Tag: Earth

The more we learn about our climate, the better equipped we become in addressing the factors harming it. So, in July 2022, NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument was launched to map 10 key minerals in some of the world’s most arid regions, and how lofted dust in those areas affects our climate.  However, in brand new research, data from the instrument has been used to identify over 750 point-source emissions of greenhouse gases, including sources of methane from landfills, agricultural sites, and oil and gas facilities. …

Eurasia’s tallest volcano has violently erupted, throwing a 1,000-mile-long (1,600 kilometers) cloud of dust and ash into the air, new NASA satellite images show. Klyuchevskoy, sometimes referred to as Klyuchevskaya Sopka, is an active stratovolcano in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, which is home to more than 300 other volcanos. Klyuchevskoy’s peak stands at 15,584 feet (4,750 meters) above sea level, making it taller than any other volcano in Asia or Europe, according to the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT).  Klyuchevskoy has been continually erupting since mid-June. But on Nov. 1, a massive…

Last year, on Oct. 9, scientists witnessed an anomaly in the sky.  Sprouting from the darkness between stars, an abundance of deep space X-rays started to flood observatories. These signals appeared to be connected to an immensely bright event happening in our galaxy known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB) — an outpouring of highly energetic particles linked to things like star explosions and black hole births. But as one expert said, for instance, this GRB is to a standard one what a floodlight is to a lightbulb. The event was…

Scientists are turning to artificial intelligence to quickly spot giant icebergs in satellite images with the goal of monitoring their shrinkage over time. And unlike the conventional iceberg-tracking approach, which takes a human a few minutes to outline just one of these structures in an image, AI accomplished the same task in less than 0.01 seconds. That’s 10,000 times faster. “It is crucial to locate icebergs and monitor their extent, to quantify how much meltwater they release into the ocean,” Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, lead author of a study on the results…

NASA shared striking views of nearly all of Earth’s water in new maps of the planet’s global sea levels.  Data from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite was used to create an animation that shows the varying surface heights of the planet’s oceans and freshwater lakes and rivers. The data was collected during SWOT’s first full 21-day science orbit, which started on July 26 and ended on Aug. 16, according to a statement from NASA.  Already, scientists are thrilled with the data the satellite is providing. “The detail…