Unusually warm waters off the coast of Sicily helped spawn a “waterspout” that sank a superyacht earlier this week, leaving several people dead or missing.

Tornadoes are among nature’s most terrifying spectacles. These rotating columns of air are called tornadoes when they form over land and waterspouts when they form over water, though there are subtle differences which we’ll get into. While meteorologists have announced with some confidence some of the probable weather effects of climate change, tornadoes remain rather more mysterious.

But, it’s a question that people who live in tornado-prone regions cannot afford to ignore: will a hotter atmosphere breed more frequent and deadly twisters?

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Astrid Werkmeister is an atmospheric physicist at Strathclyde University. She uses satellite imagery to monitor threats to offshore wind farms, and waterspouts are among the most serious.

“Safety protocols require workers to evacuate or seek shelter well before a waterspout approaches,” she says. “But if caught off guard, the situation can be life-threatening.”

There are two kinds of waterspouts. Tornadic waterspouts spawn from thunderstorms, and are essentially the same as tornadoes on land, except they form on........

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