geography

Satellite image of Sau Reservoir captured on March 3, 2023, by Landsat 9.Satellite image of Sau Reservoir captured on March 4, 2024, Landsat 8.The large reservoir in Catalonia shrank to 1 percent of capacity in March 2024.Three subsequent years of record low precipitation have taken a toll on northeastern Spain’s Catalonia region. Satellite images show one of the region’s largest reservoirs dried to a trickle in March 2024.Historical Drought Patterns and Current ImpactAccording to the Meteorological Service of Catalonia,…

Satellite image of the burn scar left on the Texas Panhandle landscape captured on March 2, 2024, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite.Ranchers in the Texas Panhandle recently faced a fire that charred more than 1 million acres.The Texas Panhandle is a sparsely populated region of rolling hills, oil and gas wells, and grazing lands. By some estimates, 85 percent of the 12 million cattle raised in Texas live on ranches in the Panhandle.Following a period of record winter heat, a…

Satellite image of smoke streaming from several fires southwest of Boa Vista (the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima) captured on February 22, 2024, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite.Huge understory fires are spreading throughout the state in northern Brazil as drought and heat turn the rainforest into tinder.Roraima—Brazil’s northernmost state—has a wet climate, which helps rainforests thrive and suppresses the natural occurrence of forest fires, even during the dry…

Satellite image of Corbassière glacier in Switzerland captured on August 23, 2001, by Landsat 5.Satellite image of Corbassière glacier in Switzerland captured on August 20, 2023, by Landsat 8.The surface melting of a high-elevation glacier in the Alps has rendered it unusable for scientific research.Glaciers are natural archives of past climate. In their frozen layers lies evidence of Earth’s changing temperature and atmospheric composition. But as the climate warms, some of the longest records of our changing planet are…

Satellite image of Nusantara, Indonesia, captured on April 26, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9.Satellite image of Nusantara, Indonesia, captured on February 19, 2024, by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8.The future site of Indonesia’s new capital saw rapid change between 2022 and 2024.Since the summer of 2022, the jungles of eastern Borneo have undergone rapid change. Roads have been carved into the landscape and buildings erected near Balikpapan Bay in Eastern Kalimantan, as Indonesia builds a…

By NASA Earth Observatory March 1, 2024Astronaut photo of the snow-covered caldera of the Nemrut volcano in eastern Türkiye captured on April 17, 2022, by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.Lakes and lava flows fill the depression atop this geologically young stratovolcano in eastern Türkiye.An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured this photo of the snow-covered caldera of the Nemrut volcano in eastern Türkiye, along the western shore of Lake Van. Mount Nemrut (Nemrut Daği) is a…

Satellite image of Pine Island Glacier captured on January 24, 1973, by the Multispectral Scanner on Landsat 1.Satellite image of Pine Island Glacier captured on December 15, 2001, by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on Landsat 7.New research shows that while some Antarctic ice shelves have been thinning since at least the 1970s, widespread thinning accelerated in the 1990s.For many ice shelves around Antarctica, the 1970s was a bumpy decade. Fast forward, and satellite images show that many of the bumps once prominently…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Knowledge matters. It informs how we think about the world around us. It informs our decisions and government policies, supporting economic growth and development. Knowledge is also power. Certain types of knowledge are given more value than others. This is driven by histories of privilege. In South Africa, apartheid…

Satellite images of Death Valley’s Badwater Basin captured on July 5, 2023; August 30, 2023; and February 14, 2024.Refreshed by precipitation from an atmospheric river, a temporary lake in Death Valley is extending its stay.An ephemeral lake in Death Valley’s Badwater Basin is showing its staying power. After forming in August 2023 in the aftermath of Hurricane Hilary, the lake gradually shrank but persisted throughout the fall and winter. A potent atmospheric river filled it back up in February 2024.This series of images…

This satellite image from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission reveals the rapid retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier. Since the 1980s, it has retreated over 20 km and lost about half of its volume. Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOAlaska’s Columbia Glacier has significantly retreated over 20 km since the 1980s, with climate change being a major factor. Satellite imagery from 2023 highlights the glacier’s dramatic transformation and the advanced technology used for…