Earth

NASA uses the vantage point of space to study our home planet the way we study other planets. Our Earth Science Division operates more than 20 missions in orbit, sponsors hundreds of research programs and studies each year, and funds opportunities to put data into use for societal needs. We observe our planet’s oceans, land cover, ice, atmosphere, and life, and measure how a change in one drives changes in others. We develop new ways to observe and study these interconnected systems, and we build long-term data records of how our planet evolves -- then we freely share this knowledge. While listening to and collaborating with industry leaders, international partners, academic institutions, and users of our data and information, we deepen knowledge of our planet, drive innovations that benefit society, and deliver science to help inform actions and decisions.

Science in Action for Society

Learn how NASA’s studies of Earth bring benefits to the nation and world.

6 min read

NASA Flights Map Critical Minerals from Skies Above Western US

A man stands in a crop field, wearing a green cap, sunglasses, and a red and blue plaid shirt. He is mid-sentence, gesturing with his hands, against a backdrop of green farmland under a partly cloudy sky.

14 min read

NASA’s Brad Doorn Brings Farm Belt Wisdom to Space-Age Agriculture

people in search-and-rescue attire stand among rubble

4 min read

NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response

This visualization depicts the orbits and data swaths of the Landsat 8, Landsat 9, Sentinel 2a, and Sentinel 2b satellites. The satellites appear one at a time with their respective data swaths. As time progresses throughout the visualization, the satellites ‘paint’ the globe with imagery to show how the four spacecraft work together to build a complete picture of the Earth.

Data in Harmony: NASA's Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 Project

NASA video on YouTube

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Map image of earth with labels for various features under study.

Treasured Maps

Elevation data collected during a space shuttle mission in 2000 continues to inform science and society in unexpected ways.

This satellite image centers the meandering Sacramento river surrounded by rice fields. The fields are broken into primarily square and rectangular areas with the fields nearest the river being full of green and brown vegetation, and farther from the river they are flooded and appear dark blue.

5 min read

OpenET Study Helps Water Managers and Farmers Put NASA Data to Work

Satellite observations show that students of color in the U.S. attend public schools with higher concentrations of air pollution than their white peers.

How NASA Sees the Air We Breathe

NASA video on YouTube

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4 min read

NASA Helps Build New Federal Sea Level Rise Website

Recent News and Articles

NASA Study: Crops, Forests Responding to Changing Rainfall Patterns

A Decade of Global Precipitation

Through rain and snow, hurricane, typhoon and monsoon, flash flood and bomb cyclone, for ten years, the joint NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement mission has measured a lot of water. GPM’s Core Observatory satellite launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan in early 2014, becoming the first satellite to be able to see through the clouds and measure liquid and frozen precipitation from the Equator to polar regions using a radar. Now in its tenth year of operation, we look at ten events brought to light by this groundbreaking mission.

Sensing the Seas

For more than forty years, NASA has found unique ways to study the surface layers of the ocean from the tropics to the poles. With three new missions since 2020 – PACE, SWOT, and Sentinel 6-Michael Freilich – we are now ushering in a new era of ocean studies.

6 min read

NASA Wants to Identify Phytoplankton Species from Space. Here’s Why.

Our Oceans from Space

NASA video on YouTube

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6 min read

NASA’s PACE, US-European SWOT Satellites Offer Combined Look at Ocean

7 min read

NASA Project in Puerto Rico Trains Students in Marine Biology

Why Is NASA Tracking Seaweed From Space?

NASA video on YouTube

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5 min read

NASA Analysis Shows Irreversible Sea Level Rise for Pacific Islands

5 min read

Surfing NASA’s Internet of Animals: Satellites Study Ocean Wildlife

The image is a satellite view, peering down on the ocean. The background of the image is the dark blue color of the ocean, but centered in the image is a swirling shape of light blue, milky substance – phytoplankton making up a bloom. In the foreground of the image are bright white clouds, seen in the top left corner and along the bottom of the image.

PACE Makes the Invisible Visible

NASA video on YouTube

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PACE Scientists Take to the Sea and Air (and Really High Air)

One of NASA’s most expansive and complex field campaigns took place over the month of September. The goal: to check the data that the new PACE satellite is collecting from orbit about Earth’s atmosphere and ocean. To do that, NASA’s PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment) deployed several aircraft and ships from multiple locations in California, including Marina, Santa Barbara, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards.

Images of the Day

More Earth Observatory Images of the Day

Visible through a layer of thin clouds, a patch of somewhat square shaped ice is visible on the dark ocean waters. It is labeled Iceberg A-23A just under the date label of December 16, 2024

Antarctic Iceberg Spins Out

After being stuck for a second time in nearly four decades, the planet’s current-largest iceberg (A-23A) again floats free.

The green mountainous coastline, with the near-black Pacific Ocean occupying the lower third of the image, is interrupted by a deep rust brown surrounding the Malibu area.

Franklin Fire Leaves Its Mark on Malibu

The December 2024 blaze charred vegetation in the hills of the Southern California coastline.

The image is colored in blue, showing snow covered land as a light blue, and clouds as a light powder blue. Cloud streets form over the great lakes and stream across the land in this image of the great lakes. Lake Ontario is partially cut off, but the remaining lakes are all visible and mostly covered by clouds. The town of Munsing on the Upper Peninsula narrowly misses the cloud streets off of Lake Superior. The town of Gaylord in Northern Michigan is thoroughly obscured by cloud streets. Buffalo, at the right edge of the image is on the cloud cover edge. Chicago is under cloud cover, but more of a typical cloud than cloud streets.

Wintry Weather Whooshes In

Arctic air surged across the Great Lakes and dumped feet of lake-effect snow in some locations.

A spiral of white clouds nearly covers the entire Mozambique channel. Madagascar appears in the lower right of the image, Indian Ocean to it's right, the channel to the left. Mainland Africa frames in the left side of the image. The border outlines of the Islands of Mayotte and Comoros are superimposed on top of the Cyclone clouds, near the dark spot eye of the cyclone, but above it on either side.

Cyclone Chido Pummels Mayotte

Fueled by warm water in the Indian Ocean, the tropical cyclone caused widespread damage on the small archipelago.

Reservoir Gouin appears as jack ragged and narrow interconnected bodies of water among the surrounding green to yellow landscape. In the top left corner of the image, out of the reservoir area, is a burned area. Immediately to the right of the reservoir is a large patch of mostly yellow land which has been labelled as logged. Below that at the very edge of the image is the reservoir Dam. The town of Obedjiwan sits right on the coast of the reservoir on a peninsula of land just left and above the image center.

The Many Arms of Réservoir Gouin

A dam on the Saint-Maurice River transformed the network of lakes and river valleys upstream.

The Cheleken Peninsula, home to the town of Hazar, centers the image, with mainland to the right and Caspian sea left. The land is all a light beige color with dried lakes causing elongated swirling patterns of slightly darker land and dunes giving the land a textured look above that. Peninsula Kafaldja extends upward off of the Cheleken and the Dervish downward. Both peninsulas are extremely narrow . The waters at the top of the image, in the Türkmenbaşy gulf are a lighter shade, even a vibrant green near the peninsula. The Türkmenbaşy peninsula appears disconnected from land at the far left edge of the image. An Oil rig appears as a small dot in the middle of the shown portion of the Caspian Sea.

Desert Peninsula in Turkmenistan

The Cheleken Peninsula and its two parallel spits comprise the hammerhead-like landform that juts into the eastern Caspian Sea.

Two of the Kii Mountains, Hakkyō and Ōdaigahara, show peaks having a lustrous reddish brown color. Human settlements are clearly visible in the valley at the top left corner, Kazeya Reservoir is shown at the lower left, but above Mount Tamaki. Ocean occupies the lower right along with the coastal towns of Owase and further up the coast Kihoku.

Hints of Color in Japan’s Kii Mountains

The onset of autumn reds and yellows was delayed across the country following several unusually warm months.

NASA, NOAA 2024 Ozone Hole Update

This year, the ozone hole over Antarctica reached its annual maximum extent on September 28th, 2024, with an area of 8.5 million square miles (22.4 square million kilometers.) The hole, which is actually a region of depleted ozone, was the 20th smallest since scientists began recording the ozone hole in 1979. The average size of the ozone hole between September and October this year was the 7th-smallest since the Montreal Protocol began to take effect.

Earth Information Center

For more than 50 years, NASA satellites have provided data on Earth's land, water, air, temperature, and climate. NASA's Earth Information Center allows visitors to see how our planet is changing in six key areas: sea level rise and coastal impacts, health and air quality, wildfires, greenhouse gases, sustainable energy, and agriculture.

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