Each summer, monsoon rains sweep across southwestern Asia, soaking India and Bangladesh. In nearby Pakistan, the rains are usually less intense, more intermittent, and centered in the northeast. The ...

This post was originally published by the Society for News Design for the Malofiej Infographic World Summit. Palettes aren’t the only important decision when visualizing data with color: you also need ...

On May 5, 2012, I was attending a conference at ICIMOD (the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development). I heard about the terrifying disaster that day. A flash ...

When a satellite reaches exactly 42,164 kilometers from the center of the Earth (about 36,000 kilometers from Earth’s surface), it enters a sort of “sweet spot” in which its orbit matches Earth’s ...

Since its launch in February 2013, Landsat 8 has collected about 400 scenes of the Earth’s surface per day. Each of these scenes covers an area of about 185 by 185 kilometers (115 by 115 miles)—34,200 ...

All of this extra carbon needs to go somewhere. So far, land plants and the ocean have taken up about 55 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere while about 45 percent has ...

The Earth Observatory shares images and stories about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, satellite missions, and models.

In the 1960s, the Soviet Union undertook a major water diversion project on the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The region’s two major rivers, fed by snowmelt and ...

Because the river irrigates millions of acres of farms, the seasonal cycle changes not just the river, but also the surrounding landscape.

In Sanskrit, Padma is a name for the sacred lotus flower, a symbol of beauty, purity, and growth. The meaning is well-suited for the river bearing the same name, which seems to be constantly evolving ...

Greenland Ice Sheet Gets a Refresh A moderately intense season of surface melting left part of the ice sheet dirty gray in summer 2025, but snowfall has since freshened its appearance. Published Sep ...