Earth Matters

Aroundup of some of the latest Earth science news from NASA.

Photographs show the ground-based view of East Owinat, one of Egypt’s land reclamation projects aimed at making some desert areas suitable for agriculture.

Between 1950 and 1970, sea ice was growing. A new study explains why.

On March 17, 2002, two small satellites (nicknamed Tom and Jerry) blasted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. In the 15 years since, there is nothing funny about what this pair has accomplished.

In February 2013, scientists saw algae growing amid the snow and ice on an Antarctic island.

Editor’s note: Here’s a roundup of the latest eye-catching earth science videos from NASA and beyond. In March, snow emerged as a theme. Where there is snow, there is water. Scientists trudged through thick white powder in Grand Mesa and the Senator Beck Basin to measure the depth of snow — and its water content — for […]

In Hawaii, land of palm trees, pineapples, and year-round surfing, a full-blown blizzard hit last week. The early March storm brought more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) to the top of Mauna Kea volcano, leading authorities to shut the road to the peak. The snow was all the more surprising given how little has fallen […]

New videos of lightning from the GOES-16 satellite and a blue jet from the International Space Station are spectacular.

Your challenge for the March puzzler is to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting.

Regular readers of our site may have noticed our recent piece on the Antarctic Peninsula. That Aqua MODIS shot was made possible by a weather pattern that brings clearer skies to the peninsula in January or February most years. You can see the same pattern in finer detail with a mosaic of Landsat scenes from early 2016. But […]