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1 July 2022
10-Extinctions: Showdown of the giant space rocks
Dani DellaGiustina is one of the youngest leaders of a NASA mission, and she was in charge of image processing for OSIRIS-REx before she even got her PhD. OSIRIS-REx is a spacecraft sent to study asteroid Bennu and scheduled to return a sample to Earth in 2023.
3 June 2022
6.5-Extinctions: Dinosaurs, volcanoes, the space station, oh my!
Join us for our next six-part miniseries on Extinctions as we learn about the demise of the dinosaurs, what makes a comet “extinct,” the Cambrian and Triassic periods, volcanoes, and the aforementioned (planned) fiery end of the International Space Station!
24 December 2020
Top AGU news and views from 2020
As we look back on 2020, we wanted to share some of the top news and views coming out of AGU.
17 December 2020
Highlights from Dec. 16 at #AGU20
Even though it was the second-to-last day at #AGU20, Wednesday was still very busy!
17 August 2020
Putting Brains in Rock Machines
What happens when you cross medical science with geophysics? In one study published last year, the result was one-part interdisciplinary and one-part science fiction.
21 April 2020
South Asia faces increased double-threat of extreme heat, extreme pollution
Extreme heat occurrences worldwide have increased in recent decades, and at the same time, many cities are facing severe air pollution problems, featuring episodes of high particulate matter pollution. This study provides an integrated assessment of human exposure to rare days of both extreme heat and high PM levels.
31 March 2020
Flooding Stunted 2019 Cropland Growing Season, Resulting in More Atmospheric CO2
A new study determines the impact of the severe 2019 floods, and offers scientists a new tool for measuring regional-scale carbon dioxide absorption by plants.
7 November 2019
E23 – Bonus Clip: Meteorite Hunting in Antarctica
Nina Lanza is a member of a research team hunts for meteorites in Antarctica. In this bonus clip from Episode 23, Between a Varnished Rock and a Hard Place, Nina describes the remote location where they set up camp, being holed up while the howling katabatic winds battered her tent and her brain, and explains the strategies and techniques for searching for and collecting space rocks that are lost bits of asteroids …
17 September 2019
Scientists identify weather event behind extreme cold in Europe and Asia during February 2018
In the new study, researchers tested their hypothesis that a chain of events in the troposphere caused the sudden stratospheric warming and subsequent splitting of the polar vortex.
26 August 2019
Ship emissions responsible for thousands of premature deaths in China’s Pearl River Delta
Ship emissions caused more than 1,200 ozone-related and 2,500 particulate-related premature deaths in the Pearl River Delta region in 2015, according to new research in the AGU journal GeoHealth. The new study also predicts that implementing new coastal emission controls could reduce mortality due to fine particulates by 30 percent and ozone by 10 percent by 2030.
Climate change is altering winter precipitation across the Northern Hemisphere
A team of scientists has successfully teased out the influence of human-caused climate change on wintertime precipitation over much of the last century, showing that the warming climate is significantly altering wintertime rainfall and snowfall across the Northern Hemisphere.
19 August 2019
Centennial E9 – The Sun and the Exploding Sea
In 1972, in the waning years of the Vietnam War, U.S. military pilots flying south of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam saw something unexpected. Without explanation, and without warning, over two dozen sea mines suddenly exploded. While the phenomenon was never officially explained, it piqued the interest of space scientist Delores Knipp.
6 August 2019
How the Pacific Ocean influences long-term drought in the Southwestern U.S.
New research explores what conditions in the ocean and in the atmosphere prolong droughts in the Southwestern U.S. The answer is complex, according to a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
5 August 2019
E20 – Ballooning on Venus
Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, is a rocky world close in size to our own. In our solar system, it is the planet most like Earth. But Earth and Venus have taken different developmental paths, creating curious contrasts for scientists interested in planetary evolution.
Geoengineering versus a volcano
Major volcanic eruptions spew ash particles into the atmosphere, which reflect some of the Sun’s radiation back into space and cool the planet. But could this effect be intentionally recreated to fight climate change? A new paper in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters investigates.
24 June 2019
Atmospheric rivers getting warmer along U.S. West Coast
Most of the West Coast of the United States relies on a healthy winter snowpack to provide water through the dry summer months. But when precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, it can diminish summer water supplies, as well as trigger floods and landslides. A new study in AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres finds atmospheric rivers –plumes of moisture that deliver much of the west’s precipitation—have gotten warmer over the past 36 years.
31 May 2019
E18 – Riders on the Storm
Few natural phenomena are more difficult to study than tornadoes. They’re short-lived, their locations are notoriously hard to predict, and getting close enough to observe them is both challenging and extremely dangerous.
15 May 2019
Study: U.S. methane emissions flat since 2006 despite increased oil and gas activity
Natural gas production in the United States has increased 46 percent since 2006, but there has been no significant increase of total US methane emissions and only a modest increase from oil and gas activity, according to a new NOAA study.
8 May 2019
A new view of wintertime air pollution
The processes that create ozone pollution in the summer can also trigger the formation of wintertime air pollution, according to a new study led by CIRES and NOAA researchers. The team’s unexpected finding suggests that in the U.S. West and elsewhere, certain efforts to reduce harmful wintertime air pollution could backfire.
24 April 2019
Uncovering polynya: new research unravels 43-year-old Antarctic mystery
Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi have discovered how the Maud-Rise Polynya that was initially spotted in Antarctica in 1974, reappeared in September 2017 at the same location.
