clouds
cwhyte | February 1, 2013Inspired by the internet comic “The Up-Goer Five”, which used only the 1,000 most commonly used words to describe the Saturn V Rocket, scientists across the internet are attempting to describe their work using the just this small set of words. And it’s tough! But one of Brookhaven’s atmospheric scientists was up to the challenge. Alistair Rogers, who works in our Environmental Sciences Department, gives it a go:
Understanding change at the top of the world so we’ll know what is going to happen later
When we drive cars and warm our homes we give out bad stuff that ends up in the air. The bad…
jeure | October 11, 2012Here's the latest field report from the MAGIC climate research collaboration:
Greetings from Honolulu! I had a wonderful trip over – mostly calm seas (we had a bit of rock and roll the last day out, but it wasn’t too bad), nice weather, some nice clouds to observe, and MAGIC data! In port in LA was busy, as usual, with MAGIC personnel getting off and on the ship, and others coming in for installation. Most of the instruments are up and running well, and of course there are a few that are being a bit problematic, but that’s not unusual for this point in a deployment.
Weather balloon launches…
esiegel | June 30, 2012"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -Mark Twain
So, you've been around a while, seen all sorts of things, and learned an awful lot about the world, solar system and Universe that we live in. But how well do you know it, really?
Image credit: NASA / Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
To scale and in order, these are the eight planets you know so well. There are the four rocky worlds of our inner solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the four gas giants that dominate the outer solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and…
illconsidered | May 2, 2012Check out the image below from NASA's Earth Observatory:
These are called von Kármán vortices.
kmcwalsh | December 8, 2011
The Horizon Spirit, a 272-meter cargo ship, makes the round trip between Los Angeles and Hawaii every two weeks.
This is not a story about the latest mega cruise ship, with five swimming pools, 10 restaurants, a rock-climbing wall, and a casino. The vessel we're talking about, the Horizon Spirit, will be outfitted instead with radars, aerosol sampling devices, and other high-tech tools. But even without the fancy umbrella drinks, Ernie Lewis, an atmospheric scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, can't wait to set sail.
Last month, he and several…
illconsidered | April 25, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
Clouds are a very large negative feedback that will stop any drastic warming. The climate models don't even take cloud effects into account.
Answer:
All of the Atmospheric Global Climate Models used for the kind of climate projections reported on by the IPCC take the effects of clouds into account. You can read a discussion about cloud processes and feedbacks in the IPCC TAR.
It is true however that clouds are one of the largest sources of…