What is El Niño?
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a large-scale climatic phenomenon that originates in the tropical Pacific but affects global climate patterns. The warm phase is known as El Niño and the cold phase is La Niña. El Niño occurs irregularly every two to seven years and peaks around in winter.
What causes an El Niño event?
The Society released another climate science briefing paper on “Global Carbon Budgets”. How much CO2 can the world emit to avoid a global warming of 1.5°C or 2°C depends on the current rate of warming and the past emissions. The briefing paper discusses the concept of carbon budgets, how they are calculated and what uncertainties exist.
Why is there another IPCC report?
Traveling across sea ice (Photo provided by courtesy of Kyra St. Pierre)
1. The lowest air temperature ever recorded on Earth amounts to -89.2 °C. It was registered at the Russian Vostok station in Antarctica on 21st July 1983. (Study by John Turner and others).
It is the middle of August in 2018 and I am in a small town in the Swiss Alps called Leysin. Beautifully situated in the mountains and not far from Lake Geneva, the temperatures here are in the mid-20s during the day, only to drop down to single digits at night. Leysin has a humid continental climate with annual precipitation averaging 1,481 mm, which equals more than twice that of London. Because the village is situated at an altitude of 1,565 m above sea level the average annual temperature is only 3.9°C.
Professor Liz Bentley sits down to interview Adam Scaife, Head of Long Rang Prediction at the Met Office and Professor at Exeter University, about the El Niño and La Niña, the largest seasonal fluctuation in the Earth's atmosphere.
After the interview Liz and Chloe discuss the two conferences that we are holding in York in July - The Atmospheric Science Conference 2018 (3rd - 4th July) and The Evolution of Science: Past, Present and Future, or conference for Students and Early Career Scientists.
by Caroline Coch
Everybody knows that while there is winter in the northern hemisphere, it remains warm near sea level in the tropics. I have always been aware of this – but experiencing this climate difference within one day was truly fascinating.
Antibiotics are widely used in both animals and humans to treat bacterial infection. This use (and often overuse) has caused bacteria to evolve and develop resistances against the treatment, posing great risks for human health globally.
Photo: The picture is actually an animation, showing global temperature change since 1850.Source: Ed Hawkins, ClimateLabBook
Climate scientist, Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading has produced a revolutionary way to illustrate global warming over the past 160 years. Ed's graphic's has been retweeted more than 15,000 times, and now Jay Alder, from the USGS has stretched the the spiral out to model data out to 2100.
