Weather and climate are similar but different. For the most part, they are very distinct phenomena. Below, we talk about the weather first, and then delve into the climate. Weather We measure what’s going on in our atmosphere over a short period of time—usually in a particular place on a particular day—by assessing the weather. Could be
Scientists are excited over an inadvertent discovery using instruments aboard the new Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, a joint venture between NASA and NOAA. The satellite is actually sensitive enough to detect clouds and other objects in the nighttime sky from space, what to the human eye would simply be complete darkness. Such a discovery
A new atmospheric molecule long suspected to exist has finally been observed and analysed by scientists. The Criegee biradicals have been implicated in several climate processes, specifically the likelihood that their existence was linked to the process by which pollutants such as nitrogen and sulphur dioxide are turned into nitrates and sulphates. In other words,
Using NASA’s Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the satellite Terra, this spectacular image of cloud vortices off Cheju Do, in South Korea, is available for your viewing pleasure. Source: NASA Goddard on Flickr
“It’s a vicious cycle – warmer temperatures mean clouds trap more heat, which in turn leads to even more warming,” explains Andrew Dessler, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dessler warns that clouds will amplify the warming of anthropogenic climate change in a cloud feedback which will lock the
A new paper published in the Journal of Climate has shone the light on the inefficiency that currently exists in the modelling of clouds in climate models. The authors of the paper presented a new approach that will help in understanding the clouds role in and their response to global warming. “All the global climate
This post is part of our participation in Blog Action Day 2010, which is on the topic of Water. As R. Buckminster Fuller reminded us, we are all traveling aboard “spaceship Earth”…all 6+ billion of us. What makes our spaceship so unique (as far as we know), and vital, is the presence of a great deal
[social_buttons] NASA has released the first ever images of mysterious polar night clouds that form 50 miles above Earth’s surface, and says that they might be linked to global warming. The startling images were captured by NASA’s “AIM” satellite (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere), and show night clouds above 70 degrees north latitude on
