Author Archives: Petr Zacharov

April 8, 2026 A team of scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, led by Masafumi Imai, has successfully unraveled a mystery surrounding lightning on Saturn from the historic Voyager missions. Data from the spacecraft, which flew past Saturn in the 1980s, had long baffled researchers: the instruments reported […]

March 25, 2026 A new study published in the prestigious journal AGU Advances investigates lightning activity during so-called “stealth superstorms” (storms invisible in the optical spectrum) on Jupiter. The work, which included significant contributions from scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, utilizes data from the Microwave Radiometer (MWR) […]

February 17, 2026 The small icy moon Enceladus, with its famous water geysers, has an unexpectedly powerful influence on Saturn’s entire magnetic field. Data from the Cassini spacecraft has revealed that the moon’s influence extends to a record distance of over 500,000 kilometers—more than 2,000 times the moon’s radius. This is the first time scientists have […]

31 March 2026 Epidemics of acute respiratory infections (especially influenza) represent a major health issue during the winter season. Two recent publications have contributed to a better understanding of how weather has affected influenza activity and human mortality in the Czech Republic over the past four decades (1982–2020). Hana Hanzlíková et al. (2026) found significant […]

27 February 2026 Czech scientists have demonstrated that electrical discharges similar to lightning occur in the Martian atmosphere. A four-member research team from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences achieved this based on measurements from the NASA MAVEN orbiter. MAVEN […]

March 26, 2026 A team of scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, led by climatologist Ondřej Lhotka, is working on a prestigious grant from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GACR) focused on off-season heatwaves in Europe. Heatwaves are typical for summer season. However, due to global […]

March 23, 2026 A new radio observatory, LWA-Niyodo, has been built in the Japanese town of Niyodogawa. Data on Sun and Jupiter activity captured in the Japanese mountains travel in real-time for analysis directly to Prague, to the Department of Space Physics at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences . […]

18. 3. 2026 For the first time in history, Europe has the capability to continuously monitor lightning activity from orbit, thanks to the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite system. The first scientific validation of space-based lightning monitoring quality was conducted by Czech scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences […]

Internal seminars – invitation

Dynamics and microphysics of small developing cumulus clouds Speaker: Alexander Khain 16 Sep 2024 in the large meeting room The presentation  generalizes findings from recent studies, focusing on the connection between Cu dynamic properties, such as velocity field, entrainment/detrainment, and cloud microphysical properties, such as cloud dilution rate and droplet size distribution parameters. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of cloud-surrounding interactions. […]