The lower-energy particles may play a larger role in magnetic reconnection than previously believed, influencing space weather near Earth.
Research Spotlights
Research spotlights are plain-language summaries of recent articles published in AGU’s suite of 24 journals.
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Microfossils Illuminate Ancient Ocean Currents
Researchers use dissolved silicon concentrations to map out how currents may have changed millennia ago in the Pacific.
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Can Large Electric Fields Power Jupiter’s X-ray Auroras?
Electric fields with megavolt potentials in Jupiter’s polar region accelerate particles to 100 times more energy than Earth’s typical auroral particles, a new study finds.
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Imaging the Underlying Mechanics of New Zealand Earthquakes
Researchers create a first-of-its-kind image to map electrical properties of rocks and minerals throughout the Hikurangi subduction zone.
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How Earth’s Outer Radiation Belts Lose Their Electrons
A new analysis of three space storms reveals the mechanisms of particle loss from the Van Allen belts.
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The Microphysics of Squall Lines
Scientists tracked the distribution of raindrops of different sizes as a row of thunderstorms formed by a cold front developed and intensified over eastern China.
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Is There a Greenhouse Effect in the Ionosphere, Too? Likely Not
Controversial observations of long-term changes in the ionosphere appear to be explained by the Sun’s 11-year cycle of activity, not human greenhouse gas emissions.
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How Do Clouds React to Regional Warming?
Researchers illuminate how and why cloud feedbacks depend on spatial patterns of global warming.
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Angles of Plasma Ropes near Mars Point to Different Origins
Variation in the orientation of flux rope features in Mars’s magnetotail suggests that some of them form on the planet’s Sun-facing side and travel to the night side.
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Summer Rainfall Patterns in East Asia Shift with the Wind
Decades of data reveal the link between westerly winds and year-to-year changes in monsoon rainfall.