Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences

NPG Paper Highlight: “Baroclinic and barotropic instabilities in planetary atmospheres: energetics, equilibration and adjustment”

Peter Read July 9, 2020

License: Read, P., Kennedy, D., Lewis, N., Scolan, H., Tabataba-Vakili, F., Wang, Y., Wright, S., and Young, R.: Baroclinic and barotropic instabilities in planetary atmospheres: energetics, equilibration and adjustment, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 27, 147–173, https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/147/2020/npg-27-147-2020.html, 2020.

Today’s our blog hosts a review article by the 2016 EGU Richardson medallist Peter Read, together with Daniel Kennedy, Neil Lewis, Hélène Scolan, Fachreddin Tabataba-Vakili, YixiongWang, Susie Wright, and Roland Young for the special issue of NPG celebrating 100 years of IUGG (https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/27/147/2020/npg-27-147-2020.html). One of the great achievements of the past 100 ...[Read More]

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

Davide Faranda June 8, 2020

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]

How Climate Sciences can help in understanding uncertainties in Covid-19 epidemic projections

Davide Faranda March 31, 2020

Artistic view of the Covid-19 virus moving along an increasing trend.

COVID-19 is currently affecting over 180 countries in the world and poses serious threats to public health as well as economic and social stability of many countries. Modeling and extrapolating in near real-time the evolution of COVID-19 epidemics is a scientific challenge, which requires a deep understanding of the factors undermining the dynamics of the epidemics. Despite the importance of havin ...[Read More]

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

Davide Faranda February 18, 2020

The satellite image shows storm Uta (name chosen by the Freie University in Berlin) an incredibly large vortex spiraling close to Iceland.

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]