The Atlantic Ocean was awash with color on December 18, 2006, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. The brilliant greens and blues are densely concentrated, microscopic plants growing on the surface of the ocean. Called phytoplankton, the plants thrive in the cool, nutrient-rich waters off the coast of Argentina. Here, the ...
A severe winter storm hammered the Midwestern United States on December 1, 2006. According to news reports, the storm iced roads, canceled flights, broke tree branches, left more than two million homes and businesses without electricity, and temporarily shut down part of Interstate 40 in central Oklahoma. Several deaths were linked to the storm, including deaths from traffic accidents and carbo...
August 2007 was the wettest month ever recorded for many places in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, with rainfall totals ranging from 23.86 inches in Hokah, Minnesota, to 12.79 inches in Winona Dam, Minnesota, said the National Weather Service. While the entire month was rainy, much of the rain fell on August 18-20, when several thunderstorms rolled across the region. The thunderstorms triggered...
On the weekend of June 23, 2007, a wildfire broke out south of Lake Tahoe, which stretches across the California-Nevada border. By June 28, the Angora Fire had burned more than 200 homes and forced some 2,000 residents to evacuate, according to The Seattle Times and the Central Valley Business Times.
On June 27, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (...
A dual disaster hit Pakistan in the final week of June 2007. On June 23, rare heavy rains and winds swept over much of the country, and three days later, on June 26, Cyclone Yemyin (03B) blew ashore in southern Pakistan. The two storms caused extensive flooding in the country’s southwest from the Arabian Sea coast to the border with Afghanistan. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer...
Numerous fires were burning in forests in Russia’s Far East on July 15, 2007. This image, showing the region at the border of China and Russia (the Amur River creates most of the national boundary here), has locations where the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite marked with red dots. Fires started from lightning and by people are common in Russia’s b...
Besides laying waste to huge areas of forest, fires burning in Greece in August 2007 released pollutants that traveled across the Mediterranean Sea and into Africa. This image shows aerosols—tiny solid or liquid particles suspended in air—observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite.
On August 26, 2007, aerosols from the fires took a fairly direct ro...
The winter-white Alaska shoreline provides a vivid contrast to the turquoise swirls in the black waters of the Gulf of Alaska. This burst of color in an otherwise black-and-white scene is caused by sediment, ground into fine powder by mountain glaciers and carried into the Gulf of Alaska through many waterways. The largest contributor of sediment shown in this photo-like image is the Copper Riv...
In the span of three weeks, spring crept over the Siberian landscape surrounding the northern half of the Lena River. Many of the rivers in Earth’s temperate zones run high in the spring when melting snow and spring rain flood river basins. On the Lena River, however, spring flooding is almost inevitable for another reason: ice. Like other north-flowing rivers, the upper reaches of the Lena mel...
Dust blew off the African coast and over the Mediterranean Sea on June 9, 2007. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image the same day. In this image, the opaque tan dust plume billows off the coast, along the Libya-Egypt border, in a shape vaguely resembling a giant inverted teardrop.
Hurricane Flossie built itself up into a powerful Category 4 hurricane as it traveled through the central Pacific Ocean in mid-August. By August 13, it had weakened to a Category 3 storm, and as of the morning of August 14, the hurricane was predicted to pass within 100 miles of the Hawaiian Islands, bringing strong winds and heavy rain, particularly to the southern end of the Big Island. A hur...
Just weeks after taking a beating from Typhoon Man-Yi in mid-July 2007, Japan’s southern islands were visited by Typhoon Usagi in early August. Although not as strong as Man-Yi, Usagi still forced the region to cancel air traffic and ferry services, and it left tens of thousand of homes without power, said news reports.
This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradio...
Hurricane Cosme was the third named storm in the 2007 eastern Pacific hurricane season. Cosme formed in a common area for hurricanes to start—off the Pacific coast of Mexico—and it tracked north and west. Cosme built power from its initial Tropical Depression state on July 14 to a minimal Category 1 hurricane on July 16.
At 10:45 a.m. local time (19:45 UTC) on July 16, 2007, whe...
Floods that started with heavy rain on June 26, 2007, still surrounded parts of Coffeyville, Kansas, on July 9, when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) flying on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image. Coffeyville was flooded on July 1, when the swollen Verdigris River burst through a levee. Water swamped neighborhoods and businesses, including the...
Like the forests of eastern North America in previous centuries, the Amazon Rainforest of South America is rapidly falling as people colonize and develop a new frontier. Where there was once no such thing as an “Amazon fire season,” fires are now widespread in the dry season as people clear forest or manage already cleared plots of crop or grazing land.
Haze dulled this picture of the mid-Atlantic states, taken on August 25, 2007, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. In this image, a wide band of haze hangs over the eastern seaboard and the Atlantic, with clouds floating overhead.
An August 25, 2007, posting on the U.S. Air Quality (Smog Blog) at the University of Maryland...
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