Although ozone pollution is dropping across many parts of the United States, western Europe and Japan, many people living in those countries still experience numerous days every year in which levels of the lung irritant exceed health-based standards.

Vertical wind shear was still affecting Tropical Cyclone Cebile when NASA's Terra satellite passed over the Southern Pacific Ocean on Feb. 6. Cebile is undergoing a transition into a subtropical cyclone.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. And as the race to find energy sources to replace our dwindling fossil fuel supplies continues, hydrogen is likely to play a crucial role.

Hundreds of methane flares observed offshore Western Svalbard in the Arctic are caused by a process that started at the end of the last ice age, according to the study. The methane release happens because the gas is freed from melting hydrates – an icy substance found below the ocean floor, containing methane in a cage of frozen water.

An astonishing number of viruses are circulating around the Earth’s atmosphere – and falling from it – according to new research from scientists in Canada, Spain and the U.S.

Global ozone has been declining since the 1970s owing to certain man-made chemicals. Since these were banned, parts of the layer have been recovering, particularly at the poles.

The 2017 hurricane season is one for the record books. A seemingly relentless line of storms tore, one after another, across the Caribbean and into the Gulf Coast. Seventeen of them were strong enough to be named, with the strongest – Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate – conspiring to inflict an estimated 350 deaths and some $400 billion in property damage.

Although ozone pollution is dropping across many parts of the United States, western Europe and Japan, many people living in those countries still experience more than a dozen days every year in which levels of the lung irritant exceed health-based standards.

Greenland’s vast ice sheet has long been home to Project Iceworm, an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. Army initiative designed to deploy ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads against the Soviet Union. When the project was shuttered in 1967, military planners expected that any materials left on site would be safely frozen in ice and snow in perpetuity.

On the basis of a unique global comparison of data from core samples extracted from the ocean floor and the polar ice sheets, AWI researchers have now demonstrated that, though climate changes have indeed decreased around the globe from glacial to interglacial periods, the difference is by no means as pronounced as previously assumed. Until now, it was believed that glacial periods were characterised by extreme temperature variability, while interglacial periods were relatively stable. The researchers publish their findings advanced online in the journal Nature.