A string of dry years shriveled vegetation in Africa's Sahel, causing some to fear that the Sahara Desert was shifting south. Satellite data spanning more than twenty years now shows that the Sahel is ...

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

These shifts in species composition may be benign, or they may result in a cascade of negative consequences throughout the marine food web. Accurate global mapping of phytoplankton taxonomic groups is ...

If Earth’s oceans are soaking up the excess heat energy caused by greenhouse gases, then exactly what is the problem? The problem—and perhaps part of the solution as well—is thermal inertia. Inertia ...

Welcome, teachers, to Mission: Biomes! This site was designed for teachers to use in classrooms as a supplementary, interdisciplinary unit. Mission: Biomes is especially appropriate for grades 3 ...

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

Updated Oct 23, 2009 World of Change: El Niño, La Niña, and Rainfall. For many people, El Niño and La Niña mean floods or drought, but the events are actually a warming or cooling of the eastern ...

After thinning at alarming rates in the 1980s and 90s, the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to recover. Watch how ozone concentrations in the stratosphere have changed from 1979 through 2018.

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

The first Lagrange point is located between the Earth and the Sun, giving satellites at this point a constant view of the Sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a NASA and European Space ...

Climate Close-up: Coral Reefs : The warm, shallow ocean waters of the tropics have talkative “forests” of their own. Brightly colored mounds of coral grow in the warm ocean waters, quickly when ...

Many ancient and medieval cultures believed the stars and the planets rotated around a fixed Earth. The complex motions of the planets—which sometimes move backwards across the sky (retrograde motion, ...