It should be noted that the Earth Science Photos archives began in 1999, therefore, they are "highlights" for 1978 - 1998.

1999 Earthpics :: Please note that images are chronicled from most to least recent.     SeaWiFS View of the  Carolina Coast   Albemarle and Pamlico Sound still look very dark in this SeaWiFS pass. All of the organic matter washed in by this summer's hurricanes is absorbing most of the incoming solar radiation.  08 December 1999   El Niņo's Dramatic Impact on Ocean Biology, Carbon Dioxide Captured By a Unique Monitoring System The 1997-98 El Niņo/La Niņa had an unprecedented roller-coaster effect on the oceanic food chain across a vast swath of the Pacific, plunging chlorophyll levels to the lowest ever recorded in December 1997 and spawning the largest bloom of microscopic algae ever seen in the region the following summer. According to new results published in the Dec. 10 issue of the journal Science, El Niņo also dramatically reduced the amount of carbon dioxide normally released into the atmosphere by the equatorial Pacific Ocean. View The Press Release Images The Official Reproduction Guidelines for Use of NASA Images and Emblems Credit line for all images: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center The SeaWiFs Project Science Visualization Studio NOTE: All SeaWiFs images and data presented on this website are for research and educational use only. All commercial use of SeaWiFs data must be coordinated with ORBIMAGE. Artist Concept of Terra Instruments Scanning the Earth Terra Spacecraft/Atlas IIAS Rocket Ready For Launch Dec. 16 -- The launch of NASA's Terra spacecraft aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS rocket is scheduled to occur on Thursday, Dec. 16 from Space Launch Complex 3 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The launch window is 25 minutes in duration extending from 10:33 - 10:58 a.m. PST (1:33 - 1:58 p.m. EST). (Details) Terra Spacecraft To Lead The Way (Details); Terra Website 07 December 1999 NASA Spacecraft Observes Lowest Ozone Ever in Northern Hemisphere A NASA spacecraft has observed the lowest value of ozone ever seen in the Northern Hemisphere since spacecraft first began ozone measurements in 1978. The measurement was obtained on Nov. 30, 1999 using the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument aboard NASA's Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite. The measurement showed an extremely low level of 165 Dobson Units (DU) over the North Sea between Scotland and Norway.  The blue color indicates lower than normal levels of ozone. Scientists believe a combination of stratospheric and tropospheric weather systems may be responsible for this extreme low ozone event. Scientists and others have a keen interest in polar ozone depletion. While this particular record low value results from a convergence of weather systems, severe depletions of ozone can result from chemical processes. Chemically caused Arctic ozone losses have also been observed, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere springs of 1996 and 1997. TOMS ozone data and pictures are available on the Internet at: http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/ GSFC Press Release 99-127 02 December 1999 Hurricane Lenny as seen from SeaWiFS 14 November 1999 NASA Tests Design Concept For A New Pumpkin-Shaped Balloon For more information on NASA's Scientific Balloon Program visit NASA Wallops Flight Facility homepage or the Balloon Program website ; (Details) 08 November 1999 New Global Digital Tectonic Activity Map Of The Earth Produced NASA scientists have developed a new digital tectonic activity map of the Earth that pinpoints the geologically and volcanically active features of the entire planet over the last one million years. (Details); Geodynamics Branch Homepage 05 November 1999 Annual Depletion Of Antarctic Ozone Results Are In:  'Ozone Hole' Smaller Than Last Year A NASA satellite has shown that the area of ozone depletion over the Antarctic -- the well-known ozone "hole" -- is a bit less in 1999 than it was last year.  TOMS ozone data and pictures are available at http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov  or select  Images or Antarctic Ozone for 7/99 to 10/99  QuickTime (160x120) (691KB).  (Details) 05 October 1999 NASA Spacecraft Provides Direct Evidence - Smoke Inhibits Rainfall Smoke from forest fires has, for the first time, been proven to inhibit rainfall, according to an extensive analysis of data taken from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft.  (Details) (JPEG Image); Information and images from the TRMM mission are available at http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 05 October 1999   Scientists Look for Signs of Pollution in the Superhighway in the Sky If you think traffic is getting worse on your commute, you're not alone. Hundreds of commercial airline flights carry thousands of passengers from the U.S. to Europe each day-traveling along what has become the busiest jet super highway in the world: the Atlantic corridor. Could all of that air traffic exhaust be a detriment to the atmosphere at 35,000 feet the way that auto exhaust pollutes the air we breathe? In a study to be released in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA scientists found that the atmosphere over the Atlantic acts nothing like the Los Angeles basin when it comes to collecting ozone-the chemical responsible for smog.   (Details) Captions (click on thumbnail for larger image):Specially designed chemical analyzer. The instrument is highly sensitive and able to analyze minute amounts of trace gases in the very clean atmosphere at 35 thousand feet. A probe protrudes from the plane taking in air for analyses of organic acids and nitric acid-a reaction product of nitrogen oxides that end up as acid rain. Other nitrogen oxides create ozone. In this part of the atmosphere, ozone acts as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Contrails. The long wispy clouds that trail jets can turn into cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds add heat to the lower atmosphere. Some scientists believe that cirrus clouds formed by aircraft may add to global warming. The NASA DC-8 and the Deutschen Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany's national space agency, Falcon-20. Anne Thompson, Goddard Space Flight Center atmospheric scientist and mission scientist for the Subsonic Assessment Ozone and Nitrogen Oxides Experiment (SONEX), part of NASA's Atmospheric Affects of Aviation Experiment. A laser water vapor detector measures water vapor in the atmosphere between the window of the plane and wing. Tandem testing. The NASA DC-8 flies in gas-sampling formation with a Deutschen Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany's national space agency, Falcon-20. The DLR has been testing the affects of aircraft on the atmosphere since the early 1990s. Gas-collecting inlet probes protrude from the DC-8   Hot Stuff from the GOES Project Hurricane Floyd in the Sargasso Sea A Collection of Hurricane Floyd Images -- Data from NOAA GOES satellite. Images produced by Dennis Chesters, Laboratory for Atmospheres, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. New Landsat 7 Images of the Earth Now Available This Landsat 7 browse image shows the area around New York City including Newark, NJ and Long Island. After soaring to space last spring, NASA's latest Earth-imaging satellite has completed its checkout phase and is now "open for business." New images from the Landsat 7 spacecraft are now available for viewing and purchase by scientific researchers and the general public via the Internet from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA. GSFC Press Release 99-095 Landsat Image Site 07 September 1999 Hurricane Dennis This image was captured by NASA's SeaWiFS instrument onboard the SeaStar satellite on August 25 at 1:12 p.m. EDT. The purpose of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project is to provide data on the global oceans. SeaWifs and several other imaging devices aboard NASA satellites are providing meteorologists with spectacular views of the turbulent tropics. ( Full Story) (8/26/99) SeaWiFS 30 August 1999 view of Dennis - click on image for larger view. For Hi-Res view visit the SeaWiFS Homepage August 28 GOES Quick-Time Movie of Hurricane Dennis (8.9MB) Eclipse 99 On Wednesday, August 11, 1999, a total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses the Eastern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow begins in the Atlantic and crosses Central Europe, the Middle East, and India where it ends at sunset in the Bay of Bengal. A partial eclipse will be seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes Northeastern North America, all of Europe, Northern Africa and the western half of Asia. This event is the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century, and it will benefit formal and informal education communities alike. Eclipse 99 Website - fact-filled website on this eclipse, a history of eclipses and future eclipses.  Visit this site for images and movies from the Aug. 11 Eclipse. http://www.williams.edu/Astronomy/eclipse99/ - composite image from Eclipse and SOHO EIT. 11 August 1999 Landsat 7 Spacecraft to Join NASA's Earth Science Team NASA will deploy the first major satellite in an unprecedented program to check the health of Planet Earth and understand the complex interactions that drive global change with the April 15 launch of the Landsat 7, the latest mission in the Landsat series, which has been documenting the Earth’s surface for more than a quarter century. For more detail, check these links: General Press Release 99-034 Landsat-7 Press Kit 31 March 1999 Rapid Thinning of the Greenland Ice Sheet Click on Image above to launch quick-time movie This movie depicts the airborne laser altimeter collecting data.  In 1993 and 1994, NASA researchers surveyed the Greenland ice sheet using an airborne laser altimeter. Ten flight lines flown in 1993 in southern Greenland were resurveyed in 1998. Scientists used computers to create detailed maps of changes in the ice.  The Many Faces of Laser Altimetry The same laser altimetry technology used to measure changes in the Greenland glaciers was also used to measure the amount of ice in the frozen northern polar cap of Mars and changes in the California coast due to severe El Nino-driven storms in 1998. A study of Greenland indicates a rapid thinning of glaciers along the east coast of the southern half of the island and suggests that the lower elevation portion of the ice sheet may be particularly sensitive to changes in climate. The results of this study are significant because they provide the first evidence of widespread thinning of low-elevation parts of one of the great polar ice sheets. Areas of ice thinning are shown in blue, areas where ice is thickening are shown in orange. NASA Researchers Document Shrinking Of Greenland's Glaciers (Details) http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/~akekesi/Greenland/QuickTimes/plane.mov -- movie courtesy of NASA/Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio 04 March 1999 New Animation Depicts Changs in Antarctic Ice Sheet For the first time, scientists at NASA have generated a computer model depicting changes in the Antarctic ice sheet since the peak of the last ice age - nearly 20,000 years ago. The West Antarctic ice sheet has lost nearly 2/3 of it's mass during this period - a volume sufficient to raise sea level 33 feet. West Antarctica is the most prominent remaining ice-filled marine basin on Earth. It is drained by fast-moving ice streams that extend far into the ice-sheet interior. There has been much debate over the potential effect of West Antarctic's volume being released into the ocean. Scientists hope to better understand the history of Antarctic ice sheet so they might better predict how the ice sheet may respond to climate changes in the future. Dr. Bob Bindschadler Glaciologist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Images and quicktimes can be downloaded after 8 a.m. Feb 3:      http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/~akekesi/Antarctica/ Background information: http://igloo.gsfc.nasa.gov/wais/ http://igloo.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/perspective.html Images/Movies courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio - "Providing an understanding of science through visualization." 17 February 1999 Montserrat explodes at dawn (0.9 MByte QT movie) The routine GOES-8 visible images are slightly contrast-enhanced to watch the ash cloud rise to 20,000 ft (6 km), and spread across the lesser Antilles Courtesy of Dennis.Chesters@gsfc.nasa.gov 13 January 1999 El Nino Movies and Images Public Use of Remote Sensing Data Image Catalog; with previews The RSD Program is designed to encourage the development of innovative applications of earth and space science remote sensing data. By stimulating broad public use, via the Internet, of the databases maintained by NASA and other agencies, the program will encourage schools, businesses and citizens to access and use earth and space science data, contribute to the implementation of a National Information Infrastructure (NII), stimulate US economic growth, and improve the quality of life. Space radar images of Earth from the Shuttle Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) is a joint U.S.-German-Italian project that uses a highly sophisticated imaging radar to capture images of Earth that are useful to scientists across a great range of disciplines. It was flown on STS-68 and STS-59. Coastal Zone Color Scanner Interactive Region Selection This is a utility which will allow you to create your own custom designed ocean color images for any region of the world and to download that image to your local system for later use.