Sprite season – spectacular, eerie flashes of colored lights that appear high above the tops of powerful thunderstorms – is underway, SpaceWeather reports. Because sprites are associated with thunderstorms, they tend to occur in late spring and summer. "Sprites…
A team of scientists aboard NIWA’s deepwater research vessel Tangaroa returned to Wellington on May 1, 2015 with new knowledge about methane ‘leaking’ into the atmosphere.The 11-strong science team led by marine geologist Dr Joshu Mountjoy has been
Ash and pumice particles were lofted high into the atmosphere after an explosive eruption of Chile's Calbuco volcano on April 22, 2015 and the debris has been darkening skies and burying parts of Chile, Argentina, and South America for nearly a week. Along with 210
The southern noctilucent clouds (NLCs) season is over now, but looking back over the entire season reveals something unexpected.In an 8-year plot of the Antarctic noctilucent cloud frequencies, the 2014/15 season is clearly different from the rest, SpaceWeather reports.
For the first time, a NASA satellite has quantified in three dimensions how much dust makes the trans-Atlantic journey from the Sahara Desert to the Amazon rainforest. Among this dust is phosphorus, an essential nutrient that acts like a fertilizer, which the Amazon dep
A possible outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) is underway around the Arctic Circle, SpaceWeather.com reports.Ivar Marthinusen sends this picture of the phenomenon taken on December 22, 2014 from Skedsmokorset, Norway:"Right after sunset, these clouds wer
Today’s atmosphere likely bears little trace of its primordial self: Geochemical evidence suggests that Earth’s atmosphere may have been completely obliterated at least twice since its formation more than 4 billion years ago. However, it’s unclear what
New video released by scientists at NASA Goddard's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office reveals how the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe in a single year. The results focus on a period between May 2005 and June 2007. At the
New study from Boston University, the University of Michigan and other institutions identifies a new, direct fingerprint of human activity on Earth as agricultural crops play a big role in seasonal swings of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Modern agricultural
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Andrew Sayer talks about how emissions from volcanoes can affect clouds. This video provides an overview of research published in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Research: Systematic satellite observations of
