Tropical Storm Amanda, the first named storm of the 2026 hurricane season, can be seen forming in the eastern Pacific Ocean on June 3, 2026. This Black Marble nighttime blue/yellow composite (day/night band) image is built with data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the NOAA-20 platform.
Due to ocean conditions related to a developing El Niño, the hurricane season in the eastern Pacific Ocean is expected to be busier than normal compared to the Atlantic basin. Historically, the majority of tropical storms that form in the eastern Pacific stay over the ocean and do not make landfall, but a few affect Hawaii, the west coast of Mexico, or the southwestern United States each year.
This visualization, built with data from May 26, 2026, shows global sea surface temperature anomalies through the lens of the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) Level 4 sea surface temperature analysis, which compares current measurements with past Multiscale Ultrahigh Resolution (MUR) climatology. Areas in orange and red are warmer than the average for this time of year. Note the warmer than average temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, indicating possible development of an El Niño event.
El Niño is a natural climate cycle that occurs every two to seven years and lasts nine to twelve months. During such an event, easterly trade winds (which blow from the Americas toward Asia) falter and can even turn around into westerlies, causing the surface waters in central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to become significantly warmer than usual. Great masses of warm water move from the western Pacific toward the Americas. The change in winds also reduces the upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich waters from the deep — shutting down or reversing some ocean currents around the equator and along the west coast of South and Central America.
The circulation of air above the tropical Pacific Ocean responds to this redistribution of ocean heat. The typically strong high-pressure systems of the eastern Pacific weaken, changing the balance of atmospheric pressure across the eastern, central, and western Pacific. While easterly winds tend to be dry and steady, Pacific westerlies tend to come in bursts of warmer, moister air. Because of the vastness of the Pacific basin, these wind and humidity changes get transmitted around the world, disrupting circulation patterns such as jet streams.
This image comparison shows sea surface temperature anomalies from May 2025 (on the left) and in May 2026 (on the right). The Pacific was generally "ENSO-neutral" in 2025, with conditions sitting around average between El Niño and La Niña phases.
Recent sea surface height data from the NASA-European Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite — another important tool for measuring the state of the ocean surface — affirms the predictions of a developing El Niño event in 2026. Water expands as it warms, so warmer water masses will raise the height of the sea surface in some places.
California's Santa Rosa island, part of Channel Islands National Park, was closed to public access in mid-May 2026 due to a wildfire on the southeast side of the island. The fire began on May 15 and was likely caused by human activity, according to government and news sources. As of May 21, 2026, the fire had burned 17,554 acres and was 44 percent contained.
Click the play button in the lower left corner of the map to view a time-lapse animation of the spread of the wildfire from May 15-20. The images were made from false-color corrected reflectance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the NOAA-21 platform. The burned area and fire front appears red and orange, with unburned vegetation in green.
Autumn leaf color spread across the southern Andes of Chile in early May 2026. The Multispectral Imager (MSI) aboard the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2C platform acquired this true color reflectance (nadir BRDF-adjusted) image of the region on May 9. The Lonquimay volcano, visible on the right, was covered in snow from a recent storm and contrasted with the red and yellow fall colors to the west.
The comparison above shows March 8 on the left and May 9 on the right. Swipe the center bar left and right to see the late summer greens give way to autumnal reds, yellows, browns, and oranges.
The images come from the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project, which provides 30-meter resolution, true-color surface reflectance imagery from the OLI and OLI-2 instruments aboard Landsat 8 and 9 and from MSI aboard ESA's Sentinel-2 satellites. Data from the four instruments are processed through a set of algorithms to make the imagery consistent and comparable. This processing includes atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow masking, spatial co-registration and common gridding, illumination and view angle normalization, and spectral bandpass adjustment.
Snow fell across the Rocky Mountains and the Front Range of Colorado and Wyoming between May 5 and 6, 2026. Cheyenne, Wyoming, received almost 12 inches of snow, the most from a snowstorm since mid-March 2021. Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado received almost 3 feet of snow, and about 6 inches fell on Denver, which had its biggest May snowstorm since 2003.
This false-color corrected reflectance (Bands 7-2-1) image has been overlaid with a snow cover data layer — the normalized difference snow index — to show the snow coverage from the storm on May 7, 2026. This false-color band combination is useful for distinguishing snow and ice (darker cyan) from clouds (brighter cyan to white). The data come from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra platform.
The comparison above shows the difference in snow cover changes between May 2 and May 7. Zoom in on the map and swipe the center bar back and forth to compare the images and see higher snow cover around Cheyenne and across Colorado.
The Lake Bangweulu area in Zambia includes a shallow lake, several rivers, flooded wetlands, grasslands, and swamps.
This false-color corrected reflectance image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra platform shows the area on April 27, 2026. The image is overlaid with the MODIS 3-day window flood information layer where yellow indicates areas of recurring floods, red indicates unusual or episodic flooding, and blue marks known, consistent water bodies. In this case, yellow highlights wetland areas around the lake that see regular inundation.
The Bangweulu wetlands have been designated as wetlands of international importance by the RAMSAR Convention. It is home to 400 bird species and 80 species of fish, many of which are threatened or endangered. The area is also home to elephants, lechwe (antelope), hippopotamuses, and other wildlife.
While the previous image showed the area at 250-meter (per pixel) resolution, this image from the Sentinel-1 platform shows the region at 30 meters per pixel. The lake and rivers are again shown in blue, and the areas identified as "recurring flood" in the previous image are identified here as inundated vegetation (in green). The base image comes from the Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) Radiometric Terrain Corrected SAR Backscatter from Sentinel-1, which is a terrain-corrected radar image. It is overlaid with the OPERA Dynamic Surface Water Extent imagery layer.
A side-by-side comparison highlights the increased level of detail and information that can be gleaned from the OPERA Sentinel-1 images. That increased level of detail does come at a cost to timeliness. While the Terra platform can image the entire planet in 1-2 days and revisits most areas daily, Sentinel-1 will only be able to map the same area every 6 to 12 days. This tradeoff between spatial coverage and temporal coverage is important to consider when using satellite imagery to study Earth.
Heavy smoke emanated from wildland fires in Georgia as the NOAA-21 satellite passed over on April 21, 2026. In this view combining datasets from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), a true-color corrected reflectance image is overlaid with the fires and thermal anomalies layers.
This false-color corrected reflectance image (bands M11-I2-I1) reveals the active fire fronts of the two fires, shown in a vibrant red. The fire on the left is the Pineland Road Fire, while the Highway 82 fire in on the right. According to government and media accounts, both fires had the potential to threaten railroad infrastructure and other structures, and some evacuations and road closures were in effect. Low humidity, extreme drought, and strong winds exacerbated the spread of the fires.
Press the Play button in the lower left corner to view the movement of the smoke plumes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EDT on April 21, 2026.
The data come from the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument. TEMPO measures sunlight reflected and scattered off the Earth’s surface, clouds, and atmosphere. Various gases absorb sunlight, and the resulting spectra are then used to determine the amounts of those gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.
In this view, we see concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, which is primarily produced by the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, power generation, and industrial activity, but also from wildland fires. Nitrogen dioxide is itself a toxic gas that plays an important role in the formation of ground-level ozone and particulate matter pollution. These pollutants are harmful to both human and ecosystem health.
Super Typhoon Sinlaku developed in mid-April 2026 in the western Pacific Ocean, southeast of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. It quickly intensified into a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and gusts up to 185 mph (almost 300 km/h).
Click on each of the dates in the left side layer list above to follow the track of the storm and see the high precipitation rates (in shades of red) associated with the storm. Sinlaku brought torrential rainfall and flooding to Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and other islands of the Northern Mariana chain.
The map above compares the corrected reflectance true color imagery with sea surface temperature. Slide the opacity bar back and forth between A and B to see the warm sea surface temperatures (in shades of red) along the storm's path.
Sensors on Aqua, Suomi-NPP, and NOAA-20 detected fires and poor air quality across Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other countries in early April 2026.
In early April 2026, much of mainland southeast Asia (sometimes referred to as Indochina) was blanketed in haze. Wildland fires and agricultural burning created hundreds of hotspots and copious amounts of smoke and smog, while weather patterns kept the fouled air from dispersing.
The image above shows thermal anomalies — mostly fires and recently burned hotspots — across Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma) on April 4, 2026. Data for the anomalies map and for the natural-color image below were gathered by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite.
Wildland fires and agricultural fires produce a mix of air pollutants, including aerosol particles, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides. Those gases and particles can often turn into ground-level ozone and haze (or smog). Such pollutants reduces outdoor visibility and have both short- and long-term effects on human and animal health.
The map below, derived from data acquired by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows concentrations of carbon monoxide about 5500 meters (18,000 feet) above sea level on April 4. Note the particularly high levels over Laos and northern Vietnam. Carbon monoxide can persist in the atmosphere for as long as a month and can be transported long distances, playing a role in regional air pollution and climate.
The next map below shows estimates of the concentration of atmospheric particles — an aerosol index — as observed by the spectrometers in the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) on the NOAA-20 satellite. The aerosol index at the 380nm layer indicates the presence of ultraviolet-absorbing particles in the air such as desert dust, volcanic ash, and smoke particles in the atmosphere. It is related to both the thickness and height of the aerosol layer in the atmosphere.
News reports from multiple countries described extremely poor air quality in the region in late March and early April 2026. The rainy monsoon season has not yet arrived, so many areas are approaching their driest conditions of the year, leaving more fuel and better burning conditions for intentionally set (agricultural) and naturally or accidentally caused fires.
Meteorological spring has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. It also appears to have arrived off the northeastern coast of the United States.
In the early afternoon on March 29, 2026, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite captured a natural-color view of the Atlantic Ocean splashed with shades of green and milky blue from Norfolk to Cape Cod. While some of the color could be due to outflows from coastal rivers and sediment churned up by spring storms, at least some of the greens and light blues offshore are phytoplankton blooms. PACE observes ocean color in more than 100 wavelengths precisely so that it can detect such blooms and discern what species are in them.
The map below affirms the presence of phytoplankton. Using the lens of near-real time (NRT) chlorophyll-a data from OCI, we can see rough estimates of the amount of sunlight-capturing pigment in the water – a proxy for detecting phytoplankton. Reds, oranges, and yellows delineate areas with higher levels of chlorophyll.
Phytoplankton are to the ocean what grasses and ground cover are to land: primary producers, a basic food source for other life, and the main carbon recycler for the marine environment. Diatoms, coccolithophores, algae, and other forms of phytoplankton are floating, plant-like organisms that soak up sunshine, sponge up nutrients, and create their own food (energy).
As springtime brings increasing hours of sunlight to the North Atlantic, phytoplankton populations surge back from winter lows. Like terrestrial plants, phytoplankton need sunlight and nutrients to thrive. Springtime brings both. The Gulf Stream, which makes many of the rings and swirls in the chlorophyll image, also helps churn the sea and capture cold water masses that usually carry nutrients.
The image pair below shows the significant increase in chlorophyll levels in the region from the end of February 2026 to the end of March.