Colorado State University (CSU) researchers are predicting an “above-average” Atlantic hurricane season this year, with a likelihood of more frequent storms, including nine hurricanes and 17 named storms.

The Tropical Cyclones, Radar, Atmospheric Modeling, and Software (TC-RAMS) Team within the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU cited warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the subtropical eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea as a primary factor in their prediction, a press release from CSU said.

Levi Silvers, one of the authors of the report and a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU, said the increase in storm activity is significant, though slightly lower than last year’s forecast.

“It’s a noticeable and important difference, because it matters for people along the coastlines whenever we have an above average season,” Silvers told CBS News.

The tropical Pacific is currently experiencing weak La Niña conditions, but it is likely that they will transition to neutral El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions in the next two months.

The odds of El Niño occurring this hurricane season are just 13 percent, according to the most recent NOAA outlook.

“When waters in the eastern subtropical Atlantic are much warmer than normal in the spring, it tends to force a weaker subtropical high and associated weaker winds blowing across the tropical Atlantic. These conditions will likely lead to a continuation of above-average water temperatures across most of the tropical Atlantic for the peak of the 2025 hurricane season. A warm Atlantic favors an above-average season, since a hurricane’s fuel source is warm ocean water. Additionally, a warm Atlantic leads to lower atmospheric pressure and a more unstable atmosphere,” the press release said.

The CSU forecasters said there is still “considerable uncertainty” about what phase ENSO will be in during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, which occurs from August to October.

“Given the combined hurricane-favorable signals of a warm Atlantic and the unlikelihood of El Niño, the CSU forecast team is predicting an above-normal season,” the press release said.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30.

Of the nine predicted hurricanes, the researchers forecast four to reach Category 3, 4 or 5 “major hurricane” strength, packing sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour.

“So far, the 2025 hurricane season is exhibiting characteristics similar to 1996, 1999, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2017,” said lead author of the report Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist with CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science, in the press release.

“While the average of our analog seasons was above normal, the large spread in observed activity in our analog years highlights the high levels of uncertainty that typically are associated with our early April outlook,” Klotzbach added.

The research team uses a statistical model for its forecasts, as well as four models based on a combination of predictions and information from the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici and the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Using historical hurricane season data from 25 to 40 different years, the models evaluate conditions and variables like Atlantic sea surface temperatures, vertical wind shear, sea level pressures, ENSO and other factors.

The forecast team predicted that this season’s hurricane activity will be roughly 125 percent of the average hurricane season from 1991 to 2020. In comparison, last year’s activity was approximately 130 percent of an average season.

The CSU team will issue forecast updates on June 11, July 9 and August 6.

The researchers warned coastal residents to always take proper precautions.

“It takes only one storm near you to make this an active season for you,” said co-author of the report Michael Bell, a professor of atmospheric science at CSU, in the press release.

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Thousands of United States health workers were laid off on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration’s massive purge of federal employees, including top scientists and senior leaders in charge of regulating food and drugs, researching treatments and cures and protecting Americans from disease.

Termination emails were sent out to employees of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and several smaller agencies, reported NPR.

“Today, two billionaires are making good on their vow to take a wrecking ball to the Department of Health and Human Services and put Americans’ health and wellbeing at serious risk,” said Democratic Senator from Washington State Patty Murray, who is former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, in a press release. “These firings make a lot of sense if you believe measles spreading like wildfire is good – or think we should be slashing cancer research. While Republicans work to pass more tax breaks for billionaires, Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. are ripping essential health services away from the American people and decimating our country’s ability to prevent outbreaks and keep families safe.”

HHS announced last week that it planned to fire 10,000 people, NPR reported. The forced layoffs are in addition to the roughly 10,000 employees who have already left or whose jobs have been terminated.

“It’s in Project 2025,” said one HHS supervisor, an employee of 20 years, as she waited in a line to find out if she would lose her job, reported The Guardian. “Basically since February they’ve been telling us we might be let go.”

“We’re being led through a security line like you would if you were at TSA,” the supervisor said. “We have to take off our shoes, take out our laptops, and they have to check our badge to make sure we can swipe it, and then check our names against a list.”

The Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP), part of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, has “been slated to be eliminated in its entirety,” an internal email from Director Ari Bernstein said, as Politico’s E&E News reported.

Former officials and outside experts described the firings and loss of expertise at the agencies as a “bloodletting,” reported The New York Times.

The cuts are part of a wider plan by HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., who announced last week that he intended to reduce the number of employees at HHS from 82,000 to 62,000. The plan includes a number of agencies being collapsed into the new Administration for a Healthy America.

The intention of the restructuring is to bring the functions and communications of the agency under the direct supervision of Kennedy, who has said he will “make America healthy again.”

“These cuts to agency experts and programs leave our country less safe, less prepared and without the necessary talent and resources to respond to health threats,” said Mandy Cohen, head of the CDC during the Biden administration, in a text message, as The New York Times reported.

Kennedy is also getting rid of departments like the Administration for Community Living, which supports programs to help people with disabilities and older Americans live independently.

“Today was simply a tragedy,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who has been a presidential advisor. “There is so much intellectual capital that literally got swept under the rug today in this country, and we are going to pay a price for this for years to come.”

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More than 1,900 scientists who are members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) have signed a letter warning the American public of the “danger” of Trump administration attacks on science.

The administration’s attack on scientific institutions in the United States has included cancellations of federal grants to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions; the firing of NASA, NOAA and other government employees; investigations and threats to private universities; resignations; and censorship, reported The Guardian.

“We see real danger in this moment. We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated,” the scientists stated in the letter.

Established by Congress in 1863 — during the administration of Abraham Lincoln — as the National Academy of Sciences, today the organization is a nonprofit and includes the National Academies of Engineering and Medicine. Together, the academies have over 6,800 peer-elected members.

“The quest for truth – the mission of science – requires that scientists freely explore new questions and report their findings honestly, independent of special interests. The administration is engaging in censorship, destroying this independence,” the letter stated. “It is using executive orders and financial threats to manipulate which studies are funded or published, how results are reported, and which data and research findings the public can access. The administration is blocking research on topics it finds objectionable, such as climate change, or that yields results it does not like, on topics ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends.”

The signatories are all elected members of NASEM and represent some of the top scientists in the country. The letter describes researchers removing scientifically accurate terminology from papers and grant proposals to comply with federal agencies; removing their own names from work; and abandoning studies, The Washington Post reported.

Richard Aslin, Yale School of Medicine senior scientist and an author of the letter, said the scientists wanted “to make sure the American public is aware that this is not just about us losing our jobs. It’s about the whole country losing a tremendously valuable resource that has made us, honestly, the envy of the world,” reported The Washington Post.

The Trump administration’s upheaval of scientific institutions has some wondering if the cuts are a precursor to privatization, The Guardian reported.

“The administration is slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration. The funding cuts are forcing institutions to pause research (including studies of new disease treatments), dismiss faculty, and stop enrolling graduate students — the pipeline for the next generation’s scientists,” the letter said.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last week that the administration plans to reduce the HHS workforce by 20,000 — about a quarter of its employees. Agencies on the chopping block include the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Peter Marks, who was the FDA’s director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, resigned last weekend, citing the administration’s “unprecedented assault on scientific truth.”

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary,” Marks’ resignation letter stated. “But rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

In an unprecedented attack on environmental science, the administration also sought to dissolve the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development by firing more than 1,100 scientists.

“The nation’s scientific enterprise is being annihilated and the silence of too many of our scientific leaders is only making the ongoing catastrophe worse,” said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of the Health Research Group at nonprofit consumer rights advocacy organization Public Citizen, a think tank based in Washington, DC, as reported by The Guardian.

“The ‘SOS’ signal from 1,900 scientists must be a wake-up call for our leading scientific and medical organizations to show courage and speak out at this critical moment,” Steinbrook said. “If scientists and scientific and medical organizations will not forcefully speak out in defense of science and public health, who will? There is no alternative.”

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In a new review published in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change, scientists have issued an urgent warning that the fossil fuel industry and its products are driving intertwined crises threatening humans, wildlife and our shared future on this planet.

The collaborative review by scientists from the Center for Biological Diversity and several universities synthesizes scientific evidence that shows fossil fuels and the industry are behind many harms to public health, biodiversity and environmental justice, while contributing to the agrochemical pollution, plastics and climate crises, a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity said.

“The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” said lead author of the report Shaye Wolf, the Center for Biological Diversity’s climate science director, in the press release. “Oil, gas and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it’s affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy.”

The review’s focus is on the United States — the largest producer of oil and gas in the world and the biggest contributor to the fossil fuel crises. The study provides solutions that are already available for the phaseout of fossil fuel use and extraction while transitioning quickly and “fairly” to affordable renewable, clean energy and materials throughout the economy.

“Fossil fuel pollution impacts health at every stage of life, with elevated risks for conditions ranging from premature births to childhood leukemia and severe depression,” said co-author of the review David J.X. González, an assistant environmental health sciences professor at University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health, in the press release. “We’ve got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy.”

Fossil fuels are responsible for roughly 90 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions that are causing global heating, ocean acidification and fueling unparalleled climate disasters.

To limit damages caused by the climate crisis, the authors encouraged governments to immediately cease the expansion of fossil fuels and to phase out current fossil fuel development.

The review also detailed the disproportionate harms fossil fuel use, extraction and processing inflict upon low-income communities and communities of color.

“Decades of discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have concentrated fossil fuel development in Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor white communities, resulting in devastating consequences,” said Robin Saha, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana, in the press release. “For far too long, these fenceline communities have been treated as sacrifice zones by greedy, callous industries. The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Climate change and pollution caused by fossil fuel use are also accelerating animals’ risk of extinction. As much as a third of plants and animals could become extinct over the next half-century if fossil fuel use continues unabated.

The review emphasized the need for increased protection of essential carbon-storing ecosystems and the incorporation of renewable energy infrastructure into the built environment, among other measures.

It also stressed the increased production of plastics by the fossil fuel industry, which creates pervasive pollution that contaminates our water, air, soil and food systems.

The scientists recommended ambitious targets to reduce the production of primary plastics and accompanying “chemicals of concern,” while at the same time incentivizing sustainable and safe plastics alternatives and substitutes, along with sustainable agricultural practices that limit petrochemical pollution from fertilizers and pesticides fueled by fossil fuels.

The review discussed a major barrier to the transition to clean energy: the longstanding, multibillion-dollar disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry to cover up the hazards of its products while blocking policies that support the phasing out of fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel industry has spent decades misleading us about the harms of their products and working to prevent meaningful climate action,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor of the history of science, in the press release. “Perversely, our governments continue to give out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to this damaging industry. It is past time that stops.”

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Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have said that Arctic sea ice most likely reached its yearly maximum extent on March 22, at 5.53 million square miles.

The maximum sea ice extent for 2025 is the lowest in a satellite record going back 47 years, falling short of the last record low set in March of 2017.

“This new record low is yet another indicator of how Arctic sea ice has fundamentally changed from earlier decades,” said Walt Meier, NSIDC senior research scientist, in a press release from NSIDC. “But even more importantly than the record low is that this year adds yet another data point to the continuing long-term loss of Arctic sea ice in all seasons.”

Scientists from NSIDC stressed that the measurement of Arctic sea ice extent was preliminary. Weather conditions could alter the total maximum ice extent for the year. NSIDC’s full analysis will be issued in early April.

“In the dark and cold of winter, sea ice forms and spreads across Arctic seas. But in recent years, less new ice has been forming, and less multi-year ice has accumulated. This winter continued a downward trend scientists have observed over the past several decades. This year’s peak ice cover was 510,000 square miles (1.32 million square kilometers) below the average levels between 1981 and 2010,” a press release from NASA said.

Antarctic sea ice hit a near-record-low minimum extent on March 1, at 764,000 square miles, tying the second-lowest yearly minimum on record.

That’s 30 percent lower than the 1.1 million square miles of typical Antarctic sea ice extent prior to 2010. Sea ice extent is the total ocean area with a minimum of 15 percent ice concentration.

“Warming temperatures are what’s causing the ice to decline,” Meier said, as The Associated Press reported. “You know, sea ice in particular is very sensitive… 31 degrees is ice skating and 33 degrees it’s swimming.”

Reduced sea ice extent in both polar regions marked another milestone — the planet’s total sea ice has reached an all-time low. Ice coverage globally in mid-February was more than one million square miles below the average before 2010.

“We’re going to come into this next summer season with less ice to begin with,” said Linette Boisvert, a NASA ice scientist based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in the NASA press release. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”

The Arctic is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the planet, and it impacts weather all over the world, reported The Associated Press. As temperature and pressure differences shrink between north and south, the jet stream becomes weaker. This causes it to dip further south, bringing storms and cold temperatures that frequently get stuck, dumping more rain and snow.

“The warming winter atmosphere above the Arctic Circle does impact large-scale weather patterns that do influence those of us outside the Arctic,” said Julienne Stroeve, a University of Manitoba ice scientist.

Ice scientists mostly rely on measurements of Earth’s microwave range radiation by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The natural radiation is distinct for sea ice and open water, with ice cover appearing bright on satellite images.

“It’s not yet clear whether the Southern Hemisphere has entered a new norm with perennially low ice or if the Antarctic is in a passing phase that will revert to prior levels in the years to come,” Meier said.

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