Some wildfires produce so much heat that they create their own thunderstorms, which drive huge amounts of smoke high up into the atmosphere. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the meteorologist David Peterson of the US Naval Research Laboratory describes how these pyrocumulonimbus events occur and why it is important to understand how the resultant smoke plumes affect the atmosphere on a huge scale.

Science is everchanging with new fields of study emerging at an increasing pace. As a result, researchers working in new areas can find themselves without a scientific society that meets their professional needs. The solution for Amy Berrington of the US National Cancer Institute and Suman Shrestha of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center was to join forces with like minded colleagues to form the International Society of Radiation Epidemiology and Dosimetry, or ISoRED – as they explain in this week’s podcast.