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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

It has been a long day on the river. The weather was blustery. Wind came up the river at us on and off all day. For the first time we were covered in spray from the river, and I got pretty chilly.

The traditional people of Siberia’s Evenkiyskiy Region survived in the harsh, wild land by being finely attuned to clues of Nature’s mood. To these people who survived as reindeer herders, hunters, ...