In a remote region of the Indian Ocean lies the source of a mysterious weather pattern with tentacles that stretch across the tropics, influencing everything from monsoons in India to heat waves and flooding in the United States.

In a first, researchers from the University of California, Irvine – as well as Switzerland’s University of Zurich, IBM Research-Zurich and UC Santa Cruz – have obtained direct images of dissolved organic carbon molecules from the ocean, allowing better analysis and characterization of compounds that play an important role in the Earth’s changing climate.

Powerful Earth-observing instruments aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, launched in 1999 and 2002, respectively, have observed nearly two decades of planetary change. Now, for the first time, all that imagery — from the first operational image to imagery acquired today — is available for exploration in Worldview.

NASA obtained an infrared look at Tropical Depression 05W as it continued moving through the South China Sea. NASA's Aqua satellite found very cold cloud top temperatures and strong storms in fragmented thunderstorms mostly east of 05W's center.  

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical 05W on June 5 at 2:05 a.m. EDT (0605 UTC) and analyzed the storm in infrared light to reveal cloud top temperatures. The MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite revealed some cloud top temperatures in a fragmented band of thunderstorms were as cold or colder than minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius). NASA research indicates very cold cloud tops with the potential to generate very heavy rainfall. The strongest storms all appeared to be over open waters in the Gulf of Tonkin and northern South China Sea.

NASA analyzed rainfall in two tropical cyclones that developed in the Northern Indian Ocean, each bringing heavy rainfall. Within a week, separate cyclones, Tropical Storm Sagar and Cyclone Mekunu, hit Somalia and nearby Oman, respectively, and both dropped heavy rainfall in a region that is not accustomed to it.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a forest, a soybean field, or a prairie, all plants take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis – the process where they use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into food. During this changeover, the plants emit an energy “glow” that is not visible to the human eye, but can be detected by satellites in space. Now, researchers at the University of New Hampshire have taken that one step further. By using satellite data from different major land-based ecosystems around the globe, they have found that the photosynthesis glow is the same across all vegetation, no matter the location. This first-of-its-kind global analysis could have significance in providing more accurate data for scientists working to model carbon cycle and eventually help better project climate change.

Understanding the thermal conditions of the ground in the Arctic is of utmost importance in order to assess the effects of climate change on the occurrence of permafrost, on the ecosystems and societies of Arctis, and the global climate system. New data on temperatures has enabled more exact modelling.

A call for policy-makers to begin planning for the inevitable disappearance of glacier-fed rivers is one of the highlights of a no-holds-barred, University of Alberta-led accounting of the health of Canada’s mountains.

New research out of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave shows that the climate of the interior of southern Africa almost two million years ago was like no modern African environment – it was much wetter.

In July of 2016, Tropical Cyclone 05W was approaching Hainan Island, China. Now, two years later in 2018, another storm, also the fifth of the year in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean, Tropical Cyclone 05W is again approaching Hainan Island.