Tuesday, November 12th, 2019
A NASA-funded study suggests winter carbon emissions in the Arctic may be adding more carbon into the atmosphere each year than is taken up by Arctic vegetation, marking a stark reversal for a region that has captured and stored carbon for tens of thousands of years. The study, published Oct. 21, 2019, in Nature Climate
Tuesday, November 5th, 2019
NASA has for years used its cutting-edge space-based and airborne instruments to better understand hurricanes and give weather forecasters new insights they could use to improve the accuracy of their storm forecasts. A NASA program focused on bringing new weather research to bare on forecasting challenges is now tackling predictions of a hurricane’s strength. The
Tuesday, October 29th, 2019
Data from the Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas shows that there were almost five times as many wildfires in August 2019 compared to August 2018, but a detailed analysis reveals precisely where these fires have been occurring, most of which were in Asia. The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission recorded 79,000 fires in August this year, compared to
Monday, October 21st, 2019
Abnormal weather patterns in the upper atmosphere over Antarctica dramatically limited ozone depletion in September and October, resulting in the smallest ozone hole observed since 1982, NASA and NOAA scientists reported. The annual ozone hole reached its peak extent of 6.3 million square miles (16. 4 million square kilometers) on Sept. 8, 2019, and then
Tuesday, October 15th, 2019
Eight briefcase-size satellites flying in a row may be key to improving forecasts of a hurricane’s wind speed—detecting whether it will make landfall as a Category 1 or a Category 5. NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) fleet, launched in 2016, was designed to show whether the same GPS signals your phone uses for
Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
As we pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world is warming at an alarming rate, with devastating consequences. While our vast oceans are helping to take the heat out of climate change, new research shows that they are absorbing a lot more atmospheric carbon dioxide than previously thought—but these positives may be outweighed
Tuesday, October 1st, 2019
The Amazon basin is exceptional. It spans at least 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), nearly twice the size of India. It is home to Earth’s largest rainforest as well as the largest river for the volume of the flow and the size of the drainage basin. The rainforest, which covers about 80
Tuesday, September 24th, 2019
Arctic sea ice reached its annual summer minimum on Sept. 18, 2019, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Analysis of satellite data by NSIDC and NASA showed that the extent of ice cover this year effectively tied 2007 and 2016 as the second lowest in the satellite record, which
Tuesday, September 17th, 2019
Hot and dry. These are the watchwords for large fires. While every fire needs a spark to ignite and fuel to burn, it’s the hot and dry conditions in the atmosphere that determine the likelihood of a fire starting, its intensity and the speed at which it spreads. Over the past several decades, as the
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in collaboration with the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), used synthetic aperture radar data from the European Union’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites to produce this flood map of the Bahamas. The light-blue color indicates areas that were likely flooded when
