Oldest Arctic Sea Ice is Disappearing. Parque Nacional Llullaillaco. In the Andes Mountains, along the border between Chile and Argentina, lies Llullaillaco Volcano. With an elevation of 6,739 meters (22,109 feet) above sea level, the volcano is the world’s second-highest active volcano after Nevados Ojos del Salado, farther south in the Andes. Llullaillaco’s last recorded eruption occurred in 1877. Llullaillaco is a stratvolcano composed of alternating layers of hardened lava, solidified ash, and rocks ejected by earlier eruptions. The volcano sits atop an older volcano that collapsed about 150,000 years ago. Viscous, thick lava flows from Llullaillaco have formed visually stunning structures known as coulées. Llullaillaco Volcano has lent its name to a national park in Chile—Parque Nacional Llullaillaco—which extends west and south of the volcano. Some snow and ice linger on the slopes of Llullaillaco, but little vegetation appears in this landscape.
Llullaillaco lies along the eastern margin of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. Yukon Delta, Alaska. The Yukon River originates in British Columbia, Canada, and flows through Yukon Territory before entering Alaska. In southwestern Alaska, the Yukon Delta spreads out in a vast tundra plain, where the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers meander toward the Bering Sea. The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on the Landsat 7 satellite acquired this natural-color image of the Yukon Delta on September 22, 2002. Looking a little like branching and overlapping blood vessels, the rivers and streams flow through circuitous channels toward the sea, passing and feeding a multitude of coastal ponds and lakes. The Yukon Delta is an important habitat for waterfowl and migratory birds, and most of the protected refuge is less than 100 feet (30 meters) above sea level.
Over such low-lying, mostly treeless terrain, the rivers can change course frequently and carve new channels to find the fastest route toward the sea. Water abounds in this region today, but it was once far drier. ReferencesBalter, M. (2011). Long Cold Spell Leads to First Arctic Ozone Hole. In March 2011, the Earth Observatory published images of a rare, deep depletion in the ozone layer over the Arctic. The images came from daily observations made by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite. A new study published in Nature uses a companion instrument on Aura, the Microwave Limb Sounder, to describe how and why the event looked a lot like the annual Antarctic “ozone hole.”
MLS looks through the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to measure gases, in this case ozone and chlorine monoxide, one of the most dominant ozone-destroying gases. The two maps above were made with data collected by MLS on March 18, 2011. In both cases, high concentrations of the gas are dark, while low concentrations are light. The correlation between high chlorine monoxide and the ozone hole is no accident. The second factor was strong, swirling polar winds that isolate the Arctic. ReferencesBuis, A. (2011, October 2). Instrument(s): Aura - MLS. Flooding in Mexico. Several rivers in southeastern Mexico spilled over their banks in late October, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.
The Usumacinta River alone damaged homes and croplands in multiple cities, and isolated rural areas by washing out roads. The governor of the state of Tabasco estimated that regional floods had affected 90,000 residents. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images on October 23, 2011 (top), and October 30, 2009 (bottom). Both images use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase contrast between water and land. Water is dark blue, vegetation is bright green, and clouds are pale blue-green. The Usumacinta River, visible as a thin river in 2009, flows past multiple lakes and ponds en route to the sea. The flooding in southeastern Mexico was part of a larger weather phenomenon in the region.
As of October 24, 2011, Tropical Storm Rina had formed off Central America. Instrument(s): Grand New View of the Canyon. It is up to 18 miles (29 kilometers) wide and one mile (1.6 km) deep, and stretches 277 river miles (446 km). It is one of the greatest natural wonders of North America and perhaps the entire world. And thanks to a joint American and Japanese science team, we now have a new perspective on the Grand Canyon and many other topographic features of the planet. The image above shows the eastern part of Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona, near 36 degrees north latitude and 112.1 degrees west longitude.
It is a composite of two pieces: a synthetic natural color image captured on July 14, 2011, draped over a three-dimensional model of the area. The images and stereoscopic data behind the model were acquired by the Advanced Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The perspective is from east to west, looking down the channel of the Colorado River. North is to the right. The first version of the model was released by NASA and METI in June 2009. Southeastern USA at Night. The southern United States is known for its distinctive cultural and historical identity within the country, including distinct music, cuisine, literature, and social customs. The U.S. Census Bureau defines “The South” as including the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
This astronaut photograph from the International Space Station highlights the southeastern part of the South at night, including the eastern Gulf of Mexico and lower Atlantic Seaboard states. The view is part of a time-lapse series of images that extends from just southwest of Mexico to northeast of Newfoundland, Canada. New sequences from the Space Station are regularly posted on the Crew Earth Observation videos page. A large dark region to the northwest of Jacksonville is the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Instrument(s): ISS - Digital Camera.
2011 Sea Ice Minimum. In September 2011, sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean declined to the second-lowest extent on record. Satellite data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) showed that the summertime ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low. The image above was made from observations collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
The map—which looks down on the North Pole—depicts sea ice extent on September 9, 2011, the date of minimum extent for the year. The animation (link below the image) shows the growth and decline of sea ice from September 2010 to September 2011. Ice-covered areas range in color from white (highest concentration) to light blue (lowest concentration). Melt season in 2011 brought higher-than-average summer temperatures, but not the unusual weather conditions that contributed to the extreme melt of 2007, the record low.
“The sea ice is not only declining; the pace of the decline is becoming more drastic,” he noted. Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae Soak The Philippines. In a matter of five days, the Philippines and southeastern Asia were hammered by two intense tropical storms in late September and early October 2011. Several months worth of rain fell within a week—a deluge even by tropical standards—on Luzon in the northern Philippines, as well as in northern Vietnam and the Chinese island of Hainan. This image shows average rainfall totals in the Western Pacific from September 26 to October 2, 2011, when Typhoon Nesat and Super Typhoon Nalgae passed through.
The heaviest average rainfall—more than 350 millimeters or 14 inches—appears in dark blue. Localized rainfall amounts could be significantly higher. The lightest rainfall—less than 50 millimeters or 2 inches—appears in light green. Superimposed on the rainfall totals are the storm tracks for Nesat and Nalgae, with maroon indicating the strongest storm intensity, and pink indicating the weakest. According to news reports, almost three million Filipinos were affected by the storms. Instrument(s): Bigach Impact Crater, Kazakhstan. Some meteor impact craters, like Barringer Crater in Arizona, are easily recognizable due to well-preserved forms and features on the landscape. Other impact structures, such as Bigach Impact Crater in northeastern Kazakhstan, are harder to recognize due to their age, modification by geologic processes, or even human alteration of the landscape. At approximately five million years old, Bigach is a relatively young geologic feature. However, active tectonic processes in the region have caused movement of parts of the structure along faults, leading to a somewhat angular appearance (image center).
The roughly circular rim of the 8-kilometer (diameter) structure is still discernable around the relatively flat interior. In addition to modification by faulting and erosion, the interior of the impact structure has also been used for agricultural activities, as indicated by the presence of tan, graded fields. Instrument(s): ISS - Digital Camera. Midwestern USA at Night with Aurora Borealis. When viewed from the International Space Station (ISS), the night skies are illuminated with light from many sources. For example, the Midwestern United States presents a nighttime appearance not unlike a patchwork quilt when viewed from orbit.
The artificial light from human settlements appears with a characteristic yellow tinge. The green light of the aurora borealis also shines brightly in this view—even seeming to reflect off Earth’s surface in Canada. A small white patch of light is almost certainly lightning from a storm on the East coast (image top right). Part of the ISS appears across the top of the image. This astronaut photograph highlights the Chicago metropolitan area as the largest cluster of lights, next to the dark patch of Lake Michigan. The other largest metropolitan areas include St. City light clusters give an immediate sense of relative city size. The sense of scale changes significantly in oblique views. Instrument(s): ISS - Digital Camera. Extending the Ozone Monitoring Record. A new satellite instrument is sending back detailed information about the health of Earth's ozone layer, the atmospheric gas that shields life from harmful levels of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation.
The Ozone Mapper and Profiler Suite, or OMPS—one of five new instruments on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite—will add to a record of space-based ozone monitoring that dates back to 1978. The images above show the concentration of ozone in Earth's atmosphere above the South Pole on January 27, 2012. Measurements are expressed in Dobson Units, the number of molecules required to create a layer of pure ozone 0.01 millimeters thick at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 1 atmosphere (the air pressure at the surface of the Earth). The ozone layer’s average thickness is about 300 Dobson Units, a layer that is 3 millimeters thick, or the height of two U.S. pennies stacked together. Instrument(s): Suomi NPP - OMPS. Grassland Restoration in Kruger National Park. September 18, 2010 August 20, 2011 acquired September 18, 2010download large image (4 MB, JPEG, 3000x3000 - left) acquired September 18, 2010download GeoTIFF file (16 MB, TIFF, 3000x3000) acquired August 20, 2011download large image (4 MB, JPEG, 3000x3000 - right) acquired August 20, 2011download GeoTIFF file (17 MB, TIFF, 3000x3000) download large image (4 MB, JPEG, 3008x2000) In September 2010, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite charted the progress of a prescribed fire in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Did the experiment work? The view from the ground is even more revealing. The restoration project will help Kruger National Park maintain a patchwork of forest, thick woody brush, and open grassland. NASA image by Jesse Allen and Rob Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team. Instrument(s): Fires in Northern Territory, Australia. Large fires burned throughout Australia’s Northern Territory on September 30, 2011, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image. The fires are marked in red. Fire fighters were monitoring 21 fires, said news reports, but many more are shown in the image. The fires are burning through thick grass in remote areas. The top image provides a closer view of three large fires around Alice Springs.
The lower image shows a broader area of fire activity in central Australia. Smoke from the fires creating hazardous driving conditions in the Alice Springs region and forced some roads to close. Fires have burned nearly 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 square miles) in Northern Territory in September, said ABC News. The fire season in 2011 is proving to be one of the most extreme in recent years. ReferencesHorn, A. (2011, September 30). NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Instrument(s): Aqua - MODIS. Ash and Lava Flows at Nabro Volcano. Satellite imagery suggests that the eruption of Nabro Volcano, which began in June 2011, continues. The volcano is located on the edge of the Danakil Desert, a remote and sparsely populated area on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and few eyewitness accounts of the eruption are available. Orbiting instruments such as the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), which acquired these images, may be the only reliable way to monitor Nabro.
The images show the volcano in false-color (top) and natural-color (lower) on September 28, 2011. Heat from vents in Nabro’s central crater is visible as a red glow in the false-color image. Another hotspot about 1,300 meters (4,600 feet) south of the vents reveals an active lava flow. A pale halo surrounding the vents indicates the presence of a tenuous volcanic plume. South of Nabro’s crater, the dark, nearly black areas are coated with ash so thick it completely covers the sparse vegetation. Instrument(s): Sea Ice and Icebergs off East Antarctica. Though it is all composed of frozen water, ice is hardly uniform. On October 7, 2011, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this image of a variety of ice types off the coast of East Antarctica.
Brilliant white ice fills the right half of this image. It is fast ice, and derives its name from the fact that it holds fast to the shore. This ice is thick enough to completely hide the underlying seawater, hence its brilliant white color. Trapped within the fast ice, and stuck along the edge of it, are icebergs. The icebergs along the edge of the fast ice are likely grounded on the shallow sea floor, and their presence may help hold the fast ice in place. Farther out to sea is pack ice that drifts with winds and currents. The pack ice includes some newly formed sea ice. ReferencesScott, M. (2009, April 20). NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team.
Israel-Egypt-Gaza border region. Typhoon Nesat. Flooding in India. Fire in the Sky and on the Ground. Floods in Cambodia. Suguta Valley, Kenya. Hurricane Katia off the Northeastern US Coastline. Four Corners, Southwestern U.S. Remembering UARS. A Kamchatkan Autumn. Polynyas and the Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica. Nyamuragira Volcano Erupts. Seeing Equinoxes and Solstices from Space. Approaching the 2011 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum. 2011 Antarctic Ozone Minimum. World of Change: Burn Recovery in Yellowstone : Feature Articles.
Blooming Waters off Argentina. Typhoon Roke. Åland Islands. Discovering America. Sand Dunes, Junggar Basin, Northwestern China. Roze Glacier, Novaya Zemlya. Melt Ponds, Petermann Ice Island. Sediment Clouds the Chesapeake Bay. Parinacota Volcano, South America. Pagami Creek Fire in Minnesota. Lava Flow on Kizimen Volcano. Seasonal Changes along the Indus River. Owens Lake, California. Namibia’s Protected Coast. Home Page. Eyes on the Solar System. Aral Sea 2011. Eyes on the Earth. Heavy Snow in Northeastern United States. NASA's Endeavour Delivers Tiny Space-Traveling Satellites to the ISS --Destined for Saturn.
Introduction | Eyes on the Earth. Eyes on the Earth. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. Flood Waters Inundate a Bangkok Airport. A WARMING WORLD. NASA Earth Observatory : Home. Powerful Storm hits Alaska. Looking Under Jakobshavn. Lake Orumiyeh, Iran. Low Clouds over Central Europe. Re-entry of Progress Spacecraft 42P. Fresh Lava Flows Surround Pu'u 'O'o. First Light for NPP. Birth of an Iceberg. El Hierro Still Churning the Sea. Rowley Shoals, Timor Sea. Shades of Green in the North Sea. Puyehue-Cordón Caulle. Where on Earth...? Crepuscular Rays, India. Oahu, Hawai'i. Weather and Climate Meet on NPP Satellite. Looking Inside Hurricane Rina. Flooding in Thailand. Operation IceBridge Returns to Antarctica. Sediment and Algae Color the Great Lakes. Old Volcano, Older Footprints. Hurricane Jova.
Fires along the Rio Xingu, Brazil. El Hierro Submarine Eruption. Toxic Algae Bloom in Lake Erie.