The Brief

Despite the fact that clouds envelop two-thirds of the planet at any given time, transport water on the wind, and shield the Earth from the sun, surprisingly little is known about how climate change affects them. Atmospheric scientists are not yet certain, for instance, whether rising temperatures will lead to more or fewer clouds, or make them better or worse at reflecting the heat of the sun.

To help unravel those mysteries and others, the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency lofted a satellite into orbit last week aboard a SpaceX rocket. The Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, known as EarthCARE, will uncover the inner workings of clouds as well as how they, and tiny airborne particles called aerosols, shape — and are shaped by — climate change.

“Clouds are the number one cooling blanket we have on the planet,” said Pavlos Kollias, an atmospheric scientist from Stony Brook University who has been supporting the EarthCARE mission since 2008.

A cloud’s effect on temperature greatly depends on the height where it happens to float. Low-level formations, such as the blanket-like stratocumulus, do a particularly good job of keeping the planet cool by reflecting most of the sunlight that strikes them. Since they fly so close to the ground, their ambient temperatures are similar to those of the landscape below, and they transfer most of the Earth’s heat to space rather than holding it in the atmosphere.

The cooling effect this provides is so pronounced, Kollias said, that without it the planet would be 5 degrees Celsius warmer — or 9 degrees Fahrenheit.*

Though the impact clouds have on the planet in the present is well known, scientists are uncertain about how that may evolve as temperatures rise. “If you perturb the system by adding temperature,” Kollias said, “we don’t know how the clouds will respond.” They could become more common and more dense, thereby mitigating climate change in a minor way, or they could become less common and less dense, speeding climate change along.

High-altitude clouds, like the wispy cirrus, for instance, are typically made of tiny ice crystals and often trap the Earth’s heat more effectively than they block the sun’s light, both of which seems to make them more sensitive to warming. Aerosols, small particles like sulfates and sea salts, introduce further complications by impacting climate both directly, by reflecting sunlight, and indirectly, by acting as the nuclei around which clouds condense. Efforts to clean up industrial emissions are reducing airborne aerosols, with pronounced effects on climate.

All of this makes cloud dynamics one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate models, something EarthCARE aims to help resolve.

EarthCARE’s cloud profiling radar allows scientists to observe the internal structure of clouds, providing detailed insights into their vertical structure and velocity, particle size distribution and water content.

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ESA / ATG Medialab

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Kollias is eager to work with the data that will begin beaming down from the new satellite later this year. The mission carries an instrument never before used in space: a cloud profile radar. The device will emit successive bursts of radio waves, measuring the signal reflected by the vapor below. This information will help researchers better understand the size and circulation of the countless droplets that comprise a cloud. EarthCARE will also map the surface profile of clouds and aerosols with a method known as lidar that reflects a low-power laser off these atmospheric formations. Those measurements coupled with images captured by the spacecraft will provide a three-dimensional view of the ubiquitous pillows and blankets of condensation drifting through the sky.

The European Space Agency named EarthCARE its sixth Earth Explorer mission back in 2001. Though delays plague seemingly every satellite, EarthCARE faced notable and protracted setbacks due to the complexity and sophistication of the radar and lidar systems. It reached a point where, Kollias said, some outside the mission began to doubt whether the nearly $900 million satellite would ever reach the launchpad. Yet “nobody gave up,” Kollias said. “Everybody kept working.”

All that made last week’s successful launch a particularly emotional affair.

“Personally, I was very nervous in the moment,” Kollias said of the launch. But he added that the prolonged process has inadvertently given the scientific community more time to prepare to work with EarthCARE’s data. Numerical models have improved dramatically in the 23 years between selection and launch, researchers have more computing power available to them than ever before, and machine learning now allows big data to be digested with comparative ease.

The intervening years have also given the world a taste of the climate disasters yet to come. As a result, an added urgency drives the desire to resolve the uncertainties clouds introduce into climate models, so scientists can look out with finer eyes to tell us what the decades ahead hold.

Thousands of students from schools across Los Angeles walked out Wednesday in peaceful protest of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The Los Angeles Unified School District estimated 4,400 students from about two dozen schools participated.

“ I think it's really empowering that we aren't being discouraged to [protest], but it's also really discouraging to have to live through this,” said Roybal Learning Center senior Melisa. 

“The reason I came out is 'cause we're so young and I feel like people always think that like young people don't have a voice and in reality we have one of the strongest voices,” said Jazlyn Garcia, a senior at  Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School. “I want people to go out and vote for midterms, pre-register to vote.”

Leonna, a senior at Downtown Magnets High School and daughter of immigrants from Cambodia, said she was thinking of her neighbors.  “We need to protect the people that make sure that the economy is running and make sure that our lives are the way that they are every day.”

Students said the Trump administration's immigration raids threaten their families, communities and education.

LAUSD estimated that several thousand students walked out.

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Sabrina Sanchez

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LAist

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Students said they were concerned for family and neighbors.

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Sabrina Sanchez

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LAist

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Alexis, a senior at Brío College Prep, said administrators locked down his campus after agents detained a nearby fruit vendor. “He was a part of our community,” Alexis said. “He would always be out there selling fruits to us after school.”

San Fernando Valley students at more than 40 schools plan to walk out Friday.

“Los Angeles Unified supports the rights of our students to advocate for causes important to them,” a district spokesperson wrote in a statement to LAist. “However, we are concerned for student safety at off-campus demonstrations as schools are the safest place for students.”

The district encouraged students to exercise their rights in on-campus discussions and demonstrations.

The University of Southern California board of trustees has appointed interim president Beong-Soo Kim to be its 13th full president.

Kim was named as the interim leader in February 2025 and began the role this summer. He most recently served as USC’s senior vice president and general counsel, and as a lecturer at the law school. Prior to joining USC, he worked at Kaiser Permanente and was a federal prosecutor for the Central District of California.

Kim succeeds Carol Folt, who was brought on to stabilize the university following a series of scandals under the administration before hers. She formally stepped down from her role in July, following criticism of her ability to handle student protests and concerns over fiscal stewardship.

Soon after his term began, Kim oversaw the university’s effort to manage a $200 million deficit, which also led to hundreds of layoffs.

“We did have to make some difficult decisions last year with respect to our budget and layoffs,” Kim told LAist. “And I'm really pleased that as a result of those difficult decisions, we're now in a much stronger financial position and really for a number of months have been really focusing on the opportunities that we see on the horizon.”

In a call with LAist, and joined by USC board chair Suzanne Nora Johnson, Kim touched on bright spots and some of his priorities. He also touched on the relationship between USC and the Trump administration before a sudden ending to the call.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

LAist: You've talked about addressing the mass layoffs and budget challenges. What do you see as the way forward?

Beong-Soo Kim: Our research expenditures have actually been going up over the last year, over the last couple of years. We're focusing on: How do we provide the best possible educational value to our students? We're focusing on how to maintain and strengthen our academic culture of excellence, open dialogue and engagement with different viewpoints.

And we're also really kind of leaning into artificial intelligence and asking questions as a community about how we incorporate AI responsibly into our education, into our operations, into our research. And there are obviously a lot of important ethical questions that we're working on, and it's really an quite an exciting time to be in the position that I'm in.

What are you excited for?

Well, a couple things that we're really looking forward to are, as part of the anniversary of the United States, we're going to be hosting a National Archives exhibition [of] founding documents in late April. We're also looking forward to helping host the L.A. Olympics in 2028. We have our 150th anniversary coming up in 2030 as a university.

So there's a lot that's on the horizon. We also have the Lucas Museum opening up across the street later this year and, of course, George Lucas is one of our most beloved Trojan alumni. So there's so much vitality, so much energy on the campus right now.

USC has, for the most part, avoided the sort of conflicts that the University of California system and elite private institutions across the country have had with the Trump administration. What can you share about how you plan to manage USC’s relationship with the federal government?

Well, we really make an effort to engage with all levels of government, as well as foundations, the private sector, community groups. That kind of engagement is really more important nowadays. Universities can't just go off on their own. It's important for us to partner and find opportunities to work with others. And that's what we've been doing.

And that's part of the reason why I think that our research has continued to go strongly. And I give a lot of the credit to our faculty and researchers who can continue submitting grant applications and continue to do research in areas that are critically important to the benefit of our community, our nation, and our world. And I think that we -—

Suzanne Nora Johnson: —Actually I'm so sorry, but we have to complete the board meeting, and we've got to run. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Bye. Thanks. Bye.

Huntington Beach will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision striking down the city’s controversial voter ID law.

What’s the backstory?

Huntington Beach voters approved a measure in 2024 allowing the city to require people to show ID when casting a ballot. That contradicts state law — voters in California are asked to provide ID when they register to vote but generally not at polling places.

The ensuing court battle

The state and a Huntington Beach resident promptly sued the city over the voter ID law and won an appeals court ruling striking down the law. The California Supreme Court declined to review the decision earlier this month. The state also passed a law prohibiting cities from implementing their own voter ID laws.

Then, the City Council voted unanimously this week to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.

Does the city have a shot?

The Supreme Court gets 7,000 to 8,000 requests to review cases each year. The Court grants about 80 of these requests, so the city’s chances of getting the court’s attention are statistically slim.

There’s also a question of whether or not the city’s voter ID case meets the Court’s criteria for review — SCOTUS addresses questions of federal law. Mayor Casey McKeon said it does, in a news release, noting a 2008 Supreme Court decision that upheld a state’s voter ID law — in Indiana. But Huntington Beach is a city, and the question in its voter ID case is whether or not a city can implement its own requirements for voting, even if it clashes with state law.

Go deeper

• Huntington Beach's controversial voter ID law is illegal
• Huntington Beach clashes with California over voter ID requirement in court
• HB Mayor defends Voter ID measure as Gov. Newsom seeks to ban it
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  The Trump Administration wants your confidential voter data. What’s behind their battle with CA and other states?