Nasa's Earth Observatory uses the space agency's wide array of
satellites and monitoring equipment to capture a variety of images
of our planet. As many parts of the world begin to emerge from the
cold winter months here are some stunning images of recent snow and
ice across Earth.
This image shows Lake Michigan's Washington Island and was captured
by the crew of the International Space Station.
While it might look like an iceberg this is in fact the remote
Bouvet Island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean. Captured by the
Landsat 8 satellite, the closest inhabited place to Bouvet is
Tristan da Cunha, which is 2,260 km (1,400 miles) away.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrordiometre (Modis) on Nasa's
Aqua satellite captured this image of the Great Lakes in North
America, where ice cover reached 88% in February 2014. The average
extent of ice cover since 1973 is just over 50%.
Scientists used images like this one from the Landsat 8 satellite
to discover a large landslide which occurred in southeastern Alaska
on February 16, 2014. Scientists estimate that the landslide on the
flanks of Mount La Perouse involved 68 million metric tons of
material, which would make it the largest known natural landslide
on Earth since 2010.
The location of the skiing events for the Sochi Winter Olympics are
shown here on an image captured by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI)
on Nasa’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite in February.
Modis on the Aqua satellite captured this image which shows a wide
view of Sochi and its surrounding area.
At the beginning of February parts of Iran suffered the worst
snowfalls in 50 years. Modis, on the Terra satellite, captured this
image which shows a large blanket of snow over Iran, and parts of
Iraq, down to the Caspian Sea.
At the beginning of December 2013 a rare winter storm dumped snow
across large parts of the Middle East. Modis, on the Terra
satellite, captured this image showing snow lying in parts of
Lebanon, Syria and Israel.
Many parts of the US were hit by huge winter storms at the end of
2013 and beginning of 2014. This picture from Modis, on the Terra
satellite, shows the US east coast, including Washington,
Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York all blanketed by snow.
In October scientists noticed a large crack in the Pine Island
Glacier and this image from November 10, 2013 shows a large iceberg
separating off. The new iceberg, called B-31, is estimated to be
35kms by 20kms (21 by 12 miles), roughly the size of Singapore.
The picture, taken by a crew member on the International Space
Station, shows Lake Sharpe, a 130 km (80 mile) long reservoir
formed behind the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri River in South
Dakota. The lake is frozen and then covered in snow, giving the
uniform white appearance, the area in the middle of the picture is
agricultural land.
This image shows Mount Annapurna, the 10th tallest mountain in the
world, but one of the most deadly. Located in Nepal near the
Gandaki River only around 200 people have successfully ascended
Annapurna, which has a fatality rate of 32%.
