NASA image gallery highlights Earth's changing face

Each image pair in the continuously updated gallery highlights before-and-after impacts of change, including the destruction wrought by extreme events such as wildfires and floods, the retreat of glaciers caused by climate change, and the expanding footprint of urban areas due to population growth.

The redesigned gallery, which currently features more than 160 comparison views, is now organized and sortable by categories, including ice, human impact, water, land cover and extreme events. A selection of some of the Global Climate Change website team's favorite images is highlighted in a new "Top Picks" category.

Another new feature is a map view, which places each image into its geographical context. Guests can zoom in to specific locations on the map, or select by region, and see where particular changes are taking place around the globe. They can also share links to each image set and download high-resolution versions of the images.

"Seeing our planet from space gives us a global view that we can't get elsewhere," said Amber Jenkins, editor of the Global Climate Change website, who established the gallery in 2009. "It underscores how fragile and interconnected our planet is, and how it is constantly changing. With this new version of the gallery, we want people to be better able to immerse themselves in the images, and gain that sense of perspective."

NASA's Global Climate Change website is devoted to improving the public's understanding of Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. For more on NASA's Earth Science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/index.html .

For more on NASA's Earth Day activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthday .

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.