vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Aerosols: Tiny Particles, Big Impact
Where ship exhaust mixed with the cloud layer, droplets became much smaller. (NASA image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, based on data from MODIS.)

Aerosols also have complex effects on clouds and precipitation. Broadly speaking, aerosols are thought to suppress precipitation because the particles decrease the size of water droplets in clouds. However, under some environmental conditions, aerosols can lead to taller clouds that are more likely to produce lightning and strong downpours. In a few places, meteorologists have even detected a cycle in which the frequency of thunderstorms is connected to mid-week peaks in aerosol emissions.
Aerosol type plays an important role in determining how aerosols affect clouds. Whereas reflective aerosols tend to brighten clouds and make them last longer, the black carbon from soot can have the opposite effect. Studies of pollution over the Indian Ocean and biomass burning smoke in the Amazon have shown that the black carbon warms the surrounding atmosphere and can cause cloud droplets to evaporate. This process, called the “semi-direct effect,” turns clouds into a smoky haze that suppresses precipitation.

Interactions between smoke and clouds are complex. In some cases, smoke and other aerosols help cloud formation. In others, smoke suppresses clouds. Both effects are apparent in this natural-color satellite image of the Brazilian Amazon, acquired on August 31, 2010. (NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response.)

Current estimates suggest the cooling driven by aerosol indirect effects is less than half as much as the warming caused by greenhouse gases when averaged over the globe. But these indirect effects are highly uncertain and vary considerably in space and time. Therefore, on smaller space and time scales, the climate effects of aerosols can be significant.
The details of aerosol indirect effects are only partially understood, as most instruments cannot measure aerosols within clouds. Climatologists consider the role of clouds to be the largest single uncertainty in climate prediction. Less than a third of the models participating in the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included indirect aerosol effects, even in a very limited way, and those considered only sulfate aerosols.

Measuring Aerosols
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HW: I have used MOPITT CO data to follow the global transport of pollution from major urban areas and from large fires. We also use MOPITT data to estimate the sources and strengths of CO emissions.
Recently, I have been using MOPITT data, along with a regional model for weather and chemistry (WRF-Chem) to quantify the reduction in CO emissions due to the traffic restrictions that were imposed during the Beijing 2008 Olympics to improve air quality. Because we know the ratio of CO to CO2 for emissions from fossil fuels in China, we can also estimate the reduction in CO2 for the Beijing Olympics.
You study carbon dioxide (CO2) as well, which is also a trace carbon gas that exists in the lower atmosphere.  Can you explain how it’s different from CO?
HW: CO and CO2 are both emitted from burning fossil fuels and wildfires, but CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas and also has a much longer lifetime in the atmosphere (hundreds of years) compared to CO (less than a few months).
What roles do CO play in the Earth System Science?
HW: CO is a pollutant near the surface, but at normal levels, around 100 ppb (parts per billion), CO is not harmful. (CO is deadly at concentrations larger than 400 parts per million).
Although CO itself does not have a significant greenhouse effect, it converts chemically to ozone, methane and carbon dioxide, which are major greenhouse gases. So, the emissions of CO are considered important to climate change.
Since it has a medium lifetime in the atmosphere (longer than a day, but not more than a few months), CO can be used to track pollution events and how they are transported across the globe. These events, such as large fires, have higher concentrations of CO that are easily measured over atmospheric background levels.
Are efforts to decrease CO emissions working?
HW: Yes, especially with the improved emissions in newer cars.
Finally, what you do is very technical”¦, what inspired you to go into this field?
HW: Understanding our atmosphere is very challenging, but necessary if we want to make informed decisions for our future.
World Of Change
World of Change: Antarctic Sea Ice
Ice has more room to expand around the continent in winter. But it also stretches into warmer latitudes, leading to more melting in summer.

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Updated Apr 28, 2021
World of Change: Arctic Sea Ice
Several record-setting summer lows, combined with poor wintertime recoveries, have fueled a persistent decline over the past few decades.

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Updated Mar 23, 2021
World of Change: Yellow River Delta
Once free to wander up and down the coast of the North China Plain, the Yellow River Delta has been shaped by levees, canals, and jetties in recent decades.

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Updated Sep 15, 2020
World of Change: Coastline Change
The shoreline of Cape Cod provides a visual case study in the evolution and dynamic motion of barrier islands and spits.

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World of Change: Sprawling Shanghai
If you could go back in time to the 1980s, you would find a city that is drastically different than today’s Shanghai.

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Updated Oct 19, 2019
World of Change: Antarctic Ozone Hole
In the early 1980s, scientists began to realize that CFCs were creating a thin spot—a hole—in the ozone layer over Antarctica every spring. This series of satellite images shows the ozone hole on the day of its maximum depth each year from 1979 through 2019.

Atmosphere

Updated Aug 29, 2019
World of Change: Columbia Glacier, Alaska
Since 1980, the volume of this glacier that spills into the Prince William Sound has shrunk by half. Climate change may have nudged the process along, but mechanical forces have played the largest role in the ice loss.

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Updated Jul 24, 2019
World of Change: Burn Recovery in Yellowstone
In 1988, wildfires raced through Yellowstone National Park, consuming hundreds of thousands of acres. This series of Landsat images tracks the landscape’s slow recovery through 2019.

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Updated Nov 7, 2018
World of Change: Shrinking Aral Sea
A massive irrigation project has devastated the Aral Sea over the past 50 years.
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Earth Matters
Within a week after a puzzler image appears on this blog, we will post an annotated and captioned version as our Image of the Day. After we post the answer, we will acknowledge the first person to correctly identify the image at the bottom of this blog post. We also may recognize readers who offer the most interesting tidbits of information. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for or attend an institution that you would like to recognize, please mention that as well.
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Eclipse Challenge: Clouds and Our Solar-Powered Earth
March 6th, 2024 by Marilé Colón Robles and Ashlee Autore, NASA's Langley Research Center

Energy from the Sun warms our planet, and changes in sunlight can also cause changes in temperature, clouds, and wind. Clouds are ever changing and give you clues and information on what is happening in the atmosphere. Clouds can tell you if air is moving vertically (or upward) when you see cumulus type clouds growing in the distance. Clouds can also tell you which direction the wind is blowing when you see clouds move at different levels in the atmosphere. They can even tell you how much moisture or water vapor is available just by the presence of clouds, especially by the presence of high cirrus clouds.
This diagram illustrates the different processes in the atmosphere that are driven by the heat of the Sun: warm air rising and cooling and then forming clouds, and wind changing due to changes in air temperature.
Let’s look at the process by which clouds form.
Clouds form when air cools and water vapor condenses. There are four ways that cause air to rise in our atmosphere, which is necessary to initiate the formation of a cloud.
1) Convection
This process starts when the Sun warms the surface of the Earth.
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