Earth

NASA applies ingenuity and expertise gained from decades of planetary and deep-space exploration to the study of our home planet. The Earth Science Division operates more than 20 satellites in orbit, sponsors hundreds of research programs and studies, and funds opportunities to put data to use for societal needs. We develop new ways to observe the oceans, land cover, ice, atmosphere, and life, and we measure how changes in one drive changes in others over the short and long term. While listening to and collaborating with industry leaders, international partners, academic institutions, and other users of our data, we deepen knowledge of our planet, drive innovations, and deliver science to help inform decisions that benefit the nation and the world.

Science in Action for Society

Learn how NASA’s studies of Earth bring benefits to the nation and world.

6 min read

NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response

This visualization depicts the orbits and data swaths of the Landsat 8, Landsat 9, Sentinel 2a, and Sentinel 2b satellites. The satellites appear one at a time with their respective data swaths. As time progresses throughout the visualization, the satellites ‘paint’ the globe with imagery to show how the four spacecraft work together to build a complete picture of the Earth.

Data in Harmony: NASA's Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 Project

NASA video on YouTube

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Map image of earth with labels for various features under study.

Treasured Maps

Elevation data collected during a space shuttle mission in 2000 continues to inform science and society in unexpected ways.

This satellite image centers the meandering Sacramento river surrounded by rice fields. The fields are broken into primarily square and rectangular areas with the fields nearest the river being full of green and brown vegetation, and farther from the river they are flooded and appear dark blue.

5 min read

OpenET Study Helps Water Managers and Farmers Put NASA Data to Work

Satellite observations show that students of color in the U.S. attend public schools with higher concentrations of air pollution than their white peers.

How NASA Sees the Air We Breathe

NASA video on YouTube

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Recent News and Articles

This is How Scientists Measure Global Temperature

5 min read

How US-Indian NISAR Satellite Will Offer Unique Window on Earth

This rectangular image shows the location of satellite-based fire detection targets overlaid on visible imagery of the Los Angeles area landscape. In the center of the image over Pacific Palisades, CA, are nearly 30 pink, light purple, and purple squares showing the location of suspected fires.

Why Do Fires on NASA's Maps Sometimes Look Bigger Than They Really Are?

Temperatures Rising: NASA Confirms 2024 Warmest Year on Record

A Decade of Global Precipitation

Through rain and snow, hurricane, typhoon and monsoon, flash flood and bomb cyclone, for ten years, the joint NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement mission has measured a lot of water. GPM’s Core Observatory satellite launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan in early 2014, becoming the first satellite to be able to see through the clouds and measure liquid and frozen precipitation from the Equator to polar regions using a radar. Now in its tenth year of operation, we look at ten events brought to light by this groundbreaking mission.

Sensing the Seas

For more than forty years, NASA has found unique ways to study the surface layers of the ocean from the tropics to the poles. With three new missions since 2020 – PACE, SWOT, and Sentinel 6-Michael Freilich – we are now ushering in a new era of ocean studies.

6 min read

NASA’s PACE, US-European SWOT Satellites Offer Combined Look at Ocean

Our Oceans from Space

NASA video on YouTube

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5 min read

NASA Analysis Shows Irreversible Sea Level Rise for Pacific Islands

7 min read

NASA Project in Puerto Rico Trains Students in Marine Biology

Why Is NASA Tracking Seaweed From Space?

NASA video on YouTube

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5 min read

Surfing NASA’s Internet of Animals: Satellites Study Ocean Wildlife

6 min read

NASA Wants to Identify Phytoplankton Species from Space. Here’s Why.

The image is a satellite view, peering down on the ocean. The background of the image is the dark blue color of the ocean, but centered in the image is a swirling shape of light blue, milky substance – phytoplankton making up a bloom. In the foreground of the image are bright white clouds, seen in the top left corner and along the bottom of the image.

PACE Makes the Invisible Visible

NASA video on YouTube

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PACE Scientists Take to the Sea and Air (and Really High Air)

One of NASA’s most expansive and complex field campaigns took place over the month of September. The goal: to check the data that the new PACE satellite is collecting from orbit about Earth’s atmosphere and ocean. To do that, NASA’s PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment) deployed several aircraft and ships from multiple locations in California, including Marina, Santa Barbara, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards.

Images of the Day

More Earth Observatory Images of the Day

The image shows burn scars from the Palisades fire between Santa Monica and Malibu and running parallel to the 405 freeway up in the hills. The land is brown to orange where it has been burned, elsewhere appears green in the image. In the upper left corner of the image, by the Agoura Hills is the Kenneth Fire. The Franklin fire near the bottom surrounds Malibu and connects to the Palisades fire. Tarzana and the Woodland Hills along the 101 freeway at the top of the image are untouched by the burn scars.

The Palisades Fire’s Footprint

The fire in Los Angeles County burned through nearly 24,000 acres in one week in January 2025.

The image shows Los Angeles Altadena area with JPL labeled on the left burned developed areas, appearing near black, to the right of JPL and the Eaton Canyon Trailhead just right of the burned area in the image center. The Angeles National Forest appears orange in this image and is labeled burned as well. Sierra Madre is farther right.

Eaton Fire Leaves California Landscape Charred

A NASA airborne instrument captured images of the fire’s aftermath in and around Altadena.

Whakaari is shown in the medium blue waters of the Bay of Plenty. The island is emitting whitish smoke, which is drifting to the right side of the image. The island is mostly bare and gray with some green foliage on the slopes of the upper end of the island.

Another Puff from Whakaari

The perpetually restless and occasionally explosive volcano in New Zealand has been emitting steam, volcanic gases, and a bit of ash.

Southern California coastline centers Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific fills the lower left half of the image with the coastline running diagonal. To the left of central Los Angeles is the Palisades fires. Smoke emanating from those hills streams out over and disperses over the Ocean. Above the Los Angeles label in this image is the Eaton fire. This more inland fire is generating less smoke than the palisades, but it also disperses toward the coast.

Smoke Streams from Palisades and Eaton Fires

Several plumes billowed from Los Angeles-area fires in the days after their ignition.

A completely white image with some oblong discoloration in the upper left and in the center. The center spot is labeled Turtle Mountains, and on the edge is an area known as and labeled Belcourt. Devils Lake is labeled in the lower right and Pelican Lake is labeled directly above Belcourt in the image.

Snow on the Turtle Mountains

Patches of forest thrive on a plateau that straddles the border between North Dakota and Manitoba.

The dark image is filled with city lights. 6 October city shows up in amber lights on the left. A dark patch between that and Giza is labeled pyramids of Giza. A dark line, the Nile River separates the area of white light, Giza Left and Cairo right, in the center of the image. In the bottom right is more amber lighting and it it labeled New Cairo. The airport is just above New Cairo.

Cairo’s Colorful Nightscape

The older and newer cities of the Greater Cairo region look very different at night when viewed from above.

The global map is color coded to correspond to the temperature difference compared to the 1951-1980 average. The gradient runs from 4 degrees C on either side of no change, where colder are increasingly deep shades of blue and warmer are increasingly darker reds. The map has no obvious blue, though some white around southern South America and the coast of Antarctica. The rest of the map is all varying shades of red, mostly light orange, but Europe, Russia, Canada and the Arctic are clearly red, which means it is exceeding 2 degrees C of warming.

2024 Was the Warmest Year on Record

A NASA analysis shows that global temperatures in 2024 were 1.28 degrees Celsius (2.30 degrees Fahrenheit) above the agency’s 20th-century baseline.

NASA, NOAA 2024 Ozone Hole Update

This year, the ozone hole over Antarctica reached its annual maximum extent on September 28th, 2024, with an area of 8.5 million square miles (22.4 square million kilometers.) The hole, which is actually a region of depleted ozone, was the 20th smallest since scientists began recording the ozone hole in 1979. The average size of the ozone hole between September and October this year was the 7th-smallest since the Montreal Protocol began to take effect.

Earth Information Center

For more than 50 years, NASA satellites have provided data on Earth's land, water, air, temperature, and climate. NASA's Earth Information Center allows visitors to see how our planet is changing in six key areas: sea level rise and coastal impacts, health and air quality, wildfires, greenhouse gases, sustainable energy, and agriculture.

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