The View From Far Above: How Earth Changed in 2015
From raging forest fires to dwindling snowmelt to the extraordinary birth of new ocean islands, sometimes the best way to witness planetary happenings — and to gain perspective on them — is from high above. Below are satellite images and aerial photos from the NASA Earth Observatory that capture some of the more dramatic changes that shaped the earth over the past year.
This aerial photo captured in July shows large, fast-flowing rivers on top of the Greenland ice sheet abruptly dropping into a seemingly bottomless moulin, or sinkhole, in the ice. The shifting network of streams and rivers that form during the summer melt season can transport water from the surface of the ice to the ocean, gradually eating away the frozen mass. A slew of recent research has shown that the Greenland ice sheet, composed of some of the planet’s largest glaciers, is steadily losing more ice in the summer than it gains in the winter.
This late-September NASA satellite image shows the massive plumes of smoke blanketing Sumatra, Indonesia, as peat fires burned uncontrolled. This was a record year for fires in Indonesia, and tens of thousands of infernos released clouds of particulate matter and toxic gases over the region — a process that repeats itself year after year as property owners clear their land of debris for farming.
The Nepali village of Langtang, which was located along a popular trekking route near the base of Mount Langtang, was completely buried by an avalanche this spring. The ice and rocks were shaken loose by the devastating earthquake that struck central Nepal on April 25, 2015.
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