Known for their weather-observing prowess, these satellites can also track land surface processes and disturbances over broad areas in near-real time.
satellites
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Satellite View of the California Wildfires of January 2025
Satellite observations of the southern California wildfires of 2025 reveal that almost all the burned areas were reached by fire within 24 hours, and wildfires in residential areas burned more intensely than nearby natural vegetation fires at night.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
How Satellite Data Helped Avoid Hunger from Drought
Satellites detecting anomalies of the spectral reflectance of crops in Uganda successfully foretold imminent crop failure and automatically triggered timely governmental disaster relief.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Managing Carbon Stocks Requires an Integrated View of the Carbon Cycle
The carbon cycle community calls for an integrated carbon observing system leveraging near-surface partial-column data to better resolve finer spatial scales where key processes and decisions occur.
Posted inFeatures
The Looming Data Loss That Threatens Public Safety and Prosperity
Cuts to funding and staff needed to maintain trusted datasets of reference Earth system observations could limit their availability and quality, undermining hazard predictions and risk assessments.
Posted inResearch & Developments
Science Escapes Largest Cuts in Latest Budget Bills
Today, top appropriators in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives released a three-bill appropriations package for fiscal year 2026 (FY26) that largely rejects drastic cuts to federal science budgets that President Trump proposed last year.
Posted inFeatures
Satellite Radar Advances Could Transform Global Snow Monitoring
The recent SnowEx campaign and the new NISAR satellite mission are lighting the way to high-resolution snowpack monitoring and improved decisionmaking in critical river basins around the world.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Climate Variations in Tropical Oceans Drive Primarily Extreme Events
Severe droughts and floods are primarily driven by climate variations in tropical oceans, with interannual and decadal patterns playing key roles.
Posted inResearch & Developments
Global Methane Emissions Projected to Fall, According to United Nations Report
The world has made significant progress on methane mitigation since 2020, though meeting the goals of a major international pledge will require additional action, according to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Understanding Relative Atmospheric Roles of Anvil and In-situ Cirrus Clouds
New framework for separating anvil and in-situ cirrus clouds provides a pathway for modeling cirrus and how regional shifts in convection could reshape global cirrus distributions and their radiative impact.