Atmosphere news, articles and features | ��è��Ƶ

Why El Niño’s impacts on the UK are hard to predict

Alec Luhn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:00:49 +0000

A planet-warming El Niño climate phase has begun, but while the phenomenon can influence Europe's weather through long-distance atmospheric teleconnections, the effects are often uncertain

‘Forgotten’ pollutants cause 15 per cent of global warming

Alec Luhn — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:00:16 +0000

So-called indirect greenhouse gases, including carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds, aren’t covered by climate policies even though they heat the planet

El Niño has started and the weather could get weird

Alec Luhn — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:38:04 +0000

Extreme weather caused by El Niño can include major flooding

Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

El Niño has officially begun, and it’s more likely than not that it will develop into a “super” El Niño. Either way, it will amplify temperatures and extreme weather around the world.

El Niño is a natural climate phase that occurs when east-to-west winds weaken in the tropical Pacific, allowing water concentrated in the “warm pool” on the western side of the Pacific to wash back towards the eastern side. This broad smear of warm water heats the atmosphere, raising the global temperature.

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Cuts to US ocean programme will hinder monitoring of El Niño and AMOC

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has now declared the onset of El Niño because sea surface temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific have been more than 0.5°C above normal for the past month, and climate models project they will remain there for at least the next six months. The Japan Meteorological Agency has also declared that El Niño has begun.

“We are seeing westerly wind anomalies from the dateline almost all the way to about 130° west, so basically the entire area south of Hawaii,” says at NOAA’s National Weather Service. “What that means is significantly reduced trade winds there, so it’s allowing the atmosphere and the ocean to slosh to the east and bring that warm water with it.”

NOAA also said there is a 63 per cent chance this El Niño will become a very strong or “super” El Niño, when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific breach 2°C above average. It could be the hottest El Niño ever seen.

“This latest El Niño is likely to be a significant event, perhaps one of the most intense on record,” said at the Met Office, the UK’s weather service, in a statement.

Out of 200 model simulations, none show sea surface temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific going back below 1°C above normal this year once El Niño gets going, according Rosencrans. Several models project sea surface temperatures could reach 2.6°C higher than usual, and one Canadian model says they could even hit 3°C, which would smash the 2.5°C record set during the super El Niño of 1982-83. During that event, flooding killed an 1300 to 2000 people in Peru.

Temperatures will likely peak by the end of the year and simmer well into 2027. This rush of heat comes on top of global warming of 1.36°C, leading scientists to predict that next year will be the hottest ever observed. The boost in temperatures will worsen extreme weather, since a warmer atmosphere holds more energy and moisture. El Niño also tends to bring abnormally wet or dry weather to different regions.

“What it does is change the odds of those rainfalls��or heatwaves or cold snaps happening in certain places,” says Rosencrans. “The atmosphere [is] throwing loaded dice in a way, so you’re more likely to get rainfall in southern California, you’re more likely to get drying in the maritime continent, and potentially even into India [and] the northern parts of Australia.”

The southern US is more likely to see reduced rainfall this summer, followed by cool, wet, stormy weather this winter, with cold snaps possible as far south as Mexico. South-East Asia and south-east Africa could face heat and drought this summer and winter, raising the risk of wildfires.

El Niño can tend to bring colder winters to the UK, but it can also bring warmer, wetter conditions, said independent climate scientist at a briefing. Many other climate factors affect Europe, meaning El Niño impacts are less certain. “It tends to change the storm tracks, and you often get these warmer, wetter conditions,” says Gilbert. “In the past, for the UK, you’ve seen more storm incidents than otherwise… but the direct connection in the UK is less obvious than in the US or Australia.”

How climate change has pushed our oceans to the brink of catastrophe

For decades, the oceans have absorbed much of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases. The latest observations suggest they are reaching their limits, so how worried should we be?

Heat or drought could impact commodities like rice, coffee and chocolate, and disrupt food supplies around the world. If rice yields decline, India – a major producer – could limit exports and cause rice to become scarcer and more expensive in other countries, says at the University of Maryland.

“The impacts… ripple through the food system,” he says. “We think about a commodity like rice, which is important for food security for many people, and we do have concerns about potential monsoon deficits leading to lower rice production.”

El Niño may be getting more frequent, and global warming will regardless exacerbate its consequences, which could compound issues like migration, says at the University of Oxford. “We need long-term preparedness and planning as we continue with climate change and we also continue with El Niño amplifying that.”

Route-planning AI cut climate-warming contrails on over 100 flights

Alex Wilkins — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:41:51 +0000

A weather-forecasting AI was used to recommend routes for American Airlines flights between the US and Europe to reduce the formation of contrails, which contribute to global warming

Did a cloud-seeding start-up really increase snowfall in part of Utah?

Alec Luhn — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 19:00:33 +0000

A technology that uses a coiled wire to electrify aerosols has boosted snowfall amid a drought in the western US, according to the company developing it, but the results haven't convinced other scientists

The audacious quest to light up the sky with artificial auroras

Graham Lawton — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:00:14 +0000

How a Finnish physicist named Karl Lemström once became obsessed with recreating the aurora borealis from scratch – and may have ended up creating something even more intriguing

Tiny discs can levitate in the upper atmosphere using sunlight alone

Jeremy Hsu — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:00:22 +0000

An illustration of solar-powered levitating discs

Schafer et al. Nature

Fingernail-size discs that levitate in sunlight could someday carry sensors through some of the thinnest and coldest reaches of the atmosphere. By flying higher than commercial aircraft or weather balloons can, such swarms could reveal new insights about Earth’s changing weather and climate patterns. The levitating devices harness a phenomenon called photophoresis. It was first discovered more than 150 years ago when chemist William Crookes invented the radiometer, a device with black and white vanes that spin when exposed to sunlight. This happens because the vanes absorb the light and give off heat, and this heat boosts the momentum of gas molecules around them. Because the black sides of the vanes are hotter than the white ones, they transfer more momentum to the gas, making the air flow in one direction with enough force to turn the vanes.

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Solar drone with wingspan wider than jumbo jet could fly for months

“We’ve taken this obscure piece of physics and applied it to something that could actually impact a lot of people – and help us better understand how things like weather and climate are evolving over time,” says at Harvard University. To develop the levitating discs, Schafer and his colleagues created a 1-centimetre-wide device made of two aluminium oxide sheets full of micro-scale holes. When exposed to light, the bottom sheet – which included alternating layers of chromium with the aluminium oxide – heated up more than the top sheet, like the black sides of a radiometer’s vanes. This also created a directional airflow, but moving upward instead of sideways. Under white LEDs and laser light – set to intensities equivalent to about 50 per cent of natural sunlight – this lifting force levitated the device. That is an improvement on other solar-powered fliers, which require light intensities several times brighter than sunlight. But the demonstration also took place in laboratory conditions with air pressure several thousand times weaker than that at Earth’s surface. Fortunately, those low air pressure conditions are common elsewhere – like the mesosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere that extends 50 to 85 kilometres above the planet. The researchers say scaling up their discs to 3 centimetres would let them carry 10 milligrams of payload at an altitude of 75 kilometres, bringing sensors to a region so difficult to study it has been nicknamed the “ignorosphere”. Schafer co-founded the startup Rarefied Technologies to commercialise swarms of such high-flying devices for atmospheric monitoring and telecommunications. After the sun sets, computer modelling suggests the discs could stay airborne by harnessing heat radiating from Earth’s surface. “If you can stay aloft at night, that’s a big change from just settling or falling,” says at the University of Pennsylvania, whose lab is doing similar research.

Journal reference

Nature

A stunning, star-studded view of Earth

Legacy content author — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This incredible image, featuring flashing Starlink satellites and Earth's glowing atmosphere, was captured over the Pacific Ocean by NASA astronaut Don Pettit

Astronomers found a completely new type of plasma wave near Jupiter

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:00:11 +0000

Observations from NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveal that Jupiter’s strong magnetic field and the unique properties of its plasma can produce a truly novel kind of extraterrestrial wave near its poles

Could reusable rockets make solar geoengineering less risky?

James Dinneen — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:30:50 +0000

Injecting aerosols into the atmosphere – but at higher altitudes than planes can reach – could cool the climate while avoiding some of the downsides of lower-altitude solar geoengineering

Atmosphere news, articles and features | ��è����Ƶ