Take a deep breath. Even if the air looks clear, it’s nearly certain that you’ll inhale tens of millions of solid particles and liquid droplets.

Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand popular with tourists, faces seasonal spikes in air pollution.  

The widespread adoption of cleaner-burning technologies and declines in fire activity over the past two decades has drawn down global levels of the pollutant.

There is hope—and precedent—in today’s relatively clear skies over Europe and North America.

Satellite observations of nitrogen dioxide near key U.S. ports suggest that increased shipping activity and backlogs may be affecting air quality.

New research shows that neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., with more people of color are exposed to more air pollution and have higher rates of disease.

Many cities have shortages of air quality monitors. NASA scientists have developed a tool called GEOS-CF that can help.

NASA research finds that a combination of windblown dust and human-caused particle pollution was associated with nearly 3 million premature deaths in 2019.

Short-lived aerosols from smoke helped researchers pinpoint some of the key processes drawing levels of carbon monoxide down.  

Marine storm cloud zones have shifted poleward and narrowed, and the changes are contributing to our planet’s growing energy imbalance.

That’s a key question for many farmers, and new research may make it easier to develop growing season plans.  

Rapid population growth and expanding cities are eating away at one of Egypt’s most precious resources.

Over the past two decades, global croplands expanded by 9 percent, with differing expressions on different continents.

Researchers are using satellites to track a spreading trend in agriculture—the use of greenhouses.

While farms remain a major source of water pollution, signs of improvements are beginning to emerge.

With floating villages, expansive seaweed farms, and hundreds of thousands of fish cages, Sansha Bay has one of the most extensive aquaculture operations in the world.

About 80 percent of South Korea’s oysters are grown in these waters.

Seaweed farms are a common sight in the shallow waters along the Korean Peninsula’s southern coast.

Inland areas along rivers and canals where people once raised crops are now dotted with fish and shrimp ponds.

Farming of this valuable product has become common in recent decades in the waters of Tanzania’s Pemba Island.

Researchers are using satellites to study development patterns in this fast-growing city in Ethiopia.

Signs of urban expansion cover parts of Tennessee’s “scenic city,” which is nestled along the meandering Tennessee River.

Since 1984, the Capital Beltway has gotten wider and much busier as suburbs have sprung up along it.

A fishing town became a bustling city after Malawi’s president moved the capital there.

The fast-growing city of Cairo has spilled onto desert plains well beyond the lush floodplain of the Nile River.

Martin Luther King Jr. came of age in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States.

Geographers who have studied the growth of China’s cities over the past four decades tend to sum up the pace of change with one word: unprecedented.

A high-pressure region combined with a passing frontal system off the South African coast to create an eye-catching gap in the clouds.

Two eye-catching cloud types—flower-shaped actinoform and spiraling von Kármán vortices—popped up off the coast of Chile in March.

Marine storm cloud zones have shifted poleward and narrowed, and the changes are contributing to our planet’s growing energy imbalance.

Whether a smoke or dust plume has a heating—or cooling—effect on the atmosphere can depend on whether it is above clouds.

Data collected by a sensor on the Aqua satellite reveals the global distribution of clouds.

As winds streamed past the South Sandwich Islands, the disrupted flow created an interlocking series of wave clouds.

The Undulations of Wave CloudsWhen undular bores ripple through the atmosphere, they leave remarkable patterns in the clouds.

When airplanes pass through clouds with supercooled water droplets, they can leave distinctive holes in their wake.

The largest tropical rainforest in Mesoamerica is shrinking as pastures and croplands spread across Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.

Political change in Eastern Europe and Russia has left its mark on forests in the region.

While the region has seen less deforestation than other parts of Indonesia, large-scale clearing is still evident.

Satellites have played a key role in monitoring and reducing the rate of deforestation in the rainforest.

Forests are being turned into rubber plantations, farmland, and timber at a rapid rate.

Satellite data show decades of gradual but persistent change to forests around one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest cities.

Heat and drought exacerbated fire season in 2020, but cattle grazing and other human activities also primed the region to burn.

Deforestation patterns near Santa Cruz de la Sierra reflect different waves of settlers and economic activities.

A remote oil and logging road first established in eastern Peru in the 1980s has become a hub for forest clearing.

Description goes hRanching and farming operations have left a distinctive grid on the landscape.

Satellite observations show how far winds normally spread North African dust particles before rain and gravity pull them down to the ocean.

After a brutally hot summer in 2023 that caused widespread bleaching and coral death, summer 2024 was more favorable for the state’s vulnerable reefs. 

Airborne dust is common over the West African country, but its source can affect the appearance of plumes.

While dust routinely blows across the Atlantic Ocean, scientists rarely see plumes as large and dense with particles as the one that darkened Caribbean skies in June 2020.

An unexpected series of blasts from a remote volcano in the Kuril Islands sent ash and volcanic gases streaming high over the North Pacific Ocean.

NASA scientists have been closely watching the evolution of the volcanic island near Tonga since 2015.

A small research station in Hawaii where analog astronauts simulate living and working on the Moon or Mars is out of harm’s way after a lava flow appeared to be headed in its direction.

Tsunami waves battered the coasts of several Tongan islands and ash blankets everything.

The remote South Sandwich Islands can disrupt passing clouds in ways that shed alternating rows of cloud spirals.

For the third time since December 2023, fresh lava has flowed across parts of the Reykjanes peninsula

Swirls of discolored water are signs of activity from the underwater volcano.

ava is once again spilling from the volcano in southwest Iceland, only this time it is igniting moss fires.

After its lava lake drained and the floor dropped, water has been pooling up in the bottom of Halema‘uma‘u crater for several months.

Explosive eruptions from the Caribbean volcano have flung ash and sulfate particles to the stratosphere.

A dangerous mixture of ash, rock, and hot gas rushed down the slopes of Fuego during a strong eruption from this persistently active volcano.

This false-color image shows the infrared signal emitted by fresh lava flowing toward the sea.

Intense lava fountains and lava flows illuminated a volcanic plume spreading across Sicily during an unusually pitched night of activity at the Italian volcano.

If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that the roses you exchanged on Valentine’s Day came from this greenhouse town high in the Andes Mountains.

In Luoping County, spring brings an explosion of canola flowers.

Poppies are sparse, but yellow wildflowers are blooming in Southern California.

About 40 percent of America’s rose plants come from a small town northwest of Bakersfield, California.

An analysis of 35 years of meteorological data shows how fire seasons have changed around the world.

Two decades of satellite data show that the most destructive U.S. fires burn in grasslands and shrublands fanned by strong winds. 

The configuration of the polar vortex may have played a role in unleashing bitter cold followed by record warmth in North America.

For decades, scientists have been tracking extreme thunderstorms created by wildfires. However, the ferocity of the storms that have popped up in Canada in 2021 has surprised them.

Heat waves and droughts supercharged by climate change, a century of fire suppression, and fast-growing populations have made large, destructive fires more likely.

The satellite-based atlas includes information about more than 13 million fires.

After the breach of Kakhovka Dam and the flood that ensued, farmers in the area are coping with depleted water supplies.

Decades of satellite observations show that the aquifers in the southern part of the state are ailing.

Intense rains during the wet season for a second year in a row have caused trouble for riparian communities near Africa’s largest lake.

Remote sensing could help experts monitor Nile hydrology as a new reservoir is filled.

A Grand New Dam on the Nile

A drop of water that falls in central New York takes a long ride to the sea. It flows past some extraordinary natural features that help tell the story of how the Chesapeake Bay came to be.

Insufficient rainfall in 2023-2024 has taken a toll on the region’s rivers and groundwater and upended daily life in several countries.

Without enough fresh snow to replenish it, Alaska’s Yakutat Glacier is in trouble.

Forests play a key role in filtering the waters of a reservoir in central Massachusetts that’s home to submerged towns and nesting eagles.

As the lake in southern Oregon dries up, the remaining water is becoming too salty to support key food sources for birds.

Braided rivers, landslide debris, and alluvial fans are spread across this dynamic landscape in Glacier Bay National Park.  

A team of NASA scientists headed to Holuhraun because the volcano has geologic cousins on Mars.

On a boat at a rocky promontory in Scotland, farmer James Hutton made an argument that changed our understanding of Earth’s age and helped establish the science of geology.

The San Andreas fault runs straight through Tomales Bay.

Despite being quite close to each other, two mountain ridges in western Virginia have very different origins.

A layer of salt called the Paradox Formation played a crucial role in the formation of thousands of arches within Utah’s Arches National Park.

Erosion exposed the subterranean plumbing of an ancient volcano in South Africa.

Here's how you can keep those bedbugs from biting

Explaining why some disease outbreaks have seasonal cycles, and predicting the timing of those cycles, remains a challenging problem.

This radiation treatment for cancer pinpoints tumors with precision—but not everyone can get it.

For decades, dueling camps of cycling advocates have feuded about how to best accommodate riders.

Nutrition experts argue that you can’t take marketing campaigns at face value.

Decades of gradual warming due to human-caused climate change and an El Niño in the Pacific Ocean nudged global sea surface temperatures to record levels in 2023.

New climate research shows where to expect hot and humid heat waves in the United States in the coming decades. 

Heat waves rolled through parts of Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, leaving vulnerable populations at risk.

Scientists investigate how climate change affects extreme weather.

Large and wealthy cities have the biggest carbon footprints.

Officials from Rio and scientists from NASA are talking about ways the city can combat rising urban temperatures.

A heat dome broke temperature records in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.

After a brutally hot summer in 2023 that caused widespread bleaching and coral death, summer 2024 was more favorable for the state’s vulnerable reefs. 

Well-wishers in Hawaii welcomed the astronauts on July 26, 1969, after they landed on the Moon, splashed down in the Pacific, and traveled by aircraft carrier to Pearl Harbor.    

After a brutally hot summer in 2023 that caused widespread bleaching and coral death, summer 2024 was more favorable for the state’s vulnerable reefs. 

The setting for John Henry’s legendary contest with a steam-powered drill may have been this tunnel through Big Bend Mountain in West Virginia.

Harriet Tubman preferred to navigate the woods and waterways of Maryland’s Eastern Shore on winter nights when guiding enslaved people north on the Underground Railroad.  

The Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington is the oldest continually operating retirement home for military personnel in the United States.

NASA scientists are studying the latest satellite imagery of the storm and analyzing the forces that made the storm so catastrophic.

A remarkable slowdown led to a prolonged lashing from winds, waves, and rain that devastated Grand Bahama Island.

After striking the Leeward Islands as a category 5 storm, Irma is headed toward more warm, hurricane-sustaining water.

Critical infrastructure is threatened as sinking land amplifies global sea level rise.

The hurricane is among the longest-lived cyclones of 2018, and the storm’s winds had plenty of time to rage and ease as they ran into different environmental conditions.

Aircraft campaigns have the potential to help scientists answer one of the toughest challenges in hurricane forecasting.

Cloudsat’s radar captured a unique view of Sandy's internal cloud structure.

Satellites tracked smoke from wildfires as it spanned the continental United States and followed winds around two hurricanes.

Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet reveals impurity-rich ice that is thousands of years old.

An outlet glacier in the Russian High Arctic has scientists rethinking how rapidly glaciers in cold, dry areas can move.

A combination of winds, currents, storms, and young ice came together to produce a wave of fractures in Arctic sea ice off the coast of northern Alaska.

NASA scientists went to northern Greenland to study how clouds and atmospheric particles may be contributing to the ongoing loss of multiyear sea ice.  

An early summer heatwave set up a cluster of glaciers in the Central Andes for accelerated melting.

Without enough fresh snow to replenish it, Alaska’s Yakutat Glacier is in trouble.

Satellites have captured imagery of one of the largest ice avalanches ever recorded.

The asteroid that smashed into northern Australia and caused the Amelia Creek impact structure transformed mountain ridges in the blast zone.

An asteroid that struck the rainforest in Africa around 1 million years ago created Ghana’s only natural lake. 

Two asteroids crashed into Earth in the Carboniferous Period, leaving this distinctive pair of craters in northwestern Quebec.

Usually the lake within Pingualuit Crater freezes by mid-September. In 2012, its circular blue surface still appeared to be free of ice in late-November.

The lake covers part of a crater where an asteroid once slammed into Labrador, Canada.

Much of the Goyder impact structure has eroded away, but there are remnants in Australia’s Northern Territory.

On June 30, 1908, an incoming fireball exploded kilometers above Earth’s surface, scorching and toppling large numbers of trees.

Life finds ways to survive on this small volcanic island chain that’s way off the beaten path.

A small island in Tonga built by an underwater volcano in 2022 has grown larger.

A tiny island birthed by an earthquake and a mud volcano has faded into the sea.

Samuel Pierpont Langley conducted the first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft from a houseboat near Chopawamsic Island in the Potomac River.

Tsunami waves battered the coasts of several Tongan islands and ash blankets everything.

A national recreation area and state park protect an archipelago made of glacial debris in eastern Massachusetts.  

Criss-crossing boat wakes left their mark in a phytoplankton bloom drifting near Block Island.

This small island in western Greenland has proven to be an irresistible base for science—and rock climbing—for a team from Aberystwyth University.

A mix of uplifting salt and other sedimentary and metamorphic rocks make for colorful landscapes in the Persian Gulf.

An explosive eruption thousands of years ago transformed the volcanic island but preserved a Bronze Age town under a layer of ash.

Bouvet Island, a territory of Norway, is one of the most remote islands in the world.

A combination of seismographic data and satellite imagery is making it easier for scientists to locate elusive landslides. In summer 2013, Landsat 8 helped pinpoint a slide in eastern Alaska.

In parts of Africa and South America, landslides are happening even if you rarely hear of them.

Steep slopes, roads, underlying geology, and forest loss can all make landslides more likely.

One of the tallest tsunami waves known to science slammed this Alaskan bay in 1958.

Debris from a landslide in British Columbia blocked the river’s flow for several days before water found a way through.

A break in the clouds offered satellites a view of hillslopes that slid away during the magnitude 7.2 temblor.

A massive landslide occurred at Utah’s Bingham Canyon Mine on April 10, 2013. It was the largest non-volcanic landslide on record in North America.

Heavy rainfall from tropical storm Komen triggered a large landslide in Myanmar (Burma).

Twenty months after a slurry of debris swamped villages and killed dozens of people, scientists have pieced together the events that caused the deadly flood.

An ancient collision between continents left a series of fractures in the bedrock around Virginia’s Massanutten Mountains. The event spawned some unusual zig-zagging stretches on the Shenandoah River.

Several surging glaciers flow into the Shimshal River in a steep gorge in northern Pakistan — a recipe for a steady stream of floods in villages downstream.

Wetlands in Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary are used by millions of migrating birds.

The Guiana Shield’s rugged terrain shapes Guyana’s waterways, but mining has altered their clarity.

A new artificial island near Malé could be a destination for people trying to escape rising waters on lower-lying islands.

The release of a burst of extra water on the lower Colorado River allowed vegetation on the banks to revive and sprout new growth.

Earth’s surface may seem motionless most of the time, but an array of measurements show that natural and human-caused processes cause coastal land to rise and fall.

The unexpected discovery of a whale skeleton hundreds of miles from the sea and more than 200 feet above sea level in 1849 is a reminder of how much sea level can change.

While scientists have grown more confident about projections of sea level rise for the next few decades, many competing factors make it hard to see far into the coastal future.

The globe is warming, ice is melting, but that doesn't mean that an ocean will be returning to Vermont anytime soon.

A new artificial island near Malé could be a destination for people trying to escape rising waters on lower-lying islands.

Sea level rise and new development are on a collision course in South Carolina lowcountry.

Rising seas have redistributed cyanobacterial mats blanketing part of Andros Island and restructured the island’s marshes and mudflats.

Bald cypress and other trees are becoming pale, leafless snags as storms, droughts, and sea level rise kill off coastal forests.

Rising waters are swallowing up another island in Chesapeake Bay.

Critical infrastructure is threatened as sinking land amplifies global sea level rise.

The city’s urban heat island could add to the challenge for Olympic marathoners.

The sport can be played on Earth’s distinctive green courses, such as those around Chicago, and even on the Moon’s gray soil.

The Olympic skiing venues are clustered around Krasnaya Polyana, a small town tucked away in the Caucasus.

Ever-warmer summers are among the challenges confronting athletes competing in the Olympic Games.

Several new stadiums were built in and around Doha for the World Cup.