March 8, 2017 – The bright central area of Ceres’ Occator Crater, known as Cerealia Facula, is approximately 30 million years younger than the crater in which it lies, according to a new study in the Astronomical Journal. Scientists used data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft to analyze Occator’s central dome in detail, concluding that this […]
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)
Posted inCalifornia
NASA Data Show California’s San Joaquin Valley Still Sinking
February 28, 2017 – Since the 1920s, excessive pumping of groundwater at thousands of wells in California’s San Joaquin Valley has caused land in sections of the valley to subside, or sink, by as much as 28 feet (8.5 meters). This subsidence is exacerbated during droughts, when farmers rely heavily on groundwater to sustain one […]
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NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star
February 22, 2017 – NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. The discovery sets a new […]
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In Atmospheric River Storms, Wind Is a Risk, Too
February 21, 2017 – Atmospheric river storms are hailed as drought-busters when they bring needed rain and snow, but they have a well-known dark side: damaging floods. A new NASA study documents a second destructive force in these storms: high winds. The study shows that atmospheric rivers were associated with almost half of the most […]
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NASA, UCI Reveal New Details of Greenland Ice Loss
February 9, 2017 – Less than a year after the first research flight kicked off NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland campaign last March, data from the new program are providing a dramatic increase in knowledge of how Greenland’s ice sheet is melting from below. Two new research papers in the journal Oceanography use OMG observations to […]
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NASA Studies a Rarity: Growing Louisiana Deltas
February 9, 2017 – The Louisiana coastline is sinking under the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of about one football field of land every hour (about 18 square miles of land lost in a year). But within this sinking region, two river deltas are growing. The Atchafalaya River and its diversion channel, Wax Lake […]
Posted inRegional
Storms Filled 37 Percent of CA Snow-Water Deficit
January 28, 2017 – The “atmospheric river” weather patterns that pummeled California with storms from late December to late January may have recouped 37 percent of the state’s five-year snow-water deficit, according to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research using NASA satellite data. Researchers at the university’s Center for Water Earth Science and Technology (CWEST) […]
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NASA’s AIRS Instrument Tracks Series of Storms Battering California
Jan. 16, 2017 – A series of atmospheric rivers that brought drought-relieving rains, heavy snowfall and flooding to California last week is highlighted in a new movie created with satellite data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The animation can be viewed here: The images of atmospheric water vapor were […]
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Your Home Planet, as Seen From Mars
Jan. 6, 2017 – From the most powerful telescope orbiting Mars comes a new view of Earth and its moon, showing continent-size detail on the planet and the relative size of the moon. The image combines two separate exposures taken on Nov. 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s […]
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NASA’s NEOWISE Mission Spies One Comet, Maybe Two
December 29, 2016 – NASA’s NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another–definitely a comet–might be seen with binoculars through next week. An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov. 27, 2016. It’s in an […]
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New Technology Could Help Track Firefighters for Safety
December 19, 2016 – In 1999, six career firefighters lost their lives responding to a five-alarm fire. They were part of a group of 73 dispatched to a smoke-filled warehouse in Worcester, Massachusetts. Lost inside the building’s tight corners, they were unable to find an exit before running out of oxygen. Avoiding a tragedy like […]
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Where is the Ice on Ceres? New NASA Dawn Findings
December 16, 2016 – At first glance, Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, may not look icy. Images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have revealed a dark, heavily cratered world whose brightest area is made of highly reflective salts — not ice. But newly published studies from Dawn scientists show two distinct lines […]
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Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior
November 22, 2016 – Frozen beneath a region of cracked and pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as what’s in Lake Superior, largest of the Great Lakes, researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have determined. Scientists examined part of Mars’ Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes, with the orbiter’s ground-penetrating Shallow […]
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Study Sheds New Insights Into Global Warming Trends
November 22, 2016 – A new multi-institutional study of the temporary slowdown in the global average surface temperature warming trend observed between 1998 and 2013 concludes the phenomenon represented a redistribution of energy within the Earth system, with Earth’s ocean absorbing the extra heat. The phenomenon was referred to by some as the “global warming […]
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NASA Study Finds Widespread Land Losses from 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Nov. 17, 2016 – Dramatic, widespread shoreline loss is revealed in new NASA/U.S. Geological Survey annual maps of the Louisiana marshlands where the coastline was most heavily coated with oil during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Following the spill, the length of shoreline that receded more than 13 […]
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Studies Offer New Glimpse of Melting Under Antarctic Glaciers
October 25, 2016 – Two new studies by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), detect the fastest ongoing rates of glacier retreat ever observed in West Antarctica and offer an unprecedented direct view of intense ice melting from the floating undersides of glaciers. The results highlight how the interaction between ocean […]
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Camera on Mars Orbiter Shows Signs of Latest Mars Lander
October 21, 2016 – NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has identified new markings on the surface of the Red Planet that are believed to be related to Europe’s Schiaparelli test lander, which arrived at Mars on Oct. 19. The new image shows a bright spot that may be Schiaparelli’s parachute, and a larger dark spot interpreted […]
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The Life Cycle of a Flood Revealed
October 21, 2016 – A NASA analysis of a 2015 Texas flood is the first to document the full life cycle and impacts of a flood on both land and ocean. Using data from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite and other satellite instruments, the study traced the event’s chronology — starting with rains […]
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Jupiter’s North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System
September 2, 2016 – NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole, taken during the spacecraft’s first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system’s gas-giant planets. Juno successfully executed the […]
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Blue Cut Fire in California spreads quickly (NASA sat photo)
August 18, 2016 – On Aug. 16, 2016, at around 10:30 a.m., a brush fire ignited in the Cajon Pass east of Los Angeles, just to the west of Interstate 15. Within a matter of hours, extreme temperatures, high winds and low humidity allowed the fire to spread rapidly, burning through brush left tinder-dry by […]