News by Subject Atmospheric Science

Satellite data has given scientists clues about how, when and why Greenland's glaciers are shrinking -- and shows a sharp increase in glacial retreat beginning about 2000, according to new research presented this week.

Tropical Storm Belna weakened after it made landfall in northwestern Madagascar, and infrared imagery from NASA showed how the area of strong storms within had diminished. Cold cloud top temperatures can tell forecasters if a tropical cyclone has the potential to generate heavy rainfall, and that is exactly what NASA's Aqua satellite found on Dec. 10 over a much smaller area than was occurring on Dec. 9.

If you want to know how climate change and hypoxia -- the related loss of oxygen in the world's oceans -- affect fish species such as the economically important Baltic cod, all you have to do is ask the fish. Those cod, at least, will tell you that hypoxia is making them smaller, scrawnier and less valuable. A paper published today in the journal Biology Letters points to a link between hypoxia and fish well-being.

Findings on ice retreat across the global tropics clarifies how the low latitudes transformed during the end of the last ice age and can help current-day predictions of our own climate future.

Cold cloud top temperatures can tell forecasters if a tropical cyclone has the potential to generate heavy rainfall, and that is exactly what NASA's Aqua satellite found when it observed the temperatures in Tropical Cyclone Belna over northwestern Madagascar.

Understanding what influences the amount of methane in the atmosphere has been identified by the American Geophysical Union to be one of the foremost challenges in the earth sciences in the coming decades because of methane's hugely important role in meeting climate warming targets.

To better understand large, disruptive snowstorms, a University of Washington atmospheric scientist will lead a NASA field campaign studying major East Coast snowstorms beginning Jan. 15. She will present the field campaign this week at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.