Friday, 25 May, 2012

Are extreme heat, wicked cyclones and record rainfalls signs of climate change, or just more changes in the weather? Will warming eliminate record cold days? Will hurricanes get bigger?

How much water is in the atmosphere? Water is an exceptionally interesting chemical with many important implications for life on Earth and the circulation of the atmosphere. It is the only chemical that naturally exists in all three phases (solid, liquid, and gas) in our atmosphere. Diagram: NOAA At any moment, the atmosphere contains an [...]

Whack that baseball! When you hit a baseball, speed, angle and air resistance all affect how far it travels. Balls hit too low quickly return to Earth; balls hit too high travel a long way vertically, but not far horizontally. Can you find the “sweet spot” where horizontal travel is greatest. Can you find the [...]

The curious growth of a snow crystal Temperature and humidity affects the shape of snowflake crystals. The temperature of formation determines the original crystal shape. Large (“dendritic”) flakes grow best between -10° and -12° C. Plates grow at warmer or colder conditions. Humidity — water vapor pressure in the cloud — affects the growth rate [...]

A tornado that’s 500 meters in diameter looks a lot more ominous than the average twister, which is “only” 150 meters across. All other things being equal, larger tornadoes are more damaging, but size is not related to wind speed. Instead, wind speed increases along with the difference between atmospheric pressure inside the funnel, and [...]

How do hurricanes form? How do we predict their paths? How can we improve predictions?

“Technically, there is no surface of the Sun,” says UW-Madison’s Sanjay Limaye. The senior scientist and educator with the Space Science and Engineering Center explains that unlike the hard, physical boundary here on Earth, the Sun’s surface is a hot mass of gas that is more or less continuous with its atmosphere. “The Sun is [...]

Farms release airborne, drug-resistant bacteria, and indoor air could be making you sick. More news about the particles we breathe every day.

Tornadoes kill 60 Americans each year. How do we predict tornadoes? How do we make houses safer? Where do tornadoes get their energy?

Scientific kites are back, flying payloads high into the atmosphere and delivering data at a fraction of the cost of satellites and specialized planes.