Atmospheric Science

Remembering Yesterday, Understanding Today, Anticipating Tomorrow

- Overview

Our world is changing at an accelerating rate. The global human population has grown from 6.1 billion to 7.1 billion in the last 15 years and is projected to reach 11.2 billion by the end of the century. The distribution of humans across the globe has also shifted, with more than 50 percent of the global population now living in urban areas, compared to 29 percent in 1950. 

Along with these trends, increasing energy demands, expanding industrial activities, and intensification of agricultural activities worldwide have in turn led to changes in emissions that have altered the composition of the atmosphere. Atmospheric Science focuses on the whole domain of research related to the physics, dynamics, and chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere, including both basic and applied research. 

The main branches of Atmospheric Science are: 

• Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: It involves the study of air motions that lead to thunderstorms, frontal systems, hurricanes and tornadoes. 
• Atmospheric Physics: It applies principles of physics to study atmospheric processes such as cloud formation, light scattering and energy transfer. 
• Atmospheric Chemistry: It applies principles of chemistry to study atmospheric processes such as air pollution, ozone depletion, and aerosol formation. 
• Climate Science: it studies changes in the statistics of weather from seasons to millennia and longer, addressing phenomena as such as El Niño, global warming, and the ice ages.

The EITA focuses more on the following fields, among others: quantitative and deductive aspects of the physics, dynamics, and chemistry of the atmosphere, applied research related to satellite meteorology, radar meteorology, boundary layer processes, air pollution and its relationship with climate, agricultural and forest meteorology, and applied numerical meteorological models. 

- Climate Engineering (Climate Geoengineering)

Climate engineering or geoengineering in general is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system. The main category of climate engineering is solar geoengineering or solar radiation management. Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification, reflects some sunlight (solar radiation) back into space to limit or reverse human-caused climate change.

[More to come ...]