A new NASA study is likely to get some folks hot under the collar.

In a study published in the May 15 issue of the journal Nature, NASA scientists show that human-caused climate change has impacted many of Earth's natural systems.  Among things, the researchers say that permafrost is thawing, plants in Europe are blooming earlier, and African lakes are becoming less productive -- all due to anthroprogenic climate change.

The study is the first of its kind to link a number of kinds of data, including temperature records, climate models, and observations of actual changes in a number of ecosystems.

You can see some of the most significant impacts across North America: the red areas indicate places where the temperatures have risen and caused changes.

Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science says, "Humans are influencing

Can you believe it?  We're almost to the first day of hurricane season.  June 1st is only a little more than two weeks away. It seems to me like last year's season just ended.  (It's like the NBA playoffs like that.)

Speaking of last year, a group of hurricane forecasters and researchers met in Florida this week.  One of the topics of this meeting was whether any hurricanes from last year should have their names retired.

As you may know, there are six lists of hurricane names for the Atlantic basin, and we cycle through each list once every six years.  Storms that are particularly nasty can have their names retired to prevent confusion in the future. 

Since we started naming tropical systems back in the mid-1950s, 70 storms have had their names retired.  Among

Did you notice how blue the skies were this morning?  I sure did.

One of our New Media photographers, Ricky Leung, snapped these pictures near the WRAL Azalea Gardens, showing these blue skies behind some green grass and gorgeous flowers.

Under normal circumstances, the skies generally appear blue thanks to how sunlight is absorbed and scattered in the atmosphere.  Blue light has a shorter wavelength, which tends to scatter more effectively than longer wavelength light when we have a "clean" atmosphere. 

When we have a lot of humidity or pollution in the atmosphere, though -- like we often do during the summer months -- that changes the equation.  Those particles are larger and tend to scatter all wavelengths of light more effectively, resulting in a lighter blue or even a white-ish sky, especially close to the horizon.  (Since most of those particles tend to hang close to

Today, I sat down with Greg Fishel to talk about all the severe weather recently.  We parceled those discussions into a pair of interviews you can see only on WRAL.com:

• First, we talked about the newest tool in our weather forecasting toolbox, 3D StormView.  (I also blogged about it today, as well.)
• We also discussed the new enhanced Fujita scale.  It's helping meteorologists and engineers better rate and understand tornado damage.

Those of you who have followed WRAL for any length of time know that we're "into" new technologies.  We're always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to forecast the weather, to show you what the atmosphere is doing, and to keep you safe when the weather turns downright ugly.

The newest tool in our toolbox is called 3D StormView, and last night's storm in Bertie County is a perfect example of something we can show you now that would have been difficult to show you before.  3D StormView allows us to really dig deeply into radar data, showing more than the standard two-dimensional "colors on a map" view we're used to seeing.  We can now show you the storms in three dimensions.  This can really bring out more of the dangerous parts of a thunderstorm -- large hail suspended above the ground (before it falls onto us!) and tornadic rotations inside the storm.

I've included three images from that big hail storm -- a storm that may also