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Arctic Eclipse
NASA's Terra satellite was r …
8/4/08
Description NASA's Terra satellite was rounding the top of the globe, making its way from the eastern tip of Siberia and across the Arctic Ocean towards northern Norway and northwest Russia, when it captured this unique view of a total solar eclipse on Aug. 1, 2008. The circular disk of the Moon casts an oval-shaped shadow across the left edge of this image. In the region of totality, where the Moon entirely obscures the Sun, the shadow is complete. The edges of the shadow are fuzzy, gradually lightening from black to red, brown, and yellow until the shadow is no longer discernable. In these areas of semi-shadow, the Sun is only partially blocked. On any other day, the photo-like view captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite would be brilliant white since both the ever-present Arctic clouds and the ice that caps the northern sea reflect light. In this image, however, it is as if the world is painted in sepia: the low light casts a yellow-brown glow on much of the scene. The image was captured between 9:35 and 9:45 UTC. In the area shown in the image, the Sun was completely obscured for about two minutes. As Earth rotated, the shadow moved southeast across the surface. At the same time, the satellite crossed the Arctic, its path nearly perpendicular to the eclipse. Because the shadow was moving across Earth's surface as the satellite approached, it has a long oblong shape in this image. In an instantaneous snapshot from a platform that was not moving relative to Earth, the shadow would be more circular. Image credit: Jeff Schmaltz, NASA's MODIS Rapid Response Team Text credit: Holli Riebeek, NASA's Earth Observatory
Date 8/4/08
Global View of the Arctic Oc …
The Arctic Ocean has been ma …
8/21/00
Date 8/21/00
Description The Arctic Ocean has been mapped in an unprecedented manner by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. Using advanced radar that sees through all weather conditions, researchers will now be able to determine how the Earth's warming may be changing the sea ice cover. Sea ice in the polar region is a large barometer of global climate conditions. The mission is a joint project between JPL and the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. JPL manages the Sea Ice Thickness Derived from High Resolution Radar Imagery project for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, DC. The Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to studying how natural and human-induced change affects our global environment. This image is posted on the World Wide Web at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/seaice .
Comparative Views of Arctic …
Scientists at NASA's Jet Pro …
8/21/00
Date 8/21/00
Description Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have used high resolution radar to see, for the first time ever, the development of the Arctic sea ice cover. The images show a comparison of ice growth during the Arctic winter. The two images are separated by nine days. Both images represent an area located in the Baufort Sea, north of the Alaskan coast. This radar view covers an area of 96 by 128 kilometers (60 by 80 miles). The brighter features are older thicker ice and the darker areas show young, recently formed ice. The earlier image is shown on the left. Within the nine-day span, large and extensive cracks in the ice cover have formed due to ice movement. These cracks expose the open ocean to the cold, frigid atmosphere where sea ice grows rapidly and thickens. Formation of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean affects the heat balance in the global atmosphere and ocean. The mission is a joint project between JPL and the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar Facility, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. JPL manages the Sea Ice Thickness Derived from High Resolution Radar Imagery project for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, DC. The Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to studying how natural and human-induced change affects our global environment. This image is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/seaice . #####
NASA TV's This Week @NASA, A …
The STS-132 crew completed a …
04/30/10
Description The STS-132 crew completed a series of terminal countdown demonstration tests needed to ensure they and their grounds teams are prepared for their targeted May 14 launch aboard space shuttle Atlantis. * NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joined EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for a special Memorandum of Agreement signing event at Howard Middle School situated on the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC. * To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this scientific icon, NASA has released a unique collection of Hubble images with commentary. * Operation IceBridge has entered the second phase of its spring 2010 campaign. NASA's DC-8 aircraft has returned from Greenland to the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, following a successful survey of the entire Arctic Ocean. * Weeks before ''first light'' imagery and data missions begin, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy was on display at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California. * 49 years ago, on May 5, 1961, Mercury-Redstone 3, launched a Freedom 7 spacecraft from Launch Complex 5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Date 04/30/10
Europa Exploration Concept
title Europa Exploration Concept
description Almost 30 years ago, NASA's Voyagers 1 and 2 (lower left) made their historic rendezvous with the Jupiter system and first revealed Europa's icy-covered surface. In 1995, the Galileo spacecraft entered orbit about Jupiter, and for years studied the giant planet and its major moons. From this mission we learned that Europa is a world covered with a global ocean about 100 kilometers (60 miles) deep, and that this ocean was capped, liked Earth's Arctic Ocean, with a shell of solid ice. To learn more about the ocean and the ice shell above, and especially to investigate the ocean's suitability to sustain life, will require the next step, a future mission dedicated to exploring Europa from orbit about the moon itself (center). Both NASA and the European Space Agency are actively studying the possibility of launching such a mission in the next 10 years. If a mission is launched, depending on what is found, future missions to Europa might involve landers or even autonomous vehicles, called cryobots (upper right), that melt through the ice to explore the ocean below, perhaps sometime later in this century. Credit: NASA/JPL
Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
Title Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
Abstract Each year, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean grows during the northern hemisphere winter and shrinks with the northern hemisphere summer. The ice extent is usually greatest during the month of March and is the least during the month of September. This image shows the average minimum extent of sea ice over the northern hemisphere during the month of September over 24 seasons, from 1979 - 2002. The red line shows the area where the average sea ice concentration is 15%.
Completed 2005-07-01
Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
Title Minimum Sea Ice Extent (WMS)
Abstract Each year, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean grows during the northern hemisphere winter and shrinks with the northern hemisphere summer. The ice extent is usually greatest during the month of March and is the least during the month of September. This image shows the average minimum extent of sea ice over the northern hemisphere during the month of September over 24 seasons, from 1979 - 2002. The red line shows the area where the average sea ice concentration is 15%.
Completed 2005-07-01
Bockfjorden
Title Bockfjorden
Description Far north within the Arctic Circle off the northern coast of Norway lies a small chain of islands known as Svalbard. These craggy islands have been scoured into shape by ice and sea. The effect of glacial activity can be seen in this image of the northern tip of the island of Spitsbergen. Here, glaciers have carved out a fjord, a U-shaped valley that has been flooded with sea water. Called Bockfjorden, the fjord is located at almost 80 degrees north, and it is still being affected by glaciers. The effect is most obvious in this image in the tan layer of silty freshwater that floats atop the denser blue water of the Arctic Ocean. The fresh water melts off land-bound glaciers and flows over the sandstone, collecting fine red-toned silt. In this image, the tan-colored fresh water flows northward up the fjord and is being pushed to the east side of the fjord by the rotation of the Earth. Glaciers here and elsewhere on Spitsbergen are cold bottom glaciers, which means that they are frozen to the ground rather than floating on top of a thin layer of melt water. The glaciers are also land glaciers since their terminus (end) lies on land, rather than floating on the water (a tidewater glacier). Land glaciers grow and retreat slowly, balancing fresh snow with the melting and draining of old ice. Their rate of growth or retreat can be affected by global warming. In most cases, including the glaciers around Bockfjorden, global warming has caused glaciers to retreat from increased melting. On the eastern side of Svalbard, however, glaciers are growing from enhanced snowfall. The reason for this pattern remains only one of many intriguing unanswered questions of Arctic science in the islands. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, (ASTER [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured this false-color image on June 26, 2001. The image was created by combining near-infrared, red, and green wavelenghts (ASTER bands 3, 2, & 1 respectively). NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC [ http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] courtesy of the NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team [ http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ]
Forest Fires Across Central …
Title Forest Fires Across Central Siberian Plateau
Description On the Central Siberian Plateau, the northeastward direction of the Lena River is turned sharply northward as the river encounters the Verkhoyanskiy Mountains. The river flows northward along the base of the range for several hundreds more miles before emptying into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. In the area where the Lena rounds this sharp corner, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite detected numerous fires (marked in red) burning in the region's boreal forests on July 7, 2005. As in Alaska, summertime thunderstorms in the northern forests often bring lightning that starts forest fires. Fires also start through carelessness or accidents of people visiting forests. In Russia's boreal forests, another major source of forest fires is arson. People set fires to acquire salvage logging permits, which are far cheaper than permits for other forests. The arsonists set fires that may only disturb underbrush and small trees, while leaving the bigger, more lucrative trees unscathed. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Fires Across Alaska
Title Fires Across Alaska
Description In the third week of August 2005, an area of high atmospheric pressure built up over Alaska. Large areas of high pressure often lead to calm weather, with light (or absent) surface winds. Unfortunately for Alaska residents, the high pressure system that parked over the state coincided with a period of significant fire activity, with more than a hundred forest fires churning out thick smoke. For several days the smoke piled up over the Interior leading to hazardous-air-quality warnings for many areas. This pair of images from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite shows smoke measurements over Alaska and western Canada on August 15 (top) and August 21 (bottom). (The background for the image is NASA's Blue Marble. [ http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429 ]) Increasing amounts of smoke are shown as an aerosol index with shades of blue (little or no smoke) to dull red (thick smoke). On August 15, a large mass of smoke had drifted westward over the Interior and spread out over the Bering Sea toward Russia. Less than a week later, the weather patterns shifted and the smoke blew to the east and north, over Yukon Territory in western Canada and over Victoria Island toward the Arctic Ocean. Smoke contains many substances, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor, and particulate matter. OMI measures smoke by tracking black carbon particles, or soot, that absorb ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the wavelengths of sunlight that cause sunburns. By measuring how much UV radiation the soot absorbs, OMI provides estimates of the amount of black carbon aerosol in the smoke layer. This method of detecting aerosols based on their interaction with UV rather than visible (rainbow) light allows OMI to measure absorption by black carbon in smoke even if the smoke is mixed with or floating above clouds. Measurements of how much radiation aerosols absorb are important for scientists trying to calculate the net effect of aerosols on Earth's energy budget and climate. OMI was added to NASA's Aura satellite as part of a collaboration between the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programs and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The sensor tracks global ozone change and monitors aerosols and pollution in the atmosphere. NASA image and caption information courtesy the OMI Science Team.
Fires Across Alaska
Title Fires Across Alaska
Description In the third week of August 2005, an area of high atmospheric pressure built up over Alaska. Large areas of high pressure often lead to calm weather, with light (or absent) surface winds. Unfortunately for Alaska residents, the high pressure system that parked over the state coincided with a period of significant fire activity, with more than a hundred forest fires churning out thick smoke. For several days the smoke piled up over the Interior leading to hazardous-air-quality warnings for many areas. This pair of images from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite shows smoke measurements over Alaska and western Canada on August 15 (top) and August 21 (bottom). (The background for the image is NASA's Blue Marble. [ http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429 ]) Increasing amounts of smoke are shown as an aerosol index with shades of blue (little or no smoke) to dull red (thick smoke). On August 15, a large mass of smoke had drifted westward over the Interior and spread out over the Bering Sea toward Russia. Less than a week later, the weather patterns shifted and the smoke blew to the east and north, over Yukon Territory in western Canada and over Victoria Island toward the Arctic Ocean. Smoke contains many substances, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor, and particulate matter. OMI measures smoke by tracking black carbon particles, or soot, that absorb ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the wavelengths of sunlight that cause sunburns. By measuring how much UV radiation the soot absorbs, OMI provides estimates of the amount of black carbon aerosol in the smoke layer. This method of detecting aerosols based on their interaction with UV rather than visible (rainbow) light allows OMI to measure absorption by black carbon in smoke even if the smoke is mixed with or floating above clouds. Measurements of how much radiation aerosols absorb are important for scientists trying to calculate the net effect of aerosols on Earth's energy budget and climate. OMI was added to NASA's Aura satellite as part of a collaboration between the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programs and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The sensor tracks global ozone change and monitors aerosols and pollution in the atmosphere. NASA image and caption information courtesy the OMI Science Team.
Northwest Passage Open
Title Northwest Passage Open
Description Although nearly open, the Northwest Passage was not necessarily easy to navigate in August 2007. Located 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of the Arctic Circle and less than 1,930 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the North Pole, this sea route poses significant challenges, and the severe depletion of sea ice means only one of these is reduced. Nevertheless, long-term opening of the passage would have global impacts on trade and natural resource use. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the Northwest Passage [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Aug2007/nwpassage_amo_2007241.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the Goddard Land Processes data archives (LAADS). [ http://laads.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] Thanks to Walt Meier, NSIDC, U.S. National Ice Center, and John Falkingham, Environment Canada - Canadian Ice Service for image interpretation., For over 500 years, Arctic explorers have sought a passage between the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Such a passage, often called the Northwest Passage, would connect Europe to Asia via shorter routes than the long voyage south around Africa. In 1497, English King Henry VII sent Italian explorer John Cabot to look for this hypothetical route and expeditions from some of the most famous explorers in the centuries that followed—Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook among them—met with failure. The combined efforts of a number of explorers eventually uncovered a winding path from the Atlantic to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans through the ice-bound islands of northern Canada. Even in modern times, navigating from the Atlantic to the Pacific through Canada's Arctic islands has been difficult. The summer of 2007, however, melted enough sea ice in Canada's far north to open up this long-sought passage. This image shows the islands north of mainland Canada adjacent to Greenland, as observed by the the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] flying on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov/ ] satellite on August 29, 2007. While the usual veil of clouds over the Arctic is visible through the scene, the sea ice pack that normally covers the water between the islands is absent. Areas often choked with ice at this time of year, but free of it in this MODIS scene, include the Parry and McClintock Channels and the McClure Strait. Larsen Sound and Victoria Strait are hidden beneath cloud cover, but they are also largely free of sea ice. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17752 ] This provided a nearly ice-free connection between Baffin Bay (a long body of water between Canada's Baffin Island and Greenland that is regularly ice-free in summer) and the Arctic Ocean. An ice-free gap between the North American mainland and the Arctic sea, not shown here, extends all the way to the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, creating a connection almost free of all sea ice from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Multi-year ice (ice that survives more than one melt season) tends to be thicker and more resistant to melt than first-year ice (formed over just one winter). According to John Falkingham of the Canadian Ice Service, most of the multi-year ice melted from Victoria Strait and McClintock Channel in the summer of 2006, leaving these traditionally difficult areas more open. In mid-August 2007, only patchy areas of ice filled Victoria Strait and Larsen Sound. Falkingham described the Northwest Passage as "nearly open." Changes in the Northwest Passage were part of a larger pattern of melt in 2007 that also affected the East Siberian Sea. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17743 ]
Fires in South-Central Russi …
Title Fires in South-Central Russia
Description Separated by a ridge of mountains, the Ob and Yenisey Rivers of south-central Russia flow northward toward the Arctic Ocean. On April 24, 2007, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite captured this image of scores of fires burning in the area around these two rivers. Snow still blankets the peaks of the Altay Mountains in the south, but the lowlands are free of snow. These fires are probably agricultural fires that people have set to prepare land for the upcoming growing season. The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image in a variety of resolutions. NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] Goddard Space Flight Center.
Fires North of Russia's Lake …
Title Fires North of Russia's Lake Baikal
Description Forest fires were burning across a broad swath of the Central Siberian Plateau on July 24, 2006, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Places where the sensor detected actively burning fires are marked in red. A shroud of smoke spreads over thousands of square kilometers of Russia. In the center of the image, the smoke has a brownish tinge. The city of Ust'-Ilimsk, normally visible as a tan spot along the Angara River, is completely hidden by smoke. The scene spans the plateau from Russia's Irkutsk region in the south to the Arctic Ocean in the north. Lake Baikal would be just outside the lower right corner of the scene. This comparison might be helpful in understanding the scale of the event: if the above image covered the United States, the scene would stretch from California to the New Mexico-Texas state line, and it would reach more than a hundred miles both north and south of the borders of the United States. The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2006205-0724/Russia.A2006205.0610 ] at additional resolutions. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] Goddard Space Flight Center.
Flooding in Southern Siberia
Title Flooding in Southern Siberia
Description Springtime flooding in southern Siberia is not unusual. Melting snow fills the north-flowing rivers in the south even as upstream sections of the river are still frozen. Floods build up behind dams of ice, or simply build under the fast flow of spring runoff. Spring of 2006 was not exceptional. The Ob River of southern Siberia bulged with melted snow when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on May 7, 2006. A little over two weeks earlier, lower image, the river was still partially frozen, as evidenced by the strips of light blue ice on the river. Snow, pale blue here, was just beginning to melt on April 21. By May 7, most of the snow was gone, and the river had expanded out over its flood plain. Under the clouds along the right edge of the image is the city of Biysk, where 1,350 houses were flooded, according to news reports. Approximately 5,000 people had evacuated from the region. The Ob forms near Biysk where two smaller rivers converge. The smaller rivers flow out of the Altay Mountains of southern Russia and Mongolia near the borders of China and Kazakhstan. From the segment of the river shown here, the Ob will flow 3,700 kilometers (2,260 miles) north to the Kara Sea, a branch of the Arctic Ocean. NASA images created Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC. [ http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ]
Flooding on the Lena River, …
Title Flooding on the Lena River, Russia
Description *full-size images:*  May 22, 2001 (1.4 MB)  May 28, 2001 (1.4 MB) What a difference a week can make! This pair of true-color images acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite show the spring thaw and resulting flooding of the Lena River, a principal waterway of eastern Siberia. The first image, acquired on May 22, 2001, shows the Lena as a mostly frozen, white ribbon running north. An eastward flowing tributary, the Vilyuy, also appears frozen. In the second image, taken only 8 days later, large sections of the Lena, as well as the Vilyuy appear to be almost completely thawed. The formerly white ribbon of the river now appears decidedly brown, likely indicating sediment churned up by high water. The region is experiencing its worst flooding in one hundred years, with hundreds of thousands of people being affected by the floodwaters that have resulted from the melting of the snow pack accumulated over a particularly harsh Siberian winter. Explosives are being detonated in many places to dislodge huge blocks of ice that are backing up rivers and exacerbating flooding. The Lena River is one of the longest rivers in the world. It flows northeast and then north from its source in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau, and it empties into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. At the mouth of the Lena River is a delta that is about 250 miles wide. The delta is frozen tundra for about 7 months of the year, but spring transforms the region into a lush wetland for the remainder of the year. Part of the area is protected as part of the Lena Delta Wildlife Reserve. Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://modland.nascom.nasa.gov/ ] Rapid Response Team
Flooding on the Lena River, …
Title Flooding on the Lena River, Russia
Description *full-size images:*  May 22, 2001 (1.4 MB)  May 28, 2001 (1.4 MB) What a difference a week can make! This pair of true-color images acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite show the spring thaw and resulting flooding of the Lena River, a principal waterway of eastern Siberia. The first image, acquired on May 22, 2001, shows the Lena as a mostly frozen, white ribbon running north. An eastward flowing tributary, the Vilyuy, also appears frozen. In the second image, taken only 8 days later, large sections of the Lena, as well as the Vilyuy appear to be almost completely thawed. The formerly white ribbon of the river now appears decidedly brown, likely indicating sediment churned up by high water. The region is experiencing its worst flooding in one hundred years, with hundreds of thousands of people being affected by the floodwaters that have resulted from the melting of the snow pack accumulated over a particularly harsh Siberian winter. Explosives are being detonated in many places to dislodge huge blocks of ice that are backing up rivers and exacerbating flooding. The Lena River is one of the longest rivers in the world. It flows northeast and then north from its source in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau, and it empties into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. At the mouth of the Lena River is a delta that is about 250 miles wide. The delta is frozen tundra for about 7 months of the year, but spring transforms the region into a lush wetland for the remainder of the year. Part of the area is protected as part of the Lena Delta Wildlife Reserve. Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://modland.nascom.nasa.gov/ ] Rapid Response Team
Flooding on the Lena River, …
Title Flooding on the Lena River, Russia
Description *full-size images:*  May 22, 2001 (1.4 MB)  May 28, 2001 (1.4 MB) What a difference a week can make! This pair of true-color images acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite show the spring thaw and resulting flooding of the Lena River, a principal waterway of eastern Siberia. The first image, acquired on May 22, 2001, shows the Lena as a mostly frozen, white ribbon running north. An eastward flowing tributary, the Vilyuy, also appears frozen. In the second image, taken only 8 days later, large sections of the Lena, as well as the Vilyuy appear to be almost completely thawed. The formerly white ribbon of the river now appears decidedly brown, likely indicating sediment churned up by high water. The region is experiencing its worst flooding in one hundred years, with hundreds of thousands of people being affected by the floodwaters that have resulted from the melting of the snow pack accumulated over a particularly harsh Siberian winter. Explosives are being detonated in many places to dislodge huge blocks of ice that are backing up rivers and exacerbating flooding. The Lena River is one of the longest rivers in the world. It flows northeast and then north from its source in the Baikal Mountains south of the Central Siberian Plateau, and it empties into the Arctic Ocean via the Laptev Sea. At the mouth of the Lena River is a delta that is about 250 miles wide. The delta is frozen tundra for about 7 months of the year, but spring transforms the region into a lush wetland for the remainder of the year. Part of the area is protected as part of the Lena Delta Wildlife Reserve. Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/redirect?http://modland.nascom.nasa.gov/ ] Rapid Response Team
Flooding on the Ob River
Title Flooding on the Ob River
Description As much a sign of spring as longer days, greening plants, and melting snow, the Ob River had spread across its floodplain in far northern Russia when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on June 20, 2007. The Ob River and its tributary, the Irtysh, together form one of the longest river systems in Asia, flowing from the Altay Mountains of northern China to the Arctic Ocean. The northern reaches of the Ob flow over a flat, permafrost plain. As spring creeps north, the snow that covered northern Russia gradually melts, and the runoff flows into the river. Swollen with spring runoff, the river flows north, where it meets ice jams on sections of the river that have not thawed. Since the river cannot cut deep channels into the frozen land, it flows out over the surrounding plain during the spring melt, creating the wide band of water seen in this image. The lower image shows the Ob River in the fall, immediately before winter secured the region in its frozen grip. The river was a fraction of the size it would be the following spring. Both images were made using a combination of visible and infrared light. Water is black and dark blue. Snow, light blue, dusts the ground south of the Gulf of Ob in the October image and covers the peaks of the Ural Mountains west of the river in the June image. Also in the June image, a smooth pane of ice, also light blue, covers the Gulf of Ob, providing the natural dam that created the floods shown here. Pale blue, frozen lakes dot the permafrost north of the river, and darker, ice-free lakes adorn the land to the south of the river. Plant-covered land is green, and clouds are light blue and white. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the mouth of the Ob River [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Jun2007/ob_tmo_2007171.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA images created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] team.
Flooding on the Ob River
Title Flooding on the Ob River
Description As much a sign of spring as longer days, greening plants, and melting snow, the Ob River had spread across its floodplain in far northern Russia when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on June 20, 2007. The Ob River and its tributary, the Irtysh, together form one of the longest river systems in Asia, flowing from the Altay Mountains of northern China to the Arctic Ocean. The northern reaches of the Ob flow over a flat, permafrost plain. As spring creeps north, the snow that covered northern Russia gradually melts, and the runoff flows into the river. Swollen with spring runoff, the river flows north, where it meets ice jams on sections of the river that have not thawed. Since the river cannot cut deep channels into the frozen land, it flows out over the surrounding plain during the spring melt, creating the wide band of water seen in this image. The lower image shows the Ob River in the fall, immediately before winter secured the region in its frozen grip. The river was a fraction of the size it would be the following spring. Both images were made using a combination of visible and infrared light. Water is black and dark blue. Snow, light blue, dusts the ground south of the Gulf of Ob in the October image and covers the peaks of the Ural Mountains west of the river in the June image. Also in the June image, a smooth pane of ice, also light blue, covers the Gulf of Ob, providing the natural dam that created the floods shown here. Pale blue, frozen lakes dot the permafrost north of the river, and darker, ice-free lakes adorn the land to the south of the river. Plant-covered land is green, and clouds are light blue and white. You can download a 250-meter-resolution KMZ file of the mouth of the Ob River [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Archive/Jun2007/ob_tmo_2007171.kmz ] suitable for use with Google Earth. [ http://earth.google.com/ ] NASA images created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] team.
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
Title Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
Description The Arctic?s largest ice shelf is breaking up. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is a remnant of the compacted snow and ancient sea ice that extended along the northern shores of Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada until the early twentieth century. Rising temperatures have reduced the original shelf into a number of smaller shelves, the largest of which was the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the northwest fringe of the island. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf encompasses Ward Hunt Island and covers the mouth of the Disraeli Fiord. Until recently, fresh melt water formed a 43-meter deep lake on top of almost 400 meters of seawater in the fiord. Called an epishelf lake, the relatively fresh water dammed by the 3000-year-old ice shelf became the basis of a rare ecosystem. Disraeli Fiord was the largest remaining epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere. Between 2000 and 2002, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf began to crack and eventually broke in two, allowing the lake behind it to drain rapidly into the Arctic Ocean. Derek Mueller and Warwick Vincent, of the Centre d?études nordiques at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada and Martin Jeffries of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, Alaska described the event in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters [ http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2003GL017931 ] on October 18, 2003. This Standard Beam Mode RADARSAT-1 image clearly shows a large crack dividing the ice shelf in half. The crack runs from the Arctic Sea to the right of Ward Hunt Island and the bright white ice grounded there and back to the rougher, mountainous region. The image, acquired September 27, 2003, has a resolution of 25 meters. Image courtesy RADARSAT International [ http://www.rsi.ca/home.htm ]. RADARSAT-1 data © Canadian Space Agency/Agence spatiale canadienne 2003. Received by the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. Processed and distributed by RADARSAT International.
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
Title Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
Description The Arctic?s largest ice shelf is breaking up. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is a remnant of the compacted snow and ancient sea ice that extended along the northern shores of Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada until the early twentieth century. Rising temperatures have reduced the original shelf into a number of smaller shelves, the largest of which was the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the northwest fringe of the island. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf encompasses Ward Hunt Island and covers the mouth of the Disraeli Fiord. Until recently, fresh melt water formed a 43-meter deep lake on top of almost 400 meters of seawater in the fiord. Called an epishelf lake, the relatively fresh water dammed by the 3000-year-old ice shelf became the basis of a rare ecosystem. Disraeli Fiord was the largest remaining epishelf lake in the Northern Hemisphere. Between 2000 and 2002, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf began to crack and eventually broke in two, allowing the lake behind it to drain rapidly into the Arctic Ocean. Derek Mueller and Warwick Vincent, of the Centre d?études nordiques at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada and Martin Jeffries of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, Alaska described the event in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters [ http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2003GL017931 ] on October 18, 2003. This Standard Beam Mode RADARSAT-1 image clearly shows a large crack dividing the ice shelf in half. The crack runs from the Arctic Sea to the right of Ward Hunt Island and the bright white ice grounded there and back to the rougher, mountainous region. The image, acquired September 27, 2003, has a resolution of 25 meters. Image courtesy RADARSAT International [ http://www.rsi.ca/home.htm ]. RADARSAT-1 data © Canadian Space Agency/Agence spatiale canadienne 2003. Received by the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. Processed and distributed by RADARSAT International.
Sea Ice Extent in the Arctic …
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npseaice_amsre_2007318
mediatype IMAGE
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date 2007-11-14
creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier npseaice_amsre_2007318
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arctic_ams_2007259
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date 2007-09-16
creator NASA -- Arctic image courtesy svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, based on data from AMSR-E. Graph courtesy Walt Meier, nsidc.org National Snow and Ice Data Center.
identifier arctic_ams_2007259
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date 2007-09-25
creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier ge_19139
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date 2007-09-25
creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier ge_19139
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identifier Barents.TMO2002234
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identifier ob_tmo_2007171
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creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier Russia_AMO_2007113
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Ellesmere.A2002219.2035
mediatype IMAGE
mediatype image
date 2002-08-07
creator NASA -- Images courtesy Jacques Descloitres, rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Image interpretation provided by Derek Mueller and Warwick Vincent, Centre d'Etudes nordiques, Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada and Martin Jeffries, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, Alaska.
identifier Ellesmere.A2002219.2035
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identifier melville_l7_2002175
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creator NASA -- NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
identifier beaufortsea_amo_2006254
Ellesmere Island National Pa …
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aster_ellesmere_04aug03
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date 2003-08-04
creator NASA -- Data made available by NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ASTER Science Team
identifier aster_ellesmere_04aug03
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identifier misr_beringstrait
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creator NASA -- Image courtesy of NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ASTER Science Team.
identifier ge_07343
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creator NASA -- Image courtesy of NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ ASTER Science Team.
identifier ge_07343
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creator NASA -- NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained courtesy of the University of Maryland's glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/index.shtml Global Land Cover Facility .
identifier siberia_L7_1999262
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identifier ge_00657
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identifier ge_00657
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creator NASA -- Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, modland.nascom.nasa.gov/ MODIS Land Rapid Response Team
identifier modis_lena_river_flood
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identifier ge_06779
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identifier ge_06779
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf: Natural …
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The Arctic's largest ice she …
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mediatype IMAGE
mediatype image
date 2003-09-27
creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier wardhunt_radarsat_md
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mediatype IMAGE
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date 2003-09-27
creator NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day
identifier wardhunt_radarsat_md
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