Climate Change

A team of researchers from ETH Zurich has used simulations on the CSCS supercomputer "Piz Daint" to investigate how ageing mechanisms of soot particles in the atmosphere affect cloud formation. The results show that the influence of ozone and sulfuric acid on soot ageing alters cloud formation and, ultimately, the climate.

A team of researchers from Empa and Imperial College London developed drones that can attach sensors to trees to monitor environmental and ecological changes in forests.

Over the past two thousand years, volcanoes have played a larger role in natural temperature variability than previously thought, shows research with participation of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL. Their climatic effects may have contributed to past societal and economic change.

An international team of scientists from EPFL, the Paul Scherrer Institute and Stockholm University has identified a novel driver of new aerosol particle formation in the Arctic during the summer to fall transition. The authors show that iodic acid is important for forming new particles which subsequently influence the formation of clouds and their radiative effect over the Arctic pack ice.

Summer series: A calling for research. Initially, the dynamic, Danish-born Anders Meibom, a professor at EPFL’s Laboratory for Biological Geochemistry since 2012, was not the slightest bit interested in corals. Now he studies them, a loaf of homemade bread always close at hand.