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

As we look at Earth from the vantage point of outer space, we can't but help notice how important water is to Earth's surface. Three quarters of our planet is covered with liquid and frozen water. The land surface is shaped by water's movements. Living things need water for survival. Water exists as vapor in the atmosphere and is the stuff of clouds. As a renewable resource, water transforms through three states of matter, solid, liquid, and gas as it cycles from the oceans to the atmosphere, to the land, and back to the oceans. Water and its effects are the dominant features Space Shuttle astronauts see from space. Water is a powerful force of change. Earthpics Archive 2 :: Please note that images are chronicled from most to least recent.   Hurricane Fran approaching the Bahamas and the US in September 1996, as viewed by GOES-8 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite).   This image was acquired from the GOES-9 Imager by the Laboratory for Atmosphere's, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on September 15, 1995.   This image was acquired from the GOES-8 Imager by the Laboratory for Atmosphere's, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Hurricane Luis taken on September 9, 1995, 14:45 UTC. This image was acquired from the GOES-8 Imager by the Laboratory for Atmosphere's, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It was taken on September 2, 1994, using two channels of the Imager to produce a "natural color" effect. This illustration as a part of NASA's program of Earth-science research, shows the world's cloud cover pattern on October 15, 1983, assembled from weather satellite images made at infrared wavelengths. Although a single image of Earth's cloud cover had been assembled from multiple satellite images before, this picture is the first time that an image had been collected for such a small time period, in this case only about one hour. This kind of information enables scientists to study global cloudiness to improve our understanding of how clouds affect climate. This illustration of Earth's sea surface temperature is part of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's program of Earth-science research. It was obtained from two weeks of infrared observations by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), an instrument on board NOAA-7 during July 1984. This study is part of NASA's multiyear global research program called Mission to Planet Earth. This image shows March monthly average ozone levels during a 14-year period taken from NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite. Shown here are the first four years, 1979-1982, and the last four years, 1990-1993 of TOMS imaging . To ensure that ozone data will be available through the next decade, NASA will continue the TOMS program; using U.S. and foreign launches. The Japanese Advanced Earth Observations Satellite (ADEOS) will carry a fourth TOMS into orbit when it launches in 1996, and a fifth TOMS Instrument is being assembled for flight in 1998 on an undetermined satellite. The TOMS program is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, for the Office of Mission to Planet Earth. A quicktime movie from TOMS on 03/01/93-03/31/93. This image shows October monthly average ozone levels during a 14-year period, 1979-1992. The ozone measurements were taken by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center. The color scale on the right side of this image shows the total ozone values for the 14-years measured. The ozone levels are indicated by the colors green/light blue, low levels by the color dark blue/purple and high levels by the red colors. The Antarctic "ozone hole" is indicated by the low values (dark purple colors). This contrasts with the relatively higher ozone values over Antarctica in earlier years (1979-1982), when the hole is virtually nonexistent (blue green/green colors). A quicktime movie from TOMS on 10/01/92-10/31/92. This computer generated illustration of Earth is part of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's program of Earth-science research. This view, generated from orbiting and ground-based instruments, shows a computer-generated topographic image of the continents with the vegetation of Earth superimposed over it. The vegetation covering the continents was recorded by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) aboard the NOAA-7, NOAA-9, and NOAA-11 satellites. This study is part of NASA's multiyear global research program called Mission to Planet Earth. It will use ground-based, airborne, and space-based instruments to study Earth as a complete environmental system. These four color-coded, digitized maps for December 1978, 1981, 1985, and 1986 show the floating ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding sea. The amount of sea-ice coverage at a given location is depicted by the color scale to the right of the maps ranging from 0% of the sea covered in ice to 100% ice coverage. This is the computer representation of the monthly averages of sea ice seen from space by the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) aboard NASA's Nimbus-7 Earth-orbiting satellite, launched October 24, 1978. Scientists use the data contained in maps like these for clues about global warming. The Nimbus-7 satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 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. Last Revised: 04 September 1997