Nasa’s before-and-after pictures show how climate change is transforming the planet

Gulf Today Report

Nasa has shared a slew of satellite images that capture the extent of damage adverse weather events have caused around the world.

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The series of pictures, part of a project called ‘Images of Change,’ were released by Nasa 's Global Climate Change group and are mostly composed of before-and-after shots which exhibit the damage left behind by climate related events such as severe floods and wildfires.

 Images show fields of corn and soybeans in Iowa, before and after the powerful derecho windstorm.

Also included are pictures showing more prolonged measures of climate change, such as receding glaciers and desertification.

One pair of pictures shows the Mekong River, an important lifeline to nearly 60 million people across Southeast Asia, changing colour.  

While the water is normally fast-flowing and loaded with sediments that give it its muddy brown appearance, 2020 saw the river turn blue-green as a result of both drought and flow-reducing dams.

 Lonar Lake in India is seen before and after turning a mysterious pink, an as yet unexplained phenomenon.

Nasa also displayed a pair of pictures showing how torrential rains brought Australians relief from catastrophic wildfires, but the storms also swamped parched lands and made rivers overflow, leading to muddy floods in many coastal regions.

Particularly striking are pictures of flooding, such as in last year’s monsoon season in Bangladesh, where large areas of land are shown dry (before) then submerged (after).

Nasa said the 2020 monsoon season was unusually severe and a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found more than 500 people were killed and more than 167,000 families were displaced across Bangladesh.

 Eastern Bangladesh seen before and after unusually severe flooding in the 2020 monsoon season.

However, not all of the pictures demonstrate climate change disasters.

There is one set of pictures showing India's Lonar Lake changing colour from green to pink — an unexplained phenomenon.

There are also plenty of pictures of volcanic eruptions.

On the Philippine island of Luzon, the Taal volcano erupted on 12 January 2020 depositing wet, heavy ash over the lush green landscape.

As the ash dried, it hardened from a mud-like consistency to that of cement, damaging most of the island's crops and other vegetation.

Hundreds more before and after pictures from Nasa ’s Images of Change project can be viewed on the agencies climate change website.