In 2011 a team of researchers led by Vasilii Petrenko, an assistant professor of Earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester, spent seven weeks in Antarctica collecting and studying 2,000-pound samples of glacial ice cores that date back nearly 12,000 years. The ancient air trapped within the ice revealed surprising new data about methane that may help inform today’s policymakers as they consider ways to reduce global warming.

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Pakhar and gathered temperature data to determine the location of the most powerful storms within. Pakhar has triggered a number of warnings throughout the Philippines as the storm moves closer.

Philippines warnings include Public storm warning signal #1 for the Luzon provinces of Cagayan including Babuyan group of islands, Apayao, Ilocos Norte, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan, Northern Quezon including Polillo island, and Camarines Norte. Public storm warning signal #2 is in effect for the Luzon provinces of Isabela, Aurora, Quirino, Kalinga, Mountain Province, Ifugao, Ilocos Sur, Benguet, Abra, La Union and Nueva Vizcaya.

Ice cores from arctic mountain glaciers show a dramatic climate change that began nearly 300 years ago, documenting an unprecedented increase in the intensity and duration of winter storms. Drilled by a Dartmouth-led team, the cores show striking changes in weather patterns that may have reached as far as Florida.

“We attribute these changes to a warming of sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific,” says Erich Osterberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth. “The North Pacific is very sensitive to what happens in the tropics. It is more stormy in Alaska now than at any time in the last 1,200 years, and that is driven by tropical ocean warming.”

Shelf ice, as found in Antarctica, refers to giant floating ice sheets that can span thousands of square kilometres. Pieces break off at their edges which form icebergs in the ocean. In order to more effectively predict these break-offs, in a process known as calving, Julia Christmann from the University of Kaiserslautern (TU) has developed mathematical models in cooperation with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). On the basis of physical factors, it is claimed that these models can be used to predict when and where the ice may collapse. This is important particularly for research teams situated on the ice shelf.

As Hurricane Harvey continued to strengthen, NASA analyzed the storm’s rainfall, cloud heights and cloud top temperatures. NASA’s GPM and Aqua satellite provided information while an animation of GOES-East satellite imagery showed Harvey’s progression toward the Texas coast. 

Harvey's intensification has been aided by movement through an environment that includes low vertical wind shear and the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Within the next century, rising ocean temperatures around the Galápagos Islands are expected to make the water too warm for a key prey species, sardines, to tolerate. A new study by Wake Forest University biologists, published in PLOS One Aug. 23, uses decades of data on the diet and breeding of a tropical seabird, the Nazca booby, to understand how the future absence of sardines may affect the booby population.

NASA’s Aqua satellite provided an infrared look at the newly formed Tropical Depression 16W in the Philippine Sea. 16W is known locally in the Philippines as "Jolina."  

Fish are expected to shrink in size by 20 to 30 per cent if ocean temperatures continue to climb due to climate change.

A new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia provides a deeper explanation of why fish are expected to decline in size.

Scientists concerned that global warming may release huge stores of methane from reservoirs beneath Arctic tundra and deposits of marine hydrates – a theory known as the “clathrate gun” hypothesis – have turned to geologic history to search for evidence of significant methane release during past warming events.

A new study published this week in the journal Nature suggests, however, that the last ice age transition to a warmer climate some 11,500 years ago did not include massive methane flux from marine sediments or the tundra. Instead, the likely source of rising levels of atmospheric methane was from tropical wetlands, authors of the new study say.

Ice has always been fascinating to Alison Criscitiello.

“I had a science teacher who did a short unit on glaciers … I couldn’t believe they were real,” she says. That classroom encounter when she was in eight grade in Winchester, Massachusetts, had a lasting impact.