Author: Derrick Lester

It starts out pretty quiet. Springfield, Missouri’s air temperature is a comfortable 21 degrees Celsius at 1:00 in the morning. The sky is partly cloudy, and there is a light southeast wind that not many people can feel. It’s almost possible to tell yourself that the worst is over. But people who have lived in this city for a summer know not to trust the early hours. The weather in Springfield has never been able to make up its mind. Today, in July, the cool air from the morning gives way to temperatures in the mid- to upper-30s Celsius by…

There’s something almost deceptive about Springfield in the late summer afternoon. It’s easy to breathe. Inside, it stays in the low 80s. A few more clouds come in from the west and make the sun a little softer. This makes you feel like the worst of summer might be over. It’s not. This week, Ron Hearst, the chief meteorologist for KY3 Weather, made that very clear. In the Ozarks, there was one more nice day. Then it gets hot again very quickly. By Sunday, it’s going to be close to 100 degrees outside. This is what the air really feels…

A tiny worm lives unhindered by bacteria somewhere on the Pacific Ocean floor in nearly freezing water under pressure strong enough to destroy most life. It’s not a coincidence. Researchers have long suspected that some of the planet’s harshest habitats, where sunlight never reaches and temperatures are barely above freezing, are secretly creating chemistry that may save lives. A growing amount of evidence now indicates that they were correct. For decades, the pipeline of antibiotics has essentially stalled. Since 1980, only two truly novel classes of antibiotics have been approved, and the bugs are quickly catching up. Globally, antimicrobial resistance…

A creature that glows to survive—not to be seen, but specifically to destroy—has a subtly unsettling quality. The Mariana Trench, located miles below the Pacific where sunlight completely disappears and pressure is measured in tons rather than pounds, is engaged in its own arms race. No noise, no bullets. Just light, used with icy accuracy. In April 2016, NOAA’s research ship Okeanos Explorer sent its remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer down close to the Enigma Seamount, and the footage it returned was truly bizarre. There, roughly 2.3 miles below the surface, a red-and-yellow jellyfish that science had never seen before…

The ocean has a layer that acts like a whispering corridor. Depending on where you are in the world, it is located about 3,000 feet below the surface, and sound can do almost unbelievable things there. It moves. Thousands of them, not just a few miles, bounced between the pressure boundary below and the thermal ceiling above, moving forward like a hand-to-hand message across a pitch-black room. It is referred to by scientists as the SOFAR channel or the Deep Sound Channel. The U.S. Navy was highly interested in it during the Cold War. Originally intended to detect Soviet submarines,…

Somewhere off the coast of Oregon, a buoy has been monitoring the temperature, salinity, and oxygen content of water that is 80 meters below the surface for the past ten years. It received little attention outside of the oceanography community. Then, in June 2026, scientists boarded a research ship and set out to remove it from the water, not because the science was finished but rather because the funding was. The Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386 million network of over 900 sensors constructed along the coasts of the United States and the North Atlantic, included that buoy. Last month, the…

For a century, whale remains provided scientists with nearly all of the information they needed to understand the enormous squid. Contents of the stomach. Only a portion is left. The occasional beak. It was barely sufficient to determine the animal’s true identity, but it was sufficient to verify its existence. Then, on March 9th of this year, the squid was simply floating in the frame of a remotely operated vehicle called SuBastian as it drifted through chilly, dark water almost 2,000 feet below the South Atlantic Ocean. The video was taken during an expedition by the Schmidt Ocean Institute close…

Living in Houston is associated with a specific type of anxiety: a low-grade, background awareness that anything can happen to you at any time. Longtime locals are aware of it. The parking lot outside your office appears to be a shallow lake by noon after you wake up to sunshine and take a quick look at your phone. According to the forecast, it was “partly cloudy.” It says “partly cloudy” every time. For millions of people throughout the metro area, Houston weather radar has become almost a daily ritual due to the discrepancy between the official forecast and actual conditions.…

Walking up to a typical bungalow tucked away among trees in the Essex countryside and realizing, in some way, that it goes down a very long way is subtly disorienting. No grand entrance. No imposing fence. With the exception of the brown tourist road signs that have been cheerfully pointing cars in the direction of the “Secret Nuclear Bunker” for decades, it’s just a small, unremarkable structure. The Top Gear crew, who once displayed those signs on air, were aware of the irony. No one who visits is unaware of it either. The Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker is located…

Standing in a city and reading those words, “Inspired by Nature,” is almost startling. for the climate. For the Future. Depending on where you are and what you’ve recently witnessed happen to the sky, rivers, and seasons, the theme for World Environment Day 2026 sounds both hopeful and a little desperate. Every year on June 5th, we observe World Environment Day. This year, Azerbaijan hosted the global observance in Baku, a city situated between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian Sea at the intersection of two climate zones. Baku has a complex energy history but a growing commitment to the…