theSIGNAL SCIENCE
10 August 2026
"Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get."
NEWSBUSINESSTECHNOLOGYWORLDSCIENCECULTUREENVIRONMENTSPORT
Science

Typhoon Dolphin Swamps Shanghai After Record Journey

China's strongest storm of the year has forced over a million people from their homes, flooding streets and grounding nearly a thousand flights in Shanghai alone.

Imagine a storm that refuses to die. Typhoon Dolphin travelled 6,000 kilometres before it even reached land — a journey more than three times longer than that of an average typhoon. When it finally slammed into Yuhuan, in Zhejiang province, at 5:30 on Sunday afternoon, it was carrying winds of 150 kilometres per hour. About an hour later, it hit the coast a second time, striking the city of Wenzhou.

By then, China had already issued its highest-level red alert. The human scale of the disruption is staggering. More than one million people were evacuated across eastern China, including residents of Shanghai, the country's financial capital. Wenzhou alone relocated roughly 900,000 residents and opened over 1,000 emergency shelters.

Nearly 1,000 flights were cancelled at Shanghai's airports on Monday. Meanwhile, parts of Disneyland and Legoland closed their gates, and viewing platforms along the famous riverside Bund were shut. In the city's former French Concession — a neighbourhood that draws visitors from around the world — floodwaters swallowed ground-floor shops, and people waded through ankle-deep water in the streets. Even as authorities downgraded Dolphin to a tropical storm, the danger was far from over.

Photo: Wes Hicks / Unsplash
Residents wade through flooded streets in Shanghai's historic French Concession district as Typhoon Dolphin strikes.
Discuss
  • Why do governments issue colour-coded alert systems, and how effective are they during extreme weather?
  • Typhoon Dolphin travelled 6,000 km before landfall — what does this suggest about changing storm patterns?
  • Should tourist attractions like Disneyland be legally required to close during red-alert weather events?
Science

NASA Chases the Moon's Shadow

At 50,000 feet above the North Atlantic, the moon's shadow will hit a NASA WB-57 research plane at over 2,000 mph — and the pilot will race it. Taking off from Keflavik, Iceland, the crew plans to extend totality from 2 minutes 18 seconds to nearly 3 full minutes. Hidden inside the nose cone, four cameras will photograph the sun's corona in multiple wavelengths, hunting for plasma prominences and tiny magnetic explosions called nanoflares. "Solar eclipses give us an opportunity to do science we couldn't do at any other time," says Dr Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.…
  • Should governments fund more eclipse-chasing science missions, and why?
∞
Typhoon Dolphin has a massive circulation size and intense rainfall capacity.
CCTV, China's state broadcaster
Science

Europe's Summer Breaks Every Record

One number stopped scientists cold: 21.62°C. That is the average temperature western Europe recorded across June and July 2026, which is higher than any equivalent period ever measured — beating the previous record set during the brutal summer of 2022. The Copernicus Climate Change Service, which monitors the EU's climate, reports that soil moisture is now even lower than it was during that 2022 drought. The Seine, the Rhine, and the Danube are all running unusually shallow. Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts puts it bluntly: heat and drought are now "reinforcing one another." France and Spain have endured their worst wildfires in living memory, while ocean temperatures also broke records for a second straight month in July — meaning the heat is not only on land. Europe warms faster than any other continent.…
  • Should governments declare a climate emergency when heat records are broken?
WORLD · Science
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GLOBAL · Science
Earth’s molten core suddenly reversed direction — and scientists don’t know why
AMERICAS · Science
Trump administration to pay German firm $1.2bn to halt US wind projects
OCEANIA · Science
Scientists tracked 12 people in Antarctica for 10 months—what happened could shape future Mars missions
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
staggeringevacuated
downgradedtotalityprominences
reinforcingcirculation
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Third conditional — hypothetical past
Use the third conditional to talk about hypothetical situations in the past and their imagined results. The structure is: if + past perfect, would/could/might + have + past participle.
have been · have cancelled · have extended · would · could · have recorded · might · have evacuated
  1. If Typhoon Dolphin travelled a shorter distance, it might not have reached Shanghai at all.
  2. If the Chinese authorities had not acted quickly, they might not over a million people in time.
  3. If the NASA pilot had not raced the moon's shadow, the crew would not totality to nearly three full minutes.
  4. If the cameras had not been hidden in the nose cone, scientists could not images of the corona in multiple wavelengths.
  5. If soil moisture higher in 2026, the wildfires across France and Spain might have been less severe.
  6. If Europe had not warmed faster than other continents, scientists would not a temperature as extreme as 21.62°C.
3COLLOCATIONS
Match the verb on the left with the noun phrase it best collocates with on the right.
  1. issue
  2. relocate
  3. capture
  4. reinforce
  5. extend
4CRITICAL THINKING
All three articles describe events that scientists say are becoming more extreme or harder to predict. What does this pattern suggest about the relationship between human activity and natural systems — and who, if anyone, bears responsibility for the consequences when those systems fail?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
The articles describe three very different scientific or meteorological events, yet all three end with an unanswered question. Choose one of those closing questions and write two paragraphs arguing what you believe the answer might be, using evidence from the article to support your view.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong by filling in the missing word or phrase from the articles. Each step must be stronger than the one before it.
  • wet→→
  • moved→→
  • warm→→
  • low→→
  • cancelled→→
  • notable→→
8SPEAKING
  1. What responsibilities do scientists have when reporting extreme climate data?
  2. Can chasing a solar eclipse ever justify significant government expense?
  3. How should cities redesign themselves for increasingly frequent flooding?
  4. Which record broken in these articles do you find most alarming, and why?