Planetary Defense Has Unexpected Support From a New Satellite
NASA’s efforts to better understand asteroid impacts has found unexpected support from a new satellite sensor designed to detect lightning. New research published in the…
Weather
Space Storm Hunter Captures First Images and Data
As the International Space Station flew over the Indonesian coast of Sumatra on an April night, lightning from a thunderstorm reached the upper layers of…
Mild Winters Have Led to Physical Alterations in Two Species of Mice
New research by McGill University biologists shows that milder winters have led to physical alterations in two species of mice in southern Quebec in the…
NASA Study Shows Wind and Warm Water Accelerating Glacier Melt
New research from NASA reveals the Antarctic glaciers that accelerated the fastest between 2008 and 2014 and finds that the most likely cause of their…
Evidence That The Southern Amazon Rainforest Triggers Its Own Rainy Season
New research gives the first observational evidence that the southern Amazon rainforest triggers its own rainy season using water vapor from plant leaves. The new…
NASA Shows Current Sierra Snowpack Bigger Than Last Four Years Combined
A major source of water for San Francisco and California’s Central Valley is the Tuolumne River Basin in California’s Sierra Nevada. New data from NASA…
New Research Examines the Intersection of Weather and Climate
A new study probes the global interactions between weather and climate, revealing the seasonal “fingerprints” of Arctic sea ice, El Nino, and other climate phenomena….
MIT Study Predicts Frequency of Heavy Precipitation with Global Warming
Researchers from MIT reveal that extreme precipitation events should become more frequent as the Earth’s climate warms over this century. On December 11, 2014, a…
AIM Spacecraft Observes Early Noctilucent Ice Clouds Over Antarctica
Data from NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere spacecraft shows the sky over Antarctica is glowing electric blue due to the start of noctilucent,…
El Niño Continues to Grow, Set to Bear Down on U.S.
The latest satellite image from the U.S./European Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 mission shows that the current strong El Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean…
2015 El Niño Appears Likely to Equal the Event of 1997-98
NASA scientists continue to monitor and study this year’s El Niño, which appears likely to equal the event of 1997-98 – the strongest El Niño…
“Grey Swan” Cyclones Will Become More Frequent and Intense
A newly published study from MIT and Princeton University reveals that “grey swan” cyclones will become more frequent and intense over the next century. “Grey…
How Rain Droplets Attract Aerosols Out of the Atmosphere
Atmospheric chemists from MIT test how effective rain is at cleaning the atmosphere, revealing the most accurate values of coagulation to date. As a raindrop…
NOAA: July 2015 The Warmest Month Ever Recorded
A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals that July 2015 had the all-time highest monthly temperature in the 1880–2015 record, at…
California Valley Land Continues to Sink
California farmers have been forced to pump large amounts of groundwater in response to the historic drought, causing the land to sink and putting nearby…
New Timescale Firmly Implicates Volcanic Eruptions as the Dominant Drivers of Past Climate Variability
A newly published study resolves the inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies…
Study Shows Carbon Emissions Could Increase Risk of Megadroughts
A new study from NASA reveals that droughts in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains during the last half of this century could be drier…
Fermi Helps Study Gamma-ray Thunderstorms
A short video details how scientists merged data on high-energy bursts seen on Earth by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with data from ground-based radar…