NASA Wants Your Help to Study These Rare, High-Altitude Clouds That Appear to Glow at Sunrise and Sunset Noctilucent clouds usually form close to the poles, but in recent decades, they’re being spotted closer to the Equator Noctilucent clouds over the Baltic Sea, as seen from Germany in 2019. Typically seen in polar regions, the clouds are increasingly appearing at mid- and low latitudes. Matthias Süßen via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 While astronomy and clouds don’t usually mix, a rare type of atmospheric phenomenon, called noctilucent or night-shining clouds, offers an exception, as reported by Space.com’s Anthony Wood. Noctilucent clouds are wispy, silvery-blue clouds found at much higher altitudes than usual. While most clouds form in the troposphere between Earth’s surface and about 11 miles above the ground, these appear in the mesosphere, up to 50 miles high. They become visible right after sunset or right before sunrise, when the sun illuminates them from beyond the horizon. The rare clouds likely come into being as ice crystallizes on meteor dust, when the mesosphere is rich with water and very cold, per EarthSky. Paradoxically, noctilucent clouds usually form in the summer. That’s because during the hottest months of the year, surface air warms up and rises, expanding and cooling as it does so. Alongside other processes, this cools the mesosphere to temperatures as low as minus 210 degrees Fahrenheit, according to EarthSky. This happens around Earth’s poles, so people are thus most likely to see noctilucent clouds in polar regions during the summer—for the Northern Hemisphere, the clouds tend to appear between late May and mid-August. What are noctilucent clouds and how can you see them? Watch on More recently, however, the rare phenomenon has been spotted closer and closer to the Equator. As such, NASA published a statement earlier this month asking citizen scientists to submit their observations and photographs of noctilucent clouds—even pictures taken in the past—to a crowdsourced research project called Space Cloud Watch. “Combined with satellite data and model simulations, your data can help us figure out why these noctilucent clouds are more frequently appearing at mid-low latitudes,” the agency explains. According to Royal Museums Greenwich, some scholars suggest climate change is responsible for that shift, as well as rocket launches. Rocket exhaust trails consist of small ice particles and water vapor, which can contribute to noctilucent clouds once they reach the mesosphere. Last summer, Europe saw especially spectacular noctilucent clouds, despite the fact that strong solar activity—such as what we’re experiencing now at the solar maximum—would normally have dissipated them, as reported by Spaceweather.com. This might be partially explained by the underwater volcano near Tonga that erupted in 2022 and threw a plume of water vapor into the atmosphere. “That was two years ago, but it takes about two years for the vapor to circulate up to the mesosphere, where NLCs [noctilucent clouds] form. Water is a key ingredient for NLCs, so Tonga’s moisture could be turbocharging the clouds,” Spaceweather.com reported in June 2024, adding that the 124 rocket launches so far that year likely also played a role. If you’re hoping to spot the night-shining clouds yourself this summer, the good news is that they’re visible to the naked eye. The bad news is that the only ways to predict their natural appearance are by checking for ideal upper atmospheric conditions and keeping an eye on north-facing webcams in regions east of your location, as reported by Stuart Atkinson for BBC Sky at Night Magazine last year. If noctilucent clouds are forming in those eastern skies, where the sun sets earlier, chances are that they might be soon visible in your area. And if you do happen to catch a glimpse, don’t forget to snap a photo for science. “I find these clouds fascinating and can’t wait to see the amazing pictures,” Space Cloud Watch project lead Chihoko Cullens, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says in NASA’s statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Essex Police has not properly considered the potentially discriminatory impacts of its live facial recognition (LFR) use, according to documents obtained by Big Brother Watch and shared with Computer Weekly. While the force claims in an equality impact assessment (EIA) that “Essex Police has carefully considered issues regarding bias and algorithmic injustice”, privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the document – obtained under Freedom of Information (FoI) rules – shows it has likely failed to fulfil its public sector equality duty (PSED) to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory. The campaigners highlighted how the force is relying on false comparisons to other algorithms and “parroting misleading claims” from the supplier about the LFR system’s lack of bias. For example, Essex Police said that when deploying LFR, it will set the system threshold “at 0.6 or above, as this is the level whereby equitability of the rate of false positive identification across all demographics is achieved”. However, this figure is based on the National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL) testing of NEC’s Neoface V4 LFR algorithm deployed by the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police, which Essex Police does not use. Instead, Essex Police has opted to use an algorithm developed by Israeli biometrics firm Corsight, whose chief privacy officer, Tony Porter, was formerly the UK’s surveillance camera commissioner until January 2021. Highlighting testing of the Corsight_003 algorithm conducted in June 2022 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the EIA also claims it has “a bias differential FMR [False Match Rate] of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing, according to the supplier”. However, looking at the NIST website, where all of the testing data is publicly shared, there is no information to support the figure cited by Corsight, or its claim to essentially have the least biased algorithm available. A separate FoI response to Big Brother Watch confirmed that, as of 16 January 2025, Essex Police had not conducted any “formal or detailed” testing of the system itself, or otherwise commissioned a third party to do so. Essex Police's lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk Jake Hurfurt, Big Brother Watch “Looking at Essex Police’s EIA, we are concerned about the force’s compliance with its duties under equality law, as the reliance on shaky evidence seriously undermines the force’s claims about how the public will be protected against algorithmic bias,” said Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch. “Essex Police’s lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk. This slapdash scrutiny of their intrusive facial recognition system sets a worrying precedent. “Facial recognition is notorious for misidentifying women and people of colour, and Essex Police’s willingness to deploy the technology without testing it themselves raises serious questions about the force’s compliance with equalities law. Essex Police should immediately stop their use of facial recognition surveillance.” The need for UK police forces deploying facial recognition to consider how their use of the technology could be discriminatory was highlighted by a legal challenge brought against South Wales Police by Cardiff resident Ed Bridges. In August 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the use of LFR by the force was unlawful because the privacy violations it entailed were “not in accordance” with legally permissible restrictions on Bridges’ Article 8 privacy rights; it did not conduct an appropriate data protection impact assessment (DPIA); and it did not comply with its PSED to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory. The judgment specifically found that the PSED is a “duty of process and not outcome”, and requires public bodies to take reasonable steps “to make enquiries about what may not yet be known to a public authority about the potential impact of a proposed decision or policy on people with the relevant characteristics, in particular for present purposes race and sex”. Big Brother Watch said equality assessments must rely on “sufficient quality evidence” to back up the claims being made and ultimately satisfy the PSED, but that the documents obtained do not demonstrate the force has had “due regard” for equalities. Academic Karen Yeung, an interdisciplinary professor at Birmingham Law School and School of Computer Science, told Computer Weekly that, in her view, the EIA is “clearly inadequate”. She also criticised the document for being “incoherent”, failing to look at the systemic equalities impacts of the technology, and relying exclusively on testing of entirely different software algorithms used by other police forces trained on different populations: “This does not, in my view, fulfil the requirements of the public sector equality duty. It is a document produced from a cut-and-paste exercise from the largely irrelevant material produced by others.” Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about every aspect of the story. “We take our responsibility to meet our public sector equality duty very seriously, and there is a contractual requirement on our LFR partner to ensure sufficient testing has taken place to ensure the software meets the specification and performance outlined in the tender process,” said a spokesperson. “There have been more than 50 deployments of our LFR vans, scanning 1.7 million faces, which have led to more than 200 positive alerts, and nearly 70 arrests. “To date, there has been one false positive, which, when reviewed, was established to be as a result of a low-quality photo uploaded onto the watchlist and not the result of bias issues with the technology. This did not lead to an arrest or any other unlawful action because of the procedures in place to verify all alerts. This issue has been resolved to ensure it does not occur again.” The spokesperson added that the force is also committed to carrying out further assessment of the software and algorithms, with the evaluation of deployments and results being subject to an independent academic review. “As part of this, we have carried out, and continue to do so, testing and evaluation activity in conjunction with the University of Cambridge. The NPL have recently agreed to carry out further independent testing, which will take place over the summer. The company have also achieved an ISO 42001 certification,” said the spokesperson. “We are also liaising with other technical specialists regarding further testing and evaluation activity.” However, the force did not comment on why it was relying on the testing of a completely different algorithm in its EIA, or why it had not conducted or otherwise commissioned its own testing before operationally deploying the technology in the field. Computer Weekly followed up Essex Police for clarification on when the testing with Cambridge began, as this is not mentioned in the EIA, but received no response by time of publication. Although Essex Police and Corsight claim the facial recognition algorithm in use has “a bias differential FMR of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing”, there is no publicly available data on NIST’s website to support this claim. Drilling down into the demographic split of false positive rates shows, for example, that there is a factor of 100 more false positives in West African women than for Eastern European men. While this is an improvement on the previous two algorithms submitted for testing by Corsight, other publicly available data held by NIST undermines Essex Police’s claim in the EIA that the “algorithm is identified by NIST as having the lowest bias variance between demographics”. Looking at another metric held by NIST – FMR Max/Min, which refers to the ratio between demographic groups that give the most and least false positives – it essentially represents how inequitable the error rates are across different age groups, sexes and ethnicities. In this instance, smaller values represent better performance, with the ratio being an estimate of how many times more false positives can be expected in one group over another. According to the NIST webpage for “demographic effects” in facial recognition algorithms, the Corsight algorithm has an FMR Max/Min of 113(22), meaning there are at least 21 algorithms that display less bias. For comparison, the least biased algorithm according to NIST results belongs to a firm called Idemia, which has an FMR Max/Min of 5(1). However, like Corsight, the highest false match rate for Idemia’s algorithm was for older West African women. Computer Weekly understands this is a common problem with many of the facial recognition algorithms NIST tests because this group is not typically well-represented in the underlying training data of most firms. Computer Weekly also confirmed with NIST that the FMR metric cited by Corsight relates to one-to-one verification, rather than the one-to-many situation police forces would be using it in. This is a key distinction, because if 1,000 people are enrolled in a facial recognition system that was built on one-to-one verification, then the false positive rate will be 1,000 times larger than the metrics held by NIST for FMR testing. “If a developer implements 1:N (one-to-many) search as N 1:1 comparisons, then the likelihood of a false positive from a search is expected to be proportional to the false match for the 1:1 comparison algorithm,” said NIST scientist Patrick Grother. “Some developers do not implement 1:N search that way.” Commenting on the contrast between this testing methodology and the practical scenarios the tech will be deployed in, Birmingham Law School’s Yeung said one-to-one is for use in stable environments to provide admission to spaces with limited access, such as airport passport gates, where only one person’s biometric data is scrutinised at a time. “One-to-many is entirely different – it’s an entirely different process, an entirely different technical challenge, and therefore cannot typically achieve equivalent levels of accuracy,” she said. Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about every aspect of the story related to its algorithmic testing, including where the “0.0006” figure is drawn from and its various claims to have the “least biased” algorithm. “The facts presented in your article are partial, manipulated and misleading,” said a company spokesperson. “Corsight AI’s algorithms have been tested by numerous entities, including NIST, and have been proven to be the least biased in the industry in terms of gender and ethnicity. This is a major factor for our commercial and government clients.” However, Corsight was either unable or unwilling to specify which facts are “partial, manipulated or misleading” in response to Computer Weekly’s request for clarification. Computer Weekly also contacted Corsight about whether it has done any further testing by running N one-to-one comparisons, and whether it has changed the system’s threshold settings for detecting a match to suppress the false positive rate, but received no response on these points. While most facial recognition developers submit their algorithms to NIST for testing on an annual or bi-annual basis, Corsight last submitted an algorithm in mid-2022. Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about why this was the case, given that most algorithms in NIST testing show continuous improvement with each submission, but again received no response on this point. The Essex Police EIA also highlights testing of the Corsight algorithm conducted in 2022 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming it demonstrated “Corsight’s capability to perform equally across all demographics”. However, Big Brother Watch’s Hurfurt highlighted that the DHS study focused on bias in the context of true positives, and did not assess the algorithm for inequality in false positives. This is a key distinction for the testing of LFR systems, as false negatives where the system fails to recognise someone will likely not lead to incorrect stops or other adverse effects, whereas a false positive where the system confuses two people could have more severe consequences for an individual. The DHS itself also publicly came out against Corsight’s representation of the test results, after the firm claimed in subsequent marketing materials that “no matter how you look at it, Corsight is ranked #1. #1 in overall recognition, #1 in dark skin, #1 in Asian, #1 in female”. Speaking with IVPM in August 2023, DHS said: “We do not know what this claim, being ‘#1’ is referring to.” The department added that the rules of the testing required companies to get their claims cleared through DHS to ensure they do not misrepresent their performance. In its breakdown of the test results, IVPM noted that systems of multiple other manufacturers achieved similar results to Corsight. The company did not respond to a request for comment about the DHS testing. Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about all the issues raised around Corsight testing, but received no direct response to these points from the force. While Essex Police claimed in its EIA that it “also sought advice from their own independent Data and Digital Ethics Committee in relation to their use of LFR generally”, meeting minutes obtained via FoI rules show that key impacts had not been considered. For example, when one panel member questioned how LFR deployments could affect community events or protests, and how the force could avoid the technology having a “chilling presence”, the officer present (whose name has been redacted from the document) said “that’s a pretty good point, actually”, adding that he had “made a note” to consider this going forward. The EIA itself also makes no mention of community events or protests, and does not specify how different groups could be affected by these different deployment scenarios. Elsewhere in the EIA, Essex Police claims that the system is likely to have minimal impact across age, gender and race, citing the 0.6 threshold setting, as well as NIST and DHS testing, as ways of achieving “equitability” across different demographics. Again, this threshold setting relates to a completely different system used by the Met and South Wales Police. For each protected characteristic, the EIA has a section on “mitigating” actions that can be taken to reduce adverse impacts. While the “ethnicity” section again highlights the National Physical Laboratory’s testing of a completely different algorithm, most other sections note that “any watchlist created will be done so as close to the deployment as possible, therefore hoping to ensure the most accurate and up-to-date images of persons being added are uploaded”. However, Yeung noted that the EIA makes no mention of the specific watchlist creation criteria beyond high-level “categories of images” that can be included, and the claimed equality impacts of that process. For example, it does not consider how people from certain ethnic minority or religious backgrounds could be disproportionally impacted as a result of their over-representation in police databases, or the issue of unlawful custody image retention whereby the Home Office is continuing to hold millions of custody images illegally in the Police National Database (PND). While the ethics panel meeting minutes offer greater insight into how Essex Police is approaching watchlist creation, the custody image retention issue was also not mentioned. Responding to Computer Weekly’s questions about the meeting minutes and the lack of scrutiny of key issues related to UK police LFR deployments, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “Our polices and processes around the use of live facial recognition have been carefully scrutinised through a thorough ethics panel.” Instead, the officer present explained how watchlists and deployments are decided based on the “intelligence case”, which then has to be justified as both proportionate and necessary. On the “Southend intelligence case”, the officer said deploying in the town centre would be permissible because “that’s where the most footfall is, the most opportunity to locate outstanding suspects”. They added: “The watchlist [then] has to be justified by the key elements, the policing purpose. Everything has to be proportionate and strictly necessary to be able to deploy… If the commander in Southend said, ‘I want to put everyone that’s wanted for shoplifting across Essex on the watchlist for Southend’, the answer would be no, because is it necessary? Probably not. Is it proportionate? I don’t think it is. Would it be proportionate to have individuals who are outstanding for shoplifting from the Southend area? Yes, because it’s local.” However, the officer also said that, on most occasions, the systems would be deployed to catch “our most serious offenders”, as this would be easier to justify from a public perception point of view. They added that, during the summer, it would be easier to justify deployments because of the seasonal population increase in Southend. “We know that there is a general increase in violence during those months. So, we don’t need to go down to the weeds to specifically look at grievous bodily harm [GBH] or murder or rape, because they’re not necessarily fuelled by a spike in terms of seasonality, for example,” they said. “However, we know that because the general population increases significantly, the level of violence increases significantly, which would justify that I could put those serious crimes on that watchlist.” Commenting on the responses given to the ethics panel, Yeung said they “failed entirely to provide me with confidence that their proposed deployments will have the required legal safeguards in place”. According to the Court of Appeal judgment against South Wales Police in the Bridges case, the force’s facial recognition policy contained “fundamental deficiencies” in relation to the “who” and “where” question of LFR. “In relation to both of those questions, too much discretion is currently left to individual police officers,” it said. “It is not clear who can be placed on the watchlist, nor is it clear that there are any criteria for determining where AFR [automated facial recognition] can be deployed.” Yeung added: “The same applies to these responses of Essex Police force, failing to adequately answer the ‘who’ and ‘where’ questions concerning their proposed facial recognition deployments. “Worse still, the court stated that a police force’s local policies can only satisfy the requirements that the privacy interventions arising from use of LFR are ‘prescribed by law’ if they are published. The documents were obtained by Big Brother Watch through freedom of information requests, strongly suggesting that these even these basic legal safeguards are not being met.” Yeung added that South Wales Police’s use of the technology was found to be unlawful in the Bridges case because there was excessive discretion left in the hands of individual police officers, allowing undue opportunities for arbitrary decision-making and abuses of power. Every decision ... must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity. I don’t see any of that happening Karen Yeung, Birmingham Law School “Every decision – where you will deploy, whose face is placed on the watchlist and why, and the duration of deployment – must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity,” she said. “I don’t see any of that happening. There are simply vague claims that ‘we’ll make sure we apply the legal test’, but how? They just offer unsubstantiated promises that ‘we will abide by the law’ without specifying how they will do so by meeting specific legal requirements.” Yeung further added these documents indicate that the police force is not looking for specific people wanted for serious crimes, but setting up dragnets for a wide variety of ‘wanted’ individuals, including those wanted for non-serious crimes such as shoplifting. “There are many platitudes about being ethical, but there’s nothing concrete indicating how they propose to meet the legal tests of necessity and proportionality,” she said. “In liberal democratic societies, every single decision about an individual by the police made without their consent must be justified in accordance with law. That means that the police must be able to justify and defend the reasons why every single person whose face is uploaded to the facial recognition watchlist meets the legal test, based on their specific operational purpose.” Yeung concluded that, assuming they can do this, police must also consider the equality impacts of their actions, and how different groups are likely to be affected by their practical deployments: “I don’t see any of that.” In response to the concerns raised around watchlist creation, proportionality and necessity, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “The watchlists for each deployment are created to identify specific people wanted for specific crimes and to enforce orders. To date, we have focused on the types of offences which cause the most harm to our communities, including our hardworking businesses. “This includes violent crime, drugs, sexual offences and thefts from shops. As a result of our deployments, we have arrested people wanted in connection with attempted murder investigations, high-risk domestic abuse cases, GBH, sexual assault, drug supply and aggravated burglary offences. We have also been able to progress investigations and move closer to securing justice for victims.” Read more about police data and technology Metropolitan Police to deploy permanent facial recognition tech in Croydon: The Met is set to deploy permanent live facial recognition cameras on street furniture in Croydon from summer 2025, but local councillors say the decision – which has taken place with no community input – will further contribute the over-policing of Black communities. UK MoJ crime prediction algorithms raise serious concerns: The Ministry of Justice is using one algorithm to predict people’s risk of reoffending and another to predict who will commit murder, but critics say the profiling in these systems raises ‘serious concerns’ over racism, classism and data inaccuracies. UK law enforcement data adequacy at risk: The UK government says reforms to police data protection rules will help to simplify law enforcement data processing, but critics argue the changes will lower protection to the point where the UK risks losing its European data adequacy.

not enough Paris Agreement target won’t protect polar ice sheets, scientists warn Calls for a more ambitious climate goal are rising as Earth hits several tipping points. Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News – May 21, 2025 11:35 am | 21 A slurry mix of sand and seawater is pumped via barge onto the main public beach during a sand replenishment project along eroding shoreline on November 21, 2024, in San Clemente, California. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images A slurry mix of sand and seawater is pumped via barge onto the main public beach during a sand replenishment project along eroding shoreline on November 21, 2024, in San Clemente, California. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. Sea levels in some parts of the world could be rising by as much as 8 to 12 inches per decade within the lifetime of today’s youngest generations, outpacing the ability of many coastal communities to adapt, scientists warned in a new study published this week. The research by an international team of sea level and polar ice experts suggests that limiting warming to 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) above the pre-industrial temperature—the Paris Climate Agreement’s target—isn’t low enough to prevent a worst-case meltdown of Earth’s polar ice sheets. A better target for maintaining a safe climate, at least for the long term, might be closer to 1.8° Fahrenheit, said Durham University geographer and glacier expert Chris Stokes, a co-author of the new paper. “There have been a couple of quite high-profile papers recently, including a synthesis in Nature looking at safe planetary boundaries,” he said. “They made the argument that 1° Celsius is a better goal. And a couple of other papers have come out suggesting that we need a stricter temperature limit or a long-term goal. And I think the evidence is building towards that.” It’s not a new argument, he said, noting that climate research predating the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 1990 already highlighted the high risks of more than 1° C of warming. “Those studies were saying, ‘We’re warming. We really don’t want to go past 1°. We really don’t want to exceed 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide,’” he said. “Because we know what could happen looking at past warm periods and at simple calculations of ice sheet mass balance. And, you know, 30 years later, 40 years later, here we are seeing the problem.” Scientific calls for a more ambitious long-term climate goal are rising just as Earth’s average global temperature has breached the Paris Agreement target of 1.5° C of warming over the pre-industrial level nearly every consecutive month for the past two years. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has reached a concentration of 430 ppm, a 50 percent increase over pre-industrial levels. But missing those goals doesn’t diminish the importance of potentially revising the target, for which the Paris Agreement includes a review mechanism, Stokes said. Even if the global temperature overshoots the 1.5° mark, it’s important to know for the long term how much it would have to be lowered to return to a safe climate range. The new study focused on how melting polar ice masses drives sea level rise by combining evidence from past warm periods that were similar to the present, measurements of how much ice is being lost under the present level of warming, and projections of how much ice would be lost at different warming levels over the next few centuries. Sea level rise of several inches per decade would likely overwhelm adaptation efforts by many coastal communities in the US, said co-author Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist and sea level expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Coastal communities that are adapting to and preparing for future sea level rise are largely adapting to the amount of sea level rise that has already occurred,” she said. In a best-case scenario, she added, they are preparing for sea level rise at the current rate of a few millimeters per year, while the research suggests that rate will double within decades. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was at a concentration similar to now was in the mid-Pliocene warm period, just over 3 million years ago, when average global sea level rose 35 to 70 feet higher than today over the course of thousands of years. But the current rate of warming is far faster than any other time identified in the geological record. How the ice sheets will respond to warming at that speed is not clear, but nearly every new study in the past few decades has shown changes in the Arctic happening faster than expected. The United States’ ability to prepare for sea level rise is also profoundly threatened by the cuts to federal science agencies and staffing, Dutton said. The current cuts to science research, the retraction of funds already promised to communities through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the abandonment of the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, and changes to federal rules on air pollution “collectively threaten our ability to project future sea level rise, to prepare our communities, and to mitigate climate change and stem the rate at which sea-level is rising,” she said via email. Many researchers are working closely with coastal communities, but as federal grants continue to get cut, these collaborations will founder, she added. “The ice sheets won’t care what different political parties ‘believe’ about climate change,” she said. “Like it or not, they are simply at the mercy of rising temperatures.” The mass of ice lost from the polar ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s, and they are currently losing around 370 billion metric tons of ice per year, said co-author Jonathan Bamber, a physicist at the University of Bristol who focuses on studying how Earth’s frozen regions interact with the rest of the climate system. “We switched on some new technology 30 years ago, and we discovered that the ice sheets are responding with a large amplitude and rather rapidly,” he said. The extent of the changes to the ice sheet are much greater than models had ever suggested they would be, he noted. “That was a bit of a shock for the whole community.” Most of the climate models of the past three decades projected only about half as much melting as has actually been observed during that time, he said. That suggests the “safe operating zone for humanity is about 350 ppm” of atmospheric carbon dioxide, corresponding to about 1° C of warming. “I think we’ve known for a long time that we’re interfering with the climate system in a very dangerous way,” he said. “And one of the points of our paper is to demonstrate that one part of the climate system, the ice sheets, are showing some very disturbing signals right now.” Some of the most vulnerable places are far from any melting ice sheets, including Belize City, home to about 65,000 people, where just 3 feet of sea level rise would swamp 500 square miles of land. In some low-lying tropical regions around the equator, sea level is rising three times as fast as the global average. That’s because the water is expanding as it warms, and as the ice sheets melt, their gravitational pull is reduced, allowing more water to flow away from the poles toward the equator. “At low latitudes, it goes up more than the average,” Bamber said. “It’s bad news for places like Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, and the Nile Delta.” Global policymakers need to be more aware of the effects of a 1.5° C temperature increase, Ambassador Carlos Fuller, long-time climate negotiator for Belize, said of the new study. Belize already moved its capital inland, but its largest city will be inundated at just 1 meter of sea-level rise, he said. “Findings such as these only sharpen the need to remain within the 1.5° Paris Agreement limit, or as close as possible, so we can return to lower temperatures and protect our coastal cities,” Fuller said. While the new study is focused on ice sheets, Durham University’s Stokes notes that recent research shows other parts of the Earth system are already at, or very near, tipping points that are irreversible on a timescale relevant to human civilizations. That includes changes to freshwater systems and ocean acidification. “I think somebody used the analogy that it’s like you’re wandering around in a dark room,” he said. “You know there’s a monster there, but you don’t know when you’re going to encounter it. It’s a little bit like that with these tipping points. We don’t know exactly where they are. We may have even crossed them, and we do know that we will hit them if we keep warming.” Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News 21 Comments

May 20, 20253 min readWhy Tornado Season Has Been So DestructiveSeveral devastating tornado outbreaks have cut swaths of destruction across the U.S. What’s driving these damaging storms?By Andrea Thompson edited by Dean VisserA U.S. Air Force aerobatic team flies in formation over community members and crews cleaning up debris on May 18, 2025, in the community of Sunshine Hills outside of London, Ky. A tornado struck the neighborhood just after midnight on May 17, 2025. Michael Swensen/Stringer/Getty ImagesNearly 900 tornadoes have torn through more than 30 states so far this year, killing dozens of people, shredding buildings and landscapes across big chunks of the Eastern U.S., and costing billions. The oddly fickle and precise mix of atmospheric ingredients needed to generate tornadoes just happens to have occurred over and over again since mid-March—and the season isn’t over yet.How do tornadoes form?“In order to get a tornado, you need to have a thunderstorm that’s capable of producing a tornado,” says Jana Houser, a tornado researcher at the Ohio State University. Most often, these are what meteorologists call “supercell” thunderstorms, which feature a circulation pattern called a mesocyclone.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Supercell formation requires a set of conditions that make the atmosphere unstable, and these start with warm, moist air at the surface and cold, dry air above. The instability comes from warmer air’s greater buoyancy, which makes it rise upward. And this mix needs yet another specific ingredient, wind shear, “where winds change speed and direction as you go up with height” in the atmosphere, Houser says. This can create sort of a “tube” of horizontally rotating air. Next, the nascent twister needs an updraft, or upward-moving air, which tightens and speeds up the rotating air, taking it “from spinning like a bike tire” to “spinning like a top.”All of these conditions are necessary—but they’re still not always enough. “Most supercells don’t even actually produce tornadoes in their lifetime,” Houser says.The exact mechanics of tornado formation aren’t yet fully understood, but essentially, air rotation at the ground needs to meet a strong updraft aloft; this pulls the rotation in like a figure skater pulling in their arms, as Houser puts it.Where do tornadoes form?Tornadoes can—and do—happen wherever the right conditions are present, from Argentina to Italy to Bangladesh. But the U.S. is by far the leader in the average annual number of these storms. North America’s geography naturally promotes a crucial collision of air masses: juicy air streams northward from the bathtub warmth of the Gulf of Mexico, while cool, dry winds rush eastward over the Rockies. The air masses meet over the center of the country, which is how the region centered around northeastern Texas and Oklahoma came to be called Tornado Alley. “If you were to design a place that would get repeated severe storms, you would build something like the central U.S.,” says Rich Thompson, chief of forecast operations for the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.But over the past decade or so, that tornado bull’s-eye has changed a bit. A “new Tornado Alley” has emerged about 400 or 500 miles to the east, in part because moist Gulf air is reaching farther east than in the past.Why do tornadoes mainly form in spring?“Spring tends to be the peak because it’s a transitional season,” Houser says. Coming out of winter, there is still abundant cold air at northern latitudes and aloft, and at the same time, the sun is shining much more, heating up the surface air to promote instability.Fall is also a transitional season, but the air aloft remains generally warmer for some time after summer. Tornado activity doesn’t tend to pick up again until later in the fall, when the atmosphere has cooled down again.The local peaks in tornado occurrence tend to move northward as spring rolls into the summer: the Gulf Coast peaks earlier in the spring, the Southern Plains in May and June, and the Northern Plains and upper Midwest in June and July.The Clear Creek post office lays in rubble after a tornado destroyed it. Several tornadoes hit Greene and Monroe counties in south-central Indiana, leaving a path of destruction.Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/Alamy Stock PhotoWhy has the current tornado season been so active?By mid-May the U.S. has had an estimated 886 tornadoes. “We’re on the upper end of what is typical” at this point, Thompson says. Until this month, the most active periods this year were in mid-March and early April. “Those were the two that really pushed us above what is typical,” he adds.The meanderings of the jet stream—a narrow band of strong winds high in the atmosphere—are part of what determines how active a season becomes. The jet stream “really dictates what kinds of weather we end up getting at the surface,” Houser says. It influences the paths storms take, and it forms the boundaries between warmer and cooler air masses.In the case of this spring, “we just have periodic high-energy systems that are moving through,” Houser says, and they have been very effective at producing severe weather when they occur. “It’s just a matter of getting the ingredients to show up and getting the storms to take advantage of them,” Thompson says.

Humpback Whales Give Birth Much Farther South Than Previously Thought, Study Finds Researchers in Australia found records of humpback whale calves more than 900 miles farther south than expected A mother and baby whale spotted swimming near Kiama, New South Wales, Australia.  Vanessa Risku / Instagram: droning_my_sorrows Each year, humpback whales migrate predictably between cold, nutrient-rich feeding grounds and warm, tropical calving grounds, where they give birth and care for their young. Or so scientists thought. Researchers in Australia recorded calves being born much farther south than previously thought, which challenges long-held assumptions about humpback migration patterns. They shared their findings in a new paper published yesterday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) live in all of the world’s oceans. These behemoth marine mammals are highly migratory, swimming thousands of miles each year. The longest humpback whale migration ever recorded was 8,106 miles, from South America to Africa, though more typical distances are around 5,000 miles. In the Southern Hemisphere, humpbacks head to the krill-rich waters of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica every summer, then venture up the eastern and western coasts of Australia toward the warmer waters north of the continent every winter. Researchers long believed that humpbacks only gave birth to their calves in the tropical waters north of 28 degrees latitude on Australia’s east side and north of 23 degrees latitude on the west side. “Our general concept of humpback whale ecology is that they feed at high latitudes in the poles, breed in the tropics, and they have this migration that's driven between the two needs,” says lead author Jane McPhee-Frew, a marine guide and biologist at the University of New South Wales, to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ellen Phiddian. But, for the new study, scientists found more than 200 records of calves spotted south of these cut-offs. Some were seen as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand, at around 43 degrees latitude, which is between 807 and 932 miles farther south than expected. And that’s just where the sightings stopped—it’s possible humpbacks are giving birth even farther south. “Eventually, we just ran out of land to see them from, so we don’t actually know where the limit is,” McPhee-Frew says in a statement from the university. The scientists gathered the baby humpback whale sightings from a variety of sources, including migration surveys, stranding reports and citizen science observations from tourism boats. In total, the data included 209 observations consisting of 11 births, 41 strandings and 168 live calves; the scientists believe the reports represent at least 169 individual calves. Though the stranding data went back as far as 1991, most of the opportunistic observations occurred more recently, from 2016 forward. Roughly two-thirds of the total opportunistic observations occurred in 2023 and 2024. Since this is the first study of its kind, the scientists aren’t sure whether this is a new trend or just something no one had noticed before. “It may be the case that this has always been happening and we’ve just not documented it well or been paying attention,” study co-author Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist at Macquarie University, tells the Guardian’s Petra Stock. “Or it may be something new is happening because waters are becoming warmer further south of those traditional tropical areas, which means that they’re more favorable for a humpback whale to have a calf.” The findings were not necessarily a surprise, either, because humpbacks are known to feed, mate and give birth along their migratory corridor, says Olaf Meynecke, a marine scientist at Griffith University who was not involved with the study, to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. However, scientists “don't know to what extent they are doing this,” he adds. The findings also raise additional questions. The biggest one? If humpbacks don’t need to be in tropical waters to give birth, then why are they migrating to do it? “I don't know, but it's exciting,” McPhee-Frew tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. One possibility is that whales born in warmer waters have better chances of survival. These regions have fewer predators, like orcas, and the waters tend to be calmer. The warmer climate may also be beneficial for baby whales—called neonates—with poor temperature regulation. In addition, calves born farther south must still migrate northward with their mothers. This long journey is not only taxing, but it also takes them through busy shipping lanes and past urbanized areas, which opens them up to risks like boat strikes, entanglement and pollution. “Newborns are like Great Dane puppies,” says study co-author Tracey Rogers, also a biologist at the University of New South Wales, in the statement. “They have those long, enormous fins that they need to grow into, and they’re not very strong swimmers. So they rest a lot of the time on their mum’s back.... It’s heartbreaking to think of these young whales traveling through busy ports and dangerous shipping lanes with those long, clumsy fins.” Moving forward, researchers might be able to answer some of these questions by following calves born in cold waters and comparing their health and longevity to those born in warm waters. Scientists are also curious about other effects, like whether calves born in colder waters also return to these same areas when they’re ready to reproduce. In the meantime, the scientists say their findings could have important conservation implications. For instance, with calves being born farther south than previously thought, policymakers may want to consider expanding marine protected areas or launching awareness-raising campaigns to help keep them safe. “We can't be in a situation where we're putting any age of whales—especially baby whales—in a situation where they're getting caught in nets, being exposed to chemicals, being hit by boats and being harassed,” McPhee-Frew says in the statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

For many creatives, there are few times in life that are more thrilling and filled with possibilities than the summer you graduate. At the same time, there's usually a fair bit of anxiety, and in 2025, there are good reasons for that. If you're a creative graduate preparing to enter the workforce, you face a rapidly changing landscape shaped by technological advancements, shifting work paradigms and unprecedented challenges. In short, you'll be navigating uncharted waters as you transition from structured academic environments to the professional world. To help bridge this gap, we've gathered industry-leading advice from established leaders across various disciplines. These veterans have weathered economic shifts, tech revolutions, and cultural transformations throughout their careers. As such, their collective wisdom offers a compass for any graduate at a time of extraordinary opportunity and complexity. 1. Be kind to yourself First things first. You'll want to get into decent-paid work straight away, but in the current job market, that might not happen. That completely sucks, of course, but the important thing is that you don't beat yourself up over it. Creative director Charlie Bowden acknowledges the challenges of getting your foot in the door, even with a degree. "Converting an internship into a job is hard and may take longer than you'd like," he cautions. "So be kind to yourself. The best work comes when you're happy." Adrian Carroll, creative director at D8, agrees. "Don't be too hard on yourself if you don't land a role straight away," he stresses. "It's an incredibly tough market for graduates at the moment. Fewer people are setting up agencies, and more people are opting to freelance, which is tough if you don't have much experience." 2. Build your personal brand In a crowded jobs market, you need to stand out. That can be challenging for many creatives, especially if you're shy or introverted. But the important thing to understand, according to Simon Manchipp, founding partner at SomeOne, is this: "YOU ARE A BRAND. Like it or not." With that in mind, he recommends you: "Get your story straight. Make it stick. Website. Insta. LinkedIn. Behance. They should sing the same song—and it should sound like you. SHOW WORK. NOT PROMISES. Don't tell us what you want to do; show us what you did. Projects are better than platitudes. Side hustles count. So do failed ones. Especially failed ones." 3. Craft a portfolio with cut-through When it comes to your portfolio, Alex Rexworthy, co-founder and design director at Outlaw, advises showcasing development alongside final work. "Show your process, not just a flashy render," he urges. "Take the reader on a journey through each project in your portfolio. Start with the brief, share your initial ideas, and explain how you arrived at the final result." Above all, encourages Cat How, founder and ECD at How Studio, make an impact. "Go big, or go home," she says. "This is your time to shine, so you owe it to yourself to be OUTRAGEOUS." 4. Stay true to your vision When you're struggling to get work, it's natural to want to apply for everything and maybe even pretend to be someone you're not. But Paul Leon, creative director at U037, reckons you'll ultimately be more successful if you focus on your authentic creative path. "Focus on what you really want to do and head for that," he advises. "If you feel something's not right for you, don't be afraid to speak up, and don't be afraid to say no. Value yourself: the journey is where all the good stuff happens. Detours, etc, are fine." When applying for a job at an agency, you obviously need to do your research. But Charlie notes that you need to look beyond an agency's portfolio. "Consider the culture, not just the work," he explains. "Certain agencies make great work, but their culture may not be right for you. Internships are a great way of getting a gauge of this, but so is asking to come in for coffee and a crit, so you can see what the agency is like first-hand." 5. Embrace the beginner's mindset You need confidence to succeed in life, but that confidence shouldn't spill over into overconfidence or the idea that you already know it all; you don't. With that in mind, Kiser Barnes, partner and chief creative officer at Red Antler, stresses the importance of humility paired with curiosity. "Be humble and stay wildly curious," he says. "Finishing school feels like reaching the peak… until you realise you're right back at the bottom of a new hill again. That's okay. The people who thrive in this industry are the ones most open to learning, evolving and collaborating." Barrington Reeves, creative director at Too Gallus, offers similar advice. "Be ready to learn," he urges. "The change from education to commercial can sometimes be daunting. But although you've just been through a full course of education, the real learning begins now. " Part of that means adapting to commercial timeframes. "Don't be discouraged by the pace of change and iteration," he stresses. "While university might teach you to nurture and grow an idea over a prolonged period of time, in the commercial market, it is an incredible skill to be able to think—and fail—fast." 6. Develop leadership skills early Being humble doesn't mean you can't have one eye on the future and start developing your leadership skills. With that in mind, Ashleigh Hansberger, co-founder and COO at Motto, suggests you: "Start studying business and leadership now. Leadership isn't about title; it's about behaviour. That means building discipline, making clear decisions, being accountable, and taking responsibility for your actions and impact. "Practise your own leadership development early," she adds. "Read about it. Reflect on it. Try it. Accumulate experience and wisdom through the unglamorous work of getting 1% better every day. That's how you grow into someone people want to follow." 7. Master your craft while embracing technology Emerging technologies might be disrupting everything right now, with negative consequences for employment. But Kiser encourages graduates to engage with them all the same. "Don't be afraid of AI—tinker with it, play with it, understand it," he says. "Use your fresh perspective to imagine better ways of working. The world doesn't need more copies of what already exists. It needs people who can push the whole system forward." Matthew Schneider, director of product marketing at LucidLink, takes a similar line. "Know your craft, but don't be afraid of new tech," he advises. "When I started, a single video editing system cost well over $100k; now, a subscription to professional editing software might cost as little as $20 monthly." And the moral of this story? "Now people have access to great tools, what sets you apart is how you use them and the story you ultimately tell with them," Matthew explains. "Growing up an aspiring filmmaker myself, my mother would always tell me, 'It's not the story; it's the storytelling'. She's right!" Tom Munckton, ECD at Fold7Design, similarly notes the accelerating pace of industry evolution right now. "The industry used to shift annually; now it feels more like monthly—with processes and project delivery being challenged by AI and other democratising factors," he says. Ultimately, though, he recommends focusing on creative direction over specific tools. "Regardless of the tool or method you use right now or in the future, confidence will come from being clear about the type of work you want to make and making constant steps towards that," he reasons. 8. Embrace discomfort as growth Finding all this stressful and frightening? Many creative people feel like they don't "belong" in normal society, but the good news is that agencies are generally pretty friendly places and are probably filled with other people who've felt like outsiders themselves. Take Claire Parker, group creative partner at The Chase. "I never fitted in at school—couldn't do maths, couldn't spell—but I could create," she recalls. "The world needs curious minds like yours. Creativity isn't about having all the answers; it's about asking better questions. "Stay interested, stay committed, and back yourself even when you feel out of your depth," she adds. "In fact, especially then, as David Bowie said, 'Always go a little further into the water'. That's where the magic happens. Be more Bowie."

The AMOC is a system of ocean currents that circulates water within the Atlantic OceanNASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio The slowdown of a major current in the Atlantic Ocean is boosting the sea level and associated flooding in the Northeast US, on top of the already-rising sea level due to climate change. A total collapse of this Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as the planet warms could raise the sea level even further. “If the AMOC collapsed, this would dramatically increase the flood frequency along the US coast, even in the absence of strong storms,” says Liping Zhang at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in New Jersey. “Even partial weakening [of the current] can already have substantial impacts.” Advertisement Melting ice sheets and warmer water due to human-caused climate change are leading to a rise in average sea level, but the rate of sea-level rise isn’t the same everywhere. For instance, some coastal land is sinking, speeding the relative rate of sea-level rise in those areas. Local sea level is also shaped by how heat, water and salt circulate in the ocean, with warmer and fresher water taking up more space than colder, saltier water. On the US north-east coast, the sea level is rising three to four times faster than the global average over recent decades. A slowdown in the AMOC – which transports warm water from lower latitudes to the North Atlantic, where it cools, gets saltier and sinks – has long been proposed as a possible driver for this. When this overturning circulation weakens, deep water along the path of the current is expected to warm and expand, sloshing more water onto the shallow continental shelf. The AMOC naturally varies in strength on different timescales, and climate change has contributed to a slowdown in recent decades as melting ice freshens the North Atlantic and its waters warm. But it wasn’t clear whether this slowdown was making a big difference to sea level. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter Zhang and her colleagues used tide gauge measurements along the New England coast to reconstruct the local sea level stretching back more than a century. On top of a steady rise due to climate change, they found a marked pattern of fluctuation between low and high sea levels every few decades. Years with a high sea level aligned closely with years when the AMOC was weak, and these years also had more frequent coastal flooding. The researchers then used two different ocean models to quantify how much fluctuations in the AMOC’s strength influenced the local sea level. While the main driver of changes was the steady rise due to climate change, they found the weakening AMOC substantially boosted the sea level and associated flooding. In different parts of the coast, they found that a slowdown in the AMOC was behind 20 to 50 per cent of flooding since 2005. Because the natural cycles in the AMOC’s strength are largely predictable, the findings could enable researchers to forecast which years will see lots of flooding up to three years in advance, says Zhang. This could help make long-term decisions about infrastructure and emergency preparedness. “It demonstrates that the AMOC really does matter to [sea level rise],” says Chris Hughes at the University of Liverpool, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s not just there in models or theory, it’s actually there in the real world.” It isn’t clear how much of the recent weakening of the AMOC is due to climate change and how much is due to natural variations. However, the findings add support for projections that much of the US East Coast could see a surge in the sea level if the AMOC were to completely collapse in response to climate change – which, though unlikely, is possible. A near-total collapse of the current could raise the sea level by around 24 centimetres, says Hughes. “It doesn’t sound very huge, but it doesn’t have to go up very much to have a big effect.” Topics:

I never thought I’d see the day when Tom Cruise didn’t stick the landing, but here we are. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the second half of the story launched in 2023’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, is a high-wire act gone horribly wrong. The stunts are stunning, as you’d be right to assume due to the mere fact that Cruise showed up to make another M:I movie at all. In what’s been coyly (and in no way definitively) teased as the final curtain call for Ethan Hunt, the character Cruise has played since 1996’s Mission: Impossible, Cruise jumps from barrel-rolling biplane to barrel-rolling biplane, squeezes through a claustrophobic maze of undetonated underwater missiles in a sunken submarine, and knife-fights in booty shorts, in a most John Wickian turn. The Final Reckoning has it all — including two and a half hours of dead-in-the-water character drama and endless platitudes about Ethan’s destiny. The sheer number of flashbacks to previous franchise installments puts The Final Reckoning in a category with Seinfeld’s notorious clip show finale. Seeing two action-movie geniuses like Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie making a movie that is so often deadly boring, I wondered whether wrapping up the M:I series with a sense of finality was the true impossible mission all along. The Final Reckoning (a phrase uttered twice in the movie, with deathly reverence) picks up two months after the events of 2023’s Dead Reckoning, in a world that has been nearly consumed by the Entity, an all-powerful AI. Ethan has a plan to take down the robotic overlord, and it once again requires him to pull off a handful of nearly implausible tasks with his team, which includes longtime pals like Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), alongside newer friends from Dead Reckoning, including pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) and French assassin Paris (Pom Klemintieff). Assuming their skills and a lot of ridiculous coincidences all come together with pinpoint precision, then maaaaybe he can time the execution of their digital overlord juuuuust right. There are obstacles: Mustache-twirling Gabriel (Esai Morales) constantly pops out of nowhere to screw with Ethan in hopes of seizing the Entity for his own control, while returning legacy M:I character Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), now director of the CIA, hopes to arrest the rogue Ethan and save the day his own way. In theory, this should all be another wild M:I ride. But even as a diehard M:I Guy, I was constantly lost among The Final Reckoning’s expositional word salad and aggressive attempts to tie every single story beat back to some event in the franchise’s past. The bar has been raised for Marvel movies that supposedly require too much homework ahead of viewing. Final Reckoning’s most direct references are groan-worthy: It “solves” a long-running series mystery with the grace of Solo’s “We’ll call you Solo” scene. And it turns the Langley NOC-list heist from the 1996 movie into the single most important historical event since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Tom Cruise, typically a mesmerizing charmer, looks beaten and exhausted throughout the talky opening hour of Final Reckoning — perhaps because filming the more thrilling parts of the movie left him literally beaten and exhausted. The leaden dialogue doesn’t help, and McQuarrie’s decision to rarely hold the camera on his leading man for more than a few seconds means Cruise never gets to lock his charisma on the audience. The choppiness of the editing, even during the talky parts, recalls the hyperactive editing tactics that made Taken 3 go viral. A lackluster play-the-hits score makes even Ethan’s required running scenes limp along. The vibes are off. Bless the Final Reckoning actors who have pep in their step anyway! Atwell remains a cunning counterpart to Cruise, all reflexes and wit, and McQuarrie overindulges in her role. Final Reckoning did not need an extended scene where an Inuit woman teaches Grace how to steer a dog sled, but it’s tender. A chunk of the movie plays less like the usual globetrotting spy story than a tense Tom Clancy political thriller. But hey, if circumstances are going to trap Ethan in a submarine, at least it’s with a captain played by Tramell Tillman, who ports over his hilariously mannered presence from Severance to the equally heightened world of Mission: Impossible. And with the U.S. on the brink of atomic war, McQuarrie fills war rooms with cheeky TV actors, gifting Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation), and Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) some much deserved dramatic spotlights. It’s the series’ best that-guy casting since Mission: Impossible III. Still, between bursts of personality, the plot of Final Reckoning spins in circles. There’s little tension in the pursuit of the Entity, an invisible threat and the greatest enemy to the “show, don’t tell” screenwriting adage. McQuarrie stages Ethan’s big confrontation with the evil Siri in a VR chamber that zips through the AI’s master plan like it’s the wormhole in 2001: A Space Odyssey. If that sequence felt like anything more than an info dump, it could have been a rush based on the visual design alone. But the Entity blathering the same lines over and over about Ethan’s destiny in no way compares to human villains offering inhumane horrors. A talking blue circle isn’t exactly a standoff with Philip Seymour Hoffman holding a gun to Ethan’s wife’s head. To make up for the lack of chase, McQuarrie cranks up every familiar form of Impossible Mission Force-patented heist operation to maximum impossibility, to the point where it’s kind of exhausting. The difference between “thrillingly inconceivable” and “preposterously cartoonish” is the difference between “we need split-second precision” and “we need split-nanosecond precision.” Everything in The Final Reckoning, from pinpointing the needle-in-a-haystack location of a missing submarine to the mind-boggling requirements of incarcerating an AI in the realm of scientific possibility, veers over the edge: Unbelievable coincidence, not skill or precision, drives these plans. Also, there has never been a three-hour movie that needed more than one ticking-time-bomb-defusal sequence. Never! But, my god, the actual stunts. McQuarrie’s set pieces whisk the audience from the streets of London to the Arctic circle to the mountains of South Africa, and it’s progressively more awe-inspiring with each new sequence. A crosscut fight between Ethan and an Entity cultist — yes, we have those now — while his team members are duking it out with goons in a burning building is a spectacle of exactitude. Though Ethan winds up back on an aircraft carrier, in what seems like a shameless callback to Top Gun, Cruise really revives his Maverick do-or-die energy when he descends into the icy depths and contends with elaborate water stunts. The movie’s much-teased climactic plane stunt is the greatest sequence Cruise has ever committed to film. While many of the Mission: Impossible franchise’s set pieces have been anchored by one death-defying moment (Ethan clinging to the side of a jet or motorcycling off a cliff), Ethan’s pursuit of Gabriel through the skies goes on and on and on — and I couldn’t get enough. Cruise clings to the side of two different planes, flopping against their sides with every barrel roll, letting his cheeks flap in the wind, and delivering a few Indiana Jones-style punches as he commandeers each vehicle. There are times when he appears to be in full zero G as the second plane careens through valleys. Anything that goes right for him immediately goes wrong, and with constant escalation. It’s breathtaking.  And it’s the grand finale of a bad watch. Ethan Hunt deserves a proper send-off, and not just in a blaze of action-fueled glory. In 2006, J.J. Abrams gave the character a down-to-Earth quality and a group of close friends in M:I III. McQuarrie ran with that intimacy when he rewrote Ghost Protocol in 2011 then made the franchise his own with 2015’s Rogue Nation. His follow-up, 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, saw Ethan close the book on his marriage, hug it out with his best buds, and sustain a symphony of stunts from start to finish. It was the perfect finale. But it was so successful that Cruise and McQuarrie couldn’t resist going back for more, with this two-part story stretched across years. Dead Reckoning was satisfying, in a classic M:I way, but it needed a coda to wrap up all its open-ended plots. What was initially planned as Dead Reckoning Part Two became The Final Reckoning, which, after watching the movie, feels like an apt title for what is likely the duo’s last swing at the property. Either way, when the credits roll, Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series feels like it’s over for good, whether more sequels are on the way or not. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters on May 23.

During an excavation, amidst the Patagonian winds and hard rock, a fossil began to turn green. It was an unexpected reaction: the adhesive applied to protect the bones, fragile after millions of years beneath the ice, had interacted with plant matter trapped in the rock’s cracks. This greenish hue earned the fossil the nickname Fiona, like the ogre from Shrek.But Fionais much more than a ogre-themed name. It is the first complete ichthyosaur ever excavated in Chile and, even more remarkably, the only known pregnant female from the Hauterivian — a stage of the Early Cretaceous dating back 131 million years. Her skeleton, discovered at the edge of the Tyndall Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park — an area increasingly exposed by glacial retreat — belongs to the species Myobradypterygius hauthali, originally described in Argentina from fragmentary remains.The discovery, led by Judith Pardo-Pérez, a researcher at the University of Magallanes and the Cabo de Hornos International Center (CHIC), and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, offers an unprecedented glimpse into ancient marine life — from how these majestic reptiles reproduced to how they adapted to oceans vastly different from those of today.An Ichthyosaur Maternity Ward in Patagonia(Image Courtesy of Irene Viscor)So far, 88 ichthyosaurs have been found on the Tyndall Glacier. Most of them are adults and newborns. Two key facts stand out: food was abundant, and no other predators were competing with them.Fiona, who measures nearly 13 feet long, is still encased in five blocks of rock. Despite the challenge, she was transported to a local clinic, where CT scans allowed researchers to study her skull and body. Her species was identified thanks to one of her fins. “There’s no other like it in the world,” says Pardo-Pérez. The limbs were remarkably elongated, suggesting this animal was built for long-distance swimming.Inside her, there were more surprises. One of them was her stomach contents, which revealed what may have been her last meal: tiny fish vertebrae. But the most striking find was a fetus, about 20 inches long, already in a position to be born.“We believe these animals came to Magallanes — the southern tip of Chilean Patagonia — from time to time to give birth, because it was a safe refuge,” Pardo-Pérez says. “We don't know how long they stayed, but we do know that mortality was high during the first few days of life.”One of the big unanswered questions is where they went next, as there are no records of Myobradypterygius hauthali, apart from a piece of fin found in Argentina. The most abundant remains come from southern Germany, but those date back to the Jurassic period, meaning they’re older.Palaeontologist Erin Maxwell suggests, “In many modern ecosystems, species migrate to higher latitudes during the summer to take advantage of seasonally abundant resources and then move to lower latitudes in winter to avoid harsh conditions,” she explains. “We believe Mesozoic marine reptiles may have followed similar seasonal patterns.”Sea Dragon GraveyardThe environment where Fiona was discovered — dubbed the "sea dragon graveyard" — also has much to reveal.According to geologist Matthew Malkowski of the University of Texas at Austin, the Hauterivian age is particularly intriguing because it coincided with major planetary changes: the breakup of continents, intense volcanic episodes, and phenomena known as "oceanic anoxic events," during which vast areas of the ocean were depleted of dissolved oxygen for hundreds of thousands of years.One such poorly understood event, the Pharaonic Anoxic Event, occurred around 131 million years ago, near the end of the Hauterivian, and still raises questions about its true impact on marine life. “We don't have a firm grasp of how significant these events were for marine vertebrates, and geological records like that of the Tyndall Glacier allow us to explore the relationship between life, the environment, and Earth’s past conditions,” Malkowski notes.Evolution of IchthyosaursReconstruction of Fiona. (Image Courtesy of Mauricio Álvarez)Don't be misled by their body shape. “Ichthyosaurs are not related to dolphins,” clarifies Pardo-Pérez. Although their hydrodynamic silhouettes may look nearly identical, the former were marine reptiles, while the latter are mammals. This resemblance results from a phenomenon known as convergent evolution: when species from different lineages develop similar anatomical features to adapt to the same environment.Ichthyosaurs evolved from terrestrial reptiles that, in response to ecological and climatic changes, began spending more time in the water until they fully adapted to a marine lifestyle. However, they retained traces of their land-dwelling ancestry, such as a pair of hind flippers — absent in dolphins — passed down from their walking forebears. They lived and thrived in prehistoric oceans for about 180 million years, giving them ample time to refine a highly specialized body: their forelimbs and hindlimbs transformed into flippers; they developed a crescent-shaped tail for propulsion, a dorsal fin for stability, and a streamlined body to reduce drag in the water. Remarkably, like whales and dolphins, “ichthyosaurs had a thick layer of blubber as insulation to maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding seawater and gave birth to live young, which meant they didn’t need to leave the water to reproduce,” explains Maxwell.Whales and dolphins also descend from land-dwelling ancestors, but their transition happened over a comparatively short evolutionary timespan, especially when measured against the long reign of the ichthyosaurs. “Their evolution hasn't had as much time as that of ichthyosaurs,” notes Pardo-Pérez. “And yet, they look so similar. That’s the wonderful thing about evolution.”Read More: Did a Swimming Reptile Predate the Dinosaurs?Fossils on the Verge of DisappearanceOne of the key factors behind the remarkable preservation of the fossils found in the Tyndall Glacier is the way they were buried. According to Malkowski, Fiona and her contemporaries were either trapped or swiftly covered by underwater landslides and turbidity currents — geological processes that led to their sudden entombment.But the good fortune that protected them for millions of years may now be running out. As the glacier retreats, exposing fossils that were once unreachable, those same remains are now vulnerable to wind, rain, and freeze-thaw cycles, which crack the surrounding rock. As vegetation takes hold, roots accelerate erosion and eventually conceal the fossils once again.“While climate change has allowed these fossils to be studied, continued warming will also eventually lead to their loss,” Maxwell warns. In Fiona’s story, scientists find not only a record of ancient life, but also a warning etched in stone and bone: what time reveals, climate can reclaim.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:María de los Ángeles Orfila is a science journalist based in Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on long-form storytelling. Her work has appeared in Discover Magazine, Science, National Geographic, among other outlets, and in leading Uruguayan publications such as El País and El Observador. She was a fellow in the 2023 Sharon Dunwoody Mentoring Program by The Open Notebook and often explores the intersections of science, culture, and Latin American identity.