In 1967 Hansen went to work for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York City, where he continued his research on planetary problems. Around 1970, some scientists suspected Earth was ...

Examine the set of graphs below for a given city. Read carefully the temperature and precipitation scales on the graphs. Review the biome information. Two biome choices are given for each set of ...

Review the biomes. Now examine the set of temperature and precipitation graphs given below for each city. Be careful reading the scales on the graphs. Using the pull-down menus, select the correct ...

Update on 4/25: This Landsat image shows Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in the winter. Congratulations to Mike and Charles for being the first readers to identify the location. Every ...

Update on 4/25: This Landsat image shows Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in the winter. Congratulations to Mike and Charles for being the first readers to identify the location. Every ...

Just as the incoming and outgoing energy at the Earth’s surface must balance, the flow of energy into the atmosphere must be balanced by an equal flow of energy out of the atmosphere and back to space ...

The time it takes carbon to move through the fast carbon cycle is measured in a lifespan. The fast carbon cycle is largely the movement of carbon through life forms on Earth, or the biosphere. Between ...

The most valuable fossils found in sediment cores are from tiny animals with a calcium carbonate shell, called foraminifera. One species of foraminifera lives in the icy waters of the Arctic above ...

Through a series of chemical reactions and tectonic activity, carbon takes between 100-200 million years to move between rocks, soil, ocean, and atmosphere in the slow carbon cycle. On average, 10 13 ...

Land surface temperature is how hot the “surface” of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks ...

Lindsey Doermann joined Earth Observatory as a science writer in 2023. She is a former editor and writer for Conservation and Anthropocene magazines, covering environmental science and solutions.

Most materials published on the Earth Observatory, including images, are freely available for re-publication or re-use, including commercial purposes, except for where copyright is indicated. In those ...