While climate change is making much of the world warmer, temperatures in a subpolar region of the North Atlantic are getting cooler. A team of researchers report that changes in the wind pattern, among other factors, may be contributing to this “cold blob.”

The vast majority of plastic pollution that makes its way into the rivers of the Chesapeake Bay stays in and along local waters and is not, as researchers put it, “exported” to the ocean.

“We found a huge band of carbon dioxide trapped around the frontal system,” said Arkayan Samaddar, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Penn State.

Measuring ethane in the atmosphere shows that the amounts of methane going into the atmosphere from oil and gas wells and contributing to greenhouse warming is higher than suggested by the U.S. EPA.

Penn State will be one of the partners in the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s new Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CISHIWRO).