When wildfires burn, they catapult smoke into the atmosphere. These plumes are loaded with tiny particles that act as magnets for water droplets sitting in clouds—the more smoky particles ejected into the sky, the more ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 16, 2021
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Permafrost—frozen soil in the far north – is thawing, releasing greenhouse gases and long-lost microbes. But one thing that scientists have not studied extensively is whether permafrost contains certain kinds of particles ...
Environment
Jan 28, 2021
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Clouds are a big source of uncertainty in computer simulations used to study Earth systems. To reduce that uncertainty, researchers study the formation of ice in clouds. This formation influences precipitation rates, large-scale ...
Condensed Matter
Dec 12, 2018
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Over the southeast Atlantic Ocean, a 2,000-mile-long plume of smoke from African agricultural fires meets a near-permanent cloud bank offshore. Their meeting makes a natural laboratory for studying the interactions between ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 15, 2018
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NASA's P-3 research plane begins flights this month through both clouds and smoke over the South Atlantic Ocean to understand how tiny airborne particles called aerosols change the properties of clouds and how they influence ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 10, 2017
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A new NASA study shows that updrafts are more important than previously understood in determining what makes clouds produce drizzle instead of full-sized raindrops, overturning a common assumption.
Earth Sciences
Jul 26, 2017
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Low clouds populate the first two kilometers of the atmosphere. Cumuliform clouds heap high and are made from columns of fast-rising air. Stratiform are sheet-like and show little vertical air movement.
Earth Sciences
May 16, 2017
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8
Those airy, wispy cirrus clouds you're contemplating could be concealing a dirty secret. High in the atmosphere, these icy clouds can take on traveling soot, expelled from diesel trucks, ship boilers, forest fires, and fireplaces. ...
Environment
Feb 1, 2016
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7
Research meteorologists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division (MMD) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, employing the Navy's Mid-Course Doppler Radar (MCR) at Cape Canaveral, were able ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 21, 2014
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A study into how organic molecules in the atmosphere affect cloud formation has found that a main component of biodiesel, methyl oleate, reacts with ozone surprisingly fast. This process may counterbalance the growth of water ...
Earth Sciences
May 29, 2014
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