NASA Earth Observatory, Author at YubaNet

NASA Earth Observatory: Satellites Show Gains in California Water

by NASA Earth Observatory June 13, 2023June 13, 2023

After years of intense drought and diminishing groundwater, California just saw its greatest year-over-year water gains in two decades, according to data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite mission, a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). This past winter’s bonanza of atmospheric rivers alleviated some of the water deficit that the […]

Wildfire Smoke Smothers the Northeast

by NASA Earth Observatory June 8, 2023June 8, 2023

Wildfire smoke from Canada has passed over the northeastern U.S. multiple times each summer in recent years, but it often goes unnoticed because it is relatively high in the atmosphere. That was not the case in June 2023. In the first week of the month, large amounts of smoke from fires in Quebec poured south into the eastern U.S. […]

On the night of April 21, the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower peaked in the skies over Earth. While NASA allsky cameras were looking up at the night skies, astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station trained his video camera on Earth below. Footage from that night is now revealing breathtaking images of Earth at night with meteors ablating - or burning up - in the atmosphere. The downlinked image to the right shows a very probable Lyrid in a six-second exposure, taken on April 22, 2012 at 5:34:22 UT. The International Space Station position was over 88.5 W, 19.9 N at an altitude of 392 km. NASA astronomer Bill Cooke mapped the meteor to the star field - seen in this annotated image - and confirmed that the meteor originated from the Lyrid radiant. The image is rotated so that the north celestial pole (NCP) is roughly in the up direction. The lights of Florida are clearly visible to the right of the meteor. Cuba, the Florida Keys and the eastern Gulf Coast shoreline are also visible. Some brilliant flashes of lightning are also prevalent in the image. Image credit: NASA/JSC/D. Pettit

Regional

The Lyrids Meteor Shower peaks tonight

by NASA Earth Observatory April 22, 2023April 22, 2023

The Lyrids meteor shower, which peaks during late April, is one of the oldest known meteor showers. The Lyrids have been observed for 2,700 years. The first recorded sighting of a Lyrid meteor shower goes back to 687 BC by the Chinese. The Lyrids are known for their fast and bright meteors. Though not as […]

Regional

Precipitation Piles on in California

by NASA Earth Observatory March 20, 2023March 20, 2023

Two successive atmospheric rivers hit California in March 2023, bearing rain, snow, and strong winds. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as the storm toppled trees, unleashed mudslides, and flooded streets. The clouds parted on March 16, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite to acquire a clear false-color image (right) of Sacramento and the San […]

Power Outages in Puerto Rico

by NASA Earth Observatory September 23, 2022September 23, 2022

After being struck by fierce winds, torrential rainfall, and widespread flooding from Hurricane Fiona, citizens of Puerto Rico were enduring significant power outages in mid-September 2022. Extreme heat and troubles with water supplies added to the miseries for the people, while federal and local agencies worked to bring relief. The blackouts came almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria decimated the island, […]

An Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc. plane in Nevada County, California, in December 2021 on its mission to measure nearby mountain snowpack. Credits: California Department of Water Resources/Kelly M. Grow

Regional

Eyes on the Snow as Water Supplies Dwindle

by NASA Earth Observatory September 20, 2022September 20, 2022

As the American West suffers a 22-year-long “megadrought” that researchers say is the worst in at least 1,200 years, water managers now have a new level of insight into just how much water will be available for their communities. Water departments in the West are using maps and models originally created by a NASA team […]

California

NASA Earth Observatory: Death Valley Flash Flooding

by NASA Earth Observatory August 10, 2022August 10, 2022

August 10, 2022 – In early August 2022, flash floods soaked Furnace Creek in Death Valley, the driest place in North America. In just three hours on August 5, a thousand-year rainfall event dropped 75 percent of the local average annual rainfall, which is just under 2 inches (5 centimeters). Flood water washed debris over roads, swept […]

Enviro

Lake Mead Keeps Dropping

by NASA Earth Observatory July 21, 2022July 21, 2022

Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time. As of July 18, 2022, Lake Mead was filled to just 27 percent of capacity. The largest reservoir in the United States supplies water to millions of people across seven […]

A full moon rises over Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in August 2021. Credit: NASA/Preston Dyches

Regional

Buck Supermoon tonight

by NASA Earth Observatory July 13, 2022July 13, 2022

Since the peak of this full moon is less than 10 hours after the Moon was closest to the Earth in its orbit, this will be a supermoon. The term “supermoon” was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979 and refers to either a new or full moon that occurs when the Moon is within […]

Laguna Ojo de Liebre, a lagoon on the Baja California Peninsula, is a whale sanctuary and the site of one of the largest saltworks in the world.

Sci/Tech

NASA: A Salty Sanctuary in Baja California Sur

by NASA Earth Observatory April 28, 2022April 28, 2022

Laguna Ojo de Liebre on the Pacific coast of Mexico is the site of one of the largest saltworks in the world. The lagoon and saltworks lie near the town of Guerrero Negro, about halfway between the U.S-Mexico border and the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. The saltworks was founded here in 1954. Each […]

Regional

December Solstice Brings Winter, Summer Seasons

by NASA Earth Observatory December 21, 2021December 21, 2021

In meteorology, Earth’s winter season for the Northern Hemisphere and summer season for the Southern Hemisphere began on Dec. 1, 2021. However, the December solstice brings in the astronomical winter and summer seasons, respectively, for the two hemispheres of our planet. This will happen on Dec. 21 at 15:59 UTC, which is 7:59 a.m. PST in the […]

The landscape of the Moon, foreground, is reddened by sunlight filtered through Earth's atmosphere. The Sun is obscured by the Earth, but the glow of its corona is visible.

Regional

An almost total lunar eclipse tonight

by NASA Earth Observatory November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

November 18, 2021 – A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon align so that the Moon passes into Earth’s shadow. In a total lunar eclipse, the entire Moon falls within the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, called the umbra. In this eclipse, up to 99.1% of the Moon’s disk will be within Earth’s umbra. […]

California

NASA Earth Observatory: Extratropical Cyclones Drench West Coast

by NASA Earth Observatory October 26, 2021October 26, 2021

One of the most intense extratropical cyclones ever to strike the Pacific Northwest drew an equally historic amount of moisture onto the West Coast of North America on October 24-25, 2021. The storm off the coast of Washington—with a central pressure of 942.5 millibars, equivalent to a category 4 hurricane—was the second extreme low-pressure storm […]

California

Mapping Methane Emissions in California

by NASA Earth Observatory September 9, 2021September 9, 2021

In October 2016, an aircraft equipped with NASA’s Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer–Next-Generation (AVIRIS-NG) instrument detected multiple plumes of methane arising from the Sunshine Canyon landfill near Santa Clarita, California. The plumes were large enough that researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) notified facility operators and local enforcement agencies about it. It was an […]

Sci/Tech

NASA: New online visualization tool will enable anyone to see what sea levels will look like anywhere in the world in the decades to come

by NASA Earth Observatory September 2, 2021September 2, 2021

NASA’s Sea Level Change Team has created a sea level projection tool that makes extensive data on future sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) easily accessible to the public – and to everyone with a stake in planning for the changes to come. Pull up the tool’s layers of maps, […]

World

Earth from Orbit: Fires Rage Across the Globe

by NASA Earth Observatory August 12, 2021August 12, 2021

As wildfires continue to rage in North America, the Dixie Fire became the second largest fire in California history. The fire has burned more than half a million acres, filling the air as far as Denver and Salt Lake City with smoke. And that’s just one of 108 large fires that have burned more than […]

Regional

A Long View of Sierra Snow

by NASA Earth Observatory July 30, 2021July 30, 2021

In Spanish, Sierra Nevada means “snowy mountain range.” While the term “snowy” has generally been true for most of U.S. history, those mountains have seen less snow accumulation in recent years. This decline plays a role in water management and response to drought in California and other western states. Each spring and summer, meltwater runoff from Sierra […]

Enviro

Study Projects a Surge in Coastal Flooding, Starting in 2030s

by NASA Earth Observatory July 15, 2021July 15, 2021

High-tide floods – also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods – are already a familiar problem in many cities on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported a total of more than 600 such floods in 2019. Starting in the mid-2030s, however, the alignment of rising sea […]

California

California Reservoirs Reflect Deepening Drought

by NASA Earth Observatory June 18, 2021June 18, 2021

Just four years after emerging from a severe multi-year drought, California has descended into dry conditions not seen since 1976-77. Evidence of the new drought stands out in satellite images of the state’s two largest reservoirs. The images above and below, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, show Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville this year and […]

Enviro

NASA: Gold mining pits in the Peruvian Amazon line the rivers and cut into the rainforest

by NASA Earth Observatory February 16, 2021February 16, 2021

February 16, 2021 – An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of numerous gold prospecting pits in eastern Peru. The pits—usually hidden from an astronaut’s view by cloud cover or outside the Sun’s glint point—stand out brilliantly in this image due to the reflected sunlight. The multiple meandering channels of the Inambari […]

Sign Up

Sign In