A new map shows the height of Earth’s forests, from stubby saplings to timbers towering more than 50 meters tall, across the entire land surface.
Monsoon rains have overwhelmed villages, inundated crops, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Image of the Day Land Water Floods Human Presence Remote Sensing
The majority of the nation’s people and several prominent volcanoes populate the island.
Published Jun 25, 2022
Snowmelt and heavy rain caused historically high water that destroyed homes, roads, and bridges, and isolated some of the national park’s gateway communities.
Published Jun 22, 2022Image of the Day Atmosphere Land Water Floods Human Presence Remote Sensing
Terceira Island is one of nine volcanic islands in the Azores archipelago, which straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a triple junction.
Published Jun 22, 2022
Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.
Published Jun 21, 2022
Researchers with SERVIR created a web-based tool that integrates NASA satellite data with observations from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
Published Jun 21, 2022
Old Point Comfort was among the first places where enslaved people were traded in colonial America—and a hub of resistance to slavery during the American Civil War.
Published Jun 19, 2022
This national park in western Argentina is rich in plant, mammal, and dinosaur fossils, as well as rocks dating back 200 million years.
Published Jun 18, 2022
Regular spring flooding has led Native peoples to adapt to the rise and fall of the water.
Published Jun 17, 2022Image of the Day Land Water Floods Human Presence Remote Sensing
The bears in Southeast Greenland are uniquely adapted to living where sea ice is scarce for much of the year.
Published Jun 17, 2022
Dozens of wildfires, including the largest tundra fire on record for the Yukon, are burning across the state.
Published Jun 14, 2022
What do you do when presented with a new satellite image? Here's what the Earth Observatory team does to understand the view.
Published Nov 18, 2013
An early summer heatwave set up a cluster of glaciers in the Central Andes for accelerated melting.
Published Jun 14, 2022
Researchers used satellite images to chronicle the historical expansion of eastern North Carolina’s swine farming industry.
Published Jun 13, 2022
NASA satellites document how our world—forests, oceans, human landscapes, even the Sun—changes over months, seasons, and years.
Published Apr 29, 2009
12 months of high-resolution global true color satellite imagery.
Published Oct 13, 2005
The desert mountain in Iran is a geologic menagerie of fault lines, exposed volcanic rocks, and alluvial fans.
Published Jun 12, 2022
In honor of our site anniversary, we offer a selection of some of the most beautiful, newsworthy, interesting, and scientifically important images from 23 years online — one image for each day of the calendar year.
Published Apr 26, 2022
For the third time in a decade, the winner hails from the Canary Islands.
Published Mar 1, 2022
These maps show the ‘metabolism” of Earth’s plants and trees. Net primary productivity is the difference between the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis minus the amount released by respiration.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a different part of the world? What would the weather be like? What kinds of animals would you see? Which plants live there? By investigating these questions, you are learning about biomes.
Published Aug 28, 2020
As green chlorophyll fades from trees and plants each autumn, other pigments color the Earth’s landscapes. Satellites take leaf-peeping to a whole new level.
Published Oct 26, 2021
Greenness is an important indicator of health for forests, grasslands, and farms. The greenness of a landscape, or vegetation index, depends on the number and type of plants, how leafy they are, and how healthy they are.
Snow and ice influence climate by reflecting sunlight back into space. When it melts, snow is a source of water for drinking and vegetation; too much snowmelt can lead to floods. These maps show average snow cover by month.
Airborne aerosols can cause or prevent cloud formation and harm human health. These maps depict aerosol concentrations in the air based on how the tiny particles reflect or absorb visible and infrared light.
Summer is beach season in the northern hemisphere. But even if you're a regular at your local swimming hole, you probably haven't seen too many beaches from this perspective. See the satellite and space-station views of various shorelines from across the United States. No sunblock necessary.
Published Jul 22, 2021
These maps depict anomalies in land surface temperatures (LSTs); that is, how much hotter or cooler a region was compared to the long-term average. LST anomalies can indicate heat waves or cold spells.
Clouds can be a nuisance when scientists are trying to observe features on Earth's surface. But at other times, clouds are exactly what they want to see. These images highlight some of the more unusual and beautiful clouds observed in recent years from space.
Published Jun 21, 2021
Satellite images of Earth at night have been a curiosity for the public and a tool of fundamental research for at least 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness.
Published Apr 12, 2017
Since 1999, Earth Observatory has published images and stories from all over our planet. Now you can explore more than 11,000 images in a different way: by location.
Published Jun 2, 2021
Land surface temperatures rise and fall with the heat of the Sun, and they represent how hot or cold the surface would feel to touch. These maps show daytime land temperatures as measured from space.
