Milton Keynes UK (SPX) Jul 23, 2021
A dust storm that engulfed the entire Red Planet in 2018 destroyed a vortex of cold air around the Martian south pole and brought an early spring to the hemisphere. By contrast, the storm caused only minor distortions to the polar vortex in the northern hemisphere and no dramatic seasonal changes. Dr Paul Streeter of The Open University's Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathemati

London UK (SPX) Jul 23, 2021
A team at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London is paving the way for future rovers to search for meteorites on Mars. The scientists are using the NHM's extensive meteorite collection to test the spectral instruments destined for the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin, and develop tools to identify meteorites on the surface of the red planet. The project is being presented today (23 July) at the

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 22, 2021
Astronomers have for the first time imaged a moon-forming disk around an exoplanet. Scientists expect the discovery - made using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array and detailed Thursday in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters - to aid the study of planet and moon formation in young solar systems. "Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satelli

Moscow (AFP) July 22, 2021
The Avangard, the Kinzhal and now the Zircon - Russia is leading the race to develop a range of new hypersonic weapons that President Vladimir Putin has dubbed "invincible". Moscow's latest step came this week with another successful test of the Zircon, a ship-launched hypersonic missile. Fired from one of Russia's most powerful warships, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, a Zircon travellin

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The Paris Agreement adopted a target for global warming not to exceed 1.5°C. This sets a limit on the additional carbon we can add to the atmosphere – the carbon budget. Only around 17% of the carbon budget is now left. That is about 10 years at current emission rates.

Each country reports its annual greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations. Scientists then set these emissions against estimates of the carbon absorbed by Earth’s natural carbon sinks. This is known as the bottom-up approach to calculating the carbon budget.

Another way to track carbon sources and sinks is

Week in images: 19 - 23 July 2021

Discover our week through the lens

Image: Duneside view of ESA's technical heart

The Tarso Toussidé volcanic massif is featured in this false-colour composite image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Long-term studies of ozone and water vapour in the atmosphere of Mars could lead to better understanding of atmospheric chemistry for the Earth. A new analysis of data from ESA's Mars Express mission has revealed that our knowledge of the way these atmospheric gases interact with each other is incomplete.