Atmospheric

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.    The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life, but the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds also can be a by-product of life processes and their detection on an Earthlike planet someday may provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet.  Previous observations of HD 189733b by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope found…

Polar lows are small-scale storms that occur in the oceans of the high latitudes and are comparable to a tropical cyclone. The strong winds they produce are rightly feared by seamen. In the course of the last century, North Atlantic polar lows caused 56 shipwrecks with a total of 342 people lost at sea. Although polar lows do not always produce winds of hurricane force, they are particularly treacherous to shipping because they can develop very suddenly and, on account of their small diameter of only a few hundred kilometres, are very difficult to predict. Similarly, the lack of…

The health threat to city dwellers posed by Southern California wildfires like those of November 2008 may have been underestimated by officials, according to a new paper analyzing particulate matter (PM) from wildfires in Southern California.  Detailed particulate analysis of the smoke produced by previous California wild fires indicates that the composition posed more serious potential threats to health than is generally realized.. The paper, entitled "Physicochemical and Toxicological Profile of Particulate Matter (PM) in Los Angeles during the October 2007 Southern California…

We don't have ten years, as Al Gore predicted in 2006, dangerous levels of carbon dioxide are already here, say 10 scientists, and the level of globe-warming carbon dioxide in the air has probably already reached a point where world climate will change disastrously unless the level can be reduced in coming decades.  Their new study is markedly different from consensus projections that carbon dioxide levels would become critical later this century.   They publish their new estimates in the current edition of the Open Atmospheric Science Journal. "There is a bright side to this…

Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been diminished by attention on the economic/political millstone of western civilization carbon dioxide. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change. Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the…

Indoor and outdoor pollutants can rapidly harm the heart in ways different than outdoor air pollution alone, according to a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008.The Cardiovascular Sub-study of the Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study (DEARS) is the first study to show that two different aspects of exposure — community wide and personal — have differing adverse health outcomes on the heart and blood vessels. Researchers examined short-term personal exposure by fitting participants with pollution-monitoring vests. The researchers found that…

Two observations are remarkable today about ozone-hole measurements. Both have been in the books for a while. First, the peak of 2008 is larger than 2007's. Second, NOAA is getting ready for a new environmental satellite. I will also make a prediction for the next year. The 90-day ozone-hole period begins in late August with an increase in measurements at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (ASSPS). Balloon-borne ozonesondes are launched two to three times a week in this period to monitor the ozone hole over Antarctica. Before rapid destruction of…

A VHF radio interferometer system that was designed by Zhang GuangShu, et al of Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute at Chinese Academy of Sciences was used to observe a cloud-to-ground lightning flash containing 19 strokes , revealing new characteristics of lightning. The system in this study has five antennas that form an array in orthogonal directions, and an interactive graphic analysis procedure is used to remove the fringe ambiguities. The system error, which comes from frequency conversion, is reduced by phase detection through direct high frequency…

In 2006, Al Gore alleged that Hurricane Katrina had been caused, or at least made worse, by global warming.    Bill Gray, one of the foremost hurricane experts in the world, disagreed.    Who was right?   Weather, and especially hurricanes, are not among things that are easy to predict but global warming is certain to have an impact.   What impact is all depending on what you want to believe. In a paper published in Science today, scientists Gabriel A. Vecchi of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Kyle L. Swanson of the University of Wisconsin -…

The amount of methane in Earth’s atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according to a paper published this week in Geophysical Review Letters.  Methane levels in the atmosphere have more than tripled since pre- industrial times, accounting for at least one-fifth of the human contribution to greenhouse gas-driven global warming. Until recently, the leveling off of methane levels had suggested that the rate of its emission from the Earth’s surface was approximately balanced…