In this satellite image, the prominent Pinacate Peaks stick out above the sand dune landscape of the Gran Desierto de Altar in Mexico’s Sonoran Province. The peaks are located just south of the Mexico ...

Michael Carlowicz was managing editor of NASA’s Earth Observatory from 2010 to 2022. He has written about Earth science and geophysics since 1991 for several NASA divisions, the Woods Hole ...

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 ...

Since its launch in February 2013, Landsat 8 has collected about 400 scenes of the Earth’s surface per day. Each of these scenes covers an area of about 185 by 185 kilometers (115 by 115 miles)—34,200 ...

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’ ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Located on the border of Pakistan and China, just a few kilometers southeast of K2, Broad Peak is the twelfth tallest mountain on Earth and the third tallest in the Karakoram Range. Its name comes ...

When it comes to climate and climate change, the Earth's radiation budget is what makes it all happen. Swathed in its protective blanket of atmospheric gases against the boiling Sun and frigid space, ...

According to Esaias, the changes aren’t just dramatic, they’re also kind of scary. The fertility of most flowering plants, including nearly all fruits and vegetables, depends on animal-mediated ...

Examine the set of graphs below for a given city. Read carefully the temperature and precipitation scales on the graphs. Review the biome information. Two biome choices are given for each set of ...