NP
Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

Earth

Is planting trees a feasible large-scale solution to mitigate climate change?

Is planting trees a feasible large-scale solution to mitigate climate change?

In the last few years it has become a common practice to compensate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by planting trees. This idea is simple and rooted on a very basic principle: trees get the energy of sunlight, and by photosynthesis they take water from the ground and CO2 from the air, releasing oxygen in the atmosphere. The CO2 is then stored in trees and surrounding soil. Tree planting efforts ar ...[Read More]

COVID-19-related drop in anthropogenic aerosol emissions in China and corresponding cloud and climate effects

COVID-19-related drop in anthropogenic aerosol emissions in China and corresponding cloud and climate effects

While a previous blog entry dealt with the question whether we can use lessons from the nonlinear nature of climate for projections of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is now a first example of how the pandemic can teach us something on climate. The several weeks long lockdown of China made February 2020 an exceptional month in terms of air quality; aerosol emissions were tremendously reduced leading ...[Read More]

NP Interviews: the newly elected NP Division President François Schmitt

NP Interviews: the newly elected NP Division President François Schmitt

Today’s NP Interviews hosts the newly elected NP Division President François Schmitt. François has a PhD degree from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (1993), in atmospheric turbulence, and an Habilitation degree from the same university (2001). He has stayed in Belgium during 6 years as a post-doc, working in meteorology and in fluid mechanics. He is CNRS researcher in Wimereux (Nor ...[Read More]

The 2020 extra-tropical monster cyclones and their (possible) relations with climate change

The 2020 extra-tropical monster cyclones and their (possible) relations with climate change

On February 9th, a British Airways Boeing 747 landed in London Heathrow airport just four hours and 56 minutes after its take-off in JFK, New York, setting the shortest flight-time for non-supersonic jets over this route. The jumbo jet took advantage of the fast upper-tropospheric winds associated with an exceptionally strong jet-stream which created tail winds of about 400km/h. Over the United Ki ...[Read More]