Encircling Antarctica, the Southern Ocean is a strange and beautiful place. Full of penguins, icebergs, giant squids, and beset by intense storms, even its clouds are brighter—really. It helps explain why Bob Rauber and Sonia Lasher-Trapp, professors of atmospheric sciences, were recently flying over the area in a research plane. The Southern...

Last month, the Midwest experienced record-breaking cold temperatures and many are wondering how, when the climate is experiencing an unprecedented warming trend, we can still experience such frigid cold. News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian asked University of Illinois atmospheric sciences professor ...

Scientists know a lot about weather. However, there is still one aspect that isn’t totally understood: the initiation and development of thunderstorms. That’s why atmospheric scientists at Illinois are soon heading to a small, geographical area in western Argentina to study what are considered the most intense thunderstorms on the planet. Illinois is leading the $30 million ...

Now and then a science story comes along that challenges what you’ve been told since you were a kid. This is one of them. For starters, water doesn’t necessarily freeze below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s been recorded in liquid form in clouds as cold as 22 degrees below zero. This scientific phenomenon is more than a rebuttal to popular belief—it’s the basis for a research effort underway by...

MARCH 10, 2023 BY ISABELLA ZARATE  | LAS  “Exhausting, hard work, and muddy,” are the words atmospheric sciences graduate student Leanne Blind-Doskocil uses to describe the Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS) campaign. “But so worthwhile,” Blind-Doskocil added, recently.  Imagine one day...

DEC 6, 2022 BY LOIS YOKSOULIAN  | PHYSICAL SCIENCES EDITOR An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth’s oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Prof. Atul Jain has once again been recognized as one of the world’s most influential scientists. See the story here to learn more about the 2022 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list.

Prof. Deanna Hence has been named a Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professor (LEAP) Scholar within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. This distinguished award recognize’s Prof. Hence’s significant achievements and outstanding future potential as a faculty member at Illinois.  A full description of the awards program and other awardees can be found...

(Argonne National Laboratory and College of LAS, 9/8/2022)  The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and a team of academic and community leaders—including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—$25 million over five years to advance urban climate science by studying climate change effects at local and regional scales. The results of this new...

During cloud processes, aerosol particles undergo physical and chemical changes. In this work by Dr. Yu Yao, and Professor Nicole Riemer, a particle-resolved model was used to quantify the changes in aerosol mixing states. They linked the particle-resolved aerosol model PartMC-MOSAIC with the cloud chemistry module CAPRAM 2.4 and designed cloud simulations that simulated several cloud cycles to...

Balloon launches are typically the stuff of birthday parties and photo opps unless you’re an atmospheric scientist trying to gather storm data in tandem with NASA research planes navigating their way through giant blizzards. Then they require a bit of creativity and determination. That was a job requirement in late January for graduate students Andrew Janiszeski (MS, ’20; ...

This March and April, University of Illinois Atmospheric Sciences faculty will lead a multi-institutional team of researchers to study tornadoes and other severe weather in the southeast US. The project is called PERiLS, which stands for Propagation Evolution and Rotation in Linear Storms, and will be based in Memphis, Tennessee, near an understudied...

In a study recently published in the journal Atmosphere, ATMS graduate student Lina Rivelli-Zea leveraged disdrometer data collection in the Americas to compare the drop-size distributions and parameters across field campaigns for the first time. Prof. Steve Nesbitt and graduate student Alfonso Ladino Rincon contributed to this study. The data were collected at two sites in the...

SEP 13, 2021 10:00 AM BY LOIS YOKSOULIAN  | PHYSICAL SCIENCES EDITOR  A new, location-specific agricultural greenhouse gas emission study is the first to account for net carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from all subsectors related to food production and consumption. The work, led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign atmospheric...

  CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Bangladesh is on track to lose all of its forestland in the next 35-40 years, leading to a rise in CO2 emissions and subsequent climate change, researchers said. However, that is just one of the significant land-use changes that the country is experiencing. A new study uses satellite and census data to quantify and unravel how physical and economic factors drive land-use...