Caption by Michon ScottMarch 18, 2011 On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off the northeast coast of Japan and triggered a tsunami that devastated coastal communities. One of the hardest hit was the city of Rikuzentakata. At the end of a narrow inlet, the city of roughly 8,000 households lost 75 percent […]
Caption by Holli RiebeekJanuary 8, 2011 Though water levels had started to subside, the Australian city of Rockhampton was still inundated when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this image on January 7, 2011. The image includes both thermal-infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between […]
In late July 2010, flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains began in several regions of Pakistan, including the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and parts of Baluchistan. According to the Associated Press, the floods have affected about one-fifth of the country. Tens of thousands of villages have been flooded, more than 1,500 people have been killed, […]
By Clay Farris Naff April 19, 2010 ERICE, Italy—If you think of Earth’s poles as fraternal twins, the Arctic has been the wild one in recent years, while the Antarctic has been a steady plodder. Withered by summer heat, Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record low coverage several times since 2005, only to rebound […]
Rise tied to warming and receding glaciers By Larry O’Hanlonupdated 12:49 p.m. PT, Wed., Jan. 27, 2010 Mountains along the southernmost swath of South America are growing taller at a record rate, say researchers, who attribute the growth to the accelerating loss of glaciers there. The new GPS-based measurements from Patagonia’s southern ice field show […]
1992: 2006: Dense green vegetation gives way to pale fields in these newly released satellite images of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The first image, from the Landsat Thematic Mapper in 1992, shows the beginning of agricultural development in a region of the southwestern state of Mato Grosso. It dissolves into a recently released image […]
