Early this month, India’s coastline was struck by Cyclone Fani, one of the strongest cyclones India has experienced in 20 years, according to a press release
Professor James Farquhar of the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Geology and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The appointment is often considered as one of the more significant honors bestowed upon researchers in recognition of their scientific achievement.
“I am highly honored to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences,” said Farquhar in a recent CMNS press release. “I am very
ESSIC / Geology Professor James Farquhar recently co-authored a new paper, “2600 years of stratospheric volcanism through sulfate isotopes,” in Nature Communications. Using 2,600 years’ worth of records contained in ice cores from Antarctica, Farquhar and his colleagues developed a new isotopic method to analyze the recent history of large stratospheric volcanic eruptions. By understanding the history of these big eruptions, researchers can begin to place short cooling episodes and …
A paper co-authored by ESSIC-AOSC professor Raghu Murtugudde was recently published in the July 2018 edition of Nature Sustainability. The piece, titled “Bridging barriers to advance global sustainability”, is a discussion about how academic institutions can better support society’s efforts towards global sustainability. The authors call for new structures of fostering knowledge that are integrated across disciplines and produced alongside non-academic stakeholders. The article …
An article by ESSIC/CICS-MD post-doctoral associate Xiaoxu Tian and by ESSIC/CICS-MD research professor Xiaolei Zou was recently accepted for publication in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. The piece, titled “Capturing Size and Intensity Changes of Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017) from Polar-Orbiting Satellite Microwave Radiometers”, is an analysis into the temporal evolutions of the three-dimensional thermal structures of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and …
ESSIC faculty specialist Kyle Duncan and associate research scientist Sinéad Farrell have a new article in press for the Annals of Glaciology about an interesting problem in measuring sea ice. Just as tectonic plates push up mountains where they meet, two pieces of sea ice push up snow ridges when they collide. These are called “pressure ridges” and the snow above the flat sea ice is called the “sail.” The article describes a new methodology to measure the …
ESSIC / AOSC Professor Zhanqing Li is a co-author of a new study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences titled “First surface-based estimation of the aerosol indirect effect (AIE) over a site in southeastern China.” According to Li, the use of ground-based measurements is one of the most important methodologies for both quantifying the magnitude of AIE and understanding the underlying mechanisms. The authors were the first researchers to utilize the approach in China. …
ESSIC post-doctoral associate Michael Peterson developed a virtual reality visualization of Hurricane Harvey using GOES-16 which puts the viewer on the space station looking down at the hurricane. Viewers can move their mobile phones in different directions for different views of the storm or use virtual reality equipment to immerse themselves in the visuals. You can view the animation here. …
ESSIC / GEOL Professor James Farquhar is a co-author of a newly released study published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper entitled “Biological regulation of atmospheric chemistry en route to planetary oxygenation,” explores emerging evidence that a methane-derived organic haze was a large contributing factor associated with the Great Oxidation Event. During the global scale phenomena that occurred over 2 billion years …
A new study from scientists Jungbin Mok and Zhanqing Li, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) University of Maryland, and Nickolay Krotkov, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is focusing on the impacts of brown carbon from biomass burning on ultraviolet (UV) radiation and atmospheric pollutants, which could lead to improved air quality models and help ameliorate potential health hazards such as suppression of the immune system and skin cancer. The paper is being released in
