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The infamous hole in Earth’s ozone layer has shrunk down to 7.6 million square miles wide (12,200,000 square kilometers), the smallest the gap has been since 1988. This healing of Earth’s main shield against ultraviolet radiation is due largely to efforts initiated in the mid-1980s, when the use of ozone-harming CFCs was phased out. Not only is this positive news in regards to our atmosphere’s ability to filter out harmful UV radiation, it also stands as an example of how humanity can make a positive, large-scale impact when efforts to reduce ecological harm are required, such as in the case of our need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has signed a new directive that prevents scientists that are receiving grants from the EPA from serving on the agency’s advisory committees. Pruitt says that this unprecedented move is to remove what he perceives to be a potential bias from the committees, stating that the members of three key EPA boards — the Science Advisory Board, Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, and Board of Scientific Counselors — have received an estimated $77 million in agency funding. The move was quickly criticized by scientists and environmentalists as one that would bar the country’s most qualified scientists from these committees, and at the same time leave the door open for Pruitt to appoint industry-friendly members to advise the EPA.read more

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The second-largest tropical cyclone on record, Typhoon Lan, made landfall early on Monday, leaving 7 people dead and 100 injured as it passed near Tokyo. The storm was fueled by warm sea surface temperatures (86ºF/30ºC), and caused extensive flooding and mudslides, dumping nearly 32 inches of rain over 48 hours on Wakayama Prefecture alone.
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A massive hole the size of Lake Superior has opened in the ice that covers Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen since the mid-1970s. This hole, called a polynya, opens up 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles) of ocean in the middle of the Weddell Sea’s ice pack, hundreds of miles from shore. "This is hundreds of kilometers from the ice edge. If we didn’t have a satellite, we wouldn’t know it was there," explains professor Kent Moore, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Toronto.
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