Earth Science and Observations Center

NASA Images of Interest

July, 2013

Greenlands Summer Melt Underway.

In 2013, melt ponds were initially slow to appear along the edge of the ice. The first pools were visible in Landsat. 8 images in early June, says Mahsa Moussavi, a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, CIRES, who is monitoring the ponds. Despite the late start, melting in 2013 has been rapid, occuring at a faster pace that the 1981-2010 average.

This image (full resolution) was featured on the NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day site.

 

New Perspectives on a Changing Planet

Our Earth's environment is changing in ways that could have profound global impacts, as the world enters climatologically unfamiliar territory. Society's success in dealing with those changes depends on how well we observe and understand them, and ultimately how well we can predict them. The Earth Science and Observation Center is a research center dedicated to the understanding of the Earth System, primarily through the use of satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques.

Earth observations from satellite and airborne sensors provide the perspective, scale, and context needed to understand key Earth system processes and assess how and why they are changing. Incorporating these and other observations into process models, provides further insights into the behavior of the Earth system and ultimately allows us predict future changes in the Earth environment.

Toward that end, scientists at ESOC are engaged in a broad range of activities that include:

remote sensing data analysis algorithm development satellite mission design development and deployment of sub-orbital field campaigns

in situ observations process modeling regional climate modeling scaling theory

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