Results 1 to 10 of 13
Managed burning on moorland in the UK led to millions of people being exposed to unsafe levels of fine particulate pollution, according to research led by Ailish Graham and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Prescribed burning is traditionally used to manage heather for grouse shooting across the UK uplands. Until recently...
Actually, this should not qualify as 'news' at all. The past observed depletion of stratospheric ozone has been studied extensively and is generally explained quantitatively by well understood chemical and dynamical processes. For example, the Antarctic ozone hole is caused by chlorine (and bromine) chemistry and interactions with polar stratospheric clouds (e.g. see above image...
PhD student Jamal Makkor has just published the first ever observation of an atmospheric chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). He analysed historical 1951 solar absorption infrared spectra recorded at the high altitude site of Jungfraujoch, Switzerland to retrieve the CFC-12 (CF2Cl2) surface mole fraction. The data had been recorded on paper rolls which Jamal digitised and processed. This...
The APARC assessment report on the impact of the huge 2022 Hunga eruption has just been published. The Hunga volcano in the tropical Pacific erupted in January 2022, sending a plume of vaporised seawater deep into the stratosphere in an explosion that equalled the size of Krakatoa’s in 1883. The Hunga assessment report’s main findings...
We have co-authored a new Nature review paper on short-lived halogens. More information soon. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09753-x
Humankind will soon lose a great deal of vigilance over the ozone layer, which shields life on Earth from harmful solar radiation. The impending loss of NASA’s Aura and the Canadian Space Agency’s SCISAT satellites threatens scientists’ ability to closely monitor compounds that destroy ozone and alter stratospheric circulation. With no planned missions to replace...
Luana Basso's recent TOMCAT inversion model study in Atmos Chem Phys has been selected as an Editor's highlight. The Editor's citation is: "The Amazon's role in the tropical and global carbon cycle is highly significant. Usually considered as the "lung of the planet", it is mandatory to monitor if this role is kept, or if...
Wuhu Feng's recent GRL paper on iodine propulsion is highlighted in Nature article. Feng, W., J.M.C. Plane, M.P. Chipperfield, A. Saiz-Lopez and J.-P. Booth, Potential stratospheric ozone depletion due to iodine injection from small satellites, Geophys. Res. Lett., 50, e2022GL102300, doi:10.1029/2022GL102300, 2023.
No ozone hole in the tropics! We have just led and published a strong rebuttal of a paper in AIP Advances which claimed that there (Chipperfield et al., 2022). That paper had not only claimed large ozone depletion in the tropics but gave an erroneous mechanism for polar ozone depletion. Chipperfield, M.P., A. Chrysanthou, R....
Stephen Anderson, Marco Gonzalez and Nancy Sherman have written an EOS article on the Montreal Protocol, highlighting twelve papers which formed "the scientific basis for fast action to strengthen the treaty, which was already safeguarding stratospheric ozone, so it also protects the climate by reducing super pollutants.". One of the 12 papers is our study...