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.

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 ...

Most people will never see Pine Island Glacier in person. Located near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula—the “thumb” of the continent—the glacier lies more than 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) from ...

If you want to set up a scientific station at the bottom of the world, who would you send? Eighteen “crazy men and a dog,” of course. The men were a collection of engineers, scientists, and support ...

Earth: A Photo e-Book from NASA 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 ...

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 ...

Carbon is the backbone of life on Earth. We are made of carbon, we eat carbon, and our civilizations—our economies, our homes, our means of transport—are built on carbon. We need carbon, but that need ...

Image Mapping the Tiny Plankton That Feed Giant Right Whales Researchers used NASA satellite data to detect swarms of red-tinged copepods, a key food source for the endangered marine mammals, in the ...

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 ...

The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone—not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, ...

In the black dome of night, the stars seem fixed in their patterns. They rotate through the sky over the seasons so unchangingly that most cultures have used the presence of one or another ...

Kathryn Hansen is the managing editor for NASA Earth Observatory. She has been writing stories, producing videos, and editing content for the group since 2014. Prior to joining Earth Observatory, ...