Summer 2023 was Earth’s hottest since global records began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 

Like much of the planet, Southern California is expected to experience more heat waves in the future due to Earth’s changing climate. And some of these will feel increasingly humid, as long-term forecasts call for muggy spells more typically associated with Florida or eastern Texas. 

High heat and humidity blanketed many states in the U.S. South, Midwest and Great Plains in late August 2023, when a large area of high pressure and warm air, often referred to as a heat dome, parked over the interior United States. 

With Portugal in the grip of a heatwave, a wildfire broke out on Aug. 5, 2023, south of Odemira in the Alentejo region in southern Portugal.

Aeolus, ESA’s wind mission, reentered Earth’s atmosphere on July 28, 2023, confirmed by U.S. Space Command. 

Former NASA astronaut Jack Fischer captured this photograph of Lagoa dos Barros and crescent-shaped barchan dunes on the Atlantic coastline of southern Brazil on July 9, 2017, while aboard the International Space Station. 

Thanks to a wet winter, California saw tremendous gains in the amount of water in the San Joaquin, Sacramento and Tulare river basins.

An unusually intense start to Canada’s wildfire season filled skies with smoke in May 2023. Then, at the beginning of June, scores of new fires raged in the central Canadian province of Quebec, some of which were ignited by lightning.  

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of an algal bloom on Lake Villarrica in Chile on May 2, 2023. Ground-based observations and analysis of additional satellite images suggest that cyanobacteria make up the light blue-green swirls in the natural-color image. 

Two NASA CubeSats designed to study tropical cyclones, including hurricanes and typhoons, are in orbit after successfully launching on May 8, 2023.