Scienceblogtwo

It was thought that the Middle East's increased air pollution was mostly caused by desert dust. An international team of experts, including those from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), has now demonstrated how anthropogenic pollution affects the region's climate and poses a health concern. According to Sergey Osipov from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Chemistry, "the prevalent thinking was that dust brought by storms over the Arabian Peninsula dominated air quality over the region." His team collaborated on the project alongside colleagues from King Saud University and The Cyprus Institute as well as Georgiy Stenchikov and Alexander Ukhov of KAUST. According to Osipov, "Our research has shown that dangerous fine particulate matter, which is different from the less damaging coarse desert dust particles, is mostly anthropogenic in origin and is a primary risk factor for health as well as a significant contributor to climate change....

The planet's surface can be either warmed or cooled by clouds, a radiative effect that makes a significant contribution to the global energy budget and can be changed by pollution brought on by humans. The world's southernmost ocean, appropriately called the Southern Ocean, is free of human pollution but is nonetheless exposed to a lot of marine gases and aerosols. About 80% of it is obscured by clouds. What role does this body of water's interaction with the clouds have in the global climate change? Due to an international partnership that discovered compensating faults in commonly used climate model protocols known as CMIP6, scientists are now one step closer to understanding it. Today, September 20, they published their findings in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Through the trapping of emitted longwave infrared radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere, clouds can function as a greenhouse gas component to warm the Earth. By reflecting shortwave solar rad...

A thorough 3D analysis of a large electrical discharge that ascended 50 miles into space above an Oklahoma thunderstorm has revealed new details about the mysterious atmospheric phenomena known as giant jets. The Oklahoma discharge carried 100 times as much electrical charge as a regular thunderstorm lightning bolt, making it the most potent enormous jet that has been analyzed to date. An estimated 300 coulombs of electrical charge were transferred by the enormous jet from the thunderstorm into the ionosphere, which is at the lower border of space. Less than five coulombs are typically carried by a typical lightning bolt between a cloud and the earth or within a cloud. Streamers of plasma that were relatively chilly (about 200 degrees Celsius/400 degrees Fahrenheit) were present in the upward discharge. It also included structures known as leaders, which are extremely hot and reach temperatures of more than 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit (4,400 degrees Celsius). According to the correspondin...