Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

The city of Jeddah’s seaport on Saudi Arabia’s western coast is pictured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite.

The second largest city in the country, Jeddah has a population of over five million people. The city is a gateway to Islam’s holiest city of Mecca, which lies about 60 km to the east, as well to the holy city of Medina, about 320 km north.

It is also an important commercial hub, with its port located in the middle of an important shipping route between east and west. Zooming in, we can see some large container vessels in the port.

Near the bottom of the image, the large circles are the tanks of an oil refinery. The oil industry comprises about 45% of Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product, and 90% of export earnings. Saudi Arabia is the world’s number-one oil exporter, and therefore plays a major role in the global energy industry. Its policies on the production and export of oil, natural gas and petroleum products have a major impact on the energy market, as well as the global economy.

The Red Sea’s coral reefs are visible off the coast. In fact, this is one of the few places along this coastline with a gap in the reef, enabling large vessels to approach the coast.

This image, also featured in the Earth from Space video program, was acquired on 17 March 2013 by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite.

Photo credit: KARI/ESA

Osaka, Japan

Osaka lies to the West of Tokyo and is Japan’s third-largest city. The city runs along the Yodo river and stretches along the coast of Osaka Bay.

Images of our planet at night taken from the International Space Station show that people have settled where the living is easy – along rivers and bays. Artificial lights from human habitation and industry highlight the advantages of settling next to rivers and seas where water provides food, waste disposal, transport and cooling for factories.

The white lights in the center of this picture correspond to Osaka’s two city centers, Kita and Minami, where businesses, shopping streets and areas of entertainment are concentrated.

To the Northeast, across the river Yodo, lies Itami Airport, the yellow vertical lights to the right of a river running North-South. The airport shares the load of landing aircraft in the Osaka area with Kobe and Kansai airports that were both built on artificial islands in Osaka Bay. The yellow lights of Kobe airport can be seen at the top-left of Osaka Bay in this picture, Kansai airport is just outside the frame.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Sochi, Russia

The Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, is the warmest city ever to host the Winter Olympic Games, which open on February 7, 2014, and run through February 23. This north-looking image, acquired on January 4, 2014, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, shows the Sochi Olympic Park Coastal Cluster -- the circular area on the shoreline in the bottom center of the image -- which was built for Olympic indoor sports. Even curling has its own arena alongside multiple arenas for hockey and skating. The Olympic alpine events will take place at the Mountain Cluster, located in a snow-capped valley at the top right of the image. Sochi itself, a city of about 400,000, is not visible in the picture. It's farther west (left) along the coast, past the airport at bottom left.

In the image, red indicates vegetation, white is snow, buildings are gray and the ocean is dark blue. The area imaged is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from west to east (left to right) at the coastline and 25 miles (41 kilometers) from front to back. Height is exaggerated 1.5 times. The image was created from the ASTER visible and near-infrared bands, draped over ASTER-derived digital elevation data.

The 2014 Winter Olympic ski runs may be rated double black diamond, but they're not quite as steep as they appear in this image of the skiing and snowboarding sites for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, acquired on January 4, 2014, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Rosa Khutar ski resort near Sochi, Russia, is in the valley at center, and the runs are visible on the shadowed slopes on the left-hand side of the valley. Height has been exaggerated 1.5 times to bring out topographic details. The games, which begin on February 7 and continue for 17 days, feature six new skiing and boarding events plus the return of the legendary Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Games for the first time since 2002.

In this southwest-looking image, red indicates vegetation, white is snow, and the resort site appears in gray. The area imaged is about 11 miles (18 kilometers) across in the foreground and 20 miles (32 kilometers) from front to back. The image was created from the ASTER visible and near-infrared bands, draped over ASTER-derived digital elevation data.

Image credits: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (top and bottom)

Note: For more information, see NASA Satellite Eyes Sochi Olympic Sites. Also, Proba-V’s Olympic View.

Monitoring Alaskan Lake Ice

In northern Alaska, within the Arctic circle, the ice regimes of shallow lakes were documented using 79 radar images from the ERS-1 and -2 satellites. How the radar signals bounced back to the sensor indicated ‘floating ice’ versus ‘grounded ice’ (fully frozen lake) when radar energy was absorbed into the ground. The data showed that from 1992 to 2011 the lakes in this region experienced a 22% reduction in grounded ice – the equivalent of ice thinning by 21–38 cm.

Video credit: Planetary Visions / University of Waterloo, Canada / ESA

Zambezi River, Zambia

This image from Envisat’s radar shows the Zambezi River’s floodplain in western Zambia.

The city of Mongu appears as a cluster of white radar reflections on the right side of the image. It is about 15 km from the river’s main channel – which appears light green, snaking down the left side of the image – but during the wet season, the waters rise right up to the edge of the town.

This image is a compilation of three acquisitions from Envisat’s radar. Each acquisition is assigned a color, and when combined show changes between the acquisitions.

The individual images were acquired on 1 March, during the wet season, 27 September and 26 December, when water levels were low, all during 2011. Combined, the psychedelic array of colors reveal how drastically the floodplain changes between seasons.

As the second largest wetland in Zambia, the Zambezi floodplain is a major spawning ground for fish. With about 80 different fish species, it serves as a source of livelihood to the local people, along with harvesting of other wetland resources like reeds and sedges for handicraft, and rice cultivation.

But this area is threatened by unsustainable fishing, animal poaching and the dredging of canals.

The Zambezi floodplains is just one of the over 2000 sites worldwide considered to be wetlands of international importance by the Ramsar Convention – an intergovernmental treaty for the sustainable use of wetlands. World Wetlands Day is observed on 2 February, the anniversary of the signing of the Convention.

ESA assists the Ramsar Convention through the GlobWetland project and the TIGER initiative ‘Looking After Water in Africa’, which provide satellite data to be used to monitor these precious resources.

This image is featured in the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: ESA

Tianjin, China

Tianjin, China, lies around 100 km southeast of Beijing near China’s eastern coast. At the top right of this image – taken from the International Space Station at night – is the Tianjin Port welcoming ships from the Bohai Bay.

The street lighting in Tianjin is interesting as it shows two different colors, presumably from different lighting technologies. At night the dual urban areas of Tianjin show up clearly with the center and old city in the middle and the newer urban city of Binhai to the right along with the port.

The other two lit-up areas in this image are the cities of Wuqing on the road to Beijing heading North (to the left here) and Jinnan below Binhai.

Tianjin is the fourth largest city of China with over 12 million inhabitants. This image was taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station using Nightpod: ESA’s camera aid that tracks the motion of Earth as our planet flies underneath the orbital outpost at 28,800 km/h. The resulting images are sharper than if an astronaut compensates for the Earth’s rotation by hand.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Hofsjökull Ice Cap, Iceland

This image shows a small part of the Hofsjökull ice cap in Iceland, which encompasses several glaciers. The fan at upper left is part of a glacier called Mûlajökul.

The above map shows the flight path (red lines) for a single flight to map flow speeds across two ice caps with the UAVSAR instrument. Each five-hour flight will follow this same complicated path for optimal coverage. The ice caps appear in white in the center of the tangled flight lines; Langjökull is west (left) of Hofsjökull. Keflavik International Airport is on the peninsula in the southwest.

A high-precision radar instrument from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, left Southern California for Iceland today to create detailed maps of how glaciers move in the dead of winter. This will help scientists better understand some of the most basic processes involved in melting glaciers, which are major contributors to rising sea levels.

Photo and map credit: Caltech

Note: For more information, see NASA Radar Maps the Winter Pace of Iceland's Glaciers.

Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

This false-color image from Japan’s ALOS satellite was acquired over part of southern Kenya and the border with Tanzania.

Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania can be seen in the lower-left corner. At 5895 m above sea level, this dormant volcano is Africa’s highest mountain.

Kilimanjaro is a critical water catchment area for both Kenya and Tanzania, but over the past century more than 80% of its ice cover – which acts as a water storage – has disappeared. The receding ice cap together with deforestation have caused several rivers to dry up, affecting forests and farmland below.

In this image, bright red areas show the rich vegetation of the forested area on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, as well as vegetation of the agricultural areas and along rivers and streams.

False color allows for better discrimination between different vegetation types. This is particularly helpful when satellite data are used in agricultural monitoring for mapping and classifying land use, crop type, crop health, change detection, irrigated landscape mapping and crop area mapping.

The upper section of the image is dominated by plains in southern Kenya. Nearby are a number of national parks (not shown) that attract tourists looking to see the wildlife. Animals found in this area include elephants, cape buffalo, lion, giraffe, zebra and wildebeest, among many others.

This image, also featured in the Earth from Space video program, was acquired on 20 March 2009.

Image credit: JAXA/ESA

Rome, Italy

Italy’s capital city shows a distinctive patchwork of lights and darker areas when seen from the International Space Station at night. Unlike England’s capital city, Rome’s A90 ring road, the “Grande Raccordo Anulare”, is not so visible due to different motorway lighting. No single point of interest strikes out from the patchwork of roads, parks and green areas.

Rome was famously founded along the Tiber river, seen here winding its way downwards to the bottom of the image, but even the Tiber river gets lost in the sea of light at the center of Rome. The dark patches are parks, ancient ruins and green areas without street lighting. To the bottom right of this picture is the hilly area and regional park of Decima-Malafede where humans have not settled. Instead Rome has expanded over the years in other directions. At the top of this picture, newer, sub-urban settlements are characterized by the straight streets.

ESA’s center for Earth Observation at the ESRIN facility near Frascati can be seen to the right of this picture, above the blackness of Albano lake.

Clouds covered parts of Rome and caused the blurry areas at the bottom half of this picture taken 12 December 2013 by an Expedition 38 astronaut.

Image credit: ESA/NASA

Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island country near the western shore of the Persian Gulf. In 1971 Bahrain declared independence from its previous status as a United Kingdom protectorate. At that time the population was about 200,000. By 1985, the population had grown to 425,000; and in 2010, the population was over 1,200,000. The rapid development of the country is dramatically seen in the northern half of the country from these three satellite images: acquired in 1972 (Landsat Multispectral Scanner), 1987 (Landsat Thematic Mapper) and 2011 (ASTER). The images cover an area of 30 x 30 km, and are located at 26.2 degrees north, 50.5 degrees east.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Long-Term Climate Warming Trend Sunstained in 2013

NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which analyzes global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated report Tuesday on temperatures around the globe in 2013. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago.

"Long-term trends in surface temperatures are unusual and 2013 adds to the evidence for ongoing climate change," GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. "While one year or one season can be affected by random weather events, this analysis shows the necessity for continued, long-term monitoring."

The average temperature in 2013 was 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.1 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis. Exact rankings for individual years are sensitive to data inputs and analysis methods.

Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperatures from year to year, but the continued increases in greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are driving a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and plays a major role in controlling changes to Earth's climate. It occurs naturally and also is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere presently is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was about 315 parts per million. This measurement peaked last year at more than 400 parts per million.

While the world experienced relatively warm temperatures in 2013, the continental United States experienced the 42nd warmest year on record, according to GISS analysis. For some other countries, such as Australia, 2013 was the hottest year on record.

The temperature analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea-surface temperature, and Antarctic research station measurements, taking into account station history and urban heat island effects. Software is used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same place from 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis. It has been 38 years since the recording of a year of cooler than average temperatures.

The GISS temperature record is one of several global temperature analyses, along with those produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. These three primary records use slightly different methods, but overall, their trends show close agreement.

Image credit: NASA's Earth Observatory; text credit: NASA

Colby Fire Anaglyph

On January 16, 2014, dry conditions and warm winter temperatures in California permitted embers from a campfire in the hills above Glendora, California, to grow into a large wildfire that claimed several homes, caused mandatory evacuations of about 2,000 people, and sent smoke and ash across the Los Angeles Basin, prompting an air quality alert by public health officials. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft passed over the region at 10:45 a.m. on January 16, about five hours after the fire was first reported.

This set of images of the Colby Fire shows a natural color rendering (Figure 1) from MISR's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera. Winds carried the smoke out over the Pacific Ocean to at least 118 miles (190 kilometers) from the inland fire location. Combining the MISR nadir image with a view acquired at 46 degrees off of nadir, a stereoscopic "anaglyph" image is generated, giving a 3-D view of the plume when viewed with red/blue glasses (red filter over the left eye). To give the stereoscopic effect, this image is rotated so that North is at the left. A computer-processed height field is shown in Figure 2, indicating that smoke was elevated to a height of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers), contributing to the widespread dispersal of the airborne particulates. The results of this analysis also place the areal coverage of the smoke and ash at about 3,860 square miles (10,000 square kilometers).

These data were collected on orbit 74901 of the Terra spacecraft (path 41, MISR blocks 63-64).

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

Note: For more information, see PIA17923: NASA's Terra Spacecraft Images Destructive Colby Fire East of Los Angeles.

Kolkata, India

Lying along the Hooghly river, Calcutta has over 4 million inhabitants. The Hooghly river shows as a black winding line in this picture that was taken from the International Space Station at night. Calcutta’s center lies on the Eastern bank of the Hooghly river, with human activity following the river up to the North.

Other features that can be seen at night are the main roads and infrastructure around the city. The 117 road leads South to the Bay of Bengal. The three bridges that cross the Hooghly river can be seen as bars of lights. The Northern-most bridge leads to Calcutta international airport, Netaji Subhash Airport or Dum Dum Airport.

This image was taken with the Nightpod camera-stand that tracks the movement of Earth passing under the International Space Station at 28 800 km/h, keeping any target fixed in the middle of the viewfinder. Standard cameras fixed to Nightpod can take pictures with longer exposure times so astronauts can take sharper pictures of cities at night.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Krakow, Poland

The snow-covered southern Polish city of Kraków is pictured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite.

The Vistula River snakes across the top of the image. The part of the river pictured flows from west to east as it winds northwards and empties into the Baltic Sea (not visible).

Kraków sits in a valley at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains and has a number of important nature reserves of great ecological value. Dubbed the European Capital of Culture in 2000, the city has an extensive cultural heritage across the epochs of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, and is home to one of the oldest universities in the world: Jagellonian University.

Just north of the river at the center-left portion of the image is the medieval Old Town or historic central district. The area is home to Europe’s largest market square, along with numerous historic houses, palaces and churches.

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978, the Old Town was the center of Poland’s political life until King Sigismund III Vasa moved his court to Warsaw in the late 1500s.

This image was acquired on 5 February 2010 by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite.

Image credit: KARI/ESA

Guinea-Bissau and the Bissagos Islands

The coast of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa is pictured in this image from the Landsat-8 satellite. Mangrove swamps are abundant along this coastline, acting as important feeding grounds for fish, birds and animals.

Flowing from the east, the Geba River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, with the country’s capital city of Bissau located on the river estuary. The city appears as a light brown area in the upper-central portion of the image.

Off the coast in the lower-left section of the image are the Bissagos (or Bijagós) islands – an archipelago of over 80 islands and islets. In 1996 the archipelago was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

A diversity of mammals, reptiles, birds and fish can be found on the islands, including protected or rare species such as the Nile crocodile, hippopotamus, African manatee and the common bottlenose dolphin.

The archipelago has also been recognized as an important site for green sea turtles to lay their eggs.

In the lower left corner, the island of Orango looks like a tree, with the waterways like branches and land appears as foliage. This island is the center of a national park, and is known for its matrimonial tradition where marriage is formally proposed by the women – who are also responsible for building the homes.

This image was acquired by Landsat-8 satellite’s Operational Land Imager on 3 May 2013 and it is featured in the Earth from Space video program.

Image credit: USGS/ESA

Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Australia

Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a city in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. The town was founded in 1893 when gold was discovered in the so-called "Golden Mile." The area boomed, with an area population of over 200,000; by 1903 Kalgoorlie grew to 30,000, close to its present population. The concentrated area of large gold mines is considered to be the richest square mile on earth. The image was acquired November 26, 2013, covers an area of 20.2 x 21.9 km, and is located at 30.8 degrees south, 121.5 degrees east.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cloudy Fishing Over China

This Nightpod image taken from the International Space Station is not an interstellar cloud formation but artificial light over a cloudy China.

Nightpod is a camera stand that helps astronauts take sharper images of night-time Earth by compensating for the motion of the Station as it orbits our planet at 28,800 km/h.

This image was taken as the Space Station was flying northwest over the Chinese coast. The lights from cities or fishing boats are dispersed by clouds to create the Nebula-like effect. An astronaut from Expedition 30/31 took the picture on 21 March 2012 as the orbital outpost flew towards Shanghai, China.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Westfjords Peninsula, Iceland

This Envisat image was acquired over the Westfjords peninsula in northwest Iceland.

Located in the North Atlantic Ocean east of Greenland and immediately south of the Arctic Circle, Iceland is the westernmost European nation, and has more land covered by glaciers than the whole of continental Europe. The country sits on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other, causing strong geothermal and volcanic activity.

The grey area that is somewhat shaped like a Christmas tree is land, while the colorful spaces between the 'branches' are long fjords – long, narrow arms of the sea that stretch far inland.

During the ice ages both ice and rivers carved deep valleys in the mountains. As the climate changed, most of the ice melted, and the valleys were gradually filled with salt water from the coast, giving birth to the fjords.

The white dots along one of the fjords close to the center of the image are radar reflections from Westfjords peninsula’s largest town, Ísafjörður. More radar reflections from other towns can also be seen scattered along the coastline.

This image, also featured in the Earth from Space video program, was created by combining three Envisat radar acquisitions from 11 September 2004, 14 April 2007 and 3 May 2008 over the same area.

Image credit: ESA

Mount Etna Eruption

Mount Etna on the Italian island of Sicily is Europe's most active volcano. Its latest series of eruptions has continued for weeks, producing ash clouds that forced the closure of nearby Catania airport; lava flows that stretched from the summit to the south and southeast; and spectacular fire fountains. In this nighttime thermal image acquired December 12, 2013 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, the lava flows are white (hot), emanating from the southeast crater. The image covers an area of 19.5 by 19.5 miles (31.5 by 31.5 kilometers), and is located at 37.7 degrees north latitude, 15 degrees east longitude.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Checkerboard Logging on the Idaho-Montana Border

Logging operations have left a striking checkerboard pattern in the landscape along the Idaho-Montana border, sandwiched between Clearwater and Bitterroot National Forests. The 1 x 1 mile squares are harvested at different times, producing a pattern of varied timber density and re-growth stages. The image was acquired July 30, 2012, covers an area of 23 x 20 km, and is located at 46.6 degrees north, 114.5 degrees west.

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team