Monthly Archives: May 2017

Reducing climate change from aviation: could climate-friendly routing play a part?

By Emma Irvine It’s commonly known that burning fossil fuels, like in jet engines, leads to the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) which causes global warming. It is perhaps less well known that, particularly in the case of aviation, carbon … Continue reading

Posted in Atmospheric chemistry, aviation, Climate, Weather forecasting | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Why has there been a rapid increase in heat-related extremes in Western Europe since the mid-1990s?

By Buwen Dong In the last few decades, Europe has warmed not only faster than the global average, but also faster than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases (van Oldenborgh et al., 2009). With the warming, Europe experienced record-breaking heat … Continue reading

Posted in Aerosols, Atmospheric chemistry, Climate, Climate change, Climate modelling, Environmental hazards, Numerical modelling | Leave a comment

The physics behind a physics scheme

By Alan Grant When I joined the Met Office (or, as it was then, The Meteorological Office), I was posted to the boundary layer group. I spent a number of years investigating the atmospheric boundary layer, using data from aircraft … Continue reading

Posted in Boundary layer, Environmental physics, Numerical modelling, Oceans, Waves | Leave a comment

Changing wet and dry seasons

By Richard Allan The fickle nature of weather patterns is ultimately responsible for the where and when of tropical rainfall extremes which wreak damage on agriculture, infrastructure and people. Tropical cyclones, such as Enawo which battered Madagascar in March, can … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Climate change, Climate modelling, Numerical modelling | Tagged | Leave a comment

Potential links between Arctic sea ice loss and mid-latitude weather: revisiting an influential earlier study

by Len Shaffrey The Arctic is changing rapidly due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Arctic sea ice extent has been declining by 12% per decade since reliable satellite estimates began in 1979. By summer 2012, Arctic sea ice extent … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Climate change, Cryosphere, Polar | Tagged | Leave a comment