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 ...

Recent years have seen significant developments in satellites for oceanographers. The European Space Agency launched the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission and NASA launched the Aquarius ...

Desertification. The word invokes images of sand dunes blowing over abandoned farms as some irresistible, dark force steadily transforms fertile fields into inhospitable wasteland. The United Nations’ ...

The water, or hydrologic, cycle describes the pilgrimage of water as water molecules make their way from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back again, in some cases to below the surface. This ...

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, the primary producers, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Small fish and invertebrates also ...

Left: A large boulder moved by the Manakamana landslide; Top right: A panoramic view of the same landslide, which can be seen on the left side of the picture; Bottom right: A top-down view of the ...

Maria Elena Paredes, Coordinator of the Community Vigilance Committee for the Ashéninka community of Sawawo Hito 40, discusses maps of Upper Amazon during a breakout group (Photo: Reynaldo Vela, USAID ...

A longstanding technical challenge for oceanography has been how to measure the sea surface – temperature, salinity, gas exchange, or surfactants – to name a few examples. Obviously enough, the ...

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Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The August 2025 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, ...

Smoky Air over North Carolina and Virginia This photograph taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery was taken at a slightly oblique look angle to better view air pollution and other atmospheric features ...