It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, November 06, 2025
"Can it?" vs. "did it?"— new study reveals the complex role of the Asian summer monsoon in the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
As heatwaves intensified globally in July 2025, regions from East Asia to Europe felt the effects. In Exeter, UK, record-breaking temperatures turned grassy areas a dry beige.
In recent years, as extreme weather events have occurred with increasing frequency, scientists have been searching within the chaotic atmospheric system for clues that can enhance forecasting capabilities—factors such as ENSO, sea ice, the stratospheric polar vortex, and tropical convective activity. These factors provide critical basis for weather and climate predictions across different time scales. Anomalies in these factors are often closely related to the occurrence of extreme weather events. However, when tracing the causes of a specific extreme event, are we prone to falling into the trap of equating "general patterns" with "specific roles," thereby oversimplifying the true complex causality?
In the summer of 2021, the Pacific Northwest experienced one of the most intense heatwaves ever recorded. In Canada's British Columbia, at a latitude higher than Mohe, China, temperatures soared to nearly 50°C, approximately 20°C higher than the seasonal average, triggering massive wildfires and severe casualties. A notable phenomenon was the appearance of an anomalously strong rainband extending from South China to Japan in the Asian monsoon region about a week before the heatwave. This sparked widespread discussion in the scientific community: was this distant monsoon activity one of the "drivers behind the scenes" for the North American heatwave?
Dr. Peiqiang Xu and Dr. Lin Wang from the Monsoon System Research Center at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborated with scholars from the University of Exeter, University of Oxford, University of St Andrews, Sun Yat-sen University, and other institutions, provided a detailed answer to this controversial question in their latest study published in Geophysical Research Letters. The study found that, based on statistical analysis and numerical experiments using the historical climate state, Asian summer monsoon activity similar to that in late June 2021 would typically induce a cooling effect over the Pacific Northwest, thus reducing the probability of a heatwave. However, analysis of the actual conditions in 2021 and tests using operational forecast models showed that this particular monsoon activity instead produced a warming effect, exacerbating the intensity of the heatwave.
Why did this seemingly contradictory result occur? The study points out that the key lies in the special background atmospheric circulation of that year. In June 2021, the Pacific jet stream was anomalously strong and positioned further north, acting as a more efficient "atmospheric waveguide" that directed the Rossby wave energy excited by the monsoon towards North America, ultimately forming an anomalously stable blocking high-pressure system over the region. When researchers set the basic flow field in an ideal model to the actual state of 2021, the monsoon's impact on North American climate indeed reversed from the usual "cyclonic cooling" to "anticyclonic warming."
The study further pointed out that the spatial pattern of the Asian monsoon activity in late June 2021 was very complex, not resembling the typical anomalous pattern of previous years. It simultaneously contained multiple active and suppressed convective centers within it. If one were to infer its impact on the heatwave based solely on a single "classic" monsoon pattern or a single convective center, it would easily lead to misjudgment of the actual physical process.
As a visiting scholar at the University of Exeter, Dr. Xu experienced the record-breaking heat of July 2025 firsthand. The severe conditions, unusual for the UK's typically mild summers, gave him direct insight into the extreme events he researches. He highlighted a critical nuance in his field: "When discussing the relationship between large-scale climate drivers and extreme events, it is crucial to clearly distinguish between the questions of 'Can it?' (i.e., whether it has the potential to influence under average conditions) and 'Did it?' (i.e., whether it actually played a role in the specific event). Future attribution studies for extreme events should pay more attention to the specific circulation background of the event and the actual spatial pattern of the forcing factors."
An international project led by Hungarian researchers has successfully identified the remains of Duke Béla, the Ban of Macsó, a member of the Árpád and Rurik dynasties. The investigations have answered a century-old archaeological question.
During the research coordinated by Tamás Hajdu (Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE TTK)), Anna Szécsényi-Nagy and Noémi Borbély from the Institute of Archaeogenomics, ELTE RCH were responsible for the genetic analyses. The results clearly illustrate how effectively historical data can be verified and past violent deaths can be reconstructed in unprecedented detail through the cooperation of the humanities and the natural sciences. The new study has been published in the prestigious forensic journal Forensic Science International: Genetics.
In 1915, during an archaeological excavation on Margaret Island (Budapest), the osteological remains of a young man were discovered in the sacristy of the Dominican monastery. Based on the find-circumstances, historical data, the place of the burial, and signs of traumatic injuries on the bones, it was assumed that the remains belonged to a duke of the House of Árpád, Béla Duke of Macsó. Béla of Macsó (born after 1243 – died: November 1272) was the grandson of Hungarian King Béla IV on his mother’s side, and on his father’s side belonged to the Rurik dynasty of northern, Scandinavian origin, which had produced many Grand Dukes of Kiev over seven centuries from the 9th century onwards. According to 13th-century Austrian chronicles, Ban Henrik "Kőszegi" of the Héder family and his companions assassinated Duke Béla of Macsó in November 1272. According to contemporary sources, the severely mutilated remains of Béla of Macsó were collected by Margit (Béla's sister) and Erzsébet (Béla's niece) and buried in the Dominican monastery on the island.
Following the excavation, the remains were sent to Lajos Bartucz at the Institute of Anthropology of the Budapest University (now: Department of Anthropology, ELTE TTK), for bioanthropological analysis. Bartucz identified 23 sword cuts on the man's skeleton and several fatal injuries on the skull. According to Bartucz, the duke did not die in a duel, but was attacked by several people at once, from several sides, and was even attacked while lying on the ground. Bartucz mentioned the bones in a newspaper article in 1936 and then published a photograph of the skull in his book in 1938, after which no news about the bones was published until 2018. Anthropologists believed that the remains may have been lost during the Second World War. In 2018, however, the postcranial bones were discovered by chance in a wooden box in the anthropological collection of tens of thousands of individuals in the Anthropology Collection of the Hungarian Museum of Natural History, while the skull is curated in the Aurél Török Collection of the Department of Anthropology at ELTE.
In 2018, an international research group was formed under the leadership of Tamás Hajdu (Department of Biological Anthropology, ELTE TTK), comprising anthropologists, geneticists, an archaeologist and an archaeobotanist, stable isotope and radiocarbon specialists, and dentists. By performing complex forensic and bioarchaeological analyses of the skeletal remains, the primary goal of the project was to genetically identify the finds and to reconstruct the duke's life and death as completely as possible. The skeletal find is also significant because, apart from the remains of King Béla III, Béla of Macsó is currently the only confirmed descendant of the House of Árpád whose almost complete skeleton has been preserved. Moreover, its study will provide data not only on the genetic background of the House of Árpád, but also on that of the Rurik dynasty. The international collaboration involved researchers from the Universities of Vienna, Bologna and Helsinki, Harvard University, and Hungarian researchers from the Department of Biological Anthropology at ELTE, the Institute of Archaeogenomics at ELTE RCH, the Budapest History Museum, the Hungarian Natural History Museum, the HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research, and the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Debrecen.
Biological anthropological analyses re-conducted within the framework of the project revealed that the individual buried under the floor in the sacristy of the Dominican monastery on Margaret Island was a young man in his early twenties. The radiocarbon dating of the bone samples was performed by two independent laboratories simultaneously to provide an exact date of the finds, as the first 14C results showed an earlier date than expected (second half of the 13th century). However, a series of measurements conducted by the researchers of the Nuclear Research Institute (Debrecen) has successfully shown that this phenomenon can be traced back to dietary reasons. Namely, the individual in question consumed large amounts of animal protein, including a significant amount of aquatic animals (fish and perhaps shellfish) that fed on ancient carbon sources, which had a so-called “reservoir” effect on the bones.
The dental calculus of the individual was analysed for further reconstruction of the diet. More than a thousand microfossils were preserved in the tartar. The identified starch grains originated from wheat and barley, with traces of milling, cooking, and baking. The remains indicated the consumption of cooked wheat semolina and baked wheat bread.
Based on the measurements of strontium isotope ratios, which indicate past individual mobility, the investigated man was not born and did not spend his early childhood in the same place where he was buried. The values in early childhood correspond to those measured in the region of Vukovar and Syrmia (now part of Croatia and Serbia; earlier this region was a part of the Macso Banat of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary), among several other areas of the Carpathian Basin. In late childhood, the person in question moved to another region (possibly even the area around present-day Budapest).
The conclusive genetic identification of the examined man was carried out at the Institute of Archaeogenomics of ELTE RCH by Anna Szécsényi-Nagy and Noémi Borbély. The genealogy indicated by historical sources can be supported by several pieces of mutually reinforcing genetic evidence. The data clearly prove that Béla, Duke of Macsó was the great-grandson (fourth-degree descendant) of King Béla III, and in accordance with this fact and with the historical facts, the genetic distance of the duke to Saint Ladislaus is approximately double. The result of the genetic composition estimation based on whole-genome data indicates a largely Scandinavian genetic component (almost half), in addition to a significant amount of Eastern Mediterranean components and a smaller amount of an early medieval Central European component. The northern component present in exceptionally high quantities supports the Rurik origin of the investigated individual. The Eastern Mediterranean connection may point to the maternal grandmother of the examined man. The maternal grandmother of Duke Béla of Macsó was Maria Laskarina, who was the wife of Béla IV, and a member of the Byzantine imperial family. Y-chromosome studies confirmed the historical data regarding the Rurik paternal line of the examined individual. In 2023, a Russian archaeogenomic study revealed, that the remains of a 13th-century Rurikid (Dmitry Alexandrovich) belonged to the same paternal lineage ; on this paternal line, the dynastic genealogy can be traced back to Yaroslav I (Yaroslav Vladimirovich, also known as Yaroslav the Wise). In addition, the well-researched genetic data of the descendants of the Rurik dynasty living today also strongly support Duke Béla's paternal connection to the Rurikids.
In order to reconstruct the exact circumstances of the duke's death and to compare them with known historical sources, a detailed forensic anthropological analysis was also carried out. Forensic anthropological and dental analysis of the skeleton revealed 26 perimortem injuries, nine to the skull and 17 to the postcranial bones, all of which were caused by a single violent incident. The injuries likely indicated a coordinated attack by three people. One attacker approached the victim from the front; the other two attacked the victim simultaneously from the left and the right. The location of the injuries suggests that the duke faced his assassins in an open confrontation, was aware of the aggression, and attempted to defend himself. The attackers used two different types of weapons to commit the murder, likely a sabre and a longsword. The clear and deep cut marks indicate that the victim was not wearing armor at the time of the assassination. The new reconstruction of the sequence of attacks suggests that the assault began with sword blows to the head and upper body, and then, while the victim tried to block the further blows and cuts, he suffered severe defensive injuries. Finally, the attackers incapacitated the victim permanently with further blows from the side. They continued the attack, and when the duke fell to the ground, the assailants inflicted fatal injuries on the head and face. The intensity of the aggression, as well as the numerous cuts and blows to the face, indicated intense emotional involvement (e.g. sudden anger, hatred), while the coordinated nature of the injuries suggests a premeditated murder. Based on the above, although the assassination of Duke Béla of Macsó in November 1272 was partly or completely premeditated, it was by no means carried out in cold blood.
Researchers and institutions participating in the research project:
Tamás Hajdu coordinator of the project, first author: Department of Biological Anthropology at ELTE, Budapest and Centre for Applied Bioanthropology, Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Noémi Borbély, corresponding author: Institute of Archaeogenomics, ELTE RCH, Budapest and Doctoral School of Biology at ELTE
Zsolt Bernert and Ágota Buzár: Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest
Tamás Szeniczey: Department of Biological Anthropology at ELTE, Budapest
István Major, Mihály Molnár, Anikó Horváth, László Palcsu and Zsuzsa Lisztes-Szabó: Isotope Climatology and Environmental Research Centre, HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research, Debrecen
Zsuzsa Lisztes-Szabó: Department of Botany, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen
Claudio Cavazzuti: Department of History and Culture, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Barna Árpád Kelentey and János Angyal: Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, Debrecen
Balázs Gusztáv Mende and Kristóf Jakab: Institute of Archaeogenomics, ELTE RCH, Budapest
Takács Ágoston: Medieval Department, Castle Museum - Budapest History Museum, Budapest
Olivia Cheronet and Ron Pinhasi: Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
David Emil Reich: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, USA és Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, USA
Martin Trautmann, correspondig author: Department of Cultures/Archaeology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland és A und O - Anthropologie und Osteoarchäologie Praxis für Bioarchäologie, München
Anna Szécsényi-Nagy, last author: Institute of Archaeogenomics, ELTE RCH, Budapest
Pterosaur is the first group of vertebrates with powered flight. It originated in the Late Triassic and became extinct with dinosaurs (excluding birds) at the end of the Cretaceous. Various diets of pterosaurs were proposed using different interpretations, such as content fossils and comparative anatomy. However, the understanding of the diets of many pterosaurs have still been on debate, which is mainly because of the rarity of stomach content found in pterosaurs. In this paper, the researchers found an elliptical content in the stomach position of a Sinopterus specimen. They extracted more than 300 phytoliths from the stomach content but none from the matrix of the same specimen. This demonstrates that these phytoliths, firstly appeared in pterosaurs, were eaten by this Sinopterus rather than any pollution after its death. Phytolith is a microstructure produced by all kinds of plants, and it varies among different plants and different positions of the same individual. Besides the phytoliths, many gastroliths (stones within the body cavity) were also discovered in the stomach content, which is the second pterosaur specimen with gastroliths. The combination of phytoliths and gastroliths, without any bones, scales or exoskeletons, strongly suggest that Sinopterus is herbivorous.
Pterosaurs represent the earliest group of vertebrates with powered flight capability, originating in the Late Triassic and becoming extinct alongside non-avian dinosaurs by the end of the Cretaceous. For decades, paleontologists have proposed various dietary hypotheses for these volant reptiles—insectivory, piscivory, filter-feeding, or even herbivory. To resolve this question, researchers have employed multiple approaches including skeletal morphology, functional analysis, and dietary residues. However, consensus on feeding habits has only been reached for one or two pterosaur taxa. Dietary residues—particularly stomach contents—serve as the most crucial direct evidence to settle these debates. Yet only six pterosaur specimens with preserved stomach contents have been reported to date: one Eudimorphodon from the Triassic and five Jurassic Rhamphorhynchus specimens, with most stomach contents dominated by fish remains. This scarcity of evidence underlies the ongoing controversies surrounding pterosaur diets.
A recent study published in Science Bulletin has now provided the first direct evidence for herbivory in pterosaurs. The research team discovered a 7.7-cm-long stomach content within a Sinopterus specimen. CT scanning of the slab fossil revealed this mass positioned between the ribs and gastralia, confirming its in situ preservation. The scan further detected numerous small gastroliths within the stomach content, while over 300 phytoliths extracted from a small piece of stomach content. Phytoliths are microscopic silica structures formed during plant growth, exhibiting distinct morphologies across plant species and even within different parts of the same plant. This discovery marks both the first phytolith extraction from any pterosaur and the second documented pterosaur specimen containing gastroliths.
To confirm that Sinopterus was truly a plant-eater, researchers carefully eliminated other possible explanations. First, they ruled out contamination by showing that the surrounding rock contained none of the phytoliths found in the stomach. Next, they considered whether the plant material might have come from eating other plant-consuming animals. But Sinopterus had a fast, bird-like metabolism – if it had eaten vertebrates or insects, some traces like bones, scales, or hard insect shells would have remained in its stomach, yet none were present. The idea that it ate soft-bodied creatures like caterpillars also didn't hold up: why would it need so many stomach stones if it wasn't grinding tough food? These stones are typically used by animals to break down hard materials like insect shells or plants, making them unnecessary for digesting soft prey. Finally, earlier studies of Tapejara – a close relative – showed it had strong jaws suited for plant-eating, further supporting this conclusion.
Therefore, the phytoliths represent direct dietary intake, while the gastroliths functioned as grinding tools for plant material processing.
