The Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites have revealed new cracks, or rifts, in the Pine Island Glacier – one of the primary ice arteries in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The two large rifts were first spotted in early 2019 and have each rapidly grown to approximately 20 km in length.

Over 700 Earth observation satellites are orbiting our planet, transmitting hundreds of terabytes of data to downlink stations every day. Processing and extracting useful information is a huge data challenge, with volumes rising quasi-exponentially.

Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has arrived in New York after a two-week sail across the Atlantic, ready to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit at the end of September.

Thousands of fires have broken out in the Amazon rainforest. Satellite data show that there are almost four times as many fires this year compared to the same period last year. Apart from Brazil, parts of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina have also been affected.

Heatwave conditions catapulted Greenland into an early Arctic summer in June, prompting widespread melting across its icesheet surface, according to researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

Most of us probably wouldn't think of describing snow in terms of its grain size. However, grain size is fundamental to the amount of sunlight that snow reflects back into space - its albedo. With both snow and albedo part of the climate system, scientists are applying a novel analytical theory to Copernicus Sentinel-3 data and shedding new light on Greenland's changing albedo.