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Last year was a record-breaking one for Operation IceBridge, NASA’s aerial survey of the state of polar ice. For the first time in its nine-year history, the mission, which aims to close the gap between two NASA satellite campaigns that study changes in the height of polar ice, carried out seven field campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic in a single year.

Infrared light provides valuable temperature data to forecasters and cloud top temperatures give clues about highest, coldest, strongest storms within a hurricane.

Temporary lakes and ponds emit CO₂ during all year –even when they are dry-, and dry areas are the ones emitting a larger amount of carbon to the atmosphere. This phenomenon, described now for the first time, could have an impact on the global carbon cycle that controls Earth’s climate, according to a study led by the lecturer Biel Obrador, form the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, and Núria Catalán, from the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA).

Most recent advances in artificial-intelligence systems such as speech- or face-recognition programs have come courtesy of neural networks, densely interconnected meshes of simple information processors that learn to perform tasks by analyzing huge sets of training data.

When Hurricane Harvey struck Texas in August, industrial facilities in the state shut down, then reopened a few days later. In doing so, they produced nearly 2,000 tons of "excess emissions" -- air pollutants in addition to what was allowed as part of their normal operation.