Seventeen high school students from southern Colorado and New Mexico journeyed to CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder recently to
News
Persistent Plume
August 08, 2019
Thunderstorms generated by a group of giant wildfires in 2017 injected a small volcano’s worth of aerosol into the stratosphere, creating a smoke plume that lasted for almost nine months. CIRES and NOAA researchers studying the plume found that black carbon or soot in the smoke was key to the plume’s rapid rise: the soot absorbed solar radiation, heating the surrounding air and allowing the plume to quickly rise.
The billowing smoke clouds provided researchers with an ideal opportunity to test climate models that estimate how long the particulate cloud would persist—after achieving a maximum altitude of 23 km, the smoke plume remained in the stratosphere for many months. These models are also important in understanding the climate effects of nuclear war or geoengineering.
New NOAA App Brings Earth and Space Animations to Your Phone
August 05, 2019
An enormous earthquake triggered a tsunami on the northwest coast of the United States in 1700. The giant wave rippled across the ocean, bounced back and forth off islands, and flooded coastlines around the Pacific to different heights. The astonishing patterns of waves reflecting and refracting across the vast basin are almost too complex to visualize. But now a new free app can bring the power of this ancient earthquake to life on your smartphone. NOAA's SOS Explorer™ Mobile, an app for personal mobile devices, tells earth science stories by playing visually stunning movies on a virtual globe.
