Author Archives: Petr Zacharov

Prague, 11 June 2026 The European Space Agency (ESA) at its June meeting proposed the ambitious Plasma Observatory satellite mission as the primary candidate for its next medium-class scientific mission (M7) planned for launch in 2037. The programme, which will explore the plasma environment around Earth, outcompeted rival candidate missions: a two-spacecraft Mars orbiter and […]

Prague, 11 June 2026 The European Space Agency (ESA) at its June meeting proposed the ambitious Plasma Observatory satellite mission as the primary candidate for its next medium-class scientific mission (M7) planned for launch in 2037. The programme, which will explore the plasma environment around Earth, outcompeted rival candidate missions: a two-spacecraft Mars orbiter and […]

Prague, April 16, 2026 Scientists from the Department of the Ionosphere and Aeronomy at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences have published the first results of measurements of the horizontal drifts of sporadic E (Es) layers in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. These layers, which occur at altitudes […]

Prague, April 14, 2026 Scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences have published the first detailed study on narrow bipolar events detected over the European continent in the journal Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. These extremely fast and intense intra-cloud discharges were previously the domain of research in America […]

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 […]