A new fissure opened on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland near Grindavík in December 2023 and continued erupting throughout 2024. Whether sparked by lightning, intentional land-clearing, ...

A new fissure opened on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland near Grindavík in December 2023 and continued erupting throughout 2024. Whether sparked by lightning, intentional land-clearing, ...

NASA will launch four Earth science missions in 2022 to provide scientists with more information about fundamental climate systems and processes including extreme storms, surface water and oceans, and ...

NASA will launch four Earth science missions in 2022 to provide scientists with more information about fundamental climate systems and processes including extreme storms, surface water and oceans, and ...

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The December 2024 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking ...

The impact of increased surface temperatures is significant in itself. But global warming will have additional, far-reaching effects on the planet. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies ...

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 ...

Colleagues in the Caltech Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences steered him toward remote-sensing scientist Michael Abrams of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Abrams is the lead scientist for ...

Variations in TSI are due to a balance between decreases caused by sunspots and increases caused by bright areas called faculae which surround sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun in which ...

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.

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 ...

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’ ...