By Holli Riebeek28 Feb 2014 (NASA) – Dense smoke cloaks central Sumatra, Indonesia, in these images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. The smoke is coming from fires in Riau province, where palm oil and pulpwood plantations are abundant. Though illegal for all but small landowners, fire […]
By Adam Voiland12 February 2014 (NASA) – Soggy winters are not unusual in the United Kingdom, but this winter has been in a category of its own. UK Met Office meteorologists had just declared January 2014 the wettest month on record for parts of southern Britain when another series of storms swept across the area […]
By Holli Riebeek11 February 2014 (NASA) – With high temperatures and strong winds, fire conditions reached dangerous levels on February 8-9, 2014, in the Australian state of Victoria. Several large bushfires burned in and around Snowy River National Park, producing dense clouds of smoke. The largest of the fires, Yalmy, had burned 79,893 hectares as […]
Contact: Clare Nullis, Media Officer, Communications and Public Affairs, Tel: +(41 22) 730 8478; (41-79) 7091397, email: cnullis at wmo.int5 February 2014 Geneva (WMO) –The year 2013 was among the top ten warmest years since modern records began in 1850, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It tied with 2007 as the sixth warmest […]
By Sam Carana4 February 2014 (Arctic News) – While much of the continental United States endured several cold snaps in January 2014, record-breaking warmth gripped Alaska. Spring-like conditions set rivers rising and avalanches tumbling. NASA Earth Observatory illustrates these words with the image above. The above map depicts land surface temperature anomalies in Alaska for […]
By Stefan Rahmstorf 13 November 2013 (RealClimate) – A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, […]
By Juan Cole5 November 2013 (Informed Comment) – The issue of habitable planets, earth’s own disastrous climate change, and Virginia politics don’t intersect every day. But today they do, and that does not reflect well on the human species or its prospects. Bear with me. NASA’s now-idle Kepler telescope’s earlier search for habitable planets […]
By Michael Carlowicz; design by Paul Przyborski22 October 2013 (NASA) – About 300 to 500 kilometers (200 to 300 miles) offshore, a city of light appeared in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. There are no human settlements there, nor fires or gas wells. But there are an awful lot of fishing boats. Adorned […]
This Landsat 5 satellite image shows the Amur/Heilong River on 19 September 2010. The Landsat 8 satellite acquired this image on 27 September 2013. The Amur River, swollen by record rainfall, has swallowed up the Chinese town of Bachaxiang. By Holli Riebeek27 October 2013 (NASA) — The Amur River (Heilong Jiang in Chinese) flows […]
By Holli Riebeek27 September 2013 (NASA) – The waters of Lake Erie seem to glow green in this image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on 26 September 2013. The color comes from a toxic algae bloom, which has been growing in the lake since mid July. The algae […]