EurekAlert! News by Subject: Atmospheric Science

Atmospheric Science

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 4-May-2024 03:09 ET (4-May-2024 07:09 GMT/UTC)

3-May-2024

Climate change amplifies severity of combined wind-rain extremes over the UK and Ireland

Newcastle University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Climate change will cause an increase in extreme winter storms combining strong winds and heavy rainfall over the UK and Ireland, new research has shown.

Journal: Weather and Climate Extremes
Funder: Natural Environment Research Council

2-May-2024

NASA selects BAE systems to develop air quality instrument for NOAA

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Business Announcement

NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected BAE Systems (formerly known as Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation) of Boulder, Colorado, to develop an instrument to monitor air quality and provide information about the impact of air pollutants on Earth for NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite program.

2-May-2024

Sugar-based catalyst upcycles carbon dioxide

Northwestern University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New catalyst is made from an inexpensive, abundant metal and table sugar. Catalyst converts carbon dioxide (CO₂) into carbon monoxide, a building block for producing a variety of useful chemicals including syngas. With recent advances in carbon capture technologies, post-combustion carbon capture is becoming a plausible option to help tackle the global climate change crisis. But how to handle the captured carbon remains an open-ended question. The new catalyst potentially could provide one solution for disposing the potent greenhouse gas by converting it into a more valuable product.

Journal: Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

2-May-2024

Agricultural management practices evaluated in new nitrous oxide accounting method

University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Most analyses point to agriculture as the major source of nitrous oxide (N2O) globally. But there are a lot of variables within agriculture that can affect emissions. A recent University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study provides a comprehensive accounting for these factors, finding, among other things, that long-term no-till management can effectively cut N2O emissions.

Journal: Science of The Total Environment
Funder: National Institute of Food and Agriculture

2-May-2024

UTA scientists test for quantum nature of gravity

University of Texas at Arlington
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study in Nature Physics from physicists at The University of Texas at Arlington reports on a deep new probe into the interface between the theories of gravity and quantum mechanics, using ultra-high energy neutrino particles detected by a particle detector set deep into the Antarctic glacier at the south pole.

Journal: Nature Physics
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Open Science Grid, Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing, DOE/US Department of Energy, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Belgium: Funds for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS and FWO), FWO Odysseus and Big Science programmes and Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo), Germany: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), and High Performance Computing cluster of the RWTH Aachen, Sweden: Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. European Union: EGI Advanced Computing for Research, Australia: Australian Research Council, Canada: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, Canada Foundation for Innovation, WestGrid and Digital Research Alliance of Canada, Denmark: Villum Fonden, Carlsberg Foundation and European Commission, New Zealand: Marsden Fund, Japan: Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Institute for Global Prominent Research (IGPR) of Chiba University, Korea: National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Switzerland: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), US Department of Energy, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Particle Astrophysics Research Computing Center at the University of Maryland, Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at Michigan State University, Astroparticle Physics Computational Facility at Marquette University, NVIDIA Corporation, Google

2-May-2024

Evolution: Weak magnetic field may have supported diversification of life on Earth

Scientific Reports
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An unusual reduction in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field between 591 and 565 million years ago coincided with a significant increase in the oxygen levels in the atmosphere and oceans, according to a paper published in Communications Earth & Environment...

Journal: Communications Earth & Environment
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

1-May-2024

EPA underestimates methane emissions from landfills, urban areas

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from landfills, urban areas and U.S. states, according to a new study led by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The researchers combined 2019 satellite observations with an atmospheric transport model to generate a high-resolution map of methane emissions, which was then compared to EPA estimates from the same year. The researchers found:

Methane emissions from landfills are 51% higher compared to EPA estimates

Methane emissions from 95 urban areas are 39% higher than EPA estimates

Methane emissions from the 10 states with the highest methane emissions are 27% higher than EPA estimates

Journal: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics