News by Subject Atmospheric Science

Analysis of seismometer data from the InSight Martian lander revealed that different types and frequencies of ambient low-magnitude "microtremors" on Mars were associated with different sources, and some reflected daily variations in wind and solar irradiance, either in distant locations or near the lander. These findings will contribute to future projects seeking to model and monitor the Martian subsurface.

Studies have shown the Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the world, and its soil holds twice the amount of carbon dioxide as the atmosphere. New research from San Diego State University finds that water from spring snowmelt infiltrates the soil and triggers fresh carbon dioxide production at higher rates than previously assumed.

Many corals are sensitive to bright light, so capturing their dynamics with traditional microscopes is a challenge. To work around their photosensitivity, Laissue developed a custom light-sheet microscope (the L-SPI) that allows gentle, non-invasive observation of corals and their polyps in detail over eight continuous hours, at high resolution. He and his colleagues, including MBL coral biologist Loretta Roberson, have published their findings in Scientific Reports.

Tropical Depression 4E formed late on June 29 and it is forecast to become a remnant low-pressure area by the end of the day on June 30. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with an image of the depression, located just southwest of the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

Over the past 150 years, global warming has more than undone the global cooling that occurred over the past six millennia, according to a major study published June 30 in Nature Research's Scientific Data, "Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach." The findings show that the millennial-scale global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago when the long-term average global temperature topped out at around 0.7°C warmer than the mid-19th century.

Scientists from ORNL and a dozen other international research institutions ran a series of simulations to produce the most elaborate set of projections to date that illustrates possible changes in nine monsoon regions across five continents.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite imagery provided a look at the end of the second named tropical cyclone of the Eastern Pacific Ocean's 2020 Hurricane Season.

Fires have spread across the majority of the landscape in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in this NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument from June 25, 2020.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with visible image of the Eastern Pacific Ocean's second tropical storm of the season, Boris. Boris formed just east of the Central Pacific Ocean's boundary as it was moving into that region.