Atmospheric

A new review of existing studies suggests a gradual, prolonged release of greenhouse gases from permafrost soils in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. That sounds like bad news, and it is, but the good news is it actually means more time to adjust to ways to reduce emissions and prevent it from happening at all.  In the original global warming scenarios, climate scientists contended that as permafrost thawed, carbon would be released in a big “bomb” and significantly accelerate climate warming.  But a gradual case means more time to fix things.  Like with sending a space ship to…

It isn't just the forests and tundra that can release climate warming and ozone-depleting chemicals, buildings can do it also, like when they crash into the ground following an earthquake and tsunami.  Emissions of these chemicals, called halocarbons, increased by 21 percent to 91 percent over typical levels,. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake released thousands of tons of chemicals into the atmosphere, according to a new study which suggests that the thousands of buildings destroyed and damaged during the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan four years ago released 6,600…

The biggest challenge facing climate models is similar to those facing economic ones - predicting the past is relatively easy, but predicting the future is far more of a challenge. In the United States, predicting hurricanes is less accurate than NCAA tournament pools, forecasters did not come close to predicting 15 in 2005 or 2 in 2013, but a team from the University of Arizona write in an upcoming Weather and Forecasting article that they are 23 percent less error prone - at predicting the past, anyway. Hurricanes are storms with maximum wind speeds in excess of 73 mph and are…

Though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has asked science journalists and political writers wearing a scientific beard to not attribute every weather event to climate change, it is still common to have every storm, drought and temperature to be listed as proof of climate change. But that isn't science.  Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and ETH Zurich have instead shown that global warming actually tends to reduce temperature variability. Repeated cold snaps led to temperatures far below freezing across the eastern United States…

Australia’s CSIRO has come up with some pretty amazing inventions over the past 86 years of research, from polymer banknotes to insect repellent and the world-changing Wi-Fi. But we can also lay claim to something a little more esoteric – we actually invented a whole new word. And no, we’re not talking about one of these new-fangled Internet words like “YOLO”, “selfie” or “totes”. The word is “petrichor”, and it’s used to describe the distinct scent of rain in the air. Or, to be more precise, it’s the name of an oil that’s released from the earth into the air before rain begins to fall. This…

It is well established that particles emitted during major volcanic eruptions cool the atmosphere for two or three years  due to a 'parasol' effect that reflects sunlight. Less well known is that they can alter North Atlantic Ocean circulation, which connects surface and deep currents and influences the climate in Europe, for decades. The results using climate simulations, recent oceanographic data, and information from natural climate records reconciles how the Atlantic Ocean is home to variations in surface temperatures that last for several decades, affecting Europe's climate,…

A new study finds that in scenarios of increasing global temperatures, methane-generating microbes, found in thawing lake sediments may ramp up production. Though methane stays in the atmosphere for far less time than CO2, it is 25X more potent during that period. Concerns about methane have risen because of concerns about possible leaks due to increased natural gas, which produces far less CO2 than coal, and that methane may be released as climate changes. Researchers found that the methane detected in in lake sediments in this region can arise from both ancient theremogenic sources deep in…

A new paper notes that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago, one of the largest volcanic cataclysms in Europe and responsible for injecting a significant amount of sulfur-dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, coincided with the final decline of Neanderthals as well as with dramatic territorial and cultural advances among modern humans.   Scientists have long debated if this eruption and the resulting volcanic sulfur cooling and acid deposition could have contributed to the final extinction of the Neanderthals more than climate change or hominin competition.…

A new study looked at the pattern of variation of the South Asian monsoon over time and compared it with the evolution of African mole rats and bamboo rats by evolutionary distribution in space and through time and found that weakening and strengthening monsoon rains played a key role in the evolution of these species. Over a period of 24 million years, the changes observed in the teeth and head shape of the rodents examined, matched the varying strength of the monsoon. Of the 38 species studied, six still exist today and the changing rains seem to have driven several species…

By Karin Heineman, (Inside Science TV) Every day around the world, lightning strikes the ground about 10 times per second. That's nearly one million strikes a day! In the U.S. there are 20 million strikes on average every year, and now David Romps, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California Berkeley, says we can expect to see that number grow in the coming years. “What we find by looking in the climate models is that on average they’re predicting a 50 percent increase in the amount of lightning that you get in the United States, during this century, the 21st century," said Romps…