Guest Author • Sep 16, 2019 •
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz I heard that carbon dioxide makes up 0.04% of the world’s atmosphere. Not 0.4% or 4%, but 0.04%! … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 13, 2018 •
Adam Crane, University of Saskatchewan and Maud Ferrari, University of Saskatchewan This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. When the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau released The Silent World, a documentary of his underwater adventures in 1953, he inspired generations of scientists to study the world’s oceans. We now know … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 09, 2018 •
Andrew Coates, UCL This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We all recognise Jupiter by its banded pattern of counter-rotating zones and belts – this can be seen even with small garden telescopes. These stunning structures are powered by fast jet streams that are visible in the planet’s clouds. But what … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 22, 2018 •
Helen Maynard-Casely, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Roughly every two years Mars and Earth wander a bit closer to each other, making the leap between these two planets a little easier. In July this year, Mars will only be about 58 million kilometres away – and NASA is set to take advantage by launching their next mission … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 22, 2017 •
New Zealand’s forests and other land areas may be absorbing up to 60% more carbon dioxide than has been calculated, with much of this uptake likely occurring in native forests. This research, revealed in February, and led by NIWA atmospheric scientists Drs Kay Steinkamp and Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, indicates that New Zealand’s forests absorb much more carbon dioxide than previously … Read More
Guest Author • Aug 02, 2017 •
By Guang Zeng, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Jason West, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Climate change is set to increase the amount of ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution we breathe, which leads to lung disease, heart conditions, and stroke. Less rain and more heat means this pollution will stay … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 19, 2016 •
A year is a short time in science but a lot happened in 2016. In the first of its Summer Series articles, NIWA highlights its top scientific endeavours of the past 12 months and reveals we know a lot more about a whole range of things than we did this time last year. MARCH – Methane culprits identified Scientists … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 29, 2016 •
By Stephen Hughes, Queensland University of Technology This title will probably come as a surprise to you. Astrophysics concerns enormous scales of space, time and energy; kitchens are relatively small, homely places. So how can there be a connection between astrophysics and the kitchen? Have you ever dropped a just-opened plastic bottle of milk or fruit juice … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 30, 2014 •
From the team at EUTMETSAT: all the weather of 2013 as seen from the world’s weather-watching satellites. It’s an HD video, so a slow download on my rural NZ treacleband internet connection, but worth every second of the wait. I strongly recommend clicking the full screen button (bottom right corner), and multiple viewings. Fascinating, with […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Dec 20, 2013 •
This is just brilliant: click on the image to see an animation of atmospheric flows around the planet, coded by Cameron Beccario, using forecast data from NOAA1. It’s mesmerising and addictive, but educational and informative too. Click on the “earth” on the bottom left of the web page, and a menu pops up that allows […] … Read More