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 the second science data acquisition flight of PALS (on June 12) I got to fly on board the Twin Otter aircraft for the flight segment after the mid-day refueling stop at Winnipeg airport. Due to the ...

Landsat 8 acquired this image of Mauna Loa on December 20, 2014. The CO2 observatory is located just north of the summit caldera. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat 8. Learn more about the image ...

Aerosols can have a major impact on climate when they scatter light. In 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines ejected more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide—a gas that reacts ...

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The June 2025 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, ...

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The June 2025 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, ...

The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens — which began with a series of small earthquakes in mid-March and peaked with a cataclysmic flank collapse, avalanche, and explosion on May 18 — was not the largest ...

The Earth Observatory image of the day for June 5 shows flooding in Botswana’s Savuti River and Savuti Swamp. The abundant water turns out to be a very small part of a much bigger picture. The Savuti ...

Temperate deciduous forests are located in the mid-latitude areas which means that they are found between the polar regions and the tropics. The deciduous forest regions are exposed to warm and cold ...

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

Old-growth forests are vital because they capture large amounts of carbon and provide homes to hundreds of species. In the Eastern United States, trees in these minimally disturbed ecosystems tend to ...

One of the more distinctive things about Earth among the planets is that we have plate tectonics.In other words, the hard, outer shell of the planet (called the lithosphere) is divided into several ...