Atmospheric

In 1994, the term “atmospheric river” appeared in a paper to describe narrow amounts of atmospheric water vapor across the mid-latitudes but now a week doesn't go by without a weather forecaster on the local news claiming it is hitting their viewers. The catchy name was new but the phenomenon was well-known prior to that. Scientists had long known that how moisture is transported through the atmosphere makes a difference in snowpacks and floods. The "Pineapple Express" is a well-known current from Hawaii to California and early analyses of climate changed were criticized for not controlling…

You wouldn't know it from listening to epidemiologists inside EPA or local weather personalities, but American air quality is better than it's been in 150 years. So clean they had to define "clean" down and start touting small micron particulate matter (PM2.5) one quarter the size of real smog, so small you need an electron microscope to see it, as a concern. Well, it isn't. No one has ever died from PM2.5 and asthmatics are at greater risk in the perfume section of Macy's, regardless of hyperbolic air quality maps that routinely show red and orange despite much of the US having the same air…

If you have ever visited or Florida or any place with rainfall extremes at sub-hourly timescales - short storms - residents joke that if you don't like their weather, wait five minutes and it will change. A new analysis says those changes may be happening quickly, and are intensifying much faster than those on longer hourly or daily timescales. Which means greater chance for damaging environmental hazards like flash flooding. If these intense short-duration precipitation events are being affected by our changing climate. understanding them is crucial for effective climate adaptation and…

The United States has some of the cleanest air in the world, at least when it comes to actual dangerous smog, PM10 - particulate matter 10 microns in size. It is a clear killer, at one point leading to the deaths of over 10,000 in London during a weather anomaly that caused it to stay low. By the 1990s, PM10 had been drastically reduced in developed countries and air activists began to 'define pollution down.' If they want air quality maps to be red or orange they knew the solution was to target smaller particles, so they settled on PM2.5. At 25 percent the size of the known killer, there is…

California is primarily a desert and with no way to generate enough of its own electricity, the state must run power lines from other states through dry areas to keep a growing population in air conditioning. When wildfires occur the state routinely blames utilities and since utilities are created and managed by government fiat, utilities rarely note that they are not allowed to own power lines in many cases, and environmental laws restrict clearing trees and brush near them. The state instead sues, gets a win in a politically sympathetic court, the utility goes into bankruptcy and then…

Prior to the 1980s, most thermometers were both inaccurate and not placed using scientific methodology. But tree rings need time and ice cores even longer, which means for recent periods of time have to rely on observational claims and hope to control for their accuracy. During the Continental Congress discussions leading up to declaring Independence from Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson logged the temperature four times. In 1799 that same first Republican worried about climate change. leading Noah Webster, he of the famous dictionary, to respond to his writings and note that micro-climate…

Increasing air pollution has sparked significant public health concerns due to its wide-ranging and negative consequences on humans. As a result, air filtration technology development has received a lot of attention as a viable and promising alternative.  Many efforts have been made in the past to enhance air filtration technology to overcome the trade-off between filtration efficiency and pressure drop. Filtration technologies for indoor air purification include fabric-based filters, ultraviolet (UV) light, and ionized air. Most traditional air filtering systems use high-efficiency…

Everyone knows droughts are bad. They increase risk of wildfires and damage life in the affected region. They are not always predictable, when I lived in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s there was a drought with no known mechanism involved, but they are often cyclical, which makes them at least broadly predictable. The Dry 2 Dry program at Ghent University believes droughts are not only predictable and cyclical, they can propagate in a kind of feedback loop; instead of being local, evaporated water is moved to other areas, so less of it is taking drought with them. If so, that is even…

A new study says that drying a load of laundry in a machine releases "microfibers" into the air but chemicals made by a $76 billion company will save us. Microfibers? Is that a thing? Sure, we have defined healthy down to such an extent that no one is without a disease of some kind. With endocrine disrupting chemicals, small micron particulate matter, and supermarket food it is amazing any of us live more than a day.  But is it really meaningful? As with Micronauts, it sounds like something that might be the science equivalent of an MCU show but on closer examination is really more like…

When you see a TV weather personality put up an air quality map for the last 10 years, it might make you believe that pollution is far worse than when you were young. It isn't, air quality in America is actually better than any time in the last 100 years, but a suspect data set embraced by the Obama administration led to his EPA pivoting from concern about real pollution - like smog, PM10 - all the way down to PM2.5, which is particulate matter so small you can't see it. Unless you have an electron microscope in your house. The only reason people think they see it is when they see actual smog…