Earth Sciences

Exhaust from the main engines of NASA’s space shuttle, which is about 97 percent water vapor, can travel to the Arctic in the Earth’s thermosphere where it forms ice to create some of the Earth’s highest clouds that literally shine at night, according to a new study led by the Naval Research Laboratory and jointly funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research.

The thermosphere is the highest layer in our atmosphere, occupying the region above about 55 miles (88 kilometers) altitude. The c

The old song, asking rain to “go away” and “come again another day,” may get even older for people who live in large coastal cities, according to new NASA-funded research. According to the study, urban heat islands, created from pavement and buildings in big coastal cities like Houston, cause warm air to rise and interact with sea breezes to create heavier and more frequent rainfall in and downwind of the cities. Analysis of Houston-area rain-gauge data, both prior to and since urbanization,

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

It has long been known that tropical climate – by redistributing vast amounts of solar energy through welling hot air and the formation of towering cumulous clouds – influences weather in other parts of the world.

It remains unclear, however, how much the tropics can be affected by higher latitudes.
Now, with the help of a sophisticated computer model, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shown that vast atmospheric “bridges” and oceanic “tunnels,” created by overturn

A team of researchers, led by NASA and Columbia University scientists, found airborne, microscopic, black- carbon (soot) particles are even more plentiful around the world, and contribute more to climate change, than was previously assumed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).

The researchers concluded if these soot particles are not reduced, at least as rapidly as light-colored pollutants, the world could warm more quickly.

The findings appear in the latest issu

For the first time, scientists have incorporated multiple human and natural factors into a climate projection model. They predict that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, due to changes in the carbon cycle, combined with a decrease in human-produced sulphates, may cause accelerated global warming during the 21st century, as compared with simulations without these feedback effects. Results of the study, completed by Chris D. Jones and colleagues at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre