Atmosphere

Light is reflected on part of the Aral Sea outside Muynak, Uzbekistan, June 25, 2023. Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA believe if they can inject ice high up in the air, water vapor, water in its gas form, in the upper atmosphere would get a bit drier and that could cool Earth. Credit: AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File Government scientists have cooked up a new concept for how to…

Water vapour — water in its gas form — is a natural greenhouse gas that traps heat, just like carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and gas. So, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA figure if they can just inject ice high up in the air, water vapour in the upper atmosphere would get a bit drier and that could counteract a small amount of the human-caused warmth. It's just the spark of an initial idea, said the lead author of a study in…

A new climate intervention strategy aims to decrease the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere by injecting it with ice-forming nuclei. The idea is that, by reducing the water content, more heat in the form of infrared radiation would leak out into space.Prepping the Sandworm Scenes in Dune: Part TwoScientists described the strategy a study published Wednesday in Science Advances. “It’s not a very complicated idea,” Joshua Schwarz, a researcher at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research…

Following almost 30 years of service, the European Space Agency’s ERS-2 satellite re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 18:17 CET on February 21. Launched in 1995 and with an original mission life of just three years,  ERS-2 set new standards for Earth observation, collecting valuable data on the ozone layer, ocean temperature, and mankind’s overall impact on the planet. In 2011, ESA decided to initiate the satellite’s deorbiting process amid concerns over the increasing amount of…

A private lander touched down on the moon Thursday but managed just a weak signal back, as flight controllers scrambled to gain better contact with the first U.S. spacecraft to reach the lunar surface in more than 50 years.Tension mounted in the company's command centre in Houston, as controllers awaited a signal from the spacecraft some 400,000 kilometres away, which arrived about 10 minutes later.Despite the spotty communication, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, which is called Odysseus,…

The EU took a significant step toward legitimizing technologies that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by agreeing to set up a certification process.The European Council and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement today to create the first-of-its-kind certification framework for carbon removal technologies. The new climate tech has yet to prove itself at scale, but the EU is already folding it into its plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Net zero implies that the bloc would resort…

University of Helsinki researchers discovered extensive aerosol particle formation in the West Siberian taiga, contradicting previous beliefs and linking it to heatwave conditions and a warming climate. This significant finding, enhancing understanding of climate interactions, calls for more research in boreal forests to inform climate modeling and policy decisions. Credit: SciTechDaily.comRecent research has discovered that, in contrast to earlier assumptions, substantial quantities of aerosol particles are generated…

Image of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in February 2022. The dark spot is the shadow of the moon Ganymede. The colorful patterns are formed by clouds at different altitudes and made up mainly of ammonia ice, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BYFor the first time, a tool designed to discover planets many light years distant has been employed on an object in the Solar System, in a study on Jupiter’s winds.We find ourselves at a time…

A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday for the third time since December, sending jets of lava into the sky and triggering the evacuation of the Blue Lagoon spa, one of the island country's biggest tourist attractions.The eruption began at about 1 a.m. ET along a three-kilometre fissure northeast of Mount Sýlingarfell, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Several communities on the Reykjanes Peninsula were cut off from heat and hot water after a river of lava engulfed a supply pipeline.The strength of…

NASA's newest climate satellite rocketed into orbit Thursday to survey the world's oceans and atmosphere in never-before-seen detail.SpaceX launched the Pace satellite on its $948-million US mission before dawn from Cape Canaveral, Fla., with the Falcon rocket heading south over the Atlantic Ocean to achieve a rare polar orbit.The satellite will spend at least three years studying the oceans from 676 kilometres up, as well as the atmosphere. It will scan the globe daily with two of the science instruments. A third…