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Ship exhaust makes oceanic thunderstorms more intense
New research from UW atmospheric scientist Joel Thornton and others finds that storms above the world’s busiest shipping lanes are significantly more powerful than storms in areas of the ocean where ships don’t travel.
Read more at UW Today »Record-low 2016 Antarctic sea ice due to ‘perfect storm’ of tropical, polar conditions
While winter sea ice in the Arctic is declining so dramatically that ships can now navigate those waters without any icebreaker escort, the scene in the Southern Hemisphere is much different. Sea ice around Antarctica has actually increased slightly during winter — until last year. About a year ago, a dramatic drop in Antarctic sea ice during spring in the Southern Hemisphere brought its maximum area to its lowest level in 40 years of record keeping.
Read more at UW Today »Earth likely to warm more than 2 degrees this century
Warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius is often seen as a “tipping point” that people should try to avoid by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But the Earth is very likely to exceed that change, according to new University of Washington research. A study from lead-author and Professor of Statistics and Sociology Adrian Raftery and Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Dargan Frierson uses statistical tools to show only a 5 percent chance that Earth will warm 2 degrees or less by the end of this century.
Read more at UW Today »Could spraying particles into marine clouds help cool the planet?
The idea of climate engineering is controversial, but as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in our atmosphere, scientists are beginning to look at possible emergency measures. A new University of Washington study looks at marine cloud brightening, which is being investigated by an on-campus group as a promising strategy to offset global warming. The idea, which could be a short-term measure to offset global warming in a future extreme emergency, is to spray saltwater into the air to make marine clouds reflect more incoming solar rays.
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