News by Subject Atmospheric Science

When a block of ice the size of Houston, Texas, broke off from East Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf in 2019, scientists had anticipated the calving event, but not exactly where it would happen. Now, satellite data can help scientists measure the depth and shape of ice shelf fractures to better predict when and where calving events will occur, according to researchers.

Western butterfly populations are declining at an estimated rate of 1.6% per year, according to a new report to be published this week in Science. The report looks at more than 450 butterfly species, including the western monarch, whose latest population count revealed a 99.9% decline since the 1980s.

Volcanic eruptions, not natural variability, were the cause of an apparent "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation," a purported cycle of warming thought to have occurred on a timescale of 40 to 60 years during the pre-industrial era, according to a team of climate scientists who looked at a large array of climate modeling experiments.

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.

Researchers have developed a remote sensing method of measuring the depth of permafrost by analyzing vegetation cover in boreal ecosystems.

A new method to rate tornado warnings shows that nighttime tornadoes in the U.S. have a lower probability of detection and a higher false-alarm rate than other events. Summertime tornadoes, occurring in June, July or August, also are more likely to evade warning.