The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded the University of Maryland a five-year, $388 million cooperative funding agreement for collaborative research in Earth system science. The agreement renews the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS), a national consortium of researchers from more than three dozen academic and nonprofit institutions that are addressing the grand challenge of understanding how human activity interacts with Earth’s environment as a coupled system.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a new mechanism by which particles are formed around the globe.

Methane, a strong greenhouse gas that naturally escapes from the bottom of the North Sea, is affected by the pressure of high or low tide. Methane emissions from the seafloor can be just easily three times as much or as little, depending on the tide. This is shown by NIOZ oceanographer Tim de Groot, in a publication in Nature Communications Earth and Environment. "Our research shows that you can never rely on one measurement when you want to know how much methane escapes from the seafloor."