Phys.org April 26, 2023 Researchers in China developed a series of high-resolution coupled Earth system models (SW-HRESMs) with up to 5 km of atmosphere and 3 km of ocean which can meet the needs of multiscale interaction studies with different computational costs. They described the progress of SW-HRESMs development, with an overview of the major advancements made by the international Earth science community in HR-ESMs. They showed the preliminary results of SW-HRESMs regarding capturing major weather-climate extremes in the atmosphere and ocean, stressing the importance of permitted clouds and ocean submesoscale eddies in modeling tropical cyclones and eddy-mean flow interactions, […]
Category Archives: Atmospheric science
Lightning Bolt Deposits a Strange Mineral Never Seen on Earth Before
Science Alert April 15, 2023 Phosphate minerals such as those in the apatite group tend to be the dominant forms of phosphorus in minerals on the Earth’s surface. Phosphate can be reduced to phosphides during high-energy events, such as lightning and impacts. An international team of researchers (Italy, USA – University of South Florida) has shown that, in addition to formation of metal phosphides, a new compound was formed by lightning in a fulgurite from New Port Richey, Florida.. A calcium phosphite material, ideally CaHPO3, was found in spherules mainly consisting of iron silicides that formed by lightning-induced fusion of […]
Scientists discover a way Earth’s atmosphere cleans itself
Phys.org April 7, 2023 Hydroxyl radical (OH) is a key oxidant that triggers atmospheric oxidation chemistry in both gas and aqueous phases. The current understanding of its aqueous sources is mainly based on known bulk (photo) chemical processes, uptake from gaseous OH, or related to interfacial O3 and NO3 radical-driven chemistry. An international team of researchers (France, USA – UC Irvine, Israel) has provided experimental evidence that OH radicals are spontaneously produced at the air–water interface of aqueous droplets in the dark and the absence of known precursors, possibly due to the strong electric field that forms at such interfaces. […]
Dust lifted into the air by cyclones provides anchor points for cloud-forming ice
Phys.org March 14, 2023 Researchers in China examined dust-infused baroclinic storm (DIBS) over East Asia in May 2017 to study the dust effects on cirrus clouds. The data indicated that the 2017 storm produced extremely high ice particle concentrations of 1 to 10 particles per cubic centimeter, with particle sizes in the range of 10 to 30 micrometers. They found that the more sophisticated parameterization matched cloud observations more closely than the simple model: The new, more complex model yielded ice particle concentrations that were 10 to 100 times higher and particle sizes that were 2 to 3 times smaller. […]
Researchers advance insights into cause of ripples on icicles
Science Daily December 5, 2022 Icicles that have grown from slightly impure water develop ripples around their circumference. The ripples have a near-universal wavelength and are thought to be the result of a morphological instability. Researchers in Canada used laboratory-grown icicles and various species of impurities, including fluorescent dye, to show that a certain fraction of the impurities remains trapped inside the icicle, forming inclusions within the ice. The inclusions were organized into chevron patterns aligned with the peaks of the ripples. Within the chevrons, there was a substructure of crescent-shaped structures. They also examined the crystal grain structure of […]
Insect Swarms Can Electrify The Air as Much as a Thunderstorm
Science Alert October 25, 2022 The atmosphere hosts multiple sources of electric charge that influence critical processes such as the aggregation of droplets and the removal of dust and aerosols. Whereas these electric fields are known to respond to physical and geological processes, the effect of biotic sources of charge has not hitherto been considered. Researchers in the UK combined theoretical and empirical evidence to demonstrate that honeybee swarms directly contribute to atmospheric electricity, in proportion to the swarm density. They provided a quantitative assessment of this finding, by comparing the electrical contribution of various swarming insect species with common […]
Explosions help probe elusive atmospheric waves
Phys.org May 25, 2022 Researchers from the Southern Methodist University will discuss a method for using infrasound pulses from detonated munitions to probe atmospheric phenomena at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America meeting. The sound they record propagates upward into the atmosphere and is refracted back down to the ground. The information they provide on the upper atmosphere can tell us about the winds aloft, and these can affect the weather at the ground. However, it requires sizeable source to have enough strength to reach the atmosphere and bounce back. Therefore, they set up detectors in the […]
How Long Do Black Carbon Particles Linger in the Atmosphere?
SciTech Daily January 1, 2022 In previous studies, the cloud nucleation values of black carbon were indirect measurements. An international team of researchers (UK, China) concurrently measured the concentration of cloud condensation nuclei and black carbon particles near heavily trafficked roads and industrial centers in Wuhan, China. They found that the activation diameter, or the size of the black carbon particle where half of the particles will nucleate and precipitate out, was 144 ± 21 nanometers at 0.2% supersaturation. How these black carbon–containing particles could act as cloud nuclei is determined by their size combined with their coatings, the authors say, […]
Researchers identify new meteorological phenomenon dubbed ‘atmospheric lakes’
Phys.org December 16, 2021 Researchers at the University of Miami will present a new meteorological phenomenon called “atmospheric lakes,” at the 2021 AGU meeting. Atmospheric lakes start as filaments of water vapor in the Indo-Pacific. They begin as water vapor streams that flow from the western side of the South Asian monsoon and pinch off to become their own measurable, isolated objects. They then float along ocean and coastal regions at the equatorial line in areas where the average wind speed is around zero. They researchers used five years of satellite data to spot 17 atmospheric lakes lasting longer than […]
Atmospheric metal layers appear with surprising regularity
Science Daily June 2, 2021 A team of researchers in the US (University of Colorado, UC Berkeley, Virginia Polytech, MIT) reported regular occurrence of mid-latitude thermosphere-ionosphere Na (TINa) layers over Boulder, Colorado. TINa layers occur regularly in various months and years, descending from ∼125 km after dusk and from ∼150 km before dawn. The downward-progression phase speeds are consistent with semidiurnal tidal phase speeds. One or more layers sometimes occur across local midnight. Elevated volume mixing ratios above the turning point of Na density slope suggest in situ production of the dawn/dusk layers via neutralization of converged Na+ layers. Vertical […]