Tag: Earth

NASA satellite data adds key pollutant to national environmental justice database

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Scientists harnessed satellite technology to track a key air pollutant previously absent from a national database, NASA announced earlier this week, marking a crucial step forward in monitoring differences in air quality across the U.S. and identifying groups whose health is unfairly affected. Measurements of nitrogen dioxide, which is primarily released into air through the burning of fossil fuels and can lead to respiratory diseases like asthma among other health problems, had been missing from the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, or EJScreen. The database is maintained by the…

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Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds

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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers. The change in forest structure could absorb more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, or increase permafrost thawing, resulting in the release of ancient carbon. Millions of data points from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) and Landsat missions helped…

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Telfer Mine, Western Australia

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NASA/Michala Garrison, USGS Landsat 9’s Operational Land Imager-2 captured this image of the open pits and ponds of Telfer Mine and the surrounding rust-colored soil on Dec. 15, 2023. The soils have a reddish tint from the iron oxides that have accumulated from millions of years of weathering. This part of Western Australia is known for being rich in natural resources, including petroleum, iron ore, copper, and certain precious metals. Beneath the soils, veins of gold and silver run through sedimentary rocks, such as quartz sandstone and siltstone, that formed about 600 million years ago,…

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Earth’s plate tectonics fired up hundreds of millions of years earlier than we thought, ancient crystals reveal

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The plate tectonics that cause earthquakes, build mountains and split continents may have started when Earth was in its infancy, new research finds — significantly earlier than many scientists previously thought.  The new study suggests plate tectonics started more than 4 billion years ago — not long after the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago. In this era, known as the Hadean, Earth was fresh and piping hot, with an ammonia-and-methane atmosphere imbued with enough water to eventually condense into a planet-wide ocean. During this period, Earth cooled enough to…

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NASA Returns to Arctic Studying Summer Sea Ice Melt

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5 Min Read NASA Returns to Arctic Studying Summer Sea Ice Melt NASA's Gulfstream III aircraft taxis on the runway at Pituffik Space Base as it begins one of its daily science flights for the ARCSIX mission. Credits: NASA/Gary Banziger What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and a new NASA mission is helping improve data modeling and increasing our understanding of Earth’s rapidly changing climate. Changing ice, ocean, and atmospheric conditions in the northernmost part of Earth have a large impact on the entire planet. That’s…

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Discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ from deep-sea metal lumps could trigger rethink of origins of life

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Potato-size metallic nodules strewn across the Pacific Ocean seafloor produce oxygen in complete darkness and without any help from living organisms, new research reveals. The discovery of this deep-sea oxygen, dubbed “dark oxygen,” is the first time scientists have ever observed oxygen being generated without the involvement of organisms and challenges what we know about the emergence of life on Earth, researchers say. “When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were faulty, because every study ever done in the deep sea has only seen oxygen being consumed…

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NASA-Funded Studies Explain How Climate Is Changing Earth’s Rotation

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6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The Arctic is captured in this 2010 visualization using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite. A new study quantifies how climate-related processes, including the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, are driving polar motion. Another study looks at how polar meltwater is speeding the lengthening of Earth’s day. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Researchers used more than 120 years of data to decipher how melting ice, dwindling groundwater, and rising seas are nudging the planet’s spin axis and lengthening days. Days…

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Registration Opens for the 2024 NASA International Space Apps Challenge

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Earth (ESD) Earth Home Explore Climate Change Science in Action Multimedia Data For Researchers NASA invites a global community of innovators, technologists, storytellers, and problem solvers to register for the 2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge, the largest annual global hackathon. The annual event,  held this year on October 5-6, fosters innovation through international collaboration by providing an opportunity for participants to utilize NASA’s free and open data and space-based data from space agency partners. “It takes a variety of skills and perspectives to launch a mission into space, and NASA’s…

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Is Earth’s weather getting weirder?

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Severe turbulence, record rainfall, killer heatwaves and raging wildfires to name but a few: is it just me, or is “Is Earth’s weather getting weirder?” The answer? Yes. Well, sort of.  These weather events have happened in the past, but the problem is nowadays they’re happening more frequently and to a far greater extent.  What’s causing this uptick in “global weirding” and is there anything we can do about it? Space.com spoke with a leading climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe to learn more about this strange surge in weird weather events…

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A Midsummer Red Sprite Seen from Space

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Several transient luminous events illuminate pockets of Earth’s upper atmosphere. A line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa powers the rare phenomena. NASA/Matthew Dominick NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth’s upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024. The bright red flashes (more easily seen by clicking on the photo to see a larger version) are a less understood phenomena associated with powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere. Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are…

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