Following the Montreal Protocol in the late 1980s, CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) were replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) as a refrigerant. Unfortunately, the HFC’s have a global warming potential (GWP) far greater than the well-known greenhouse gas (GHG), carbon dioxide. Apart from the fact that …[Read More]
Earlier this summer journalists, broadcasters, writers and scientists gathered in Manchester, UK for the Third European Conference of Science Journalists (ECSJ) arranged by two prestigious organisations. Firstly, the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) who provides support to those who write about science and technology in the UK through debates, events and awards. Secondly the …[Read More]
I was taking a plane trip home recently. To kill the time I got talking with the person sitting next to me and naturally one of their first questions was to ask me what I did for a living. To avoid a complicated discussion about the nuances of my research I summarised – ‘I am …[Read More]
Twice a year in Toulouse Meteo-France runs a tutorial on Meso-NH – the non-hydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric model of the French research community. Last week I was fortunate enough to attend their autumn 2015 tutorial. But, what is this model and was the tutorial useful? Atmospheric models solve the governing equations for atmospheric motions. This allows us, …[Read More]
From the 9th to the 11th of September the Solar Energy and Buildings Physics laboratory is hosting the CISBAT conference. This international meeting is seen as a leading platform for interdisciplinary dialog in the field of sustainability in the built environment. More than 250 scientists and people from the industry will be at EPFL in …[Read More]
The 9th International Conference on Urban Climate and the 12th Urban Environment Symposium are taking place this week in the “Pink City” Toulouse. With the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) which will be held in December in Paris, the obvious focus topic for the urban climate conference is the mitigation and adaptation to climate change …[Read More]
It’s hard to think of the scale of the biggest air pollution event in the modern era. Immediately my mind conjures up memories of black and white photographs of the Great London Smog of 1952. Then I start thinking bigger, how about the 1.2 billion vehicles world-wide on the road churning out nitrogen dioxide every …[Read More]
I have recently been confronted with the choice of buying a “new” car and this has proved to be a very tedious task with all the diversity of car that exists on the market today. However, one of my primary concerns was, of course, to find the least polluting car based on my usage (roughly …[Read More]
This would not be a blog about atmospheric science if I did not talk about climate change. But I won’t be talking about the science of climate change… there are numerous blogs including here that will talk much better about this. The problem that will be addressed here does not only refer to the “battle” …[Read More]
The Atmospheric Sciences Division of the EGU is launching its new blog. This blog hopes to address a number of topics, as well as the major challenges, related to the atmospheric sciences. In this introductory post, I would like to present some of the topics we will address here and also some hurdles the …[Read More]
