Tag: Earth

Shanghai from Space

NeRD

NASA/Jasmin Moghbeli While the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above the East China Sea, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli snapped this photo of Shanghai’s city lights and the Huangpu River flowing through downtown. Shanghai is the most populous city in China with a population of about 24.9 million. The space station serves as a unique platform for observing Earth with both hands-on and automated equipment. Station crew members have produced hundreds of thousands of images, recording phenomena such as storms in real time, observing natural events such as volcanic eruptions…

Read More

What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays!

NeRD

3 min read What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays! A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. These are normal stormy sights and sounds. But sometimes, up above the clouds, stranger things happen. Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has spotted bursts of gamma rays – some of the highest-energy forms of light in the universe – coming from thunderstorms. Gamma rays are usually found coming from objects with crazy extreme physics like neutron stars and black holes. So why is Fermi seeing them come from thunderstorms? About a thousand times a…

Read More

Major ‘magnetic anomaly’ discovered deep below New Zealand’s Lake Rotorua

NeRD

New maps have revealed a hidden hydrothermal system beneath a legendary lake in New Zealand, which serves as the setting for a famous Māori love story.  Lake Rotorua sits at the heart of a massive ancient crater of a dormant volcano on New Zealand’s North Island. The lake has a storied history: it is where the daughter of an influential chief is said to have overcome forbidden love by swimming across the lake to be with a young warrior.  The Rotorua area is also well known for hydrothermal activity, with…

Read More

Space mysteries: Why do Earth’s magnetic poles flip?

NeRD

Earth, our rocky, watery oasis in the cosmos is the ideal place for life to flourish for a number of reasons.  We sit at just the right distance from our home star for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface. The gravitational pull of other large planets helps protect us from apocalyptic collisions with wandering meteorites. And the planet’s magnetic field encircles Earth with a protective barrier that shields us from charged particles hurtling through space.  Earth’s magnetic field is generated by the complex flow of molten metallic material…

Read More

Goodbye sun: What it’s like to experience the polar night along Norway’s rugged coastline

NeRD

Anyone who has ventured to the far north or south during winter will have experienced the surreal phenomenon of the “polar night,” during which the sun doesn’t rise.   Most people who have encountered the polar night will have done so in the Northern Hemisphere in either Norway, parts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Finland, Russia or Sweden. The only landmass in the Southern Hemisphere to welcome the polar night is Antarctica.  Lucky for me, I got my first true taste of the polar night while on an Astronomy Voyage along…

Read More

What would happen if Earth stopped spinning?

NeRD

Even though Earth is always spinning, we can’t feel it, and you probably take it for granted. But what would happen if it stopped? If Earth suddenly stopped spinning, it would be catastrophic. Almost everyone and everything not attached to the planet would continue to move at the current speed of Earth’s rotation, around 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) at its fastest, which is along the equator. Related: 10 dramatic discoveries about Earth from 20  “The momentum of all the material that’s normally rotating — the water, the air, all the…

Read More

El análisis de la NASA confirma que 2023 fue el año más cálido registrado

NeRD

Este mapa de la Tierra en 2023 muestra las anomalías de la temperatura global de la superficie, es decir, cuánto más cálida o más fría estuvo cada región del planeta en comparación con el promedio del período de 1951 a 1980. Las temperaturas normales se muestran en blanco, las superiores a las normales en rojo y naranja, y las inferiores a las normales en azul. Una versión animada de este mapa muestra la evolución de las anomalías de la temperatura global a lo largo del tiempo, desde 1880. Descarga esta…

Read More

NASA Analysis Confirms 2023 as Warmest Year on Record

NeRD

This map of Earth in 2023 shows global surface temperature anomalies, or how much warmer or cooler each region of the planet was compared to the average from 1951 to 1980. Normal temperatures are shown in white, higher-than-normal temperatures in red and orange, and lower-than-normal temperatures in blue. An animated version of this map shows global temperature anomalies changing over time, dating back to 1880. Download this visualization from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svsdev.gsfc.nasa.gov/5207. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí. Earth’s average surface temperature…

Read More

NASA’s PACE To Investigate Oceans, Atmospheres in Changing Climate

NeRD

6 Min Read NASA’s PACE To Investigate Oceans, Atmospheres in Changing Climate Earth is complex – the atmosphere, ocean, land, and each small interwoven facet of those systems is a puzzle piece that connects and fills out the full picture. With a changing climate, the puzzle is becoming more complex – and important – to understand. Credits: NASA / Ryan Fitzgibbons and Emme Watkins Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are changing as the planet warms. Some ocean waters become greener as more microscopic organisms bloom. In the atmosphere, dust storms born on…

Read More

NASA, NOAA to Announce 2023 Global Temperatures, Climate Conditions

NeRD

This map depicts global temperature anomalies for meteorological summer in 2023 (June, July, and August). It shows how much warmer or cooler different regions of Earth were compared to the baseline average from 1951 to 1980. Climate researchers from NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will release their annual assessments of global temperatures and discuss the major climate trends of 2023 during a media briefing at 11 a.m. EST Friday, Jan. 12. NASA will stream audio of the briefing on the agency’s YouTube. Participants will include: Kate Calvin,…

Read More