“In 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid named Dimorphos. The goal of this interplanetary smashup was to prove that if a killer space rock ever threatened Earth in the future, humans could deflect it and save our world.

The mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, worked: The crash shortened Dimorphos’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos, by 32 minutes. It also generated a giant cloud of dust and debris captured by telescopes around the world and in space.

A new study shows that DART achieved more than that. Scientists found that the spacecraft’s impact shifted not only the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, but also the trajectory of the pair around our sun.”

From New York Times.

“California is completely drought-free for the first time in a quarter of a century, a significant development in a state that endured grueling years with insufficient rainfall.

Over the last 25 years, drought conditions in California have intensified the state’s wildfire crisis and created challenges in its massive agricultural sector. But a few wet years, and a recent spate of winter storms, helped bring the state out of drought.

A map published by the US Drought Monitor on Thursday showed that no part of the state is experiencing drought or abnormal dryness. The development came after weeks of above-normal rainfall that helped fill reservoirs in the state, including lakes Shasta and Oroville, far beyond their historic averages. The December holiday season has been one of the wettest on record for parts of southern California.”

From The Guardian.

“In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater.

For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos of equipment, risked data loss due to bad weather or a volcanic explosion and used artificial intelligence to analyze the seismic data. Now, the team has created the first three-dimensional image of the 17,883-foot (5,452-meter) volcano’s interior, which tells them where the magma accumulates and will help them better understand its activity, and, eventually, help authorities better react to eruptions.”

From ABC News.

“While the final death tolls are not yet available, reports suggest perhaps 1,600 people tragically lost their lives in these and several other events in the final two months of the year.

If those estimates prove accurate, that would make 2025 among the lowest in total deaths from extreme weather events. Ever! I am cautious here because the recent decade or so has seen many years with similarly low totals — notably 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2021.

What we can say with some greater confidence is that the death rate from extreme weather events is the lowest ever at less than 0.8 deaths per 100,000 people (with population data from the United Nations). Only 2018 and 2015 are close.

To put the death rate into perspective, consider that:

• in 1960 it was >320 per 100,000;
• in 1970, >80 per 100,000;
• in 1980, ~3 per 100,000;
• in 1990, ~1.3 per 100,000;

Since 2000, six years have occurred with <1.0 deaths per 100,000 people, all since 2014. From 1970 to 2025 the death rate dropped by two orders of magnitude. This is an incredible story of human ingenuity and progress.”

From The Honest Broker.