Skip Navigation
menu close modal

MULTIMEDIA

Baffin Bay, Greenland

Baffin Bay, Greenland

Along Greenland's western coast, a small field of glaciers surrounds Baffin Bay.

This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on September 3, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using near-infrared, red and blue wavelengths.

Credit

Image provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) EROS Data Center Satellite Systems Branch. Caption adapted from text provided by NASA's Earth Observatory. Source: NASA/USGS Landsat 7; NASA Earth Observatory.

Enlarge

Related

Salinity plays a major role in global ocean circulation and changes in salinity may impact regional and global climates. NASA's Aquarius mission is painting a global picture of our planet's salty waters.
More
Salinity plays a major role...
Video: Aquarius
The first television picture of Earth from space. Image taken by TIROS 1 on April 1, 1960.
More
TV DEBUT: The first televis...
TV debut
'Ship tracks' above the northern Pacific Ocean. These patterns are produced when fine particles from ship exhaust float into a moist layer of atmosphere. The particles seed new clouds or attract water from existing cloud particles. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on July 3, 2010.
More
SHIP TRACKS: 'Ship tracks' ...
Ship tracks
This false-color image shows snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalayas between major rivers in southwest China. The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together stretch for more than 1800 miles (2,900 kilometers). This particular image was taken by NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), flying aboard the Terra satellite, on February 27, 2002. The picture is a composite made by combining near-infrared, red and green wavelengths.
More
Himalayas
The Himalayas
Some of the most breathtaking views of Earth taken from space are those that capture our planet's limb. When viewed from the side, the Earth looks like a flat circle, and the atmosphere appears like a halo around it. This edge of the atmosphere is known as the limb. Viewed from space, the image of this luminous envelope of gases shielding life on our planet from the dark, cold space beyond rarely fails to fascinate us. What makes this image even more fascinating is the added silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour. The orange layer seen is the troposphere, where all of the weather and clouds that we typically experience are created and contained. The troposphere gives way to the whitish stratosphere and then mesosphere. This image was captured by an astronaut prior to Endeavour's rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station on February 9, 2010.
More
ENDEAVOUR: Some of the most...
Endeavour
These night-shining clouds were spotted over Billund, Denmark on July 15, 2010. These rare clouds are technically called "noctilucent" or "polar mesospheric" clouds, and form at high altitudes, 80 to 85 kilometers (50 to 53 miles) high, where the mesosphere is located. The clouds' high position in the atmosphere allows them to reflect sunlight long after the sun has dropped below the horizon. They only form when the temperature drops below –130 degrees Celsius (-200 degrees Fahrenheit), whereupon the scant amount of water high in the atmosphere freezes into ice clouds. This happens most often in countries at high northern and southern latitudes (above 50 degrees) in the summer, when the mesosphere is coldest. Studies suggest that night-shining clouds are becoming brighter and more common, which is linked to the mesosphere getting colder and more humid. These changes may be happening because of increased levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. In the mesosphere, carbon dioxide radiates heat into space, causing cooling. More methane, on the other hand, puts more water vapor into the atmosphere, because sunlight breaks methane up into water molecules at high altitudes. Research is ongoing.
More
Nocturnal Wonders
Nocturnal wonders
Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the North Atlantic, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Blooms off Scandinavia seem to be particularly intense in summer 2018.
More
A vortex of lighter green p...
Summer blooms in the Baltic
Earth and its Moon are nicely framed in this image taken from the aft windows of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. Discovery, on mission STS-95, was flying over the Atlantic Ocean at the time this image was taken.
More
MOON FRAME: Earth and its M...
Moon frame
Captured onboard a NASA Operation IceBridge flight to survey glacier change in a warming world, this photograph shows a beach and stream in Russel Fjord, Alaska, near the terminus of Hubbard Glacier.
More
Beached bergs in Alaska
Beached bergs in Alaska
Vivid colors and bizarre shapes come together in this artistic, fantastical image, taken from space on June 15, 2005. The labyrinth of exotic features was spotted along the edge of Russia's Chaunskaya Bay (shown by the vivid blue half circle) in northeastern Siberia. Two major rivers, the Chaun and Palyavaam, flow into the bay, which in turn opens into the Arctic Ocean. Ribbon lakes and bogs are present throughout the area, created by depressions left by receding glaciers.
More
Vivid colors and bizarre sh...
Siberian ribbons
This animation compares sea surface salinity (saltiness) data from two NASA datasets from 2015 to 2017.
More
Animation: Sea Surface Sali...
Animation: Sea Surface Salinity (Saltiness) Comparison (2015-2017)
This simulated natural-color image shows the North and South Malosmadulu Atolls in the Maldives, an island republic in the northern Indian Ocean, southwest of India. The Maldives consists of a chain of almost 1200 small coral islands that are grouped into clusters of atolls. It is home to about a third of a million people. Arguably the lowest-lying country in the world, the average elevation is 1 meter (3.3 feet) above sea level. Waves triggered by the great tsunami of December 2004 spilled over sea walls to flood the capital with sandy water and then swept out just as suddenly. Residents fear this was a foreboding of disasters to come from sea level rise due to global warming. The image was taken on 22 December 2002, and covers an area of 51 x 90 kilometers (32 x 56 miles).
More
The Maldives
The Maldives
We know seas are rising and we know why. The urgent questions are by how much and how quickly.
More
Infographic: Sea level rise
Infographic: Sea level rise
Susitna Glacier, Alaska. Like rivers of liquid water, glaciers flow downhill, with tributaries joining to form larger rivers. But where water rushes, ice crawls. As a result, glaciers gather dust and dirt, and bear long-lasting evidence of past movements. Alaska’s Susitna Glacier reveals some of its long, grinding journey in this image, taken from space on August 27, 2009. The satellite image combines infrared, red and green wavelengths to form a false-color picture. Vegetation is red and the glacier’s surface is marbled with dirt-free blue ice and dirt-coated brown ice. Infusions of relatively clean ice push in from tributaries in the north. The glacier surface appears especially complicated near the center of the image, where a tributary has pushed the ice in the main glacier slightly southward. In the lower left corner of this image, meltwater lakes can be seen on top of the ice.
More
Like rivers of liquid water...
Susitna Glacier
This map shows the bright lights of cities and wildfires set against the inky black backdrop of night. The image is actually a composite of satellite data collected over a number of days in April 2012 and October 2012, and is the result of 312 orbits and 2.5 TB of information. The lights seen here are not just from cities; they are also from wildifires, lightning, gas flares and reflected moonlight. Because the image is a composite of several days’ worth of data, fires and other points of light may have been picked up by the satellite and integrated into the composite image even though they were temporary, making some rural locations (such as in Australia) seem brighter than they really are on a typical day.
More
Night lights, big cities
Night lights, big cities
Curling snow drifts are magnified by the terrain around the 1,400 mile Dnieper (Dnipro) River, flowing from Russia to the Black Sea.
More
The wild, frozen Dnieper (D...
The wild, frozen Dnieper (Dnipro) River
This stunning image of the northwest corner of Australia was snapped by a student on Earth after remotely controlling the Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station.
More
Northwest Australia from th...
Northwest Australia from the Space Station
This beautiful aerial photograph shows a multi-layered lenticular cloud hovering near Mount Discovery in Antarctica, a volcano about 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of McMurdo.
More
Antarctic Wonders
Antarctic wonders
This photo, taken on 30 December 2010, shows the aft section of the International Space Station (ISS). It was taken by an Expedition 26 crew member from a window in the ISS Progress 40 supply vehicle docked to the Pirs Docking Compartment.
More
Aft view of Earth
Aft view of Earth
In this image, we see blue silt off the southern coast of Louisiana as the Mississippi River flows off into the Gulf of Mexico. The brightness and shade of blue depends on the density of the silt and the depth of the silt-carrying currents in the water. The small bright dots in the scene are fishing boats and oil platforms.
More
In this image, we see blue ...
Louisiana silt
Earth has about 370,000,000,000,000,000,000 (quintillion) gallons of water, with some sources easier to access and use than others. The water budget tells us where that water is – key information that helps better plan for the future.
More
Video: Earth's Water Budget
Video: Earth's Water Budget
Animation showing changes in Greenland ice mass since 2002 based on satellite data.
More
Video: Greenland Ice Mass L...
Video: Greenland Ice Mass Loss 2002-2023
Ice covers 10 percent of Earth's surface and helps moderate the planet's temperature. Glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting at an alarming rate. By keeping an eye on Earth's ice from space, NASA satellites help us understand the global effects of climate change.
More
Ice covers 10 percent of Ea...
Video: Frozen Earth
This image, taken on 4 July 2002, shows spiraling eddies known as von Karman vortices over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Such eddies form as air flows over and around objects in its path. In this case, these eddies were created when prevailing winds sweeping east across the northern Pacific Ocean encountered Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
More
Extraordinary Eddies
Extraordinary eddies
This visualization depicts changes in Greenland land ice thickness as measured by the ICESat and ICESat-2 satellites.
More
Greenland Land Ice Height C...
Greenland Land Ice Height Change as Measured by ICESat and ICESat-2

Explore

Interactives, galleries and apps

Images of Change

Images of Change

Explore a stunning gallery of before-and-after images of Earth from land and space that reveal our home planet in a state of flux.
More
Climate Time Machine

Climate Time Machine

Travel through Earth's recent climate history and see how increasing carbon dioxide, global temperature and sea ice have changed over time.
More
Eyes on the Earth

Eyes on the Earth

Track Earth's vital signs from space and fly along with NASA's Earth-observing satellites in an interactive 3D visualization.
More
Global Ice Viewer

Global Ice Viewer

Earth's ice cover is shrinking. See how climate change has affected glaciers, sea ice, and continental ice sheets.
More