Manchester-based Volcanologists have developed a method and camera that could help reduce the dangers, health risks and travel impacts of ash plumes during a volcanic eruption.

Global sea level is rising constantly. One factor contributing to this rise is the melting of the glaciers. However, although the surface area of the glaciers has been well mapped, there is often no information regarding their thickness, making it impossible to calculate their volume. As a result, we cannot accurately calculate the effects on sea levels. Dr. Johannes Fürst from the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has developed an approach which can be used to draw up regional ice thickness maps for glaciers. He has now produced such a map for Svalbard and published his findings in Geophysical Research Letters.

Tropical Storm Vicente made landfall and weakened quickly to a tropical depression on Oct. 23. NOAA’s GOES-West satellite captured a visible image of the fading, and now post-tropical storm raining on southwestern Mexico.

In the Canadian Arctic, a mystery has troubled scientists and local communities for decades: Why do marine animals in the western Arctic have higher mercury levels than those in the east?

It’s 5am as we head out onto the outermost pier,  where our trusty vessel awaits. Fog clings to the surface of the water as harbour seals play in the marina’s kelp beds below.

Researchers found that when water temperatures heat up for corals, fish ‘tempers’ cool down, providing the first clear evidence of coral bleaching serving as a trigger for rapid change in reef fish behaviour. 

Hurricane Willa is a major hurricane threatening western Mexico. Forecasters were able to see the rate of rainfall occurring within the powerful storm when the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM’s core satellite passed overhead and provided that data.

Asian elephants demonstrate numeric ability which is closer to that observed in humans rather than in other animals. This is according to lead author Naoko Irie of SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies) in Japan. In a study published in the Springer-branded Journal of Ethology, Irie and her colleagues found that an Asian elephants' sense of numbers is not affected by distance, magnitude or ratios of presented numerosities, and therefore provides initial experimental evidence that non-human animals have cognitive characteristics similar to human counting. 

Hurricanes Florence and Michael in the U.S. and Super Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines have shown the widespread and harmful impact of weather extremes on both ecosystems and built communities, with flash floods causing more deaths, as well as property and agriculture losses than from any other severe weather-related hazards. These losses have been increasing over the past 50 years and have exceeded $30 billion per year in the past decade. Globally, almost one billion people now live in floodplains, raising their exposure to river flooding from extreme weather events and underscoring the urgency in understanding and predicting these events. 

It’s called ArcCI (or Arctic CyberInfrastructure) and promises to combine the thousands of images that have been taken along the years of the Arctic Ocean into one global database that will help scientists and the world see the physical changes occurring in the region including ice loss. The hope is that this web-based repository will allow researchers to spend more time analyzing information rather than just collecting and processing data.