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atmospheric science

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climate science

Solving the Faint-Sun Paradox

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
January 27, 2022
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We might have a past faint sun to owe for life’s existence. This has consequences for the possibility of life outside Earth.

atmospheric science

Detailed Footage Finally Reveals What Triggers Lightning

By Thomas Lewton
December 20, 2021
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Scientists have never been able to adequately explain where lightning comes from. Now the first detailed observations of its emergence inside a cloud have exposed how electric fields grow strong enough to let bolts fly.

Q&A

The Astronomer Who’s About to See the Skies of Other Earths

By Thomas Lewton
October 12, 2021
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After the ultra-powerful James Webb Space Telescope launches later this year, Laura Kreidberg will lead two efforts to check the weather on rocky planets orbiting other stars.

Photograph showing cirrus clouds in a blue sky above an expanse of flat, snow-covered ice.
Abstractions blog

Cloud-Making Aerosol Could Devastate Polar Sea Ice

By Max Kozlov
February 23, 2021
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An overlooked but powerful driver of cloud formation could accelerate the loss of polar sea ice.

Earth from space.
Abstractions blog

Global Wave Discovery Ends 220-Year Search

By Charlie Wood
August 13, 2020
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An 18th-century physicist first predicted the existence of a chorus of atmospheric waves that swoop around Earth. Scientists have finally found them.

An ice sheet stretching into the distance.
Abstractions blog

How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are Different Now)

By Howard Lee
July 21, 2020
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Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change.

The Polarstern icebreaker in sea ice.
climate science

The Voyage to the End of Ice

By Shannon Hall
January 16, 2020
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Summer sea ice could vanish later this decade, with disastrous consequences. It all depends on the physics of ice.

PHOTO: Sarah Hörst in her lab at JHU
Q&A

The Scientist Who Cooks Up the Skies of Faraway Worlds

By Shannon Hall
April 8, 2019
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Astronomers will soon take their first glance at the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet. Sarah Hörst is writing the guidebook for these exoplanetary explorers, one that will reveal what a distinctive atmosphere says about the world underneath.

Art for "A World Without Clouds"
climate science

A World Without Clouds

By Natalie Wolchover
February 25, 2019
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A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.


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