Passive solar systems such as solar chimneys need solar radiation in order to work. Therefore, they cannot present stable natural ventilation when solar energy vanishes: to have a more robust and stable condition, solar energy should be stored during the day and released back during the night. Phase change materials can save additional thermal energy during the day and release it during the nig...

Surface neutron counter data are often used as a proxy for atmospheric ionisation from cosmic rays in studies of extraterrestrial effects on climate. Neutron counter instrumentation was developed in the 1950s and relationships between neutron counts, ionisation and meteorological conditions were investigated thoroughly using the techniques available at the time; the analysis can now be extended...

Nocturnal chemistry in the atmospheric boundary layer plays a key role in determining the initial chemical conditions for photochemistry during the following morning as well as influencing the budgets of O 3 and NO 2. Despite its importance, chemistry in the nocturnal boundary layer (NBL), especially in heavily polluted urban areas, has 5 received little attention so far, which greatly limits t...

[1] Recent attention has focused on the impact of black carbon (BC) on Arctic climate. Here, idealized equilibrium climate experiments are conducted to explore the dependence of Arctic temperature change on the altitude and season of local BC forcing. BC residing in the lowest atmospheric layer produces very strong Arctic warming per unit mass and forcing [2.8 ̇ 0.5 K (W m–2)–1] because of low c...

Nocturnal chemistry in the atmospheric boundary layer plays a key role in determining the initial chemical conditions for photochemistry during the following morning as well as influencing the budgets of O3 and NO2. Despite its importance, chemistry in the nocturnal boundary layer (NBL), especially in heavily polluted urban areas, has received little attention so far, which greatly limits the c...

A new sensor is described for measuring the fluctuating component of the wall-shear stress in the atmospheric surface layer over relatively smooth uniform terrain. The sensor was tested at the Surface Layer Turbulence and Environmental Science Test (SLTEST) site on the western salt flats of Utah, giving the first ever direct measurements of this quantity in an atmospheric-scale flow. The device...

We report new measurements of atmospheric methane by the Curiosity rover’s Tunable Laser Spectrometer that is part Sample Analysis at Mars suite (TLS-SAM), finding nondetections during two daytime average value 0.05 ± 0.22 ppbv (95% confidence interval CI). These are in marked contrast with nighttime background levels 0.52 0.10 CI) from four taken same season northern summer. This large day-nig...