A First: Category 5 Storms Have Formed in Every Ocean Basin this Year – the Washington Post

Hurricane Lee intensified with breakneck speed Thursday over record-warm Atlantic waters, its peak winds catapulting from 80 to 160 mph in just 18 hours. Lee is now a top tier Category 5 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center, and will probably strengthen even more…
Lee rapidly intensifies into a Category 5 hurricane over Atlantic – the Washington Post

Hurricane Lee intensified with breakneck speed Thursday over record-warm Atlantic waters, its peak winds catapulting from 80 to 160 mph in just 18 hours. Lee is now a top tier Category 5 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center, and will probably strengthen even more…
Can video games change people’s minds about the climate crisis? – the Guardian

A new wave of game makers are attempting to influence a generation of environmentally conscious players. Will it work, and is it enough?….Terra Nil, the video game that Alfred has been developing since 2019, is a response to these terrifying events. Dubbed a “city-builder in reverse”, it foregoes the consumption and expansion of genre classics such as Civilisation and SimCity to paint a picture of environmental restoration. Starting with arid desert, it’s up to the player to rewild a landscape using various technologies – a toxin scrubber, for example, or a beehive…
In the face of sea level rise, can we reimagine California’s vanishing coastline? – the Los Angeles Times

Excerpted from “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline” (available Sept. 26, 2023) by Rosanna Xia. Reprinted in the Los Angeles Times with permission from Heyday Books, © 2023.
The “Octopus Garden” – MBARI

Deep below the ocean’s surface just off the Central California coast, thousands of octopus gather near an extinct underwater volcano. The Octopus Garden is the largest known aggregation of octopus anywhere in the world…