For a short time after a snowfall, glaciers are like blank white canvases. But it’s not long before the snowy surfaces are painted over with coats of dust, soot, ash, pollen, salt, sand, rocks, and ...

Since 1999, Earth Observatory has published 16,000+ images. To celebrate our 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we want you to pick our all-time best image. Each week from March ...

Many Siberians call the first of August “the beginning of the end of summer.” This expression acknowledges how quickly warm weather will pass, and reminds people to prepare for the extreme cold to ...

In January 2016 in Kenya, the conditions were just right for an outbreak of Rift Valley fever. A strong El Niño on the other side of the world had brought higher temperatures and a wetter-than-normal ...

Swirling white clouds, deep blue oceans, and multicolored landscapes come to life on the pages of NASA’s new photo essay Earth, a collection of dramatic images captured by satellites. Video transcript ...

Hurricane season in the North Atlantic Ocean officially began on June 1, though the season typically peaks in September. Through August 1, 2011, four tropical storms had developed in the Atlantic ...

It measures about half the size of a football field and it is so small that you cannot see it on Google maps. This barren bit of rock off the coast of Canada has an unusual namesake: the Landsat 1 ...

When a deadly landslide in Guatemala on May 30, 2010, killed nearly 100 people and forced the evacuation of 75,000, Dalia Kirschbaum of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center carefully documented it. And ...

Over the years, astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory have snapped spectacular photographs of Earth’s snow and ice in both hemispheres.

The craggy silhouettes of iconic whitebark pines rise from the mountain ridges of Yellowstone National Park. Those trees fill a niche in the environment that was left vacant by other species. Grizzly ...

The Kochechum is a curious river. The chilly headwaters begin in snowmelt and rain in the basaltic mountains north of the Arctic Circle. These waters flow southerly to the town of Tura and join the ...