Atmospheric

Acid rain and ozone depletion may seem like modern problems but it has been connected to the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, a mass die-off so severe in Earth's history that even Mother Jones hasn't used it as a corollary of modern climate issues. Contemporaneous volcanic eruptions in Siberia and the atmospheric effects of those eruptions long ago would have caused the devastation rather than leaving an outside light on. New results from a team including show that the atmospheric effects of these eruptions could have been devastating. Their work is published in Geology. The mass…

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a massive storm big enough to engulf the Earth two times over, is one of the solar system's most enigmatic landmarks and a mystery of fluid dynamics  – because it  should have disappeared centuries ago.  Some new work will be presented by Pedram Hassanzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and Philip Marcus, a professor of fluid dynamics at Berkeley at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics in Pittsburgh on November 25th. They think they can explain why Jupiter's Great Red Spot persists "Based on current…

Super-Typhoon Haiyan is bringing the maximum sustained winds of a Category 5 hurricane - 195 MPH, making it among the strongest storms ever recorded. Warnings are in effect for the Philippines and Micronesia as Haiyan moves west. Brian McNoldy, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami, Fla. noted that on the morning (EST) of Nov. 7, "Haiyan has achieved tropical cyclone perfection. It is now estimated at 165kts (190mph), with an 8.0 on the Dvorak scale... the highest possible value." Warnings in the Philippines have…

Might we one day predict summer heat waves? A distinctive atmospheric wave pattern high above the Northern Hemisphere can foreshadow the emergence of summertime heat waves in the United States more than two weeks in advance, according to research led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that could potentially forecast heat waves 15-20 days out. Heat waves are among the most deadly weather phenomena on Earth. A heat wave in Europe in 2003 killed more than 50,000 people.  They detected the pattern by conducting a 12,000-year simulation of the atmosphere over…

Typhoon Francisco was already spreading fringe clouds over southern Japan when NASA's Aqua satellite flew overhead and captured a picture of the storm from space on Oct. 22nd at 04:30 UTC/12:30 a.m. EDT. Aqua captured Typhoon Francisco approaching Japan with a tightly wound center and small eye. Bands of thunderstorms wrapped into the center from the northern and southern quadrants of the storm as Francisco moved toward Japan. The image was created by the NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On Oct. 22 at 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT, Typhoon…

Typhoon Francisco passed by Guam today - on its way to becoming a super typhoon. Francisco developed in the Western Pacific Ocean on October 16th, 2013 and NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over on October 18th, 2013 at 1002 UTC/6:02 a.m. EDT when Typhoon Francisco was located west-northwest of Guam. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. rainfall analysis used data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments overlaid on an enhanced infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS). The image…

Emissions standards are easy for politicians. They just consult some people whose opinion they happen to like and pick a number.  Then it is up for science and engineering to make it possible, whatever the cost.  In 2012, California approved standards to reduce emissions from passenger cars to 3 milligrams, or a millionth of an ounce, per mile over the 2017-2021 automobile model years. Part of the justification politicians used was a gross miscalculation by the California Air Resources Board, which overstated some emissions by 340% to make the problem look urgent. Particulate…

Tropical Cyclone Phailin is closing on northeastern India and by morning will bring winds exceeding 100 miles per hour and a storm surge up to 20 feet.  Windgusts near landfall could be 150 MPH. They were higher than that a few hours ago. NASA would ordinarily provide details but while the administration has 83% of the government working during the budget negotiations, including 463 people just in the White House and a fully staffed Congressional gym, 97% of NASA and other science organizations are furloughed. Accuweather says residents of the states of Orissa and eastern Andhra Pradesh…

One of the more controversial issues from the recent first part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is the failure of global climate models to predict a hiatus in warming of global surface temperatures since 1998. Several ideas have been put forward to explain this hiatus, including what the IPCC refers to as 'unpredictable climate variability' that is associated with large-scale circulation regimes in the atmosphere and ocean. The most familiar of these is El Niño/La Niña, which are parts of an oscillation in the ocean-atmosphere system. On…

A week ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered to massive media coverage an unsettling message – climate change is real, humans are the main cause of it, and unless we stop the warming of the planet, in 50 years life as we know will be no more. The problem now, is that despite in numerous attempts, world consensus on how to do it has proved impossible. Research in Nature Climate Change by a Portuguese team known worldwide for their studies on cooperation claims to have not only identified the root of the problem but also its solution. Vítor Vasconcelos,…