The January 2015 puzzler (top image) might look like bacteria in a petri dish—many guesses played off some variation of that theme. However, if you answered “coral reef,” you were on the right track. Alexandre Mathieu was the fist to submit a comment to our Earth Matters blog suggesting that the image was a reef. There […]
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The January 2015 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 a […]
If you follow Earth and climate science closely, you may have noticed that the media is abuzz every December and January with stories about how the past year ranked in terms of global temperatures. Was this the hottest year on record? In fact, it was. The Japanese Meteorological Agency released data on January 5, 2015, that showed 2014 was […]
NASA and NOAA announced today that 2014 brought the warmest global temperatures in the modern instrumental record. But what did the year look like on a more regional scale? According to the Met Office, the United Kingdom experienced it warmest year since 1659. Despite the record-breaking temperatures, however, no month was extremely warm. Instead, each month (with the exception of […]
Last week, an Earth Observatory Image of the Day featured a sediment plume from the Fraser River where it enters the Strait of Georgia. That photograph was taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on September 6, 2014. After we posted the image on Facebook, researcher Ed Wiebe responded by sharing some close-up views of […]
What is the hottest volcano of them all? It depends on how you define “hottest,” but a fascinating new analysis crunches the numbers in a few different ways, using satellite observations of 95 of Earth’s most active volcanoes since 2000. In terms of total energy radiated, the prize goes to Hawaii’s Kilauea (shown above), which has been […]
It’s human nature to get excited by novelty in science…to gravitate to the sexy headlines and the tales of new discoveries and the flashy imagery. But so much of science is a slow slog, an anonymous labor in ordinary looking labs and cinderblock office buildings. Most scientists know that the fundamental advances do not often come […]
Shortly after we posted our December puzzler, Dan Mahr had responded with the correct answer. “This is definitely a scene of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. Specifically, I think this is Wright Valley, and the body of water at center is Don Juan Pond, one of the most saline lakes in the world. The […]
The 2014 fall meeting of the American Geological Union (AGU) is more than halfway over. Throughout the week we’ve been enjoying a series of cartoons drawn live at the meeting by Miles Traer, a multimedia producer at Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences, inspired by various sessions. Below is a cartoon from December 16 titled: “Atlas […]
Nighttime lights around many major U.S. cities shine 20 to 50 percent brighter during Christmas and New Year’s when compared to light output during the rest of the year. Full story. Related. Kilauea lava flow burning through forest near Pahoa, Hawaii. Full story. Related. Yes, that’s a NASA plane without wings. Its top speed: 1,064 […]
