Animation showing monthly changes on the Earth's surface over a complete year.
Click on image for full size
NASA's Earth Observatory
North and South: Opposite Seasons
NASA's Earth Observatory has recently started making images of the entire
surface of the Earth every month. There are no clouds in the images because
they combine many pictures taken at different times when the weather is
clear in different places. The polar ice caps look larger than they really
are because of how the globe was projected onto a rectangle.
The animation begins in January, when it is winter in the North and summer
in the South. As the months go by, you can see the ice and snow melt in
the North and then return the following winter.
There is not as much land far in the South, so the change in the snow is
less obvious. But you can see the land in the South grow more green in the
summer (when it is winter in the North) and more brown in the winter (when
it is summer in the North).
For the first time, you can see with your own eyes how the seasons are
opposite in the North and South.
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
The Summer 2010 issue of The Earth Scientist
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, includes articles on rivers and snow, classroom planetariums, satellites and oceanography, hands-on astronomy, and global warming.
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