Call it a surprise: Hurricane Michael strengthened unusually quickly before hitting the Florida panhandle, a long and thin landmass surrounding the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, on October 10,2018, and remained abnormally strong as it swept into Georgia. The storm made landfall with strong winds of about 250 kilometers per hour, just shy of a category 5 storm, making it the strongest storm ever to hit the area, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, or NHC.

Warm ocean waters are known to fuel hurricanes violence by adding heat and moisture (湿气);the drier air over landmasses, comparatively, can help reduce a storm's strength. So hurricanes nearing the Florida panhandle tended to weaken. But waters in the Gulf that were about 1 degree to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average for this time of year, as well as abundant moisture in the air over the eastern United States, helped to strengthen Michael. Despite some wind conditions that scientists expected to weaken the storm, it strengthened steadily until it made landfall, which the NHC noted "defies(违背)traditional logic", The fast-moving storm weakened only slightly, to a category 3, before sweeping into Georgia.

Although it is not possible to attribute(把......归因于)the generation of any one storm to climate change, scientists have long predicted that warming ocean waters would lead to more fierce tropical cyclones(热带飓风)in the future. More recent attribution studies have confirmed that prediction, suggesting that very warm waters in the tropical Atlantic helped to fuel 2017's powerful storm season, which caused hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Hurricane Harvey, fueled by unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2017 ,also underwent a rapid intensification(增强),strengthening from a tropical storm to a category 4 hurricane within about 30 hours. And in 2018 scientists reported that Hurricane Florence, which hit the Carolinas in September 2018, was probably warmer and wetter due to warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.

An environmental group in Colombia is leading a project to save wild areas in the San Lucas Mountains with the help of coffee growers.

Since 2016, San Lucas areas have been threatened by mining and coca (古柯) planting Gold miners and coca growers make more money than coffee farms. Now the group WebConserva helps link coffee farmers with coffee processors from around the country in order that they can earn more. At the same time coffee farms can serve as boarders around the forests to protect the biodiversity within.

To date, the project includes 10 families who farm 400 hectares of coffee plants. WebConserva said it hopes, in time, 200 families will be included. At that level. 20,000 hectares of untouched forest could be protected. The families promise not to cut down trees to expand their crops or to hunt wild animals. In return, they receive $300 for 125 kilograms of coffee.

Arcadio Barajas is among those taking part. His coffee farm sets up a barrier between cattle farms and forests where wild animals live, thus reducing the possibility of conflict between cattle farmers and wild animals.   “Cutting down the forest to plant coca and killing wildlife were against my faith, and now I feel that growing coffee lets me be a good guard of the land,” he said.

Amnobis Romero is a former coca grower and miner. “Many families depended on illegal activities to support their children years ago. Now, we feel it a duty to look after this biodiversity and leave it for future generations,” he said. Activists want San Lucas to be protected as a national park, but the process has been slow. Carlos Valderrama, director of Webconserva, hopes the project can build production system that will last far into the future. “It protects forests, biodiversity and ecosystems at the same time as improving coffee growers’ quality of life,” he said.

A volcano is an opening in the Earth’s surface. Through that opening, red-hot rock and hot gases escape. This can be a sudden and thunderous puff of ash and gas, or it can be a continuous flow of lava (岩浆) destroying everything in its path. The danger of a volcano may explain why its importance are often ignored. They exist for hundreds of thousands of years, and the gases they release come from the inside of our planet. They are probably the very gases that created Earth’s atmosphere (大气层) billions of years ago. Both awful and amazing, volcanoes have much more to offer than other geographical events.

Volcanic regions are hotbeds of biodiversity. The lava islands of the Galapagos in the Eastern Pacific are textbook examples in action. As lava hardens and begins to erode (风化) over the course of years or centuries, the nutrients and minerals from the volcanoes create rich soil.Some of the world’s most productive regions for farming, such as in Indonesia and Central build up underground aquifers (含水层). For example, without the Tibesti and its five volcanoes in the north of Chad and in southern Libya, the eastern Sahara would be even drier.

Volcanoes also produce geothermal energy, which makes up significant shares of electricity supply in a growing number of countries, including EI Salvador, Kenya and New Zealand. The most common type of volcanic rock, basalt (玄武岩), is capable of permanently trapping (卡住) carbon dioxide. This will make volcanoes an important player in the game of catching and storing carbon. Long viewed as a fearsome enemy of humankind, volcanoes may yet become a savior.