In a new study, EPFL professor Tom Battin reviews our current understanding of carbon fluxes in the world’s river networks. He explains their central role in the global carbon cycle and warrants for the creation of a global River Observation System.
Clouds can warm or cool the planet’s surface, a radiative effect that contributes greatly to the global energy budget and can be altered by human-caused pollution. The Southern Ocean is far from human pollution but subject to abundant marine gases and aerosols. It is about 80% covered by clouds.
Instead of using climate models coded in Fortran in the 1960s and 70s, MIT decided that there was no saving the ancient code and to start from scratch.
Climate is made by the general circulation of the atmosphere and the global pattern of air movements. Many meteorologists believed that shifts in this pattern were the main cause of climate change.
The Earth is a complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice. Simulating the dynamics of these systems has proven to be just as complex. Now, Earth system models are able to simulate variations in Earth systems and anticipate decade-scale changes.
NASA scientists have studied 17 years of gravity observations of Earth to understand how the global water cycle is changing.
Because of the impact of extreme heat waves on society and biodiversity, their study is a key challenge. Physics applied weather forecast systems or climate models can be used to forecast their occurrence or predict their probability.
Environmental engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that sharp contrasts in relatively small land features play a substantial role in local weather developments, which can in turn influence larger climate trends.
Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe wrote the most influential climate science paper of all time in 1967.
Forecasting models help us predict when, where and how strongly hurricanes may strike. But such rapid intensification, can elude the predictions of even the best models. Accurately predicting when these violent storms surge and strengthen is an uncertainty within the hurricane forecasting community.
