In early January NASA’s retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere after almost four decades in space. For 21 of those years, the ERBS actively investigated how the Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the Sun, and made measurements of stratospheric ozone, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols. As of […]
Permafrost in Alaska has been warming and thawing at an increasing rate. The state is actually sinking a little in places. Soumitra Sakhalkar, a graduate research assistant at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, has been using the global navigation satellite system to precisely measure just how much the surface is subsiding in some […]
Permafrost — ground that has been permanently frozen for two or more years — makes up a large part of the Earth, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost is important for the planet’s climate, containing large amounts of biomass stored as methane and carbon dioxide, making tundra soil a carbon sink. However, permafrost’s innate […]
Using data from the ICESat and ICESat-2 laser altimeters, scientists precisely measured how much ice has been lost from ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland between 2003 and 2019. The Antarctic Peninsula, seen here, was one of the fastest changing regions of the continent. Credits: NASA / K. Ramsayer The results provide insights into how […]