Mountaintop removal, a coal-mining technique used in much of Central Appalachia, is an extreme form of surface mining, that excavates ridges as deep as 600 feet — twice the length of a football field — and buries adjacent valleys and streams in bedrock and coal residue. This mining activity has long been known to have negative impacts on water quality downstream.

A new NASA-led study helps answer decades-old questions about the role of smoke and human-caused air pollution on clouds and rainfall. Looking specifically at deep convective clouds -- tall clouds like thunderclouds, formed by warm air rising -- the study shows that smoky air makes it harder for these clouds to grow. Pollution, on the other hand, energizes their growth, but only if the pollution isn't heavy. Extreme pollution is likely to shut down cloud growth.

More than 26,000 years ago, sea level was much lower than it is today partly because the ice sheets that jut out from the continent of Antarctica were enormous and covered by grounded ice — ice that was fully attached to the seafloor. The ice sheets were as large as they could get and at the time, sea level was much lower because a lot of ice was sequestered on the continent. As the planet warmed, the ice sheets melted and contracted, and sea level began to rise. LSU Department of Geology & Geophysics Associate Professor Phil Bart and his students have discovered new information that illuminates how and when this global phenomenon occurred. Their research recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports may change today’s sea level rise predictions as Earth and its icy continent continues to warm.

NASA provided an infrared look at newly developed Tropical Storm Rosa in the Eastern Pacific and found the storm was getting better organized.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite probed super typhoon Trami when it traveled above the northwestern Pacific Ocean and provided an analysis of heavy rainfall and cloud top heights.

Mosses reveal a colder, windier and drier climate.

Researchers find that urbanization is weakening the New York City shoreline.

Scientists have determined for the first time that Amazon’s waterlogged coastal mangrove forests, which are being clear cut for cattle pastures and shrimp ponds, store significantly more carbon per acre than the region’s famous rainforest.

Current climate change models might be overestimating how much carbon dioxide plants can suck from the atmosphere.

In order to assess the risk of simultaneous climate extremes such as heatwaves and drought, Jakob Zscheischler calls for various research areas to work more closely together.