Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local … Read more
NASA satellite data and citizen science observations combine for new findings on bird populations. Through the eBird citizen scientist program, millions of birders have recorded their observations of different species and submitted checklists to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Through a partnership with NASA, the lab has now used this data to model and map … Read more
Earth scientist Compton J. Tucker has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his work creating innovative tools to track the planet’s changing vegetation from space. It’s research that has spanned nearly 50 years at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he is a visiting scientist after retiring in March. … Read more
In the waters off New England, one of Earth’s rarest mammals swims slowly, mouth agape. The North Atlantic right whale filters clouds of tiny reddish zooplankton — called Calanus finmarchicus — from the sea. These zooplankton, no bigger than grains of rice, are the whale’s lifeline. Only about 370 of these massive creatures remain. For … Read more
In a recently published paper, NASA scientists use nearly 20 years of observations to show that the global water cycle is shifting in unprecedented ways. The majority of those shifts are driven by activities such as agriculture and could have impacts on ecosystems and water management, especially in certain regions. “We established with data assimilation … Read more
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture of two cyclones near Iceland on Nov. 20, 2006. Though we usually think of cyclones occurring in the tropics, these spiraling storms can also form at mid- and high latitudes. Cyclones at these latitudes are actually fairly common, and they drive much … Read more
NASA’s Terra satellite captured floating fragments of sea ice as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast on June 4, 2024. This ice traveled from the Fram Strait, a 450-kilometer (280-mile)-wide passage between Greenland and Svalbard, to the Arctic Ocean. Along the journey, it breaks into smaller pieces and starts to melt in … Read more
NASA/Lisa Tanh, Matilda Anokye, Ian Lee, Connor Racette The island of Hawai’i and surrounding waters glow in unusual shades in this 2022 model made through NASA DEVELOP. The model was created to help the County of Hawai’i in their shoreline setback plan. The image shows areas of high flood risk (blue), as well as sea … Read more