Nearly every day in July 2013, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites observed dust blowing from Sudan out over the Red Sea. On some days, the sea was cloaked in a cloud of yellow. On other days, distinct plumes stretched out over the water, as captured in this time-lapse montage of satellite images.
The longest and fastest moving glacier in West Antarctica calved a new iceberg in July 2013, as shown in this Terra satellite image.
Astronauts often observe atmospheric and surface phenomena in ways that are impossible to view from the ground, as illustrated in this photograph of Lake Superior that exhibits both at once.
In June and early July 2013, beaches and bays along the east coast of China's Shandong Province were coated in thick mats of green algae, or seaweed, that washed in from the Yellow Sea.
Spring and early summer can be dynamic times in Canada, with ice retreating, soil thawing, wildfires and agricultural fires sparking, and rivers swelling.
NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the burn scar from Colorado's Black Forest fire, which charred more than 14,000 acres (5,700 hectares) and destroyed 509 homes, killing two people.
Colorado's West Fork Complex fire was so hot that it spawned pyrocumulus clouds”tall, cauliflower-shaped clouds that swell high above Earth's surface. Here's how it looked from the International Space Station.
Colorado wasn't forecast to have an unusually high wildfire risk this year, but when temperatures soared above 100°F in Denver on June 11”the earliest ever for triple digits”all bets were off. On the same day, the Black Forest fire erupted. A week later, more than 500 homes were destroyed and two lives lost northeast of Colorado Springs.
On June 2, 2013, NASA's Terra satellite observed an immense scar on the Oklahoma landscape left by a May 20, 2013, EF-5 tornado”the most severe rating on the enhanced Fujita scale. It was the deadliest U.S. tornado since an EF-5 killed 158 people in Joplin, Mo., in 2011.
When studying volcanoes, detecting even slight movements of the land surface can tell a lot about what's happening below. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have a new tool to observe such ground deformation.
