A Decade Revolutionizing Rain Enhancement Science and Applications - World Meteorological Organization WMO

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractFreshwater scarcity, particularly in arid and off-grid regions, demands efficient and low-cost desalination technologies. While solar stills offer a sustainable solution, their low productivity remains a key limitation. Studies on the combined effect of external reflectors and nanoparticle-coated absorber plates in double-slope solar stills are scarce, and no such investigation has been conducted under the climatic conditions of Gondar, Ethiopia. This study addresses this gap by experimentally evaluating a double-slope solar still integrated with four externally mounted aluminum reflectors and interchangeable absorber plates coated with black paint, black paint + CuO nanoparticles (0.443 wt%), and black paint + Al2O3 nanoparticles (0.443 wt%). Experiments were conducted in December 2023 and May 2024 at water depths of 2 cm, 2.5 cm, and 3 cm to optimize performance.

The Moon is getting closer to its full phase, with more of its surface visible as the days go by. Here's what you can look for when you look up at the sky tonight. What is today's Moon phase? As of Friday, Oct. 23, NASA's Daily Moon Guide tracker tells us the Moon is in the Waxing Gibbous phase, with 90% of its surface visible. Tonight, without the use of visual aids you should be able to spot the Copernicus Crater, the Mare Serenitatis, and Mare Fecunditatis. If you have binoculars you'll also see the Endymion Crater, the Alphonsus Crater, and the Clavius Crater. Plus, if you have a telescope, you'll also see the Linne Crater, Rima Ariadaeus, and the Apollo 17 landing spot. When is the next Full Moon? The next Full Moon will take place on October 25 or 26, depending on your timezone. What are Moon phases? The Moon takes around 29.5 days to travel around Earth, and its appearance changes throughout the month. As it moves around our planet, we see different amounts of its sunlit side, from a slim crescent to the quarter phases and eventually a Full Moon. It then begins the cycle again.

Every morning during the Martian spring and summer, a thin and extremely long cloud emerges, only to disappear again. The wispy formation appears near the volcano Arsia Mons and gradually elongates until it reaches over 1,000 miles—about the distance from New York to Kansas City as the crow flies—before dissipating. This cycle then repeats for several months. Since it was first recorded by a probe in 2018, scientists have been unable to find a plausible explanation for the existence of this cloud, often referred to as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). Until now. Recently, researchers successfully modeled the cloud’s formation for the first time, their results suggesting that it may be driven by a physical process that has never been directly observed in any planet's atmosphere. "We found that we needed to include some exotic physics … physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature. It certainly hasn’t been seen in action before," Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at Paris’ Sorbonne Université and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

The experiment Thomas Penny, Yu-Han Tseng and Cecily Lowe observe nanoparticle collisions at Yale University. (Courtesy: Yale Wright Lab) A silica nanoparticle levitated in an optical trap could be used as a tiny pressure sensor that detects collisions with individual atoms and molecules – according to researchers in the US. Their proof-of-principle demonstration originated in the team’s work in developing novel neutrino and dark-matter detectors. It could lead to the development of a background pressure sensor to work alongside other optomechanical sensors.