Australian fires in 2019 and 2020 injected almost 1 million metric tons of smoke into the stratosphere, causing it to warm and likely contributing to a large and persistent ozone hole.

Lockdowns last year in response to COVID-19 resulted in drastic cuts to emissions, especially from vehicle tailpipes, and yet some urban areas saw a paradoxical spike in ozone air pollution.

Ozone in the lower atmosphere fell by 7% on average across the Northern Hemisphere, new research finds.

Pieternel Levelt has been selected to lead the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling Laboratory (ACOM) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Levelt currently serves as the head of the R&D Satellite Observations department at The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute while also serving as a professor at Delft University of Technology.  

Smoke forecasts may incorrectly predict the amount of particles in staler air.