Upper Ocean Temperatures Break Records for Sixth Year!
Accumulated heat in the upper ocean is at record levels, again! The world’s oceans are hotter than ever before, continuing their record-breaking temperature streak for…
Atmospheric Science
A Dirt Cheap Climate Change Solution? Common Clay Materials May Help Curb Methane Emissions
With special treatment, minerals called zeolites — commonly found in cat litter — can efficiently remove the greenhouse gas from the air, researchers report. Methane…
The Surprising Mystery of the Small Dimensionless Number With a Big Effect
Theory and simulations reveal why seemingly weak effects sometimes play a strong role in how particles move through the air close to the Earth’s surface….
Ancient Air Bubbles Trapped in Antarctic Ice Point to Cause of Oxygen Decline
Glacial erosion likely caused atmospheric oxygen levels to dip over past 800,000 years. An unknown culprit has been removing oxygen from our atmosphere for at…
New Research Reveals More Hostile Conditions on Earth As Life Evolved
During long portions of the past 2.4 billion years, the Earth may have been more inhospitable to life than scientists previously thought, according to new…
New, High-Resolution Evidence Questions “Whiff of Oxygen” in Earth’s Early History
Analysis of the rock record rules out atmospheric oxygen before the Great Oxygenation Event. Evidence arguing for a “whiff of oxygen” before the Earth’s Great…
How Long Do Black Carbon Particles Linger in the Atmosphere?
Researchers uncover how black carbon evolves from hydrophobic particles to cloud nucleation sites, eventually removing the heat-absorbing particles from the sky. There’s a stubborn, heat-absorbing…
Iodine in Desert Dust Destroys Ozone – Could Prolong Greenhouse Gas Lifetimes
New CU Boulder study shows iodine from desert dust can decrease ozone air pollution but could prolong greenhouse gas lifetimes. When winds loft fine desert…
Trees Are Biggest Methane “Vents” in Wetland Areas – Significant Emissions Even When They’re Dry
Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems – with significant emissions occurring even…
Tornado Damage: Nighttime Satellite Images Detail Kentucky Blackout
Tornadoes and severe winds knocked out power to Mayfield and surrounding towns. On the night of December 10-11, 2021, a potent storm front and dozens…
La Niña Returns for a Second Winter – El Niño’s Cooler Sister
This coupling of the atmosphere and ocean alters atmospheric circulation and jet streams in ways that intensify rainfall in some regions and bring drought to…
Ozone 101: What Is the Ozone Hole? [Video]
Ozone 101 is the first in a series of explainer videos outlining the fundamentals of popular Earth science topics. Let’s back up to the basics…
Strange Things Happening in Earth’s Atmosphere: NASA Launches Rocket To Investigate Mysterious Area Above the North Pole
Strange things happen in Earth’s atmosphere at high latitudes. Around local noon, when the Sun is at its highest point, a funnel-shaped gap in our…
Hydraulic Jump Drives Stratospheric Hydration Above Intense Supercell Thunderstorms
Scientists have provided new insights into how intense thunderstorms drive the injection of water vapor from the troposphere — the atmospheric layer closest to Earth’s…
Epochs of Extreme Heat: On Ancient Earth, It Never Rained but It Poured
Extreme Heat Led to Episodic Deluges on Hothouse Earth Today, we are experiencing the dramatic impacts that even a small increase in global temperatures can…
Earth’s Atmosphere Reacted in Surprising Ways to Emission Reductions From COVID Pandemic
Earth’s atmosphere reacted in surprising ways to the lowering of emissions during the pandemic, showing how closely climate warming and air pollution are linked. The…
NASA’s New Earth Science Mission To Study Storms, Impacts on Climate Models
NASA has selected a new Earth science mission that will study the behavior of tropical storms and thunderstorms, including their impacts on weather and climate…
2.5-Billion-Year-Old Rocks Reveal Volcanic Eruptions Spurred First “Whiffs” of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere
A new analysis of 2.5-billion-year-old rocks from Australia finds that volcanic eruptions may have stimulated population surges of marine microorganisms, creating the first puffs of…