Among the mysteries of the South American Monsoon, explains Fu, is how the first thunderstorms of the wet season get started. A monsoon is an atmospheric see-saw in which the large-scale circulation ...

Science suggests that to mitigate the human contribution to global warming, we should reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Because some additional warming is inevitable—even if we ...

Desertification. The word invokes images of sand dunes blowing over abandoned farms as some irresistible, dark force steadily transforms fertile fields into inhospitable wasteland. The United Nations’ ...

Near infrared (NIR) light includes wavelengths between 700 and 1,100 nanometers. Water absorbs NIR, so these wavelengths are useful for discerning land-water boundaries that are not obvious in visible ...

Joshua Stevens was the lead visualizer of NASA’s Earth Observatory from 2015 to 2023. He has researched and taught cartographic design, geovisual analytics, and remote sensing for more than a decade.

Welcome, teachers, to Mission: Biomes! This site was designed for teachers to use in classrooms as a supplementary, interdisciplinary unit. Mission: Biomes is especially appropriate for grades 3 ...

Phytoplankton thrive along coastlines and continental shelves, along the equator in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and in high-latitude areas. Winds play a strong role in the distribution of ...

Air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. While natural variability plays some part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human activities—particularly ...

When scientists started to analyze the paleoclimate evidence in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, they found that the record also supported Milankovitch’s theory of when ice ages should occur.

Most materials published on the Earth Observatory, including images, are freely available for re-publication or re-use, including commercial purposes, except for where copyright is indicated. In those ...

The cost and benefits of global warming will vary greatly from area to area. For moderate climate change, the balance can be difficult to assess. But the larger the change in climate, the more ...

The most valuable fossils found in sediment cores are from tiny animals with a calcium carbonate shell, called foraminifera. One species of foraminifera lives in the icy waters of the Arctic above ...