Images of Change

NASA Climate, NASA

This collection of photos from the NASA Climate website features images of global change, such as floods, wildfires, and retreating glaciers. Not all images show change caused directly by climate change and energy use, and descriptive captions indicate causes for change in most of the images.

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Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

It is crucial to emphasize that these changes depicted on this site may or may not be due to human activities and climate change. Search website by using CTR+F and type in your search term in the box.
Images include changes related to climate change directly (e.g. glaciers melting) and indirectly (e.g. pine bark beetle infestations), as well as consequences of energy development/use (e.g. Chernobyl 2011 and damming the Nile for hydroelectricity). It must be emphasized that images of global change are not always due to or attributable to human induced climate change. For example, images of Caspian Sea from week of June 30, 2011 show changes that are due to human activities, specifically irrigation diversions of streams into the Caspian Sea for growing cotton. While this is not directly related to climate change, these changes did impact human health and alter weather patterns in the region. New images are added periodically. Comments from expert scientist: The striking visual imagery effectively communicates earth surface changes. The changes themselves are compelling. Imagery from different instruments and missions is being (at least visually) set to a similar reflectance scale, in order to allow for visual comparisons.
These images show dramatic, large-scale changes over relatively short time scales. It is important for viewers not to jump to conclusions about the cause or attribution of the change. Students could explore the collection and find images, processes, or locations that are most compelling to them. Background materials or readings are not provided.