NASA satellite images capture the extreme weather events of 2020

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Along with a deadly pandemic, 2020 also recalled the severity of the climate crisis facing the world: droughts, floods, heat waves, wildfires and hurricanes continued to disrupt the lives of communities around the world, in addition to despite the challenges that arise. by Covid-19.

NASA’s fleet of satellites and Earth observation instruments has captured images of some of these equally visually stunning and disturbing climatic events. the International Space Station.

On this day last year, NASA’s moderate-resolution imaging spectrometer captured images of thick, brown smoke floating through southeastern Australia, taken while the country was devastated by one of the its worst recorded fire seasons.

The fire season in Australia is always dangerous, but conditions were unusually severe in 2020, which ignited the flames and especially made extinction conditions difficult.

Experts say climate change has worsened the extent and impact of natural disasters such as fires and floods: weather conditions are becoming more extreme and fires have been starting for years at the beginning of the season and they extend with greater intensity.

This natural color image from Southeast Australia was acquired on January 4, 2020 by NASA's Aqua satellite moderate resolution image spectroradiometer.
2020 was also a year to remember for many residents of the west coast states of the United States, where deadly fires in California, Oregon and Washington forced tens of thousands of people to take refuge in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the following image, captured on September 9, a thick blanket of smoke can be seen along the west coast.

“Climate and fire scientists have long predicted that fires in the western United States will grow more, be more intense, and be more dangerous. But even the most experienced have lost words in describing the scope and intensity of fires burning in west coast states during September 2020, ”NASA said.

This image shows North America on September 9, 2020, while a thick blanket of smoke covered the west coast.

Several this year the fires were caused by lightning, but extreme conditions, including record temperatures, dry air, fierce winds and drought, caused the fires to wreak havoc on nearby forests and eventually homes.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) sensors, located on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite, collected daily images of thick feathers of aerosol particles blowing all over. the western United States, which, according to NASA was on a scale that satellites and scientists rarely see.

Drought

On July 3, 2020, Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager captured this false-color image of the river near Rosario, a key port city in Argentina.

While this image appears to show a lush, green oasis, the image, captured by NASA’s Landsat, actually reveals the dry basin of Argentina’s Paraná River.

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A prolonged period of unusually warm weather and drought in southern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina caused the river to drop to the lowest levels in decades. The drought has not only contributed to increased fire activity in the surrounding delta and floodplains, but has also affected businesses and local residents, with boats ashore and low water levels costing millions of dollars. in the grain industry.

Human activity has been linked to the global risk of drought since the early twentieth century: greenhouse gases generated by power plants, agriculture, cars, trains, and human activities in general have influenced in the risk of droughts and experts predict that drought is related to climate change will worsen.

Hurricanes

Hurricane Laura, one of the ten strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the United States, swept southwest Louisiana in August, killing at least six people and leaving behind a wide path of destruction.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active recorded and many of the storms that hit the Gulf Coast, Central America and the Caribbean last year showed signs that they were overwhelmed by global warming. .
NOAA-20's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer (VIIRS) Suite acquired this image of Hurricane Laura at 2:20 a.m., Central Time of Day, on August 26, 2020.

In the image above, captured by VIIRS on the NOAA-20 satellite, the storm is approaching the US coast, highlighted by the darkness of night, while the clouds are shown in infrared using brightness temperature data. and they overlap with images showing city lights.

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