Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The November 2016 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, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your answer can be […]
If you have ever stood on a beach before sunset and gawked at a gleaming line of light extending toward the horizon, you have seen a glitter path. What causes this spectacular optical phenomenon? Glitter paths are made up of many bright points of light reflecting off tiny ripples, waves, and undulations on the water […]
The Antarctic ozone hole in 2016 was not exactly remarkable. But each year, we publish an annual update because, when strung together over time, the series shows the unparalleled success of the Montreal Protocol in stabilizing the atmosphere. Now the scientists and negotiators behind the Protocol are taking on a new problem: the climate warming […]
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2016 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, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your answer can be […]
September 2016 was the warmest September in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. September 2016’s temperature was a razor-thin 0.004 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest September in 2014. The margin is so narrow […]
After Hurricane Matthew ripped through Haiti, it blew through the Southeast. From above, NASA satellites, aircraft, and astronauts kept watch on the storm. The Earth Observatory published several images of the destructive storm (thumbnails above). The below includes a sampling of other notable images and maps related to the storm. Soil Moisture Matthew drenched the […]
In the United States, we say “it’s raining cats and dogs” when we get a heavy downpour. In South Africa, it rains “women with clubs.” In Slovakia, a good soak means “tractors are falling.” World languages brim with rainy day idioms. But when it comes to describing copious amounts of wet stuff, meteorologists do not […]
Tropical Storm Julia made headlines in September 2016, but not in the usual way. It wasn’t a particularly strong or destructive storm, although it brought heavy rainfall to coastal areas of the eastern United States from Florida to Virginia. The unusual aspect was where it formed: Julia became a tropical storm while over land, not […]
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The September 2016 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, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your answer can be […]
While I was interviewing University of North Carolina climate scientist Wei Mei about his new research that shows a significant increase in the intensity of land-falling typhoons in the western Pacific, the strongest storm of the 2016 season (Super Typhoon Meranti) was on the verge of slamming into China after grazing Taiwan. “Meranti fits the trend,” […]
