Providing water for drinking, irrigation and power, glaciers in the world's highest mountains are a lifeline for more than a billion people. As climate change takes a grip and glaciers lose mass, one might think that, lubricated by more meltwater, they flow more quickly. However, satellite images from over the last 30 years show that it isn't as simple as that.

The jury is still out as to whether climate change will lead to stronger El Niño events, but while representatives from around 200 countries at the COP24 conference are working to breathe life into the 2105 Paris Agreement, there is a 75–80% chance that a fully-fledged event could be with us in the next couple of months.

ESA has added nine new projects to its flagship climate initiative as part of ongoing efforts to systematically observe and collect data in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It was five years ago this month that ESA's GOCE gravity-mapping satellite finally gave way to gravity, but its results are still yielding buried treasure – giving a new view of the remnants of lost continents hidden deep under the ice sheet of Antarctica.

The Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite has been providing data on carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone since July, and now other polluting nasties such as sulphur dioxide and formaldehyde have joined the list of data products available to monitor the air we breathe.

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Indonesia on 28 September, destroying homes and hundreds of lives. As the death toll continues to rise, the effects of this natural disaster are far-reaching, with hundreds of thousands of people seeking access food, water and shelter in the aftermath of this tragedy.