The Earth Observatory: NASA's New Web Environment for Learning About Earth

To help bridge the communication gap between its Earth scientists and the general public, NASA constructed the "Earth Observatory," a new Web site where the public can go to learn about global climatic and environmental change. The Earth Observatory presents, in lay terms, stories, images, and animations that illustrate the complexities of Earth system science, as well as NASA's use of satellites and remote sensing data to study our home planet.

As such, the Earth Observatory features real remote sensing data that show key phenomena of change on global and regional scales. Updated weekly, the Earth Observatory serves as an information resource for media writers and educators. Educators may be particularly interested in the simple, hands-on models that demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships among select geophysical parameters (e.g., temperature, radiative fluxes, and clouds). These models will complement case studies (also available in the site) of actual regional and global change events. The Earth Observatory is a communication tool that takes advantage of new information technologies, while using popular writers and data visualizers to help bridge the gap between NASA's Earth science community and the general public. If successful, the Earth Observatory could serve as a model public outreach and education tool for other scientific enterprises. The site is available at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov