by Jane Berg and Rachel Sender (A version of this piece was published previously on the nasa.gov site.) At the end of 2022, 65% of the western United States was in severe drought, the result of a two-decades-long megadrought in…
By Ian Watsky Thirteen years, 15 aircraft, 968 flights, and nearly 5,000 flight hours: that’s the combined effort it took to monitor and collect data on Earth’s cryosphere, otherwise known as the frozen part of the planet. NASA’s Operation IceBridge…
By Jane Berg No one could be certain that a flare would happen when and where it did. On March 29, 2014, BAERI alum Professor Lucia Kleint was performing observations of the Sun at the Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope…
By Jane Berg Logo embroidered into the seat covers on the DC-8 jetliner, also known as the Airborne Science Laboratory. Image: Jane Berg. Despite my noise-canceling headset, the whirring engines are still very loud as NASA’s Airborne Science Program plane…
By Erin Bregman Every Tuesday morning, members of the Earth Science Project Office gather around a conference room table at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, to problem solve and talk about upcoming mission plans. The 20-person…
By Rachel Sender A fire coral before and after bleaching. Bleaching has become more prevalent in coral reefs as global warming causes the oceans to warm. Image: XL Catlin Seaview Survey. A Daring Drone Delivery In 2019, over the waters…
By Jane Berg The first photo taken from space was captured by a rocket-borne camera launched from New Mexico in October 1946. It showed a grainy black-and-white image with clouds and a sharp horizontal line where the atmosphere ended and outer…
By Jane Berg When BAERI’s Courtney Batterson was a child growing up in Minnesota, she was fascinated by storms — not only the tornados for which the Midwest is known — but also the very sudden and aggressive thunderstorms that…
By Rachel Sender Extreme and unpredictable weather patterns are quickly becoming the new normal—intense heat, flooding, tornadoes, and wildfires have become almost old news as Earth’s climate changes rapidly. To continue moving forward as a species, we will need to…
