample, the first thing many of us scientists do is to characterise it in terms of two numbers: the average or mean value of the sample, and the spread or variance of the sample values around the mean. This has become second nature and we rarely stop to think twice about it. Yet it is indeed quite remarkable that data as different as Reading summer temperatures, the chest circumference of Scottish soldiers, or the sum of points obtained by rolling several identical dice can all be characterised by just these two numbers. Read on →
Is it possible to predict inter-annual changes in terrestrial water storage at regional scales?
Weather and Climate @ Reading | 18th January, 2016 | Marie-Estelle Demory
The hydrological cycle is a fundamental link between components of the Earth System: atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. It is mainly driven by solar energy, is strongly influenced by the ocean, and involves complex interactive processes that drive the movement of water at various time and spatial scales. This complexity, together with a lack of homogeneous and accurate global observational datasets, compounds the difficulty climate modellers encounter in simulating the hydrological cycle with global climate models (GCM). This leads to large uncertainties in predictions of changes in the hydrological cycle. Read on →