- 9 Rare Atmospheric Events Scientists Continue To Study Evidence Highlights - October 3, 2025
- How Urban Areas Can Create Their Own Weather Patterns - September 29, 2025
- Why Global Climate Patterns Affect Local Weather Events - September 29, 2025
Stratospheric Polar Warming Breaking Records
Antarctic stratospheric temperatures reached extraordinary heights in July 2024, with temperatures jumping 15°C on July 7 and another 17°C spike on August 5. This phenomenon occurs roughly thirty kilometers above Antarctica where July temperatures typically hover around minus 80 degrees Celsius. The sudden stratospheric warming events surprised NASA atmospheric scientists Lawrence Coy and Paul Newman, who develop complex data assimilation models.
These warming events happen when the polar vortex, which normally creates winds moving at 300 kilometers per hour around the South Pole, becomes disrupted and elongated, causing winds to weaken. Scientists have shown these events directly affect ozone concentrations over Antarctica, with the 2024 ozone hole being smaller than usual.
Sprites Dancing Above Thunderstorms
Sprites occur at roughly 50 miles altitude above thunderstorms, appearing moments after lightning strikes as sudden reddish flashes that take various shapes and can dance over storms, turning on and off one after another. Red sprites were captured in December 2024 in Mississippi, and in 2022, astrophotographers recorded an unprecedented 105 red sprites in a single South Asian thunderstorm. These phenomena were first photographed on July 6, 1989, by University of Minnesota scientists using a low-light video camera, with modern high-speed video captured at 100,000 frames per second providing detailed insights.
NASA has launched the Spritacular citizen science project to create the first crowdsourced database of sprites and other Transient Luminous Events accessible for scientific research. Research suggests rising global temperatures due to climate change will impact thunderstorm intensity and frequency, leading to stronger lightning activity that serves as precursors for sprite activity.
Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Accelerating Particles
The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor on the International Space Station has captured three bright Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes, enabling scientists to determine precise TGF positions and correlate them with parent lightning events in both time and position. In Japan’s Hokuriku region, downward TGFs have been detected at ground level during winter thunderstorms, which have lower charge centers due to colder temperatures, allowing gamma rays to reach the surface with minimal atmospheric attenuation.
A groundbreaking 2024 study revealed a TGF occurred when a downward negative leader collided with an upward positive leader from a transmission tower in Kanazawa, Japan, with the cloud-to-ground current following the TGF by just 30 microseconds. TGFs produce the most intense radiation naturally generated on Earth with energies up to 40 MeV and durations varying from tens to hundreds of microseconds.
Gamma-Ray Glows Covering Thunderstorm Complexes
NASA’s ALOFT campaign made major discoveries about gamma-ray glows using the ER-2 aircraft, finding these high-energy emissions were ubiquitous and highly dynamic within tropical thunderclouds, covering areas the size of thunderstorm complexes and lasting for hours. Originally thought to be up to 10,000 times rarer than lightning, Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes were instead detected on most ALOFT science flights, with researchers discovering a new type called Flickering Gamma-ray flashes that could be the missing link between gamma-ray glows and conventional TGFs.
During a July 24th flight, the ALOFT ER-2 aircraft detected six TGFs that were not detected by the space-based ASIM instrument, revealing a previously unknown population of weaker TGFs. These aircraft observations showed TGFs associated with source photons several orders of magnitude below what can be detected from space, ranging from 10^15 to 10^12 photons at source.
Atmospheric Blocking Events Reshaping Weather Patterns
Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, high-impact weather patterns that occur when large-scale high-pressure systems become stationary and divert the jet stream and storm tracks for days to weeks, potentially causing record-breaking flooding or heat waves like those in Europe in 2023. These strong, persistent mid-latitude high-pressure systems can significantly impact Hawaii, where flooding has accompanied persistent North Pacific blocks, and worldwide locations including the Pacific Northwest and Europe.
University of Hawaii researchers have created a unique web-interface using deep learning models to explore atmospheric blocking reconstructions, emphasizing the importance of sharing results and methods for Open Research practices as machine learning applications expand rapidly. Scientists use these studies to relate blocking frequencies in mid- and high-latitudes to tropical Pacific climate variability over the last millennium, which is essential for climate model validation.
Geomagnetic Storms Creating Worldwide Auroras
The strongest geomagnetic storm in over two decades occurred in May 2024, culminating overnight on May 10-11 with an extreme storm that produced remarkable aurora displays visible from many areas worldwide, including latitudes where aurora sightings are uncommon. This extraordinary event dazzled scientists and skywatchers, with the aurora appearing in regions far from typical polar viewing areas.
Space weather events like these demonstrate the complex interactions between solar activity and Earth’s magnetosphere. Scientists continue studying these phenomena to better predict their occurrence and understand their effects on satellite communications, power grids, and navigation systems worldwide.
Atmospheric Rivers Creating Unprecedented Flooding
NASA researchers used the GEOS Atmospheric Global Climate Model to investigate the unprecedented series of atmospheric rivers that hit California, identifying a persistent positive Pacific-North American circulation pattern as the cause, which resulted from a chain of events initiated by a Rossby wave in the northern Indian Ocean. The study revealed a fundamental lack of predictability for this type of event at seasonal time scales, with forecasts showing useful skill limited to lead times shorter than about three weeks.
These atmospheric river events represent some of the most challenging weather phenomena for long-term prediction. The complex chain of atmospheric interactions that create these moisture-laden corridors demonstrates how global weather patterns interconnect in ways scientists are still working to fully understand.
Unexplained Heat Anomalies of 2023 and 2024
Since May 2024, scientists have been compiling research about possible contributors to unexpected warmth, including changes in greenhouse gas emissions, solar radiation, aerosols, and cloud cover, but none provide convincing explanations for the unusual heat in 2023. Research teams have found a significant drop in aerosol pollution from shipping since 2020, coinciding with new international sulfur content regulations, which could reduce cloud formation and contribute to warming effects.
NASA’s PACE satellite, launched in February 2024, may help scientists understand these mysteries by making global assessments of atmospheric aerosol particles and studying how aerosols influence cloud formation. The unexplained temperature increases have prompted intensive scientific investigation across multiple research institutions.
Blue Jets and Gigantic Jets Reaching Space
Blue jets propagate from thundercloud tops at roughly 100 kilometers per second as narrow blue cones of light, occurring much less frequently than sprites, with fewer than a hundred images obtained by 2007, mostly from a single thunderstorm during 1994 aircraft flights. More recently observed from the International Space Station, blue starters appear as shorter and brighter phenomena reaching altitudes of only up to 20 kilometers.
Although classified as upper-atmospheric lightning, jets have been found to be components of tropospheric lightning and represent a type of cloud-to-air discharge that initiates within thunderstorms and travels upward. Other Transient Luminous Events include elves, which are rapidly expanding disc-shaped regions of luminosity caused by electromagnetic pulse sources.
