Atmospheric

Water Vapor Is The Most Abundant Greenhouse Gas

Though many people believe that CO2 is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, that honor actually goes to water vapor. NASA has been saying for years that water vapor is the biggest amplifier in global warming, perhaps double the effect of CO ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 29 2014 - 6:00am

Evidence Of Man At The South Pole Before Roald Amundsen Arrived In 1911

The South Pole is the spot in Antarctica at 90 degrees S, where the surface of the earth intersects the axis of rotation. Except for inside the United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, there is no plant or animal life. Norwegian explorer Roald Amu ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 28 2014 - 10:48pm

Science 2.0: Big Data Shows Temperature Swings Are Here To Stay

One of the most promising aspects of a Science 2.0 future is not just being able to analyze trillions of data points or getting the public to help with biology, but making more accurate models using much larger data sets. Big data. ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 30 2014 - 9:46am

Wildfires, Other Burns Play Bigger Role In Climate Change

It has long been known that biomass burning – burning forests to create agricultural lands, burning savannah as a ritual, slash-and-burn agriculture and wildfires – figures into both climate change and public health but the degree of that contribution had ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 31 2014 - 7:51pm

Global Warming Puzzle: A New Hypothesis On Why The Pacific Trade Winds Didn't Weaken

Climate models predicted that the equatorial Pacific trade winds should weaken with increasing greenhouse gases, yet satellites and climate stations have instead revealed a rapid and unprecedented strengthening of the Pacific trade winds since the 1990s.  ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 3 2014 - 8:02pm

Sulfur Signals In The Antarctic Snow

Sulfur signals in the Antarctic snow have revealed the importance of overlooked atmospheric chemistry for understanding climate, past and future. The element sulfur is everywhere and occurs in four stable forms, or isotopes, each with a slightly different ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 4 2014 - 5:30pm

How Much Warming Is Due To Wildfires? A Way To Model Brown Carbon

In California, wildfires happen thousands of times per year, even in non-drought years. They happened long before climate change concerns but not factoring wildfires into simplistic parameter-based models of climate change meant we were not getting an acc ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 7 2014 - 2:19pm

NASA Sees Heavy Rain In Hurricane Iselle As It Heads Toward Hawaii

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM flew directly over the eye of powerful Hurricane Iselle and found extremely heavy rainfall rates occurring there. ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 5 2014 - 1:30pm

Geographers Link Tornado Strength To Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations geographically-chosen group of climate researchers, is the most high-profile science body in the world. Publicly they state that short-term weather events not be linked to climate chan ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 9 2014 - 5:00pm

Giant Atmospheric Rossby Waves Cause More Weather Extremes

Weather extremes have been linked to a recently discovered mechanism: the trapping of giant waves in the atmosphere. A new data analysis now shows that such wave-trapping events are indeed on the rise.  One reason could be changes in circulation patterns ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2014 - 7:30pm