Stories & Discoveries

In 2018, in the Indian state of Kerala, more than 400 people died in a single series of floods that displaced millions. Flooding is a regular feature of the yearly monsoon season in tropical Asia, but until now it has been difficult to predict how and when the normally heavy monsoon rainfall would ratchet up into a nightmare event of severe flooding. New research by a Weizmann Institute of Science research group may broaden the forecast window by pointing to an event – surprisingly, the arrival of dry air – that may presage extra-strong rains.

Dust storms are not only a nuisance for anyone trying to keep their house spick and span, they also pose a very real health hazard and are a major ecological concern. Respiratory problems caused by breathing in dust and other airborne particles are one of the main causes of death worldwide. To make matters even worse, dust particles, which travel freely from country to country and from continent to continent, can spread pathogens, possibly contributing to the outbreak of pandemics.

In the tropics, above the equatorial rainforests and oceans, the strong solar radiation hitting Earth propels a stream of warm, moist air far upward. Once reaching the upper atmosphere, this stream moves in both hemispheres toward the poles; it then descends in the subtropical regions at around 20 to 30 degrees latitude, contributing to the creation of massive deserts like the Sahara in northern Africa. From there, the stream – known as the Hadley cell – returns to the equator, where it heats up and rises again, embarking on its circular journey anew.

The journey to Jupiter has begun. The European Space Agency’s unmanned spacecraft JUICE (short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) was recently launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. JUICE’s voyage, the ESA’s most ambitious mission to date, will be particularly lengthy: Upon reaching Jupiter’s orbit by 2031, it will embark on a four-year mission to investigate three of Jupiter’s moons – Callisto, Europa and Ganymede – as well as the composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Because of their minute size, microorganisms travel the world effortlessly. Winds transport them, perched on specs of dust and other airborne particles, across continents and oceans. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and elsewhere have documented this movement consistently through gene sequencing of samples extracted from air.

When looking at the Earth from space, its hemispheres – northern and southern – appear equally bright. This is particularly unexpected because the Southern Hemisphere is mostly covered with dark oceans, whereas the Northern Hemisphere has a vast land area that is much brighter than these oceans. For years, the brightness symmetry between hemispheres remained a mystery.

About 30 massive, intricate computer networks serve the scientists who stand at the forefront of climate change research. Each network runs a software program comprised of millions of lines of code. These programs are computational models that combine the myriads of physical, chemical and biological phenomena that together form the climate of our planet. The models calculate the state of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and ice, capturing past and present climate variability and using the data to predict future climate change.

Even the smallest organism can have a major influence on the evolution of life on Earth. Microscopic algae that inhabit the sunlit waters of the ocean surface are not only responsible for about half of the photosynthesis on the planet but are also valuable as a nutrient-rich food source sustaining the entire marine ecosystem. In their recently published study, Prof. Itay Halevy and Dr.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is up there with the rings of Saturn and the blue marble of Earth for solar system icon status. In a study published today in Science, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers and their collaborators on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter report that this spot – really a giant, persistent storm – extends to a depth of about 500 kilometers below the planet’s clouds.

Until recently, before NASA’s Juno space probe entered its orbit around the planet Jupiter, no one knew that powerful cyclones, approximately the size of Australia, rage across its polar regions. Jupiter's storms, as opposed to their earthly variety, do not disperse, hardly change, and are clearly not associated with flying rooftops and damp weather reporters.

It’s not just how hot the fires burn – it’s also where they burn that matters. During the recent extreme fire season in Australia, which began in 2019 and burned into 2020, millions of tons of smoke particles were released into the atmosphere. Most of those particles followed a typical pattern, settling to the ground after a day or week; yet the ones created in fires burning in one corner of the country managed to blanket the entire Southern hemisphere for months.

As the plastic in our oceans breaks up into smaller and smaller bits without breaking down chemically, the resulting microplastics are becoming a serious ecological problem. A new study at the Weizmann Institute of Science reveals a troubling aspect of microplastics – defined as particles smaller than 5 mm across. They are swept up into the atmosphere and carried on the wind to far-flung parts of the ocean, including those that appear to be clear.

Clouds: We see them as objects with clear-cut shapes and outlines. The satellites that collect cloud data and the climate models built on this data work on this supposition as well. But the line between “cloudy” and “clear” is much hazier than we think.

If humans are to establish any sort of settlement on the Moon, they might do so near one of its poles, where its meager supply of water is stored in the form of ice. That ice has been detected in difficult-to-reach spots: at the bottoms of large, deep craters, down where sunshine cannot reach and temperatures remain below -160^o Centigrade.

The history of our planet has been written, among other things, in the periodic reversal of its magnetic poles. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science propose a new means of reading this historic record: in ice.

If life does exist outside of Earth in our Solar System, it could be hiding in subterranean oceans flowing under the surface of icy moons. One of the most promising candidates for such an underground liquid body is Triton – aptly named for the son of the sea god Neptune – the planet around which it orbits.

Geoscientists studying the conditions prevailing in Earth’s earliest oceans have been in disagreement for the past half century. Some, working backwards, think the first ocean was extremely hot – at least 70˚ Celsius – while others believe it was closer to the 15˚C we enjoy today.

The 2019 Israel Prize for Earth Sciences will go to Prof. Dan Yakir of the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Prize committee chose Prof.

The main scientific instrument on board the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft, the SpaceIL Magnetometer (SILMAG), has now been successfully turned on in space and data returned to Earth. After its successful launch, Beresheet is circling Earth on its journey to the Moon. Prof.

Antifreeze is life’s means of surviving in cold winters: Natural antifreeze proteins help fish, insects, plants and even bacteria live through low temperatures that should turn their liquid parts to deadly shards of ice. Strangely enough, in very cold conditions, the same proteins can also promote the growth of ice crystals. This was the finding of experiments carried out in Israel and Germany using proteins taken from fish and beetles.

Cassini was one of the more successful planetary missions, orbiting and returning information on Saturn and its moons for the last 20 years. But as the mission was approaching its end, it was decided to end its life with a non-circular orbit swinging in very close to the planet, followed by a final plunge into the gaseous mass. Kaspi and Galanti joined the Cassini team following their work as part of NASA’s Juno science team, which had employed a similar orbit to produce the most reliable measurements yet of Jupiter’s atmospheric depth.

Ten satellites, each around the size of a shoebox, are slated in a few years to enter orbit and begin filling in some gaping holes in our understanding of clouds and their role in climate. Inspired by medical CT (computed tomography), which observes and maps the interior of a patient, the designers are creating a system that will reveal detailed images of clouds‘ external and internal 3D structures and properties.

When microscopic plankton in the oceans catch a virus, the forecast might be rain. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science finds that as plankton die off from viral infection, some of the bits and pieces they leave behind are released into the atmosphere, where they can affect cloud formation and reduce the sun’s glare.

A blood moon will be visible this Friday night, July 27, 2018, during a stunning, relatively rare, occurrence of a total lunar eclipse, when the Sun, Earth and Moon will be completely aligned, resulting in Earth casting a shadow on the lunar surface. This will be the longest lunar eclipse of this century. 

Three papers published tomorrow in Nature answer a question that scientists have been asking ever since Galileo first observed the famous stripes of Jupiter: Are the colorful bands just a pretty surface phenomenon, or are they a significant stratum of the planet? The Weizmann Institute’s Prof.

We plant forests today because they are “carbon sinks” − they can offset rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. But not all forests are equal when it comes to cooling the planet, and it has not always been clear where new forests can do the most good in the shortest amount of time. The results of a new study in the group of Prof.

Neptune has one of the most peculiar assortments of moons in our solar system, and Triton is largely to blame. Triton is unusually massive compared to the other Neptunian satellites; but this is not the only characteristic that makes it an outlier. Not only does Triton orbit much farther away from Neptune than its other, smaller moons, it also spins in the opposite direction to the planet.

Under global climate change, the Earth’s climatic zones will shift toward the poles. This is not just a future prediction; it is a trend that has already been observed in the past decades. The dry, semi-arid regions are expanding into higher latitudes, and temperate, rainy regions are migrating poleward.

Credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran
 

They produce around half the oxygen we breathe and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as forming the base of the ocean’s food chain. So it’s no wonder that the single-celled organisms called phytoplankton are a hot topic of research: Their health is essential for the health of the planet.