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17 June 2020
Vulnerable carbon stores twice as high where permafrost subsidence is factored in, new research finds
Sinking terrain caused by the loss of ice and soil mass in permafrost is causing deeper thaw than previously thought and making vulnerable twice as much carbon as estimates that don’t account for this shifting ground.
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.
Continued carbon dioxide emissions will impair human cognition
Rising CO2 causes more than a climate crisis—it may directly harm our ability to think.
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.
30 January 2020
Rocket on the chilled rail at Poker Flat
In cold, dry, subarctic air, a rocket taller than a house tilts northward, awaiting the moment when a person inside a nearby concrete building pushes a button. The ink-black Chatanika River valley will then flash white, and erupt with a clap of thunder.
14 November 2019
Size of thunderstorm dome clouds may predict tornado intensity
The size of a bulge at the top of a thunderstorm’s anvil-shaped cloud may allow researchers to forecast the strength of tornadoes that spawn from such storms, according to a new study in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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.
29 August 2019
Atmospheric rivers sometimes soak Alaska
Scientists have long noted these flood-causing/wildfire-relieving “long, narrow plumes of enhanced atmospheric water vapor.” If you were to study weather maps of the entire Earth today, you would see about 11 atmospheric rivers.
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.
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.
27 June 2019
Study finds increased moisture facilitated decline in African fires in Africa
The amount of area burned across Africa declined by 18.5 percent between 2002 and 2016, according to a new study.
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.
23 May 2019
New Studies Increase Confidence in NASA’s Measure of Earth’s Temperature
A new assessment of NASA’s record of global temperatures revealed that the agency’s estimate of Earth’s long-term temperature rise in recent decades is accurate to within less than a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, providing evidence that past and future research is correctly capturing rising surface temperatures.
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.
22 April 2019
Microbes hitch a ride on high-flying dust
High-altitude dust may disperse bacterial and fungal pathogens for thousands of miles, seeding far-flung ecosystems and potentially impacting human health
11 April 2019
Extended winter polar vortices chill Saturn’s strangely familiar moon, Titan
Saturn’s hazy moon Titan has a long-lived Earth-like winter polar vortex supercharged by the moon’s peculiar chemistry. A new study finds Titan’s northern hemisphere polar vortex sticks around past the moon’s summer solstice, into what would be late June on Earth, lasting three-quarters of a Titan year, or about 22 Earth years.
20 February 2019
Earth’s atmosphere stretches out to the Moon – and beyond
A recent discovery based on observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, shows that the gaseous layer that wraps around Earth reaches up to 630,000 km away, or 50 times the diameter of our planet.
