A saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantca) has a smooth, waxy skin that seals in moisture. Cacti expand by absorbing water when it is available and shrink as they lose water slowly during times of drought.

The water, or hydrologic, cycle describes the pilgrimage of water as water molecules make their way from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back again, in some cases to below the surface. This ...

Pine trees (genus Pinus) are evergreen, conifers (they produce cones that encase reproduction seeds) and can be found throughout the world, but they are native to northern temperate regions. There are ...

Left unperturbed, the fast and slow carbon cycles maintain a relatively steady concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, land, plants, and ocean. But when anything changes the amount of carbon in one ...

The warm, shallow ocean waters of the tropics have talkative “forests” of their own. Brightly colored mounds of coral grow in the warm ocean waters, quickly when nutrients are plentiful and more ...

To find out how a forest or a field of wheat influences weather or climate, modelers simulate the intricate interactions between land and sky. The goal, says NASA modeler Lahouari Bounoua, is to first ...

Joshua Stevens was the lead visualizer of NASA’s Earth Observatory from 2015 to 2023. He has researched and taught cartographic design, geovisual analytics, and remote sensing for more than a decade.

Arctic moss is found in freezing temperatures and can survive very strong winds. The moss grows underwater or very low to the ground and can store energy to survive the freezing cold.

All matter in the universe that has a temperature above absolute zero (the temperature at which all atomic or molecular motion stops) radiates energy across a range of wavelengths in the ...

In 1967 Hansen went to work for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York City, where he continued his research on planetary problems. Around 1970, some scientists suspected Earth was ...

If Earth’s oceans are soaking up the excess heat energy caused by greenhouse gases, then exactly what is the problem? The problem—and perhaps part of the solution as well—is thermal inertia. Inertia ...

Air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. While natural variability plays some part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human activities—particularly ...