Weather.com’s Top 50 Science and Environment Photos of 2014 - Pic Heavy

Brazil is losing its Amazon rainforests at an alarming rate. In October 2014, the NGO Imazon reported that deforestation was up 450 percent compared to the same time last year. In the photo above, a fire burns near grazing land in the Amazon basin. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)


Carolyn Marks Blackwood takes striking images of cracked ice along the Hudson River in New York.


In Point Lay, Alaska, tens of thousands of walrus came ashore in early October. The 35,000 animals, which made up what’s called a haulout, arrived for several reasons, including less sea ice and hunting. (AP Photo/NOAA/CoreyAccardo)


Above, the Aurora borealis, also called the Northern Lights, near Tromsoe, Northern Norway on Oct. 21, 2014. It was considered one of the best times in decades to see the light show. (Jan Morten Bjoernbakk/AFP/Getty Images)


These two galaxies, NGC 2207 and IC 2163, were caught as they were merging, in something called a grazing encounter. They’re quite the pair, too; astronomers have noted at least three supernova explosions from them in the past two decades. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/S. Mineo et al, Optical: NASA/STScI, Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech)


This near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, captured Aug. 21, shows the sun glinting off of the north polar seas of Saturn’s moon Titan. Though the colors above are real, without some aid, the human eye would see only haze. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho)


On Nov. 12, Philae, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe lander, successfully attached to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the first time in history such a feat was accomplished. (ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA)

A lot more at Weather.com