Atmospheric

The “Holy Grail of Climate Change" press release about biomaterial found in Wyoming clouds has been making its way across the internet like a steady front.  Surprisingly, the blockbuster discovery isn’t that there are microbes high in the atmosphere; we knew that.  And it isn’t that microbes can cause ice crystals to form.  We knew that, too.  And it also isn’t that we directly observed microbes causing ice to form in a cloud, because that's not exactly what happened.  Perhaps this is why lead researcher Kimberly Prather did not actually refer to this paper as the "…

A team of atmospheric chemists say they have moved closer to what is considered the "holy grail" of climate change science;  the first-ever direct detections of biological particles within ice clouds.  The team, led by Kimberly Prather and Kerri Pratt of the University of California at San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sampled water droplet and ice crystal residues at high speeds while flying through clouds in the skies over Wyoming. While it has long been known that microorganisms become airborne and travel great distances, this study is the first to yield direct data…

Exposure to particulate matter has been recognized as a contributing factor to lung cancer development for some time, but a new study indicates inhalation of certain particulates can actually cause some genes to become reprogrammed, affecting both the development and the outcome of cancers and other diseases.  "Recently, changes in gene programming due to a chemical transformation called methylation have been found in the blood and tissues of lung cancer patients," said investigator Andrea Baccarelli, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of applied biotechnology at the University of Milan. "…

Global warming isn't spiking but the global composite temperature during April revealed an increase above the 20-year average for that month. The report is issued monthly as part of an ongoing joint project between The University of Alabama in Huntsville, NOAA and NASA. As part of an ongoing joint project between The University of Alabama inHuntsville, NOAA and NASA, Dr. John Christy, director of U.A. Huntsville'sEarth System Science Center, and Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal researchscientist in the ESSC, use data gathered by microwave sounding units on NOAAand NASA satellites to get accurate…

Methane has 23X the warming impact of carbon dioxide and food production, including livestock, is a huge source of methane, spiking as larger world populations have led to increased production.   University of Alberta researchers say they have developed a formula to reduce methane gas (basically, farts) in cattle, balancing starch, sugar, cellulose, ash, fat and other elements of feed.  They say this will give beef producers the tools to lessen the methane gas their cattle produce by as much as 25 per cent.  "That's good news for the environment," said Stephen Moore, a…

Hank is worried about people who want to take us back to the stone age in response to environmental challenges. For my Earth Day post, here's someone who's talking sense (no, I'm not implying that Hank's not talking sense - he's blogging about people not talking sense): Energy Secretary Steven Chu, in this interview with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria: Zakaria: Can we really prevent global warming? Or should we be thinking more about adaptation? Building coastal fortifications may be cheaper than halting the release of CO2. Chu: Right now, the climate scientists feel that if all humans shut off…

Dartmouth researchers have determined that the presence of the rare element osmium is on the rise globally. They trace this increase to the consumption of refined platinum, the primary ingredient in catalytic converters, the equipment commonly installed in cars to reduce smog. A volatile form of osmium is generated during platinum refinement and also during the normal operation of cars, and it gets dispersed globally through the atmosphere. While osmium is found naturally, the researchers were surprised to discover that most of the osmium in rain and snow, and in the surface waters of rivers…

Global warming gets all the press today but there was a time when pollution-caused global cooling was the concern - and if you map the planet's recent history, 90,000 out of every 100,000 years were ice ages and it's been 12,000 years since the last one so the historical reason for concern was not unfounded.  A new book, "The Late Eocene Earth - Hothouse, Icehouse, and Impacts" tackles what global cooling was like. According to the book's editors, Christian Koeberl of the University of Vienna and Alessandro Montanari of the Observatorio Geologico di Coldigioco in Italy, the end of the…

The setup to the classic Melting Ice Cube problem goes something like this: “Fifty grams of ice are melting in a 100-mililiter cup of 35-degree water.” Using simple principles of energy transfer, we can estimate what the final temperature of the water will be, and how much energy transfer was required to make the ice melt.   But what if that ice cube was 20,000 square miles and the cup of water was 300 million cubic miles?  What if the ice reflected incoming heat but the water absorbed it?  And what if hurricanes, droughts, and forest fires depended on the outcome?   The…

The great thing about science is that we will converge on the correct answer eventually.  In something like climate change, there is rarely one correct answer and while greenhouse gases have long been center stage in discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols. That doesn't mean mankind is off the hook.   Aerosols are emitted by both natural and human sources and, regardless of where they come from, they can directly…