News by Subject Atmospheric Science

Munich is home to the world's first fully automated sensor network for measuring urban greenhouse gas emissions based on ground-based remote sensing of the atmosphere. It has been developed by scientists in the group of Jia Chen, Professor of Environmental Sensing and Modeling at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Now, anyone can view the measurement data via an Internet platform.

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied the properties of mixtures of silicone-coated "magic sand", a popular kid's toy, and normal sand. Silicone-coated sand particles were found to interact with each other only, and not with other sand particles. The team discovered that adding silicone-coated sand beyond a certain threshold leads to an abrupt change in clustering and rigidity, a simple, useful way to potentially tune the flow of granular materials for industry.

Analyses by the University of Innsbruck show that traffic restrictions during the first lockdown last March led to a sharp drop in air pollutant emissions, significantly more than for carbon dioxide. The study confirms the assumption that traffic is significantly underestimated as a source of nitrogen oxide pollution in cities and is responsible for over 90 percent of these pollutants.

Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Miami found that the latest generation of high-sensitivity climate models do not provide a plausible scenario of Earth's future climate. These models project that clouds moderate greenhouse gas-induced warming -- particularly in the northern hemisphere -- much more than climate records show actually happens. The results provide a cautionary tale on interpreting climate simulations, which can determine the aggressiveness of carbon-mitigation policies.

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement resulted in multiple studies examining the impact of global temperature increases, but these rarely investigate the effect of warming on "fire weather" conditions. Now, in a new study, scientists have found that by projecting two different types of fire weather conditions, an additional half-degree of warming could drastically increase the likelihood and significance of blazes worldwide.