Every month, NASA Earth Observatory will offer up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The second puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section below to tell us what ...

This summer, we have the chance to be part of a team of researchers studying the efficiency of the drainage system over the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet. This NASA Cryosphere program ...

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere has been fluctuating, mostly rising. The question is why. Scientists wonder if they have the right monitoring systems in place to answer that question ...

Why does the difference matter? When we see a photo where the colors are brightened or altered, we think of it as artful (at best) or manipulated (at worst). We also have that bias when we look at ...

In September and October 2015, tens of thousands of fires sent clouds of toxic gas and particulate matter into the air over Indonesia. Despite the moist climate of tropical Asia, fire is not unusual ...

Giant kelp forests are among Earth’s most productive habitats, but they are ephemeral. Researchers are using Landsat and a host of online friends to figure out where the forests are growing and ...

A few decades ago, the idea of predicting a disease outbreak via satellite was science fiction. But today, researchers can use environmental data to predict when and where some diseases are likely to ...

For centuries, if archaeologists wanted to find an ancient or mythical site, they trudged through desert sands or rainforest thickets armed with little more than rumors and hand-drawn maps. They ...

But, Rignot notes, scientists just got some better climbing shoes. The mission known as IceBridge carries an array of instruments on airplanes to obtain the most complete picture of Earth’s ice cover ...

Dirty snow usually melts faster than fresh snow because it absorbs more energy from the Sun, and that’s not just a problem in sooty, gritty cities. Except for some mountains and high plateaus, snow ...

A, what begins with A? There is Antarctica and the Arctic, algal blooms, acid rain, and the atmosphere. And aerosols altering an astronaut’s view of this ancient assemblage of rock in a state adjacent ...

Empowered by free access to the Landsat data archive, earth scientists are using new computing tools to ask questions that were impossible to answer a decade ago. From week-to-week fluctuations in ...