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TIME to escape from New York? In Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, rising sea levels were shown claiming Manhattan’s concrete canyons a century from now. Add to that the increasing threat of hurricanes, and it’s a wonder the city’s inhabitants haven’t fled.

Now another ill linked to global warming threatens the east coast. Robert Trapp and colleagues at Purdue University in Indiana have used climate models to show that the risk of severe thunderstorms in the eastern and southern US could double by 2100 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ).

Higher temperatures will fuel such storms by increasing the water vapour in the atmosphere and boosting convection.