• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

High fliers try to unravel clouds’ climate effects

October 17, 2015
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Paul Brown

 

Scientists take to the air to find out how the warming climate is affecting rainfall and storms.

LONDON, 17 October, 2015 – British scientists are using aircraft packed with high-tech air monitoring equipment to predict what is happening in the lower atmosphere as the climate warms.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

While the extra heat in the oceans and on land, which can be measured, is known to add energy to the atmosphere, the precise effect this has on clouds, storms and where rainfall will be generated remains largely a mystery.

As well as the problems created by greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution from traffic, industry, burning forests and the vast palm oil plantations in the tropics are all changing rainfall patterns.

The critical part of the atmosphere for creating the day-to-day weather that affects food supplies and generates increasingly destructive storms is the first kilometre (3,280 feet) above the ground.

It is possible to measure some of the changes that are happening from satellites and ground observation stations, but the only way to find out precisely what is going on is to fly through the clouds and measure what they contain.

Both the US and the UK have developed airborne laboratories where scientists can feed air directly from intakes in the aircraft’s nose and sides into onboard equipment to measure exactly what is happening in the atmosphere outside.

Desert dust

One of these aircraft is the BAe 146-301 large Atmospheric Research Aircraft (ARA) based at Cranfield University in central England. The aircraft has been used this year to study the mineral dust coming off the Sahara, which heads westward across the Atlantic and provides the anchor for water droplets that turn into giant cumulus clouds.

The team has been flying through the clouds of dense dust over the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of West Africa to try to understand how the process works – a key to predicting the hurricanes that will later spiral across the Atlantic and hit the Caribbean and the US.

The plane has been on show this week at the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) at Cranfield. It is the largest plane in the fleet based there for use in atmospheric research, part of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. The aircraft can carry four tons of scientific equipment, three crew and 12 scientists.

It has also been used to measure the methane escaping from the Arctic as the permafrost melts, the effect on clouds of pollution from New Delhi and Beijing of rainfall in the region, and ash from volcanic eruptions. It can even head through storm clouds to check the  devastation they can cause as they develop, and can fly at heights from 35,000 feet (10,670m) to 50 ft (15m), measuring the atmosphere once every second.

The aircraft and the research it makes possible are both funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Professor Iain Gillespie, NERC’s director of science, says the link between manmade air pollution and premature deaths among local populations is a central part of their studies. In 2012 there were 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide because of air pollution. Low and middle-income countries were the worst affected, suffering 88% of the deaths.

Asian scourge

Even the UK, with relatively low pollution levels and 60 million people, records 29,000 of these premature deaths annually. Average life expectancy is lowered by seven months, and the annual cost to the economy is £20 billion. The loss of life in India and China, where air pollution is often 40 times above the World Health Organisation danger limit, is in the millions.

To investigate the link between this air pollution and what is happening in the clouds, ARA counts the particles from diesel engines and the hydrocarbons from industrial processes, and checks how they are affecting the size and composition of the droplets of water and ice in clouds and the rainfall they produce.

Professor Gillespie said: “This is particularly important in the case of the South Asian monsoon, which provides 80% of the rainfall to feed a billion people, yet might be adversely affected by manmade pollution.”

Other manmade effects on the atmosphere and rainfall are also being studied. For example palm oil plantations in Borneo produce three to four times as much isoprene, an aerosol associated with mist and cloud formation, as the rainforests felled to make room for them. The link between this change of land use and rainfall in the region is still being investigated. – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
28

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
328
Sam Balto/YouTube

Elementary School’s Bike Bus Brings ‘Sheer Joy’ to Portland Neighbourhood

October 16, 2022
261
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
325
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
502

Recent Posts

Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Next Post

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}