Earth Matters

These key science points were published on September 27, 2013, as “headline statements” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as part of the organization’s fifth assessment report. Background links provided by Earth Observatory. +Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades […]

As category 4 Super Typhoon Usagi churned toward Taiwan on September 19, 2013, a satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above used a radar instrument to map the storm’s inner structure. The instrument on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) observed two tall complexes of rain clouds called hot towers in the inner eyewall, a sign that Usagi was a […]

Congratulations to Felix Bossert for being the quickest to solve the September puzzler. The answer is the Chara Sands.  See the Image of the Day that published on September 21, 2013, for a second image and details about the area. Also congratulations to Robert Emberson for providing interesting details about the geologic history of the […]

Drew Skau and I have received a few comments on Subtleties of Color that deserve to be included. (By the way, don’t be shy. You can leave a comment here or at visual.ly) Naomi B. Robbins demonstrated that the standard land cover classification palette fails for color-deficient viewers. She also pointed out that “color-deficient” is […]

Each month, Earth Observatory offers up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The September 2013 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your […]

Note: See the comment thread for an archive of questions and answers related to this event. Do you have questions about how NASA measures, models, and visualizes our changing climate? Here’s your chance to ask them directly. Earth Observatory is hosting a climate Q & A with NASA scientists at 2 pm EDT on Wednesday, […]

The previous posts are my personal take on using color in visualization. I hope my perspective is useful, but it’s primarily a synthesis of the work of others. Here’s a list of the sources that inspired and informed this series. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to sort through the whole set, […]

The topic of climate change inspires a lot of debate. At NASA, it has also inspired a lot of science. NASA scientists examine the Earth’s climate and how it is changing – gaining knowledge (or insight?) through decades of satellite observations, powerful computer models and expert scientific analysis. Over the course of this month, these […]