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Now an extra-tropical cyclone over northern Japan, Lan was a typhoon when it made landfall just south of Tokyo over the weekend of Oct. 21 and 22. NASA's Aqua satellite and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided imagery of the extra-tropical cyclone.

On New Year’s Day, 1909, a grocer named Julius Fried and his novice drilling crew, the Lakeview Oil Company, spudded a well in the desert valley scrub in the Midway-Sunset oil field, 110 miles north of Los Angeles. For the first 1,655 feet, the well yielded only dust, and then Lakeview ran out of money.

Until recently, glaciers in the United States have been measured in two ways: placing stakes in the snow, as federal scientists have done each year since 1957 at South Cascade Glacier in Washington state; or tracking glacier area using photographs from airplanes and satellites.

In 1995, the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Program called for a united, global effort to reduce persistent organic pollutants (POPs) — synthetic chemicals such as PCBs, DDT, and dioxins. The compounds were known to persist and accumulate far from their sources, polluting the environment and causing adverse health effects in humans.

Groundwater may play an unrecognized role in thawing Arctic permafrost following wildfires, according to new research.