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Plastic aerosols in the atmosphere could affect the climate

Physics World

Tiny particles of plastic in the atmosphere can affect Earth’s climate, according to Laura Revell at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and colleagues. Although the threats these microplastics pose to natural ecosystems are now being studied extensively, their influence on Earth’s climate is still virtually unknown.

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A Nobel pursuit

Real Climate

In this, he is in violent agreement with Isaac Held, his colleague at GFDL, and indeed most climate scientists. The key aspects were the inclusion of water vapour feedback as temperatures increased, and the use of ‘convective adjustment’ to maintain stability of the lower atmospheric column. 1975) , and Bryan et al.

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Science denial is still an issue ahead of COP28

Real Climate

The only region of cooling is the northern Atlantic, where climate models have long predicted just that due to a slowing of the Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation. The heating of the global ocean has been going on at a steady rate of nine zeta Joules per year for decades , which is 15 times the worldwide primary energy consumption.

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A distraction due to errors, misunderstanding and misguided Norwegian statistics

Real Climate

are used all over the world, based on calculations that quantify the effects of physical mechanisms and the way different parts of the atmosphere are connected to each other. The physics-based models describe how energy flows through the atmosphere and ocean, as well as how the forces from different air masses push against each other.

Sea Level 293
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AR6 of the best

Real Climate

As climate scientists we tend to look at the IPCC reports a little differently than the general public might. Here are a few things that mark this report out from previous versions that relate to issues we’ve discussed here before: Extreme events are increasingly connected to climate (duh!) Figure SPM 8.

Sea Level 341
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Antarctic extreme events: ‘All-time records are being shattered not from decades ago, but from the last few years and months’

Frontiers

For example, Antarctica acts to cool our planet by reflecting solar radiation back to space by virtue of the brightness of its snow surface. Several floating ice shelves – the massive slabs of ice that push back grounded ice from flowing into the ocean – have catastrophically broken up in a matter of days because of such melting.

Ocean 98
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The unconventional scientist who predicted that rising carbon dioxide levels would change the climate

Physics World

The correlation had been shown in a paper by an author outside the conventional scientific community, so, for good measure, Simpson added that a non-expert could not properly appreciate how atmospheric circulation affects the absorption of radiation. One was Eunice Foote , a 19th-century American scientist. 139 1961 ).