ATOC in the News

Cloud seeding—sowing clouds with small particles to make them rain or snow—has a reputation as dodgy as the weather. That’s because even though scientists have been seeding clouds since the 1940s, there was precious little proof the technique worked. Now, researchers flying two small planes through a bank of clouds in Idaho have shown, for the first time outside the lab, that humans can artificially turbocharge snowfall.

For the first time, scientists have obtained direct, quantifiable observations of cloud seeding for increased snowfall -- from the growth of ice crystals, through the processes that occur in clouds, to the eventual snowfall.

Congratulations to ATOC Professor Peter Pilewskie on being inducted as a 2018 fellow of the American Meteorological Society. Peter‘s lifelong dedication to delivering outstanding science and his outstanding representation of LASP and the University of Colorado Boulder is recognized in this honor.

Congratulations to ATOC graduate student Joshua Pettit who received a student presentation award from the Space Weather Science and Technical Activities Commission at this week’s AMS meeting. He gave an oral presentation entitled, “Comparison of two medium energy electron data sets in WACCM”.

In the next century, wind resources may decrease in many regions of the Northern Hemisphere and could sharply increase in some hotspot regions down south, according to a study by University of Colorado Boulder researchers. The first-of-its-kind study predicting how global wind power may shift with climate change appears today in Nature Geoscience.

Consumers in Boulder are highly susceptible to "local food" marketing, but recent natural disasters should warrant more gratitude this Thanksgiving for remotely-sourced food.

Sho-Air TWENTY20 Cycling announces the signing of Margot Clyne (USA), the reigning 2017 USA National Champion - Hill Climb and a two-time Colorado State Champion. Now a first year PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, she is working to improve on how the impacts of volcanic eruptions are simulated by climate earth system models. In addition to cycling, her dream is to contribute results to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a career research scientist.

New research published on Monday finds there is so much wind energy potential over oceans that it could theoretically be used to generate “civilization scale power” — assuming, that is, that we are willing to cover enormous stretches of the sea with turbines, and can come up with ways to install and maintain them in often extreme ocean environments.

This peer-reviewed educational video explains human-caused climate change including the greenhouse effect. It is aimed at an undergraduate non-science major level. The video was produced by a team of CIRES scientists in collaboration with CIRES Education and Outreach.

This <5 minute video describes sea ice and land ice processes that are unique to polar regions. Key take-home messages: Melting land ice raises sea level and is irreversible on human timescales. Melting sea ice does not raise sea level and is reversible on human timescales.