Mitsubishi Electric has been designated as the contractor of the Global Observing Satellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW) by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
GOSAT-GW will observe greenhouse gases for Japan’s Ministry of the Environment and the National Institute for Environmental Studies and make water-cycle observations for JAXA.
By developing GOSAT-GW, the third in the GOSAT series, Mitsubishi Electric will contribute to measures for preventing global warming and climate change related disasters.
It will also advance scientific and technological methods that enable more accurate climate change predictions.
GOSAT-SW will be equipped with a sensor named Total Anthropogenic and Natural emissions mapping SpectrOmeter-3 (TANSO-3) to observe concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Continue reading Mitsubishi develops GOSAT-GW at Meteorological Technology International.
Reducing the combustion of fossil fuel can improve water quality on China’s coast, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong.
Burning fossil fuels is associated with global warming, but the research led by MPhil student Yu Yan Yin and supervised by Dr Benoit Thibodeau from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science at the University of Hong Kong studies the effects of nitrogen oxide in China’s seas.
The researchers used Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected trends in atmospheric emissions of NOX and a biogeochemical model to estimate the impact in the South China Sea, East China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea.
With people in Britain having more time on their hands, the University of Reading is asking for help transcribing historic rainfall records.
The Rainfall Rescue project is run by Prof. Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, with the aim of filling the gap in digital weather records between the 1820s and 1950s.
Members of the public are invited to transcribe observations made before the age of computers.
Historic information will help scientists to better understand why certain parts of the UK are wetter or dryer than others at different times and look at long-term trends and historical patterns.
Continue reading Help the UK digitize rainfall records at Meteorological Technology International.
The atmospheric circulation of the Southern Hemisphere stopped expanding polewards as the ozone hole began recovering, US researchers have found.
A study by the University of Colorado Boulder says that after ozone-destroying substances were phased out with the Montreal Protocol of 1987, the concentration of chemicals in the stratosphere started to decline and the ozone hole began to recover around 2000.
The ozone hole forms every spring in the atmosphere over Antarctica, and ozone depletion cools the air, strengthening the winds of the polar vortex and affecting winds down to the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
Continue reading Ozone treaty stops wind changes at Meteorological Technology International.
Grounding aircraft due to the coronavirus pandemic has reduced the observations available for weather prediction centers.
The observations are used with others to estimate the state of the Earth system at the start of forecasts.
For the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), aircraft reports are second only to satellite data for forecasts.
The number of aircraft reports had reduced by 65% by March 23 compared with March 3, and global reports were down 42%.
A major source of aircraft-based observations in operational weather forecasting is the World Meteorological Organization’s Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR) program.
Arctic sea ice extent reached its annual maximum on March 5, covering one of the lowest ranges in 40 years.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that the 2019-2020 season was an unexceptional 5.81 million square miles, the 11th-lowest maximum in the 42-year satellite record.
Graphs from the NSIDC’s Charctic tool shows daily sea ice extent, and each year it follows a similar path of starting high in January, rising to the maximum between early March and mid-April before falling again until mid-September.
The 2019-2020 season was not near the bottom, but is on the lower half of the satellite record.
Continue reading Unexceptional Arctic sea ice maximum at Meteorological Technology International.
Injecting the right amount of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere could reduce the effects of climate change.
Researchers from University College London in the UK and Harvard University in the USA say adding aerosol particles to thicken the layer of light can reduce climate change caused by greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide.
They used results from a simulation of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering to evaluate whether the approach could offset or worsen the effects of climate change.
Halving warming by adding aerosols to the stratosphere could moderate important climate hazards in almost all regions, while exacerbating the effects in a small fraction of land areas.
Researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute are using satellite data to observe phytoplankton in the ocean.
Using the algorithms, studying the phytoplankton can identify toxic algal blooms and assess the effects of global warming on marine plankton, providing information on water quality.
Phytoplankton create half the oxygen we breathe using photosynthesis to produce carbohydrate, which they use as an energy source.
They grow, divide and produce biomass, and are an essential food source for small crustaceans, fish and mussel larvae, which themselves are staples for larger fish.
Marine phytoplankton are an important CO2 sink, so researchers are keen to learn how the different groups are developing around the world.
Continue reading Satellites monitor phytoplankton at Meteorological Technology International.
