Featured series 
Tag: atmospheric sciences
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Science & Tech
Negative vibes from space
Astronomers have discovered the first negatively charged molecule in space, identifying it from radio signals that were a mystery until now. While about 130 neutral and 14 positively charged molecules are known to exist in interstellar space, this is the first negative molecule, or anion, to be found. “We’ve spotted a rare and exotic species,…
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Science & Tech
Super-Earths may be three times more common than Jupiters
Astronomers have discovered a new “super-Earth” orbiting a red dwarf star located about 9,000 light-years away. This newfound world weighs about 13 times the mass of the Earth and is probably a mixture of rock and ice, with a diameter several times that of Earth. It orbits its star at about the distance of the…
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Science & Tech
A star that looks like a planet
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a remarkably small brown dwarf surrounded by a dusty disk. The brown dwarf contains only about eight times the mass of Jupiter, making it one of the smallest known brown dwarfs. It is even smaller than several planets around other stars, leading to the question of whether…
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Campus & Community
Researchers observe ozone killer
Harvard researchers have implicated a particular molecule in the destruction of Earth’s ozone layer. The molecule, made up of two chlorine atoms and two oxygen atoms, is called a chlorine monoxide dimer or chlorine peroxide, Cl-O-O-Cl. It has a crucial role in the process by which chlorine destroys atmospheric ozone. Though a variety of chemicals…
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Campus & Community
Researchers close in on date of critical rise in Earth’s oxygen
Findings by Harvard researchers and colleagues narrow the range of possible dates for a critical change in the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists had previously believed oxygen first appeared sometime between 2.45 billion and 2.22 billion years ago, a span of about 230 million years. The new findings narrow that window dramatically – to about 130 million…
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Science & Tech
Raging storms of hot and cold gas
New observations with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), Hubble’s high-precision and ultra-sensitive spectrometer, show that the warm chromosphere of Betelgeuse extends out to more than 50 times its radius in visible light, a size five times larger than the orbit of Neptune. (The chromosphere is an inner layer of a star’s atmosphere, between the…
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Campus & Community
Picturing a universe that’s out of sight
Giovanni Fazio, a senior physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, directed the design and construction of a camera that is looking beyond the visible universe to see planets, stars, and galaxies being born. On Aug. 25, 2003, he waited for the ignition of a Delta rocket, with extra boosters strapped to it, to blast…
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Campus & Community
Speedy solar storm reaches Earth
An Oct. 28, 2003 eruption created a monstrous solar flare – the third largest recorded since 1976 – and an associated coronal mass ejection, in which superheated gas, called plasma, streaks away from the sun at millions of miles an hour. When the plasma hits the Earth it can disrupt the planet’s magnetic field, triggering…
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Science & Tech
State-of-the-art solar model tracks eruption
The Sun may appear to be a bright, steadily shining orb, but it is actually a seething cauldron of hot gases prone to violent eruptions. The most dramatic eruptions are coronal mass ejections (CMEs), in which giant, bubble-shaped balloons of plasma and magnetic field lines blast outward at speeds of up to 1,500 miles per…
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Science & Tech
Professor honored for ongoing environmental research
Harvard Professor Jack Spengler and MIT professor Mario Molina shared the $250,000 Heinz award, which recognized the independent bodies of work by Spengler and Molina, although coincidentally the researchers are collaborating on air quality studies in Mexico City. Spengler, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation in the Department of Environmental Health at…
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Science & Tech
Putting bacteria to work
A nautical group of bacteria known as Prochlorococcus removes carbon dioxide from air and fixes it into the carbon content of their own tiny bodies. The more carbon dioxide they take from the air, the less is available to capture the heat that is causing the warm-up of our planet. That adds up to a…
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Science & Tech
South Pole telescope maps heart of Milky Way
Research results obtained by a team of astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) led by Chris Martin and Antony Stark suggest that we are headed for some celestial fireworks. Sometime in the next 300 million years, the galactic center will experience a dramatic burst of star formation and will shine with the light…
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Science & Tech
Scientists predict calmer weather ahead
When the Sun is more active, it has bad effects on our planet. For instance, energy from solar eruptions changes the orbits of satellites, causing them to spiral back to the Earth. Solar eruptions perturb the Earth’s magnetic field, causing communications disruptions, especially to cell phone and other wireless devices. Magnetic storms also cause current…
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Science & Tech
Pollen production — and allergies — may rise significantly over next 50 years
Ragweed, which flourishes along roadsides and in disturbed habitats throughout North America, produces one of the most common allergens. A study by Harvard researchers found that ragweed grown in an atmosphere with double the current carbon dioxide levels produced 61 percent more pollen than normal. Such a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to…
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Science & Tech
Atmospheric chemists fly high and low for novel carbon dioxide measurements
Political leaders throughout the world have taken notice of the increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere and have begun negotiations on how to mitigate “greenhouse” gases through accords such as the Kyoto Protocol. One major problem with the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States rejected, was how to monitor compliance. Currently there is no…
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Science & Tech
Scientists find X-rays from stellar winds that may play significant role in galactic evolution
The Rosette Nebula is a nursery for stars. For hundreds of years, astronomers have been looking at this star-forming region and wondering about the forces at work there. Now, scientists using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have determined that colliding stellar winds create turmoil in this part of space, superheating gas in the region to 6…
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Science & Tech
Polar bear research shows global warming is real
Harvard Professor James McCarthy was among a handful of top scientists who coordinated a remarkable report by the world scientific community in 2001 that said global warming is real, it’s here, and it’s going to be worse than we thought. “We already see effects that [indicate] the change in climate has occurred,” said McCarthy, who…
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Science & Tech
Scientists probe Northern Hemisphere ozone loss
The ozone layer shields us from cancerous ultraviolet radiation. Understanding how it is being destroyed was the mission of more than 350 scientists from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia; 19 of the researchers came from Harvard. The exploration included the first high-altitude reconnaissance flights over Russia since the Soviet Union shot down…
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Science & Tech
El Nino found to be 124,000 years old
Records preserved in corals from Indonesia reveal that El Niño was causing severe weather even before the last ice age began, when the climate apparently was like it was for most of the 20th century. “No question about it; there were El Niños that long ago,” says Daniel Schrag, professor of earth and planetary sciences.…