THE RED SKIES

Cloudy Skies

Standard Gaussian-type statistics are not really adequate to describe atmospheric variability; this traditional approach implicitly dismisses fluctuations as "noise" of use only in computing a standard deviation which, together with the mean, presumably varies so little in space and time that one can meaningfully speak of "climatological" values. In geophysics, unfortunately, this approach ofte...

Blue skies for the best people.

DOI: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.114.305403 1 Editor’s preamble: The criteria for awarding research grants are a topic of the utmost importance, one that needs to be examined and debated carefully. As the readers probably know, there are strong and disparate viewpoints regarding this problem. Accordingly, in line with our editorial vision (1), this issue of Circulation Research features a News &Views co...

Geoengineering: Whiter skies?

[1] One proposed side effect of geoengineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosols is sky whitening during the day and afterglows near sunset, as is seen after large volcanic eruptions. Sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere would increase diffuse light received at the surface, but with a non-uniform spectral distribution. We use a radiative transfer model to calculate spectral irradiance for ide...

Flying the smoky skies: secondhand smoke

Sailing the skies: the improbable aeronautical success of the pterosaurs.

Pterosaur wings bore a striking resemblance to sails, having a bony spar at the leading edge, formed by the forelimb and one enormously elongated digit, and an elastic wing membrane. Such simple wings would be expected to have performed badly due to excessive deformation, membrane flutter and poor control characteristics. Here I discuss how certain anatomical features, specifically a forewing m...