Time and again, Himalayan landslides and flash floods cost the lives of dozens of people in Nepal, sweeping away entire villages and infrastructure like bridges and roads.

As global temperatures gradually increase, more water is expected to evaporate into the atmosphere. But using satellite data, scientists have discovered that El Nino-induced droughts have caused global declines in evapotranspiration despite rising temperatures.

Plumes of several anthropogenic pollutants (especially particulate matter and carbon monoxide) located near ground level over China have for the first time been detected from space.

NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures.

Like thermometers in the sky, satellite instruments can measure the temperatures of Earth's surfaces. ESA's new GlobTemperature project is merging these data from a variety of spaceborne sensors to provide scientists with a one-stop shop for land, lake and ice temperature data.

For ten days, 74 scientists and tourists were trapped in the Antarctic on board the Russian Akademik Shokalskiy research vessel. Strong winds had driven ice floes into a bay, blocking the ship's advancement. High-resolution satellite data provided by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) helped to assess the ice conditions at the location.

A field campaign dedicated to SMOS and GOCE has revealed unexpected similarities in the missions' very different types of measurements. This surprising discovery could lead to a better understanding of what is happening deep under the Antarctic ice sheet.

A team of glaciologists serendipitously found the aquifer while drilling in southeast Greenland in 2011 to study snow accumulation. Two of their ice cores were dripping water when the scientists lifted them to the surface, despite air temperatures of minus 4 F (minus 20 C). 

New research published in the journal Nature resolves decades of scientific controversy over the origin of the extremely energetic particles known as ultra-relativistic electrons in the Earth's near-space environment and is likely to influence our understanding of planetary magnetospheres throughout the universe.

According to a new report released today by NOAA and its partners, cooler temperatures in the summer of 2013 across the central Arctic Ocean, Greenland and northern Canada moderated the record sea ice loss and extensive melting that the surface of the Greenland ice sheet experienced last year. Yet there continued to be regional extremes, including record low May snow cover in Eurasia and record high summer temperatures in Alaska.

A new, low-cost cubesat mission led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., will demonstrate technology needed to measure the absolute imbalance in the Earth's radiation budget for the first time, giving scientists valuable information to study our climate.

Clouds can both warm and cool Earth's atmosphere. In current climate models, detailed conditions for cloud cover as a climatic factor are still not clearly understood. There is a shortage of precise measurements on how the water, humidity, ice particles and aerosols that form water droplets are distributed in towering cumulus clouds.

Three years of observations by ESA's CryoSat satellite show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over 150 cubic kilometres of ice each year - considerably more than when last surveyed.

Human activities, a changing climate and natural disasters are rapidly altering the face of our planet. Now, with NASA's Images of Change iPad application, users can get an interactive before-and-after view of these changes.

ESA's GOCE satellite has revealed that the devastating Japanese earthquake of 2011 left its mark in Earth's gravity - yet another example of this extraordinary mission surpassing its original scope.

Between 3.5 and 4.5 million square kilometres of land surface are burnt every year. More than half of this burnt surface is in Africa, which has more than 6000 protected areas across 50 countries.

Scientists have used satellite observations to create a set of high-resolution 3D maps of the entire Great Barrier Reef - a critical step towards identifying, managing and protecting what lies beneath the waters.

With current Earth observation technologies and satellites, it is possible to target specific ecosystems or at-risk regions that have become vulnerable to air and water quality problems as a result of climate change. That was the conclusion of Climatologist DeWayne Cecil, PhD in a resent White Paper for a study team sponsored by Sharon Kleyne's Bio-Logic Aqua Research. The White Paper suggests a series of steps to implement programs that define and solve water and air problems on a regional or local level. 

German and Australian scientists today launched a set of groundbreaking, high resolution, shallow water topography maps for the entire Great Barrier Reef. These world-first digital maps of the coral reefs, using satellite derived depth (bathymetry) techniques, are a critical step towards identifying, managing and essentially preserving and protecting what lies within the waters of this global icon.

A new study based on Earth-observing satellite data comprehensively describes changes in the world's forests from the beginning of this century. Published in Science today, this unparalleled survey of global forests tracked forest loss and gain at the spatial granularity of an area covered by a baseball diamond (30-metre resolution).