News and Events
Piers Sellers, a former Terra project scientist and astronaut recently was published in the New York Time, sharing his story on Cancer and Climate Change. Piers Sellers is currently Deputy Director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate and Acting Director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Read the article Cancer and Climate Change
Image from GIS Geography. 100 Earth Shattering Uses and Applications of Remote Sensing.
GIS Geography published a list of 100 uses and applications of remote sensing, where data from NASA’s Terra satellite appeared in over 10%.
Listed below are some examples of Terra data uses that made the list (numbered by their original order in the article from GIS Geography):
13. Identifying forest stands and tallying their area to estimate forest supplies (MODIS)
26. Fighting wildfires by planning firefighter dispatch (MODIS)
27. Monitoring air quality in the lower atmosphere (MOPITT)
38. Keeping tabs on the shift from rural to urban growth (MODIS)
39. Quantifying crop conditions with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI from MODIS)
59. Monitoring active volcanoes using thermal remote sensing (ASTER, MISR, and MODIS)
66. Looking at the Earth as an art masterpiece NASA’s Earth as Art | NASA Visible Earth
70. Comparing climatic factors from past to present (MODIS, CERES, MOPITT)
75. Studying geology of the Earth’s surface (ASTER, MISR, MODIS)
77. Measuring albedo for Earth’s radiation budget (CERES)
83. Delineating watersheds using DEMs for hydrologists (ASTER)
85. Using a least-cost analysis and vegetation to understand wildebeest migration (NDVI from MODIS)
Read the whole list and learn more about each of the uses and applications of remote sensing at 100 Earth Shattering Remote Sensing Applications Uses from GIS Geography
Washington D.C.—Michael King, Team Leader of the MODIS science team on the Terra and Aqua satellites, of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), University of Colorado Boulder, was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). King was elected as an AAAS Fellow for distinguished contributions to the remote sensing and analysis of clouds and aerosols, and for years of distinguished scientific leadership of the multi-satellite Earth Observing System, which includes Terra.
Read the full release by LASP.
Read more about Dr. Michael King.
Terra images were featured on NASA’s Earth Observatory this December.
Icebergs Make Waves off South Georgia Island – Features Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images showing icebergs floating offshore of South Georgia Island, more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) east-northeast of South America’s southern tip. The icebergs make waves in the atmosphere.
Fires Put a Carbon Monoxide Cloud over Indonesia – Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) is used to monitor carbon monoxide from fires in Indonesia.
Shades of White – MODIS images enable distinction between fog and snow from space
The Ural Mountains – The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) captured images of the Ural Mountains.
Letter Y: Ugab River, Namibia –
The Ugab River looks like a “Y” in the Earth Observatories feature, Reading the ABCs from Space. ASTER on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-colored image of the Ugab River running through what appears to be a field of yardangs in northern Namibia.
Letter N for the New Year –
Shiptracks in the atmosphere are visible in this image from NASA’s Terra satellite’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) as part of the new feature, Reading the ABCs from Space from NASA’s Earth Observatory. N is for New Year was the final Image of the Day for 2015.
The American Geophysical Union recently concluded its Fall meeting in San Fransisco, California from December 14 – 18, 2015. As part of the meeting contributions to science were featured on NASA.gov. Data from Terra’s instruments played important roles in collecting data to further research in each of these featured areas. Read the full features from NASA.gov available at the links below.
El Niño
NASA: Observing the 2015 El Niño – The strongest El Niño since 1997 – 1998 is being monitored for the first time by a host of satellites, including Terra. This video (above) features global data sets from Terra’s instruments and their contribution to El Niño research.
How NASA Sees El Niño Effects From Space – The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) contributes to data collection on fires and hurricane monitoring
NASA Examines Global Impact of the 2015 El Niño – El Niño research pulls from data from Terra’s 16 years of data collection, monitoring Earth’s systems from Space
Warming Lakes
Study Shows Climate Change Rapidly Warming World’s Lakes – The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) contributed to this study.
Earthquakes
Studies of Recent and Ancient Nepal Quakes Yield Surprises – The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) contributed to this study.