With the smoke of summer wildfires still dimming skies over much of the West, NOAA has announced funding for development of an improved global map of smoke, dust and other aerosol particles that promises to help improve air quality monitoring and forecasting.

Outdoor air pollution is a major contributor to indoor air pollution -- but high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters used in the home significantly reduce fine-particulate matter in the air compared with non-HEPA air filters.

With the right public infrastructure investment, the United States could as much as double the amount of carbon dioxide emissions currently captured and stored worldwide within the next six years, according to an analysis by Princeton University researchers.

Microplastics have been found deep in the sand on beaches where sea turtles lay their eggs.

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.

"Health trumps politics,” said Iowa State Senator David Johnson before taking the stage at a raucous rally in Des Moines last winter to support strengthening the state’s water quality. In the marble rotunda of the state capitol, he rose to denounce the nitrogen and phosphates that have been flowing in ever-increasing quantities into Iowa’s public water supplies — and was cheered by the small crowd of family farmers, concerned mothers, and his new political allies, the legislature’s drastically outnumbered Democrats. Johnson had been one of the longest-serving Republicans in Iowa until he left the party to become an independent in 2016 after defying it  repeatedly on one of the most divisive issues in Iowa — the integrity of the state’s water.

The world’s most widely used weed killer may also be indirectly killing bees.

Building on a century of hydroscience research, the University of Iowa enters a new era of activity aimed at solving Earth’s biggest environmental issues.

Artificial light at night also makes guppies more courageous during the day, according to a behavioural study led by researchers from IGB and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Exposing fish to artificial light at night, not only made fish more active during the night, but also made them emerge quicker from hiding places during the day, which could increase their exposure to predators. Nocturnal lighting, however, did not affect their swimming speed or social behaviour during the day.

In September 2015, the German automaker Volkswagen was found to have illegally cheated federal emissions tests in the United States, by intentionally programming emissions control devices to turn on only during laboratory testing. The devices enabled more than 11 million passenger vehicles to meet U.S. emissions standards in the laboratory despite producing emissions up to 40 times higher than the legal limit in real-world driving conditions.