Lut [Desert] hit its all-time high in 2018, a record the Sonoran [Desert], in a weird coincidence, matched the next summer, Yunxia Zhao, [graduate student, civll & environmental engineering], of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues report .… It’s unclear whether climate change is driving up surface temperatures, Zhao says. But she notes that the Sonoran’s highs coincided with La Niña, a climate oscillation featuring cooler surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and drier desert conditions. Read More