This September, the extent of Arctic sea ice shrank to roughly 4.7 million square kilometres, as was determined by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, the University of Bremen and Universität Hamburg. Though slightly larger than last year, the minimum sea ice extent 2017 is average for the past ten years and far below the numbers from 1979 to 2006. The Northeast Passage was traversable for ships without the need for icebreakers.

Clouds are an important part of the Arctic climate because they trap warm air at the surface like a blanket. There has been a continuous increase in cloud cover over the Arctic for the past two decades and this is driving big changes on land and in the ocean. The increasing cloud cover has exacerbated the Arctic amplification and is a major reason why the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

Tropical Storm Norma is the newest addition to the tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific and NASA's Terra satellite caught it after it developed.

A new study evaluating models of future climate scenarios has led to the creation of the new risk categories “catastrophic” and “unknown” to characterize the range of threats posed by rapid global warming. Researchers propose that unknown risks imply existential threats to the survival of humanity.

These categories describe two low-probability but statistically significant scenarios that could play out by century’s end, in a new study by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a distinguished professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and his former Scripps graduate student Yangyang Xu, now an assistant professor at Texas A&M University.

Typhoon Doksuri appeared well-rounded and organized on satellite imagery as it moved through the north central South China Sea toward Vietnam.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible light image of Typhoon Doksuri on Sept. 14, 2017 at 1:48 a.m. EDT (0548 UTC).Although Doksuri's eye was obscured by high clouds, the center was evident by the powerful thunderstorms that surrounded it. Doksuri's western quadrant had already spread over the east coast of Vietnam as it moved toward that country.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of the latest tropical cyclone in the Eastern Pacific on Sept. 13 along the southwestern coast of Mexico. After Max formed as a tropical storm, it appeared to have two "tails." Max strengthened into a hurricane on Sept. 14.

Max formed as a depression on Sept. 13 around 11 a.m. EDT. It was the sixteenth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season. By 5 p.m. EDT it had strengthened into a tropical storm.   

Even if the planet only warms up by 1.5 degrees Celsius – which is what the signatories to the Paris climate agreement are aiming for – one-third of all Asian glaciers will have melted by 2100, according to a study carried out by Utrecht University researchers, which will be published in Nature on 14 September.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite analyzed Hurricane Jose and found some very tall, powerful thunderstorms within, despite still being battered by wind shear as it moves between Bermuda and the Bahamas.

Using ethanol instead of gasoline as a car fuel can reduce emissions of ultrafine particles by a third, which benefits human health and the environment, according to a new study.

Conventional wisdom dictates water conservation can only benefit communities affected by drought. But researchers at the University of California, Riverside have deduced that indoor residential conservation can have unintended consequences in places where systems of wastewater reuse have already been implemented, diminishing both the quantity and quality of influent available for treatment.