This blog post is the first in a series to come. Our team, the Climate & Ecosystems Change research group from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is working in collaboration with the Environmental ...

In the process of researching a feature for the Earth Observatory, I always come across fascinating tidbits that just don’t quite fit into my article. For instance, there’s this great carbon ...

On June 16, 1962, The New Yorker began publishing a serialized version of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Spring would eventually turn silent, Carson warned, because widespread pesticide use was ...

Researchers have found that Earth’s energy imbalance approximately doubled during the 14-year period from 2005 to 2019. Earth’s climate is determined by a delicate balance between how much of the ...

This month we published a satellite image and map of the southern United States featuring the Black Belt Prairie—a crescent-shaped swath of land running through Mississippi and Alabama named for its ...

The Earth Observatory shares images and stories about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, satellite missions, and models.

While the brief scenarios described above represent a small portion of the observed changes in the water cycle, it should be noted that many uncertainties remain in the prediction of future climate.

Each summer, monsoon rains sweep across southwestern Asia, soaking India and Bangladesh. In nearby Pakistan, the rains are usually less intense, more intermittent, and centered in the northeast. The ...

Earth’s temperature depends on how much sunlight the land, oceans, and atmosphere absorb, and how much heat the planet radiates back to space. This fact sheet describes the net flow of energy through ...

Drew Skau and I have received a few comments on Subtleties of Color that deserve to be included. (By the way, don’t be shy. You can leave a comment here or at visual.ly). Naomi B. Robbins demonstrated ...

We are kicking off 2025 with much to look forward to but also much to look back on. In 2024, over 7.5 million readers visited our website to read our stories, and many millions more viewed our imagery ...