NASA

Cracked PIG spawns big berg

by Gareth November 3, 2011

NASA’s IceBridge operation for this Antarctic summer has discovered that the Pine Island Glacier is in the process of calving a massive iceberg — 880 square kilometres of the floating glacier tongue is about to go floatabout, leaving the glacier snout shorter than any time since its position was first recorded in the 1940s. The [...]

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Southern lights

by Gareth September 30, 2011

If you watch nothing else today, take the time to look at this spectacular movie of an aurora australis taken by the International Space Station on September 17, and made available by NASA’s Earth Observatory a couple of days ago. Not really climate-related, unless you’re into solar/climate linkages, but posted because the images are spectacular. [...]

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The view from on high

by Gareth May 27, 2011

NASA’s Earth Observatory has just undergone a web makeover — all very shiny and nice — and yesterday celebrated with a very beautiful image of New Zealand, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite (click on the image above for the full hi-res 17MB file). As the site says, it [...]

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Paul Nurse: science under attack

by Bryan Walker January 29, 2011

Paul Nurse is the new President of the Royal Society. His predecessor Martin Rees was firm in his insistence on the seriousness of climate science and climate change, and Nurse is equally so. In a striking BBC Horizon documentary Science Under Attack he examines why public trust in scientific theory appears to have diminished, especially [...]

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Bloomin’ marvellous

by Gareth December 11, 2010

A stunning image of a massive bloom of phytoplankton off the Chatham Islands (to the east of NZ — that’s Wellington and the Wairarapa in the top left corner), snapped by NASA’s Aqua satellite on December 5th and featured this week at NASA’s excellent Earth Observatory. Click on the image to see the full (4MB) [...]

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The Climate Show: Beta 1

by Gareth October 26, 2010

Introducing The Climate Show, the first (beta 1) stab at a web-based “radio with pictures” programme about climate news science, policy, politics and solutions. It’s the brainchild of KIWI FM’s Radio Wammo breakfast host Glenn Williams, one of the most innovative young broadcasters in New Zealand, and he’s roped me in to add, er, something [...]

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It’s grim up North #2

by Gareth June 10, 2010

From NASA’s eyes in the sky, this is a view of the west coast of Greenland downloaded earlier today, looking down on the Ilulissat Icefjord — the outlet for the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the biggest outlet glacier in Greenland and the largest in the northern hemisphere. It’s the long tongue of white reaching up from right [...]

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Arctic sea ice maximum reached, melt starts

by Gareth April 7, 2010

Arctic winter sea ice extent reached its maximum on March 31st, the latest date since satellite records began in 1979 according to the latest sea ice update from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. The maximum extent was 15.25 million square kilometers. The NASA image above shows the ice extent on March 6th, before [...]

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Great balls of… air

by Gareth March 19, 2010

Two images of the day: above — the picture says it all. Doesn’t look like much, does it? [via Ecohustler, h/t @Revkin]. And below, a NASA photograph from the International Space Station showing what that thin skin of air looks like in situ. Note the large cumulonimbus clouds casting shadows, especially the one left of [...]

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Hansen: it can be cold in a warming world.

by Bryan Walker January 30, 2010

“If it’s that warm, how come it’s so darned cold?” is the heading James Hansen has given to a recently finalised essay circulated to his email list. In more sober terms he subtitles it Regional Cold Anomalies within Near-Record Global Temperature.  The essay explains how the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) goes about analyzing global [...]

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