NOAA Photo Library

Learn more

• Learn more about American history, art, biology, environmental science, geology, marine biology, meteorology, natural history, oceanography, technology, and visual learners.

Legal

The NOAA Photo Library has been built so as to capture the work, observations, and studies that are carried on by the scientists, engineers, commissioned officers, and administrative personnel that make up this complex and scientifically diverse agency. It is also an attempt to capture NOAA’s scientific heritage, which is in fact a heritage shared by much of the physical and environmental science communities in the United States today. “The NOAA of today carries on the work begun by these agencies under the auspices of the National Ocean Service, the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

Because of this broad base of scientific expertise and the geographic range under which NOAA science and observations are conducted, the NOAA collection includes thousands of weather and space images, hundreds of images of our shores and coastal seas, and thousands of marine species images ranging from the great whales to the most minute plankton.

The geographic range of NOAA work encompasses polar region to polar region and much of the World’s oceans. On any given day NOAA personnel could be chasing tornadoes, flying into hurricanes, battling stormy seas, tagging turtles and whales, taking scientific readings at the South Pole, monitoring the health of coral reefs, or engaging in virtually any task that can be thought of related to monitoring our environment and the health of our planet.”

To date, over 20,000 images have been digitized and reside in the online NOAA Photo Library.