#aerosol — Public Fediverse posts

Paul Beckwith, a climate science educator, goes through James Hansen's recent warnings about a coming "Super El Niño".

This video (24:48) assumes a small amount of background in math and science, enough to read time/temperature graphs, but is generally quite accessible in its explanations. He walks through a lot of good stuff like how the El Niño / La Niña cycle works, what some of the "forcings" are that are driving some of these things, why things like aerosols matter, what different models show, what the consensus predictions have been and why Hansen's predicting something substantively stronger.

It's a pretty worrisome set of things, but Hansen has been an important voice in the climate conversation, and I think Beckwith's presentation is pretty level—trying to just walk through the information dispassionately in a way that can help you understand the science part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP3VQk3mIgQ

Note: Notwithstanding the use of em dash, this post was written by a human.

#climate #ElNiño #ElNino #SuperElNiño #SuperElNino #ClimateModels #ClimateModeling #warming #heat #GlobalWarming #aerosol #aerosols #OceanWarming #ClimateSensitivity #ClimateScience #science #co2 #IPCC #forcing #Greenhouse #JamesHansen #PaulBeckwith #video #YouTube

Transmission spectroscopy of sub-Neptunes was expected to reveal their compositions and hence origins, yet many show flat near- to mid-infrared #spectra.

Such spectra can be explained either by metal dominated #atmospheres or by high-altitude, grey #aerosols.

Observations of escaping hydrogen and helium from several of these #planets rule out metal dominated atmospheres, while homogeneous distributions of small aerosols cannot produce flat spectra and large particles require unphysically high production rates.

Alternatively, modestly optically thick clumps at high altitudes can produce flat spectra even with small particles and physically realistic production rates.

Clumping increases the effective photon mean-free path while reducing wavelength dependence, allowing the #aerosol distribution to behave as an effective grey absorber.

Clumpy aerosol distributions naturally resolve the tension between flat spectra and low-metallicity atmospheres and may be a common feature of sub-Neptune #exoplanets.

#astronomy
https://astrobiology.com/2025/11/resolving-the-flat-spectrum-conundrum-clumpy-aerosol-distributions-in-sub-neptune-atmospheres.html