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The first tropical storm of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed 40 days before the official kick off of the season. Tropical Storm Arlene formed in the North Central Atlantic Ocean and NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided forecasters with a look at the storm, swirling far from land areas.

When grasslands feature a wide array of plant species, they provide a variety of benefits for humans and animals, including enhanced carbon storage capacity that can be quantified economically, according to a new scientific paper co-written by a University of Wyoming researcher.

Increasing water temperatures are responsible for the accumulation of a chemical called nitrite in marine environments throughout the world, a symptom of broader changes in normal ocean biochemical pathways that could ultimately disrupt ocean food webs, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

Some updates on current volcanic activity worldwide:

On April 13, Poás in Costa Rica had its largest explosive eruption in years. The explosion was mainly driven by waterheated at the summit crater lake/vent area, generating what is called a “phreatic” eruption. Although water turning to steam is the main player, these explosions can still produce plumes that reach over 1 kilometer (~3200 feet). This eruption at Poás did just that, with plumes 500-1000 meters tall. News reports also mentioned ash fall in the surrounding region, incandescent blocks suggesting magma relatively close to the surface, and boulders two meters wide being thrown from the lake vent. (They broke the floor at the Poas visitor’s center!) Passengers on a flight out of San Jose got quite a view of the eruption. You can watch video of the eruption that was captured by the webcam at Poás. The eruptions have continued, with another blast on April 18.

With a single executive order issued at the end of March, the Trump administration launched a robust effort to roll back Obama-era climate policies designed to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Chief among those policies is the Clean Power Plan, which targets coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants that account for about 40 percent of the nation’s CO2 emissions. Private and public-sector investors may see the executive order as a green light to double down on relatively cheap fossil fuels and reduce holdings in more costly, climate-friendly, non-carbon generation technologies such as wind, solar and nuclear. But they may want to think twice before making such transactions.