Earth's beautiful glow Teaching undergrad spectroscopy was much about theory, with a bit of lab practical, and little on critical applications. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) were covered in terms of line densities, atmospheric residence times and global warming potential (GWP), but no depth of analysis of radiative forcing, the key driver of warming and climate change. Shame on me! So here goes with the recipe for turning those age old infrared (IR) transmission spectra of CO 2 (c

The aerosol layer: courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center STS043-22-12 [1] Aerosols have had a PR problem in the past, but in the right place aerosols play a critical role in regulating the climate. Some of us remember a time when aerosol deodorant became an envrinmental nasty and roll-ons were the new norm. In this case, the change was less about the aerosol, and more about the propellent pushing the spray from the can. CFC (chlorofl

The climate pendulum As a first play with python on a mobile app, I was impressed by the seemless install, ease of coding, excution and neat graphical interface. Coding the dynamics of the double pendulum as an example to test imports of integration and graphing modules, it was apparent the coupled system provides a good analogue for the climate "chaos" (sorry, "transition" for a less dramatic take) that may follow the tipping points that are now talked about as part of the c

Footprints of the world wide web So the quick dive into shedding light on the dark "slide" (eek) of the webpage in pt I, becomes a full on jump down a rabbit hole in pt 11, to look at the footprint of all the magic that brings the page to the screen. Again excuse the title, paraphrased from Batman's line in Lego Movie and less relevant here, but it connects the posts and i'm all out of puns for now. There's a whole bunch of analyses of the energy demand and carbon emissions

Footprint of screen modes and page themes Quick thoughts on the design of this website. What are the energy footprints of the components that make and deliver the webpage. It's by no means an exhaustive analysis, but food for thought and perhpas timely as AI (guilty pleasure left) goes mainstream. Excuse the title, paraphrased from Batman's line in Lego Movie, but it highlights one aspect to start; the screens through which we see the world (wide web). Even a shallow dive rev