There is no award for completing the walk from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. But read about the journeys of so-called “thru-hikers” of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and ...

For a short time after a snowfall, glaciers are like blank white canvases. But it’s not long before the snowy surfaces are painted over with coats of dust, soot, ash, pollen, salt, sand, rocks, and ...

Since 1999, Earth Observatory has published 16,000+ images. To celebrate our 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we want you to pick our all-time best image. Each week from March ...

Many Siberians call the first of August “the beginning of the end of summer.” This expression acknowledges how quickly warm weather will pass, and reminds people to prepare for the extreme cold to ...

In January 2016 in Kenya, the conditions were just right for an outbreak of Rift Valley fever. A strong El Niño on the other side of the world had brought higher temperatures and a wetter-than-normal ...

Swirling white clouds, deep blue oceans, and multicolored landscapes come to life on the pages of NASA’s new photo essay Earth, a collection of dramatic images captured by satellites. Video transcript ...

At least as far back as King David’s psalms and Isaiah’s prophecies, snow has been characterized as a symbol of purity. “Lawn [linen] as white as driven snow” was how Shakespeare once described it.

Hurricane season in the North Atlantic Ocean officially began on June 1, though the season typically peaks in September. Through August 1, 2011, four tropical storms had developed in the Atlantic ...

It measures about half the size of a football field and it is so small that you cannot see it on Google maps. This barren bit of rock off the coast of Canada has an unusual namesake: the Landsat 1 ...

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 ...

Permafrost is not your garden-variety soil. Beneath the frozen depths of the Arctic, the icy soil stores an estimated 1.5 trillion tons of carbon — including methane and other hydrocarbons — twice as ...

When a deadly landslide in Guatemala on May 30, 2010, killed nearly 100 people and forced the evacuation of 75,000, Dalia Kirschbaum of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center carefully documented it. And ...