A first-of-its-kind survey of the world’s sandy shorelines with satellite data found that they have increased slightly on a global scale over the past three decades but decreased in protected marine areas, where many beaches are eroding.

Erosion in protected marine areas could threaten plant and animal species and cultural heritage sites.  Worldwide, the study found that 24 percent of Earth’s sandy beaches are eroding, a coastline distance of almost 50,000 miles.

The view from space provided researchers with a more accurate picture of just how much of Earth’s shorelines are beaches. They found that about a third (31 percent) of all ice-free shorelines are sandy or gravelly. Africa has the highest proportion of sandy beaches (66 percent) and Europe has the lowest (22 percent).

When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Northwestern Pacific Ocean on July 19, the large Tropical Storm Ampil appeared much more organized than it did the previous day.

An international team of scientists has shown how much sea level would rise if Larsen C and George VI, two Antarctic ice shelves at risk of collapse, were to break up. While Larsen C has received much attention due to the break-away of a trillion-tonne iceberg from it last summer, its collapse would contribute only a few millimetres to sea-level rise. The break-up of the smaller George VI Ice Shelf would have a much larger impact. The research is published today in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere.

Cities can serve as useful proxies to study and predict the effects of climate change, according to a North Carolina State University research review that tracks urbanization’s effects on plant and insect species.

Warming streams and rivers could be disproportionately contributing to the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases, according to a new study.

Deep in the ocean’s twilight zone, swarms of ravenous single-celled organisms may be altering Earth’s carbon cycle in ways scientists never expected, according to a new study from Florida State University researchers.

The air in US national parks contains just as much ozone pollution as the air in many of the country’s largest cities, according to a study published on 18 July in Science Advances.

Tropical Depression 12W formed in the Philippine Sea and NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite analyzed the storm in infrared light. The depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Ampil later on July 18.

Arctic climate change research relies on field measurements and samples that are too scarce, and patchy at best, according to a comprehensive review study from Lund University in Sweden. The researchers looked at thousands of scientific studies and found that around 30% of cited studies were clustered around only two research stations in the vast Arctic region.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite flew over Tropical Storm Son-Tinh on July 18 after it crossed over Hainan Island, China and as it moved into the Gulf of Tonkin.