Update on May 27, 2025: This springtime Landsat image shows snow-covered tundra streaked with wind-blown sediment near Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States. Congratulations to ...

One of the more distinctive things about Earth among the planets is that we have plate tectonics. In other words, the hard, outer shell of the planet (called the lithosphere) is divided into several ...

In response to Map of the Ancient Mississippi a few of you left comments to the effect of “no one should live in floodplains.” It’s an appealing notion, but I think it’s unrealistic. Anne Jefferson of ...

When the Minute 319 “pulse flow” began in March 2014, it was not clear whether the effort would be enough to reconnect the Colorado River with the Sea of Cortez. Some hydrologists thought there might ...

Based on email and social media comments we receive, climate models are one of the least understood and most maligned tools used by Earth scientists. One of the first general circulation models was ...

Sticking to the flood theme, here’s a recent map from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showing the predicted travel time for water in the Morganza Floodway. It’s a reasonably good map, with one big ...

Researcher Amy McNally spent two weeks in Yanco, Australia to participate in the three week Soil Moisture Active Passive Experiment-4 (SMAPEx-4) field campaign in May. The field campaign measures soil ...

It is no secret that many diesel cars and trucks emit more pollution under real-world driving conditions than during laboratory certification testing. Many lab tests, for instance, are run with ...

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.

For a chemical compound that shows up nearly everywhere on the planet, methane still surprises us. It is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and yet the reasons for why and where it shows up are ...

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 ...

For the past two centuries, two trends have been steady and clear around the United States. Sea level has been rising, and more people have been moving closer to the coast. As the ocean has warmed, ...