Justine Calma

There are plenty of pollution blind spots that ground monitors miss. So NASA launched a powerful new instrument in April to track air pollution from space. The new tool, called TEMPO, monitors three smog-forming pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and ground-level ozone. NASA released the first data maps from TEMPO today. They show pollution building up over major cities in North America, including Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.

Heatwaves that hit North America and Europe in July would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, another study found. And urban sprawl makes certain neighborhoods even hotter than surrounding areas, maps of 44 US cities published in July showed us.