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

Flinders Ranges, Australia

This image from Japan’s ALOS satellite shows part of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, about 500 km north of Adelaide.

The area pictured is between Flinders Ranges National Park to the south, Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park to the north and Lake Frome due east (none of which is pictured).

The curving structures that dominate this image are part of a larger geosyncline – a subsiding linear trough in Earth’s crust – that includes the Flinders Ranges. The geosyncline consists of sedimentary rocks in a basin that were folded about 500 million years ago and have been eroded to the current landscape. In this image, the different colors show the different layers of rock.

Some of the oldest fossilised animal life have been found in parts of the Flinders Ranges.

Running up the middle of this image is a long, narrow gorge – typical of the ranges.

Along the right side of the image, the terrain is flat with a long, straight road running north–south. Numerous creeks appear like veins across the entire image.

The Flinders Ranges is one of Australia’s most seismically active regions, with numerous small earthquakes recorded every year.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite captured this image on 3 January 2009. ALOS was supported as a Third Party Mission, which means that ESA used its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community.

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

Image credit: JAXA/ESA

Greater London

This image taken from the International Space Station shows the metropolis of London and its surroundings. The area is characterized by the M25 orbital motorway that encircles the city and the Thames river winding its way to the Eastern coast. As no streetlamps or other sources of light illuminate the Thames it appears as a black curving line leaving the intense white light of the inner city towards the right. Other areas without light include parks and other bodies of water, notably the large Hyde Park and Regent’s Park to the left of the City Centre and the William Girling and King George’s Reservoirs that supply London with drinking water.

Heading due South from London, down and slightly to the left on this image, is the M23 road to Gatwick international airport and the town of Crawley. The lights of Gatwick Airport shine brighter than the 100,000-inhabitant town. Airports are brightly-lit and easily recognizable from above so pilots can safely direct their aircraft to land. London’s Heathrow airport including the two main runways can be seen at the left of London City Centre.

Continuing south past Crawley to the English Channel, the seaside town of Brighton can be seen merging with Worthing to the left as one continuous stream of light.

ESA’s Nightpod camera aid helps astronauts track objects on Earth from the International Space Station. Following Earth’s motion automatically, the tripod creates clear images in low lights with off-the-shelf professional cameras – 400 km above our planet.

Photo credit: ESA/NASA

Thinning Antarctic Ice

Three years of measurements from CryoSat show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is estimated to be losing over 150 cubic kilometers of ice each year.

Image credit: CPOM/ESA

The Coldest Place on Earth

With remote-sensing satellites, scientists have found the coldest places on Earth, just off a ridge in the East Antarctic Plateau. The coldest of the cold temperatures dropped to minus 135.8 F (minus 93.2 C) -- several degrees colder than the previous record.

What is the coldest place on Earth? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 92 degrees Celsius) on a clear winter night.

Scientists made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, joined a team of researchers reporting the findings Monday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Researchers analyzed 32 years' worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 136 F (minus 93.2 C) was set August 10, 2010.

That is several degrees colder than the previous low of minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), set in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica. The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is northeastern Siberia, where temperatures in the towns of Verkhoyansk and Oimekon dropped to a bone-chilling 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 C) in 1892 and 1933, respectively.

"We had a suspicion this Antarctic ridge was likely to be extremely cold, and colder than Vostok because it's higher up the hill," Scambos said. "With the launch of Landsat 8, we finally had a sensor capable of really investigating this area in more detail."

The quest to find out just how cold it can get on Earth -- and why -- started when the researchers were studying large snow dunes, sculpted and polished by the wind, on the East Antarctic Plateau. When the scientists looked closer, they noticed cracks in the snow surface between the dunes, possibly created when wintertime temperatures got so low the top snow layer shrunk. This led scientists to wonder what the temperature range was, and prompted them to hunt for the coldest places using data from two types of satellite sensors.

They turned to the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites. These sensitive instruments can pick up thermal radiation emitted from Earth's surface, even in areas lacking much heat.

Using these sensors to scan the East Antarctic Plateau, Scambos detected extremely cold temperatures on a 620-mile stretch of the ridge at high elevations between Argus and Fuji, and even colder temperatures lower elevations in pockets off the ridge. Then, with the higher resolution of the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) aboard Landsat 8, the research team pinpointed the record-setting pockets.

The team compared the sites to topographic maps to explore how it gets so cold. Already cold temperatures fall rapidly when the sky clears. If clear skies persist for a few days, the ground chills as it radiates its remaining heat into space. This creates a layer of super-chilled air above the surface of the snow and ice. This layer of air is denser than the relatively warmer air above it, which causes it to slide down the shallow slope of domes on the Antarctic plateau. As it flows into the pockets, it can be trapped, and the cooling continues.

"By causing the air to be stationary for extended periods, while continuing to radiate more heat away into space, you get the absolute lowest temperatures we're able to find," Scambos said. "We suspected that we would be looking for one magical site that got extremely cold, but what we found was a large strip of Antarctica at high altitude that regularly reached these record low temperatures."

The study is an example of some of the intriguing science possible with Landsat 8 and the TIRS instrument, which was built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since its launch February 11, Landsat 8 has captured approximately 550 scenes per day of Earth's land surface. USGS processes, archives and distributes the images free of charge over the Internet.

"With Landsat 8, we expect to see more accurate and more detailed maps of the landscape than we've ever been able to see," said James Irons, the mission's project scientist at Goddard. "If change is occurring, I think we'll be able to detect it earlier and track it."

Researchers also are eager to see what new results come out of Landsat 8, both from icy plateaus and Earth's warmer regions.

"What we've got orbiting Earth right now is a very accurate and consistent sensor that can tell us all kinds of things about how the land surface of Earth is changing, how climate change is impacting the surface of Earth, the oceans of Earth, and the icy areas of Earth," Scambos said. "Finding the coldest areas on Earth is just the beginning of the discoveries we're going to be able to make with Landsat 8."

Image credit: Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center; text credit: NASA

Spatial Distribution of the Tuolumne River Basin

Spatial distribution of snow water equivalent across the Tuolumne River Basin from April 10 to June 1, 2013 as measured by NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory.

Flying aboard a Twin Otter aircraft, the Airborne Snow Observatory measures two properties most critical to understanding snowmelt runoff and timing: snow depth and snow reflectivity. By combining snow depth with estimated density, snow water equivalent -- the amount of water in the snow -- is derived and used to calculate the amount of water that will run off. Snow reflectivity, or albedo, is the fraction of the incoming amount of sunlight reflected by snow. Subtracting reflected sunlight from incoming sunlight gives the absorbed sunlight, which largely controls the speed of snowmelt and timing of its runoff.

Map credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see NASA Snow Mapper Reaps Big Benefits for California.