Courtesy Video | NASA | 07.11.2011
Rainfall is the primary way the atmosphere spreads heat around. Not surprisingly, nearly two-thirds of all rain falls in the tropics, where incoming sunlight is steady year round. Sunlight evaporates water from the warm ocean and land surfaces. The water vapor holds on to the heat that drove its evaporation until it condenses back into rain drops and releases the heat back to the atmosphere.......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 07.06.2011
The 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season broke record after record -- most named storms, lowest pressure measured in the Atlantic, longest-lived December hurricane -- and the list goes on. This image provides a summary of the season, with the track of each named storm marked in black. In all, 30 tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes formed in 2005 (see table at the end of the......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.30.2011
A new study of the Patagonia Icefields in South America by NASA and Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos concludes the icefields -- the largest non-Antarctic ice masses in the Southern Hemisphere -- are thinning at an accelerating pace, faster than other areas on the planet. The runoff from these melting icefields is contributing to an ongoing rise in global sea level. (Click to read the ......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.30.2011
A massive solar flare erupted from the surface of the Sun at 9:51 UTC on October 28, 2003. The solar flare persisted for more than an hour, peaking at 11:10 UTC. Associated with the flare was an ejection of a billion tons or more of gas from the Sun's tenuous outer atmosphere, or corona. Both the flare and the coronal mass ejection accelerated electrically charged particles to very high......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.28.2011
Hurricane Kenna, the sixteenth tropical disturbance of the 2002 eastern Pacific hurricane season, explosively intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 48 hours. On October 25, 2002, Kenna made landfall on the western Mexican coast as a Category 4 storm. Kenna was born in the warm tropical waters of the eastern Pacific south of Mexico on October 22 to become......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.27.2011
Hurricane season in the eastern Pacific started off with a whimper late last month as Alma, a Category 2 hurricane, slowly made its way up the coast of Baja California, packing sustained winds of 110 miles per hour and gusts of 135 miles per hour. The above image of the hurricane was acquired on May 29, 2002, and displays the rainfall rates occurring within the storm. Click the image above to......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.27.2011
NASA's latest Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite -- aqua.nasa.gov Aqua -- successfully launched Saturday morning, May 4, 2002. Aqua is dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of Earth's water cycle and environment. Launching the Aqua spacecraft marks a major milestone in support of NASA's mission to help us better understand and protect our planet. The images above are......
Courtesy Video | NASA | 06.26.2011
This true-color scene is situated along Antarctica's Scott Coastline (toward the west, or lefthand side, of the image), looking out toward the Ross Sea (eastward, or toward the right). Near the top of the image, the Drygalski Ice Tongue juts eastward roughly 80 km (50 miles) out from the coast. Just below this ice tongue is a cluster of large icebergs surrounded by a large bed of sea ice. The......
