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The strong El Niño event of 2015-2016 provided NASA and NOAA an unprecedented opportunity to test the effectiveness of the newest observation tool to measure global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations -- NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite or OCO-2.

Observations of carbon dioxide concentrations over the tropical Pacific from the satellite were validated by data from NOAA’s Tropical Pacific Observing System of buoys, which directly measure carbon dioxide concentrations at the surface of the ocean.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible picture of newly formed Tropical Storm Lan in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.

When it comes to oysters and their role in reducing nutrient pollution, a new study by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science gets right to the guts—and the shell—of the matter.

The desalination industry, a critical source of potable water in many arid regions, generated more than $13 billion last year and is expected to double within a decade. Most desalination plants today use a process called reverse osmosis (RO), which forces water through huge rolls of membranes, leaving the salt behind. One of the most expensive operational challenges for such plants is the fouling of these membranes by microorganisms.

If oceans warm at a rate predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nation-sponsored group that assesses climate change research and issues periodic reports, expected financial losses caused by hurricanes could increase more than 70 percent by 2100, according to a University of Vermont study just published in the journal Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure.