After last summer’s Pluto flyby, the New Horizons spacecraft started sending data back to Earth – at 2 kilobits per second. Here’s some of what scientists have learned so far from that rich, slow cache.
We have hit a new milestone in carbon dioxide levels: the average for February topped 400ppm. It’s the first time this has happened in the northern winter, when levels are typically lower than in summer.
Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology answered questions posed by the public on Reddit. The Conversation has curated the highlights. Weather With…
It’s been nearly 30 years since the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica, and the realisation that chlorine, in the form of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, was the chemical culprit behind the depletion…
Last week the greenhouse gas monitoring site at Mauna Loa in Hawaii recorded daily levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that approached the 400 parts per million molar (ppm) benchmark. Annual mean Southern…
On May 9, 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US recorded CO2 levels in the atmosphere at of 400 parts per million. This signifies a return to the atmospheric conditions similar…
This week, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere finally crossed the 400 parts-per-million mark. The last time that happened was 3-5 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch, several million…
The northern hemisphere has experienced a spate of extreme weather in recent times. In 2012 there were destructive heat waves in the US and southern Europe, accompanied by floods in China. This followed…
SAVING THE OZONE: Part six in our series exploring the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – dubbed “the world’s most successful environmental agreement” – looks at the atmosphere…
The Earth’s principal climatic zones appear to be shifting poleward. If this continues, as climate models project, the weather patterns that give rise to deserts in the subtropics, and stormy wet weather…
Methane has been floating into the atmosphere at a slower rate over the last three decades but two new papers published in the journal Nature put forward very different theories as to why it’s happening…
Holes created by planes flying through clouds near airports may cause a slight increase in rain or snowfall in the local area, a new study has found. Scientists who studied the effect have likened it to…