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Icy Bay, Alaska

Icy Bay, Alaska

From NASA's Operation IceBridge campaign in Alaska: A high altitude view of Icy Bay, in the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness. Just a century ago, this body of water was covered in ice.

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The Sierra de Velasco Mountains dominate this image in northern Argentina. The Catamarca province is in the northern part of the image, and the La Rioja province is to the south. The streams are fed by runoff from the snow in the Andes Mountains to the north. These intermittent streams can dry up rapidly. The larger urban area near the bottom of the image is La Rioja, the capital of the province of La Rioja. This image was acquired by the Landsat 5 satellite on February 28, 1985.
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Argentina
Argentina
Small, blocky shapes of towns, fields, and pastures surround the graceful swirls and whorls of the Mississippi River. Countless oxbow lakes and cutoffs accompany the meandering river south of Memphis, Tennessee, on the border between Arkansas and Mississippi, USA. The 'mighty Mississippi' is the largest river system in North America. Image taken by Landsat 7 on May 28, 2003.
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MEANDERING MISSISSIPPI: Sma...
Meandering Mississippi
Rivers of ice - Climate365 graphic
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Rivers of ice - Climate365 ...
Graphic: Rivers of ice
This visualization shows sea surface temperature (SST) data from January 2016 through March 2020.
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Sea Surface Temperature (SS...
Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from January 2016 through March 2020
These are the Anti-Atlas Mountains, part of the Atlas Mountain range in southern Morocco, Africa. The region contains some of the world’s largest and most diverse mineral resources, most of which are still untouched. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on June 22, 2001. This is a false-color composite image made using shortwave infrared, infrared and red wavelengths.
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Atlas Mountains
Atlas Mountains
Guinea-Bissau is a small country in West Africa. Complex patterns can be seen in the shallow waters along its coastline, where silt carried by the Geba and other rivers washes out into the Atlantic Ocean. Image taken by Landsat 7 on December 1, 2000.
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GUINEA-BISSAU COAST: Guinea...
Guinea-Bissau coast
Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the North Atlantic, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Blooms off Scandinavia seem to be particularly intense in summer 2018.
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A vortex of lighter green p...
Summer blooms in the Baltic
This photo from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the Earth as seen from the surface of Mars, shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky. Earth is the bright point of light a little left of the image’s center and our moon can be seen just below Earth. Curiosity, which landed on the red planet on August 6, 2013, is the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to Mars. It studies the geology of its surroundings and has found evidence of a past environment well-suited to support microbial life. Researchers used the left-eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (January 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove cosmic-ray effects. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct bright evening ‘stars’. When Curiosity took the photo, Earth was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers) from Mars. This picture adds to our collection of photos of planet Earth from afar, giving a unique perspective to our place in the cosmos.
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Earth from Mars
Earth from Mars
Perhaps the most impressive of cloud formations, cumulonimbus (from the Latin for “pile” and “rain cloud”) clouds form due to vigorous convection (rising and overturning) of warm, moist and unstable air. Surface air is warmed by the sun-heated ground surface and rises; if sufficient atmospheric moisture is present, water droplets will condense as the air mass encounters cooler air at higher altitudes. The air mass itself also expands and cools as it rises due to decreasing atmospheric pressure, a process known as adiabatic cooling. This type of convection is common in tropical latitudes year-round and during the summer season at higher latitudes. As water in the rising air mass condenses and changes from a gas to a liquid state, it releases energy to its surroundings, further heating the surrounding air and leading to more convection and rising of the cloud mass to higher altitudes. This leads to the characteristic vertical “towers” associated with cumulonimbus clouds, an excellent example of which is visible in this astronaut photograph. If enough moisture is present to condense and heat the cloud mass through several convective cycles, a tower can rise to altitudes of approximately 10 kilometers at high latitudes and to 20 kilometers in the tropics before encountering a region of the atmosphere known as the tropopause—the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. The tropopause is characterized by a strong temperature inversion. Beyond the tropopause, the air no longer gets colder as altitude increases. The tropopause halts further upward motion of the cloud mass. The cloud tops flatten and spread into an anvil shape, as illustrated by this astronaut photograph. The photo was taken from a viewpoint that was at an angle from the vertical, rather than looking straight down towards the Earth’s surface. The image, taken while the International Space Station was located over western Africa near the Senegal-Mali border, shows a fully formed anvil cloud with numerous smaller cumulonimbus towers rising near it. The high energy levels of these storm systems typically make them hazardous due to associated heavy precipitation, lightning, high wind speeds and possible tornadoes.
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Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
Cumulonimbus cloud over Africa
Lake Chad, Africa; February 7 and 11, 2004. Once serving as part of the floor for a much larger Lake Chad, the area now known as the Bodele Depression, located at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in north central Africa, is slowly being transformed into a desert landscape. In the mid-1960s, Lake Chad was about the size of Lake Erie. But persistent drought conditions, coupled with increased demand for freshwater for irrigation, have reduced Lake Chad to about 5 percent of its former size. As the waters receded, the silts and sediments resting on the lakebed were left to dry in the scorching African sun. The small grains of the silty sand are easily swept up by the strong wind gusts that occasionally blow over the region. Once heaved aloft, the dust can be carried for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. The remnants of Lake Chad appear in olive-green amid the tan and light brown hues of the surrounding landscape where the countries of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon all share borders. The Bodele Depression was the source of some very impressive dust storms that swept over West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands in February 2004, the date of this image.
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Lake Chad, Africa; February...
Lake Chad
In an area north of the city of Al-Basrah, Iraq, which borders Iran, a former wetland has been drained and walled off. Now littered with minefields and gun emplacements, it is a staging area for military exercises. This false-color composite image was made using near-infrared, red and green wavelengths of light. Taken by Landsat 7 on January 24, 2001.
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WALLED OFF: In an area nort...
Walled off
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will join a long-standing family of Earth-observing satellites from NASA and European partners, including EUMETSAT and the French space agency CNES.
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Video: Sentinel-6 Michael F...
Video: Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Satellite Family Tree
This movie shows the evolution of several regions of the Greenland Ice Sheet between 2008 and 2300 based on three different climate scenarios.
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Greenland Ice Sheet: Three ...
Greenland Ice Sheet: Three Futures
This image, taken on 4 July 2002, shows spiraling eddies known as von Karman vortices over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Such eddies form as air flows over and around objects in its path. In this case, these eddies were created when prevailing winds sweeping east across the northern Pacific Ocean encountered Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
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Extraordinary Eddies
Extraordinary eddies
B-roll for media on the sea level-observing Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite.
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Video: Sentinel-6 Michael F...
Video: Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Media Reel
The Ganges River forms an extensive delta where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. The delta, largely covered with a swamp forest, is home to most of Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated countries and a nation that is particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the climate changes, low-lying Bangladesh will increasingly face issues such as food insecurity, sea level rise and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. About 120 million people live on the Ganges Delta under the threat of repeated catastrophic floods due to heavy runoff of meltwater from the Himalayas and due to the intense rainfall during the monsoon season.  This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on February 28, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using green, infrared, and blue wavelengths.
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Ganges River Delta
Ganges River Delta
NASA's Landsat 8 satellite captured water mixing between Georgia's ick-colored Suwannee River and the deep blue Gulf of Mexico.
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Suwannee blackwater river m...
Suwannee blackwater river meets the sea
Ubicada en el Ártico cerca del Polo Norte, la isla de Groenlandia está cubierta por una enorme capa de hielo equivalente a tres veces el tamaño de Texas y de 1,6 kilómetros (una milla) de profundidad en promedio.
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Hielo de Groenlandia
Hielo de Groenlandia
Ice covers 10 percent of Earth's surface and helps moderate the planet's temperature. Glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting at an alarming rate. By keeping an eye on Earth's ice from space, NASA satellites help us understand the global effects of climate change.
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Ice covers 10 percent of Ea...
Video: Frozen Earth
Along Greenland's western coast, a small field of glaciers surrounds Baffin Bay. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on September 3, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using near-infrared, red and blue wavelengths. 
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Baffin Bay, Greenland
Baffin Bay, Greenland
Video: The NASA satellite fleet in 2017, from low Earth orbit to the DSCOVR satellite taking in the million-mile view.
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Video: NASA's vantage point...
Video: NASA's vantage point to view Earth
These night-shining clouds were spotted over Billund, Denmark on July 15, 2010. These rare clouds are technically called "noctilucent" or "polar mesospheric" clouds, and form at high altitudes, 80 to 85 kilometers (50 to 53 miles) high, where the mesosphere is located. The clouds' high position in the atmosphere allows them to reflect sunlight long after the sun has dropped below the horizon. They only form when the temperature drops below –130 degrees Celsius (-200 degrees Fahrenheit), whereupon the scant amount of water high in the atmosphere freezes into ice clouds. This happens most often in countries at high northern and southern latitudes (above 50 degrees) in the summer, when the mesosphere is coldest. Studies suggest that night-shining clouds are becoming brighter and more common, which is linked to the mesosphere getting colder and more humid. These changes may be happening because of increased levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. In the mesosphere, carbon dioxide radiates heat into space, causing cooling. More methane, on the other hand, puts more water vapor into the atmosphere, because sunlight breaks methane up into water molecules at high altitudes. Research is ongoing.
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Nocturnal Wonders
Nocturnal wonders
Dagze Co (Lake) is one of many inland lakes in Tibet. In glacial times, the region was considerably wetter, and lakes were correspondingly much larger. This is evident by the numerous fossil shorelines that circle the lake, and attest to the presence of a larger, deeper lake. Changes in climate have resulted in greater aridity of the Tibetan Plateau, and drying up of the lakes. Image taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on October 8, 2001.
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TIBETAN DEPTHS: Dagze Co (L...
Tibetan depths
This stunning image of the northwest corner of Australia was snapped by a student on Earth after remotely controlling the Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station.
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Northwest Australia from th...
Northwest Australia from the Space Station
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Climate time machine intera...
Interactive: Climate time machine

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