all Atmospheric Sciences stories

A star that looks like a planet

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:42:39 -0400

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a remarkably small brown dwarf surrounded by a dusty disk. The brown dwarf contains only about eight times the mass of Jupiter, making it one of the smallest known brown dwarfs.

Weather watchers forecast better forecasts

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:23:37 -0400

Brian Farrell, the Robert P. Burden Professor of Meteorology, is spearheading a project that is part of a five-year initiative funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research to spark progress in the general area of predictability of the atmosphere and oceans. "Right now we have a fairly good forecast out to 48 hours," Farrell says, "maybe two or three days. After that, you never know." The reason for this, he adds, is that starting out with a certain amount of error is inevitable. Both the observational data and the mathematical model used to parse it are imperfect; the necessity of using them together only compounds the problem.

Atmospheric chemists fly high and low for novel carbon dioxide measurements

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:16:26 -0400

Political leaders throughout the world have taken notice of the increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere and have begun negotiations on how to mitigate "greenhouse" gases through accords such as the Kyoto Protocol. One major problem with the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States rejected, was how to monitor compliance. Currently there is no good way to tell how much carbon is being emitted from - or taken up by - land on a country-sized scale. This makes accords such as the Kyoto Protocol, should they be agreed upon, nearly impossible to enforce. That's why researchers at Harvard University are developing novel methods to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists probe Northern Hemisphere ozone loss

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:03:51 -0400

The ozone layer shields us from cancerous ultraviolet radiation. Understanding how it is being destroyed was the mission of more than 350 scientists from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia; 19 of the researchers came from Harvard. The exploration included the first high-altitude reconnaissance flights over Russia since the Soviet Union shot down Gary Powers in a U-2 spy plane in 1960. The flights in 2000 were made by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration ER-2 aircraft, a civilian version of the U-2. These sorties were part of the largest international effort to date to measure ozone in this hemisphere.