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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

× This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated.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 ...

Anyone who has ever planned to spend hours outside on a hot, sunny day has probably heard the advice to wear light colors. Pale colors reflect much of the Sun’s light, keeping their wearers cool. The ...

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 ...

The Antarctic is in some ways the opposite of the Arctic. The Arctic is an ocean basin surrounded by land, with the sea ice corralled in the coldest, darkest part of the Northern Hemisphere. The ...

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, the primary producers, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Small fish and invertebrates also ...

Less than two years after dissecting the head of the great white shark, Steno completed a manuscript on the geology of Tuscany. The locale was a shrewd choice; it celebrated the homeland of his ...