MICHAEL D. KING
               GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
               (Winner of this year's William Nordberg Award)

 
"A Perspective of Our Planet’s Atmosphere, Land, and Oceans:
A View from Space"

A birds eye view of the Earth from afar and up close reveals the power and magnificence of the Earth and juxtaposes the simultaneous impacts and powerlessness of humankind.  The NASA Electronic Theater presents Earth science observations and visualizations in an historical perspective.  See the latest spectacular images from remote sensing missions like GOES, TRMM, Landsat 7, and Terra, which will be visualized and explained in the context of global change.  See visualizations of global data sets currently available from Earth orbiting satellites, including the Earth at night with its city lights, and aerosols from biomass burning in South America and Africa.  See the dynamics of vegetation growth and decay over Africa over 17 years, and its contrast to the North American continent.

New visualization tools allow us to roam & zoom through massive global mosaic images from the Himalayas to the dynamics of the Atlantic Ocean that affect hurricanes over North America.  See flybys of Cape Town, South Africa with its dramatic mountains and landscape, as well as satellite imagery of tropical cyclone Elena and the resulting flooding of Mozambique.

Spectacular new visualizations of the global atmosphere & oceans are shown.  See massive dust storms sweeping across Africa and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and Amazon basin.  See ocean vortexes and currents that bring up the nutrients to feed tiny phytoplankton and draw the fish, giant whales and fisherman.  See how the ocean blooms in response to these currents and El Niño/La Niña climate changes.
We will illustrate these and other topics with a dynamic theater-style presentation, along with animations of satellite launch deployments and orbital mapping to highlight aspects of Earth observations from space.

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