EPIC Earth
Named after the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), this image of our home world was snapped from NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite from about one million miles away on July 6, 2015. It showcases a fully sunlit globe that is actually a combination of different photos stitched together. NASA
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Climate change is often treated as a political issue, but it shouldn’t be.

The facts are these: The climate of our planet is changing at a pace unlike anything seen in the natural fluctuations traced across geological records, and scientists have overwhelmingly traced this global warming trend to human activity.

Unless you’re a supercomputer, you’ll find it virtually impossible to keep an eye on every single indicator of climate change. Here are a few that scientists use to monitor the planet:

For more, check out this story on how we know climate change is happening—and that humans are causing it.

smog

CO2 in the atmosphere

Wildfire

Droughts

car in water

Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL)

desert

Temperature

sea temp map

Sea Surface Temperature (SST)

Antarctica

Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent

For more on what we know about climate change, check out this story’s companion piece—and our ongoing series on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Erin Blakemore
Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a freelance reporter from Boulder, Colorado. In more than 15 years as a journalist, she’s covered everything from yoga teachers in cadaver labs to Cold War-era archeology to the mysterious uptick in diabetes cases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work on science, health, and history has appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, TIME, NPR, and more.

Climate Change
Global Warming