× This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science. Before widespread human settlement began to encroach on the ...

The average temperature in winter ranges from -40°C (-40°F) to 20°C (68°F). The average summer temperatures are usually around 10°C (50°F). The coniferous forest is sandwiched in between the tundra to ...

Michael Carlowicz was managing editor of NASA’s Earth Observatory from 2010 to 2022. He has written about Earth science and geophysics since 1991 for several NASA divisions, the Woods Hole ...

The four Gasherbrum peaks are the highest points along an enormous horseshoe-shaped ridge on the border of Pakistan and China. The ridge encircles South Gasherbrum Glacier, a bowl-shaped mass of ice ...

The most valuable fossils found in sediment cores are from tiny animals with a calcium carbonate shell, called foraminifera. One species of foraminifera lives in the icy waters of the Arctic above ...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a different part of the world? What would the weather be like? What kinds of animals would you see? Which plants live there? By investigating ...

Nanga Parbat is the ninth tallest mountain in the world, but it is one of the most alluring for both mountain climbers and scientists. Located in northern Pakistan, Nanga Parbat is the westernmost of ...

Between 1950 and 2003, the world’s population grew from an estimated 2.5 billion to 6.3 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More people are affected by natural disasters today because there ...

Examine the set of graphs below for a given city. Read carefully the temperature and precipitation scales on the graphs. Review the biome information. Two biome choices are given for each set of ...

All of this extra carbon needs to go somewhere. So far, land plants and the ocean have taken up about 55 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere while about 45 percent has ...

Although it became clear about 40 years ago that aerosols could affect climate, the measurements needed to establish the magnitude of such effects—or even whether specific aerosol types warm or cool ...

Among the first things the data revealed was a definite seasonal difference in cloudiness over the polar regions. Cloud fraction (the fraction of the area in a map’s grid box covered by cloud) over ...