Satellite confirms decline in pollution from coal power plants

12.07.11 Adam Voiland and Rani Gran, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center A team of scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite to confirm major reductions in the levels of a key air pollutant generated by coal power plants in the eastern United States. The pollutant, sulfur dioxide, contributes to the formation...

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NASA's Grace helps monitor U.S. drought

11.30.11 By Kelly Helm Smith, National Drought Mitigation Center and Adam Voiland, NASA's Earth Science News Team New groundwater and soil moisture drought indicator maps produced by NASA are available on the National Drought Mitigation Center's website. They currently show unusually low groundwater storage levels in Texas. The maps use an 11-division...

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First light for NPP satellite

An image taken by the NPP Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Nov. 21, 2011. This high-resolution image is wrapped on a globe and shows a broad swath of Eastern North America from Canada’s Hudson Bay past Florida to the northern coast of Venezuela. The NASA NPP Team at the Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison created the...

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The end of the IceBridge

11.29.11 By Alan Brown, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center NASA's DC-8 airborne science laboratory has completed its 2011 Operation IceBridge science flights over Antarctica, and arrived home at its base in Palmdale, Calif., Nov. 22. The IceBridge flight and science team flew a record 24 science flights during the six-week campaign, recording data...

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To the ends of the Earth

A close-up image of the crack spreading across the ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier shows the details of the boulder-like blocks of ice that fell into the rift when it split. For most of the 18-mile stretch of the crack that NASA’s DC-8 flew over on Oct. 26, 2011, it stretched about 240 feet wide, as roughly seen here. The deepest points ranged from...

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Watching the birth of an iceberg

A photo from the window of NASA's DC-8 shows the rift across the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf running off toward the horizon.Credit: Michael Studinger/NASA PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE – After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up...

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NASA Leads Study of Unprecedented Arctic Ozone Loss

October 02, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere. The study, published online Sunday, Oct. 2, in the journal Nature, finds the amount of ozone destroyed in the Arctic in 2011 was comparable to that seen in some years in the Antarctic, where an ozone "hole" has formed each spring since the mid-1980s. The stratospheric ozone layer, extending...

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First complete map of Antarctica ice flow

[ First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCI ] 08.18.11 By Alan Buis NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory PASADENA, Calif. - NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The...

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Tohoku tsunami created icebergs in Antarctica

Before (left) and after (right) photos of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf illustrate the calving event associated with the Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011. The icebergs have just begun to separate in the left image. Credit: European Space Agency/Envisat 08.15.11 By Patrick Lynch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Steve...

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Researchers document ice loss after Antarctic shelf collapse

[The Larsen B ice shelf began disintegrating around Jan. 31, 2002. Its eventual collapse into the Weddell Sea remains the largest in a series of Larsen ice shelf losses in recent decades, and a team of international scientists has now documented the continued glacier ice loss in the years following the dramatic event. NASA’s MODerate Imaging Spectroradiometer...

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Cold front, warm front

[acquired November 26, 2011] Weather fronts are as familiar as rain. For those who live outside of Earth’s tropics, the movement of warm and cold masses of air creates the weather, and when the two clash, it often rains. Understanding what happens when cold and warm air meet (cold and warm fronts) has given meteorologists the ability to predict...

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Two NASA Sites Win Webby Awards

WASHINGTON -- Two NASA websites have been recognized in the 15th Annual Webby Awards -- the leading international honor for the world's best Internet sites. NASA's main website, www.NASA.gov, received its third consecutive People's Voice Award for best government site. NASA's Global Climate Change site at http://climate.nasa.gov/, which won last...

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Benefits of cleaner vehicles

04.05.11 By Adam Voiland NASA's Earth Science News Team A new analysis, published this week and conducted by a team of scientists led by Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, shows stricter vehicle emission standards would yield major health, agricultural, and climate benefits. Shindell and colleagues...

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