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News articles on nasa
Mongabay.com news articles on nasa in blog format. Updated regularly.
Featured video: why one scientist is getting arrested over climate change
(05/16/2012) In March 2012 the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and well-known climatologist, James Hansen, spoke at a TED conference to explain what would push a 70-year-old scientist to participate in civil disobedience against mountaintop coal mining and the Keystone Pipeline, even leading to several arrests.
Now on Google Earth: NASA updates global forest height map
(04/18/2012) NASA researchers have released a Google Earth version of a map showing the height of the world's forests.
U.S. suffers warmest March, breaking over 15,000 record temperatures
(04/11/2012) March was the warmest ever recorded in the U.S. with record-keeping going back to 1895, according to new data by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But the month wasn't just a record-breaker, it was shockingly aberrant: an extreme heatwave throughout much of the eastern and central U.S. shattered 15,272 day and nighttime records across the U.S. In all March 2012 was 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the previous warmest March in 1910, and an astounding 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th Century average for March in the U.S.
NASA image: records shattered across U.S. as summer arrives before spring
(03/22/2012) Central U.S. and parts of Canada have seen over a thousand record temperatures shattered over the past week and a half, as an abnormally-long and bizarrely-hot warm spell moves across portions of North America. The direct cause of the weird weather is a blocked high pressure system, but as the U.S. experiences what may be the warmest March on record, meteorologists say climate change may be playing a role in the severity of the heatwave.
Airborne lasers discover undocumented deforestation in Belize park
(03/19/2012) A NASA funded expedition using airborne lasers to study ancient Mayan ruins has also documented widespread illegal deforestation in the Caracol Archaeological Reserve. The lasers found that forest disturbance was actually 58 percent greater than recent satellite surveys showed, according new study in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Society (TCS). Such deforestation not only imperils biodiversity, carbon storage, and migration routes for Central American species, but could also lead to plundering of the Maya site of Caracol.
NASA satellite image shows extent of logging in Pacific Northwest
(02/22/2012) New satellite and space radar images by NASA shows the decline of forests in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Washington and Oregon. Lost to development, agriculture, and large-scale logging, the maps apart of the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD) show the patchy, fragmented nature of the forests in the two U.S. states.
NASA map reveals the heights of the world's forests
(02/20/2012) The height of a forest is important in a number of different ways. First the taller a forest, the more likely there are important niche habitats in the canopy providing homes to unique species. In addition, a forests' height says something about its ability to sequester carbon: the taller a forest the more carbon it can hold. Now a team of researchers, led by NASA, has created the world's first global map showing the height of the world's forests (click here for interactive map), publishing their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
NASA: 2011 ninth warmest year yet
(01/23/2012) Despite being a strong La Niña year, which tends to be cooler than the average year, 2011 was the ninth warmest year on record and the warmest La Niña yet, according to a global temperature analysis by NASA. To date, nine of the world's ten warmest years have occurred since 2000 according to data going back to 1880.
New NASA satellite captures Earth in its full daylight glory on a daily basis (image)
(12/21/2011) NASA has released the first images from its new NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite, which captures images from the entire planet on a daily basis.
NASA image shows it snowing in driest place on earth
(07/20/2011) A snowstorm engulfed parts of the driest place on earth this month: the Atacama desert in South America. Images captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra Satellite show parts of the landscape covered in white.
NASA image: hotter lows and hotter highs in the US
(07/13/2011) New images show just how much US temperatures in July and January have changed recently as the nation feels the impact of global climate change. Dubbed the 'new normals' of US climate, the maps focus on July maximums – typically the hottest month of the year – and January minimums – typically the coldest month. While both July highs and January lows warmed recently, January lows saw the biggest jump.
NASA picture of largest fire in Arizona history
(06/14/2011) NASA released a satellite image of the Wallow Fire that has become the largest fire in Arizona history.
NASA image reveals extent of deforestation in western Brazil
(05/04/2011) The Brazilian state of Rondônia has undergone tremendous change over the past decade as revealed by the NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite. A hotspot for recent deforestation, Rondônia was once home to over 50 million acres (208,000 square kilometers of forest). By 2003 nearly a third of the rainforest in the state was gone and deforestation continues although at a slower pace. The state has the dubious honor of undergoing the highest percentage of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon.
Forest carbon map released for the US
(04/20/2011) The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) has released the first hectare-scale map displaying aboveground woody biomass and forest carbon in US forests. The map, which also shows canopy heights, is known as the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD).
NASA image reveals extent of 2010 Amazon drought
(04/17/2011) NASA has revealed a satellite image of the crippling effect of last year's record-breaking drought on the Amazon ecosystem. For those of you counting, that's two record droughts in the Amazon Basin in 5 years.
NASA images reveal consistent climate warming among different temperature records
(01/19/2011) New images released by NASA illustrate how four different global temperature records show remarkably consistent warming around the world. Currently, global temperatures are analyzed by four major organizations: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Met Office Hadley Center’s Climatic Research Unit, and the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Although each organization has garnered slightly different results year-to-year, all show a consistent warming trend globally, including that the most recent decade as the warmest since record-keeping began in the late Nineteenth Century.
NASA image reveals worst drought on record for the Amazon river
(12/15/2010) A new image released by NASA reveals the impact of the worst drought on record on the world's largest river.
NASA releases global warming map
(12/15/2010) NASA has released a new analysis of temperature change.
Breaking all of life's rules: scientists discover bacteria that can survive on arsenic
(12/02/2010) While for days rumors have circulated around the Internet that NASA had discovered alien life, the truth may be even less expected. Instead of aliens, NASA-funded researchers have discovered a microorganism on Earth that breaks all the rules of life: in Mono Lake in California scientists found a bacterium that can survive wholly on arsenic. The microorganism is capable of replacing phosphate, one of the essential blocks of all known life, with the toxic chemical arsenic according to new researched published in Science. Uncovered by lead author and NASA-funded scientist, Felicia Wolf-Simon, along with astrobiolgist colleagues at Arizona State University, the discovery is thought to have widespread implications on how life may survive on other planets.
NASA images reveal disappearing mangroves worldwide
(12/01/2010) In August, NASA and the US Geological Survey released the first-ever satellite analysis of the world's mangrove ecosystems. What they found was dire: mangroves covered 12.3% less area than previously estimated. Now, NASA has released images of the world's mangrove ecosystems (see below), which currently cover 137,760 square kilometers. Yet this number keeps shrinking: mangroves are vanishing rapidly due to rising sea levels, deforestation for coastal developments, agriculture and aquaculture.
NASA: surge in Amazon fires
(08/31/2010) The number of fire hotspots has surged in the Bolivian and Brazilian parts of the Amazon, reveals data and imagery from NASA.
NASA image captures one of the warmest Julys on record
(08/19/2010) The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has found that the global average temperature of July 2010 was nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) higher than average temperatures from July1951-1980. In fact, this July was tied for the warmest on record with July 2005 and 1998.
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