Featured
Tuesday, May 19th, 2026
Maps can show more than just where things are—they can also show how things change. New maps of artificial light reveal a planet that has been reshaping its nights through patterns of brightening and dimming. The maps are based on a recent analysis of NASA’s Black Marble data, which found that instead of a gradual increase in
Monday, May 4th, 2026
Satellite observations are capturing the rapid retreat of Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier, where ice loss has accelerated dramatically in recent years. The imagery reveals fractured ice, expanding melt zones and newly exposed terrain as the glacier continues to destabilize. Scientists attribute the retreat to a combination of ocean warming and structural weakening of the glacier’s ice
Monday, April 20th, 2026
Nearly all of Florida faced at least “moderate” drought in April 2026, and nearly 80 percent of the state fell under “extreme” conditions—some of the worst on record. The Floridan aquifer dropped to its lowest levels since 2011, prompting water-management districts to issue mandatory outdoor watering restrictions across multiple regions. The map above combines data
Tuesday, April 7th, 2026
At the top of the planet, the cap of sea ice across Arctic waters grows and shrinks with the seasons, usually reaching its annual maximum extent in March. In 2026, this peak occurred on March 15, when the extent reached 14.29 million square kilometers, matching the lowest maximum observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979. One
Tuesday, March 24th, 2026
From Jan. 19-22, 2026, a particularly strong X-class solar flare caused a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere, with some of the most intense radiation storms on record. The cause was an eruption on the Sun’s surface, which released high-energy particles that reached Earth within 25 hours. ESA’s ice mission, CryoSat, had just received an important software update, enabling the mission
Tuesday, March 10th, 2026
In a first, a space mission led by NASA and France tracked Earth’s rivers swelling and shrinking from month to month over the course of a year and found significantly less of a swing than previous model-based estimates. A record drought in the Amazon likely influenced the tally made by the Surface Water and Ocean
Monday, February 23rd, 2026
Each year, the world’s leading climate scientists evaluate the most critical evidence on how our planet is changing. Their assessments draw heavily on data from Earth-observing satellites—and the latest 10 New Insights in Climate Science report delivers a stark warning: the planet’s energy balance is drifting further out of alignment, oceans are warming at unprecedented rates, and the
Monday, February 9th, 2026
In the wake of a winter storm that blanketed numerous U.S. states with snow and ice, unusually low temperatures gripped a large swath of the nation east of the Rockies in late January 2026. The cold spell was notable for severity, longevity and geographic scope. This image compares surface air temperatures across part of the
Monday, January 26th, 2026
The European Space Agency’s innovative Biomass satellite is now fully commissioned, opening free access to a powerful new stream of data that promise a step change in our understanding of forest dynamics and their role in regulating the global carbon cycle. This image from the Biomass mission depicts a transect of estimated forest carbon content, in tonnes
Monday, January 12th, 2026
Science teams at NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) have released the first-ever global estimate of river discharge and suspended sediment, as observed from space, marking a new milestone in our ability to understand one of Earth’s most fundamental systems. Developed using data from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography
