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A new research tool to safeguard drinking water is now keeping a watchful eye on Lake Erie. This week, a robotic lake-bottom laboratory began tracking the levels of dangerous toxins produced by cyanobacteria that bloom each summer in the lake's western basin.

The goal is to provide advance warning to municipal drinking water managers and thereby prevent a recurrence of the water crisis that left more than 400,000 Toledo-area residents without safe drinking water for about two days in early August 2014 due to high levels of microcystin toxins.

The world’s most extensive study of a major storm front striking the coast has revealed a previously unrecognised danger from climate change: as storm patterns fluctuate, waterfront areas once thought safe are likely to be hammered and damaged as never before.

The study, led by engineers at University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, was published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Coral reefs in the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba can resist rising water temperatures. If they survive local pollution, these corals may one day be used to re-seed parts of the world where reefs are dying. The scientists urge governments to protect the Gulf of Aqaba Reefs.

Coral reefs are dying on a massive scale around the world, and global warming is driving this extinction. The planet’s largest reef, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, is currently experiencing enormous coral bleaching for the second year in a row, while last year left only a third of its 2300-km ecosystem unbleached. The demise of coral reefs heralds the loss of some of the planet’s most diverse ecosystems.

The Eastern Pacific Ocean has been recently generating a lot of tropical cyclones. Tropical Depression 09E just formed off the southern coast of Mexico and was captured in imagery from NOAA’s GOES-East satellite.

Tropical Storm Fernanda has moved into the Central Pacific Ocean, while Tropical Storm Greg, which just absorbed the remnants of Tropical Depression 8E continues to strengthen in the Eastern Pacific.

Three new species of toads have been discovered living in Nevada's Great Basin in an expansive survey of the 190,000 square mile ancient lake bottom. Discoveries of new amphibians are extremely rare in the United States with only three new frog species discovered since 1985 - and toad species are even more rare, with the last species discovered north of Mexico, the now extinct Wyoming toad, in 1968.

"We've found the toads in small, wet habitats surrounded by high-desert completely cut off from other populations," Dick Tracy, a renowned biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and lead scientist on the project, said. "These are absolutely new, true species that have been separated from other populations for 650,000 years."