Global warming is continuously advancing. How quickly this will happen can now be predicted more accurately than ever before, thanks to a method developed by climate researcher Gottfried Kirchengast and his team at the University of Graz. For the first time, this method enables reliable monitoring of the Paris climate goals and shows that temperatures are rising faster than expected in the latest IPCC report. Based on this, the researchers propose a four-classes assessment scale to quantitatively gauge to what degree the Paris climate goals are being met or missed. "This creates a completely new compliance assessment basis for the political and legal implementation of the agreement", says Kirchengast.

• Tracing the origin of an ultra-hot exoplanet: The chemical composition of WASP-121b suggests that it formed in a cool zone of its natal disc, comparable to the region of gas and ice giants in our Solar System.

• First detection of silicon monoxide in a planetary atmosphere: Measurements of this refractory gas allow quantifying the rocky material the planet had accumulated.

A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores.

These findings not only refine the timeline of Earth’s oxygenation but also highlight a critical evolutionary shift, where life began adapting to oxygen-rich conditions—paving the way for the emergence of complex, multicellular organisms like humans.

Earthquakes create ripple effects in Earth's upper atmosphere that can disrupt satellite communications and navigation systems we rely on. Nagoya University scientists and their collaborators have used Japan's extensive network of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers to create the first 3D images of atmospheric disturbances caused by the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Their results show sound wave disturbance patterns in unique 3D detail and provide new insights into how earthquakes generate these waves. The results were published in the journal Earth, Planets and Space.

The Satellite Observation Center of the Earth System Division of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) has been publicly providing global concentrations of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) and an air pollutant (carbon monoxide) obtained from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite-2 "Ibuki-2" (GOSAT-2, launched in October 2018).

In this study, a research team consisting of Dr. Hirofumi Ohyama (Senior Researcher), Dr. Yukio Yoshida (Senior Researcher), and Dr. Tsuneo Matsunaga (Director of the Satellite Observation Center) of the Earth System Division of the NIES developed a method to calculate the enhancement ratios among carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide concentrations in megacities, using data from GOSAT-2, the only satellite observing all three gases simultaneously. Furthermore, the team evaluated the accuracy of emission databases and estimated the methane and carbon monoxide emissions for approximately 40 cities around the world by using the calculated four-year average enhancement ratios. The results demonstrated that we could independently evaluate the values in emission databases for megacities using data from satellite observations without relying on complicated calculations of atmospheric transport. With continued observations, we anticipate that annual changes of emissions for certain cities can be captured from satellites. Furthermore, the GOSAT-GW satellite, scheduled for launch in FY2025, will be capable of observing carbon dioxide and methane at a greater number of observation points than GOSAT-2 and will also observe atmospheric concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, most of which is distributed around emission sources. These enhancements are expected to further improve the accuracy of emission estimates. The results of this study were published on 5 November 2024 in Environmental Research Letters, an academic journal in the environmental field.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle moves between warmer-than-average Pacific Ocean surface water temperatures during El Niño phases to colder-than-average surface water temperatures during La Niña phases. Scientists have observed that the surface temperatures of water in the central and eastern Pacific affect the number and strength of tropical cyclones (TCs) that develop in the North Atlantic Ocean and the probability those TCs will make landfall. Researchers recently investigated the effects of El Niño and La Niña dissipation events on and factors that contribute to TC development in the North Atlantic Ocean.