Atmospheric

Scientists studying the effects of particulate matter on cloud cover in the Amazon say increasing air pollution could have serious consequences for local weather patterns, rainfall and thunderstorms. The results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, could be used by climate scientists trying to understand the impact of pollution on global weather patterns, the author says. Researchers demonstrated how pollution's effects on cloud development could negatively impact our environment. While low levels of particulate matter actually help the development of thunderstorms, the reverse is…

NASA's Terra satellite has captured another image of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls volcano ash cloud, now moving into Germany. Eyjafjallajökull continues to spew ash into the air and the ash clouds are still impacting air travel in Northern Europe. The satellite flew over the volcano on April 16 at 10:45 UTC (6:45 a.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument aboard Terra captured a visible image of Eyjafjallajökull's ash plume over the England and the Netherlands, stretching into Germany. Air travel into and out of northern Europe has either…

The eruption of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull volcano that sent a huge plume of ash into the atmosphere is unlikely to have a global impact and will probably dissipate in the next several days, according to a University of Colorado, Boulder atmospheric scientist. Professor Brian Toon, chair of CU-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department, compared the Icelandic eruption to the popping of a champagne bottle cork. When the pressure is released by breaching the rock "cork," gases bubble out, spewing tiny rock particles into the air like champagne droplets. Such rocks threaten the…

Volcano in Iceland Grounds UK Flights Edit: for latest updates please see comments, below. A volcanic ash cloud in UK airspace has left tens of thousands of travellers returning from Easter holidays facing long delays in getting home.  All non-emergency flights have been banned within UK airspace. Statement on Icelandic volcanic eruption: Thurs April 15, 09:30 From midday today until at least 6pm, there will be no flights permitted in UK controlled airspace other than emergency situations. This has been applied in accordance with international civil aviation policy. We continue to…

Scientists cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a new article in Science. While we may have been spared some of the warming that inevitably results from our reckless C02 emissions, "the heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article's lead author. The researchers warn that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system. Last year's…

A study published in Environmental Research Letters suggests a link between low solar activity and jet streams could explain why regions North East of the Atlantic Ocean might experience more frequent cold winters in years to come. Scientists say the UK and Europe could experience temperatures not seen since the end of the seventeenth century as a result of the changes in solar activity. "This year's winter in the UK has been the 14th coldest in the last 160 years and yet the global average temperature for the same period has been the 5th highest," said Lead author Mike Lockwood of the…

New satellite data indicate that March 2010 was the third warmest month since December 1978, compared to seasonal norms, according to researchers at the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Powered by the most intense El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event since 1997-1998, the first three months of 2010 have all landed among the six warmest months in the satellite temperature record, which starts in December 1978. While 2010 has been significantly warmer than normal when averaged across large areas (global, hemisphere or the tropics), it isn't setting…

The Paleoindians who occupied North America throughout the Younger Dryas interval, which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions approximately 11,000 years ago, successfully dispersed across the continent's diverse habitats, according to a new study in the Journal of World Prehistory.   Experts have generally assumed that cooling temperatures and their impact on communities posed significant adaptive challenges to Paleoindian groups.  But the new review of climatic and environmental records from this time period in continental North America suggests that the Young Dryas age cooling…

Some solar physicists have suggested that prolonged low solar activity could offset the effects of anthropogenic global warming. But a new Grand Minimum of solar activity would decrease the rise of global mean temperature caused by human greenhouse gas emissions by at most 0.3 degrees Celsius until the end of the century, according to a recent study in Geophysical Research Letters. The projected temperature drop is less than ten percent of the rise projected under “business as usual” scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The observations of sunspots, visible…

Fossilized Weather If you want to know what the weather is doing you can do as the candlelight fisherman in the song did, and "open the pane and pop out the flame and see how the winds do blow".  Or you could look at the nearest weathervane.  They come in all sort of designs, shapes and sizes.  The world's biggest is at Whitehorse_International_Airport. It's an old DC3 mounted on a pivot.  It takes about a 5 km/hr wind to move it, so it is not the world's most sensitive weathervane. If you want to know about the weather in older times you have to check the written records…