The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Assessment Report 6 (AR6), stated that the recent climate change is “widespread, rapid, intensifying and unprecedented in thousands of years.” It is further noted: “Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth in multiple ways. The changes we experience will increase with …
A revised Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model with updated secondary organic aerosol (SOA) yields and a more detailed description of SOA formation from isoprene oxidation was applied to study the spatial and temporal distribution of SOA in China in the entire year of 2013. Predicted organic carbon (OC), elemental …
Understanding the sources and evolution of aerosols is crucial for constraining the impacts that aerosols have on a global scale. An unanswered question in atmospheric science is the source and evolution of the Antarctic aerosol population. Original Source
Chinese coastal waters support vast fisheries and vital economies, but their productivity is threatened by increasingly frequent harmful algal blooms (HABs). Here we provide direct experimental evidence that atmospheric deposition, along with riverine input, opens new niches for bloom-forming dinoflagellates and diatoms in the East China Sea (ECS) by increasing …
The electric field and Maxwell current density measured below 32 small isolated thunderstorms over Pune (India) have been analyzed here. These data clearly show the presence of 10 out of 32 thunderstorms with inverted polarity charge structure. Values of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) on thunderstorm days taken from MODIS show …
Exceedingly high levels of fine particulate matter (PM) occur frequently in China, but the mechanism of severe haze formation remains unclear. From atmospheric measurements in two Chinese megacities and laboratory experiments, we show that the oxidation of SO2 by NO2 occurs efficiently in aqueous media under two polluted conditions: first, …
The recent dust storm in the Middle East (Sepember 2015) was publicized in the media as a sign of an impending 'Dust Bowl.' Its severity, demonstrated by extreme aerosol optical depth in the atmosphere in the 99th percentile compared to historical data, was attributed to the ongoing regional conflict. However, …
Anthropogenic aerosols are a key factor governing Earth’s climate, and play a central role in human-caused climate change. However, because of aerosols’ complex physical, optical, and dynamical properties, aerosols are one of the most uncertain aspects of climate modeling. Fortunately, aerosol measurement networks over the past few decades have led …
Legionella pneumophila is, by far, the species most frequently associated with Legionnaires’ disease (LD). Human infection occurs almost exclusively by aerosol inhalation which places the bacteria in juxtaposition with alveolar macrophages. LD risk management is based on controlling water quality by applying standardized procedures. However, to gain a better understanding …
Much of the influence on climate from air pollution in East Asia is driven by consumption in the developed countries of Western Europe and North America, according to research co-led by McGill University atmospheric scientist Yi Huang. In a paper published online this week in Nature Geoscience, Huang and colleagues …
The ability of seven state-of-the-art chemistry–aerosol models to reproduce distributions of tropospheric ozone and its precursors, as well as aerosols over eastern Asia in summer 2008, is evaluated. The study focuses on the performance of models used to assess impacts of pollutants on climate and air quality as part of …
Isobutanol is more powerful than ethanol and has now been approved for use in aircraft fuel blends Plans to cut airline CO2 using greener jet fuels made from waste wood have been dismissed as a "pipe dream" by environmentalists. Several high octane, waste-based biofuels are being tested by airlines as …
A new Yale-led study published in the journal Nature Communications sheds light on the surprising role that haze in China plays in promoting the urban heat island effect [UHI], a process whereby city centers tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas. Scientists have always suspected that aerosol particles, …
Although China's severe air pollution has become a focus in the field of atmospheric chemistry and the mechanisms of urban air pollution there have been researched extensively, few field sampling campaigns have been conducted at remote background sites in China, where air pollution characteristics on a larger scale are highlighted. …
There is a lack of knowledge of how biomass burning aerosols in the tropics age, including those in the fire-prone Northern Territory in Australia. This paper reports chemical characterization and aging of aerosols monitored during the one month long SAFIRED (Savannah Fires in the Early Dry Season) field study, with …
A global agreement on cutting the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - potent greenhouse gases used in aerosols, refrigerants and air conditioning - seems within grasp, delegates said on Sunday after ten days of talks on climate change in Vienna. A final deal is expected to be reached at a meeting …
The mass extinction of life 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary, marked by the extinctions of dinosaurs and shallow marine organisms, is important because it led to the macroevolution of mammals and appearance of humans. The current hypothesis for the extinction is that an asteroid impact in present-day …
Winter has the worst air pollution of the year in the megacity of Beijing. Despite extensive winter studies in recent years, our knowledge of the sources, formation mechanisms and evolution of aerosol particles is not complete. Here we have a comprehensive characterization of the sources, variations and processes of submicron …
We present the measurements of cloud-base height variations over Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Science, Nainital (79.45E, 29.37N, 1958 m amsl) obtained from Vaisala Ceilometer, during the nearly year-long Ganges Valley Aerosol Experiment (GVAX). The cloud-base measurements are analysed in conjunction with collocated measurements of rainfall, to study the possible …
Long-term measurements (from August 2009 to December 2014) of aerosol black carbon mass concentration (MBC) and spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) were carried out from a high-altitude location, Hanle in western trans-Himalaya as part of the Regional Aerosol Warming Experiment. Original Source
This bottom-up modeling study, supported by new population census 2011 data, simulates ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure on local to regional scales. It quantifies, present-day premature mortalities associated with the exposure to near-surface PM2.5 and O3 concentrations in India using a regional chemistry model. We estimate that …
